Page 61 of Wild Ivy
“Well, I can’t argue with that.”
“Torin, sweetheart,” the forest version of my mother calls, her voice dripping with false warmth that the real vicious bitch would never use. “Don’t you want to make your mother proud?”
“That’s definitely not her,” Bram snorts.
“The forest is really bad at impersonations,” Tate adds dryly.
Their casual dismissal helps. They’re right - my mother would never use that sugary tone. She’s all ice and sharp edges. This poor imitation just proves it’s the forest playing tricks.
Another snap, closer. My mother’s voice shifts, becoming colder, but still not quite right. “You could have joined us. You still can. All that new power, wasted.”
“Oh, shut up,” Ivy snarls suddenly. “You aren’t real, and even if you were, Torin has chosen his side, and it’s not yours.”
The air grows heavy with tension, like two powerful forces testing each other. For a moment, I think the forest might retaliate, but then the pressure eases, and it goes silent.
“Well, that was irritating,” I grit out.
“The forest isn’t evil,” Ivy says thoughtfully. “It’s testing us. But we have to set boundaries.”
“Respect for each other,” Tate murmurs.
She nods. “Exactly. We show respect, but we don’t submit. We don’t let it?—”
A scream cuts through the night - Lila’s scream. Ivy’s head whips around, her whole body tensing.
“Don’t,” I warn. “It’s not real. It can’t be real.”
Ivy’s jaw clenches, but she doesn’t move toward the sound. Smart girl. Instead, she grips my hand. “We keep moving.”
But the forest isn’t done with us. The screams multiply. Tate makes a choked sound that suggests he’s hearing his own personal demons.
“Close ranks,” I order, pulling our group into a tighter formation. My chaos magick swirls protectively around us, responding to my need to shield rather than attack. “Whatever you hear, whatever you see, remember that the forest is trying to separate us.”
The path ahead shimmers, like heat waves rising from hot pavement. Through the distortion, I see figures moving. They look like us, but wrong somehow. They are darker versions, twisted versions.
“Oh, that’s new,” Bram mutters, his shadows rising up, ready to attack. “Never seen a forest do that before.”
Our doppelgangers step forward, and I have to admit, these are better copies than the voice mimicry. The other-me grins, chaos magick crackling around him with an intensity that makes my skin crawl. His eyes are completely black.
“This is what you could be,” he says. “What you will be, once you stop fighting your true nature.”
“Bullshit,” I snap. “My nature isn’t yours to define.”
The other-Ivy laughs, the sound sharp and cruel. “Such conviction. Such delicious denial. You all cling to your manufactured morality while power beyond imagination waits for you to embrace it.”
“They’re not real,” Ivy reminds us firmly. “They’re just the forest trying to…”
She trails off as the figures suddenly blur, merging and shifting until we’re facing Life herself, looking exactly like Lila again.
“Fuck this,” Tate growls. “We don’t have time for mind games.”
Before any of us can stop him, he launches a blast of pure energy at the apparition. It passes right through, but the impact seems to shatter something. The path warps and twists, and suddenly, we’re somewhere else entirely.
The air is thicker here, heavy with magick that tastes like copper on my tongue. The moss-lit trees have given way to ancient stone pillars, crumbling but still standing, covered in symbols that hurt my eyes if I look at them too long.
“Well, that’s not good,” I mutter, noting how my magick reacts to this place, coiling and writhing like it’s found something familiar. Something dangerous.
“Where are we?” Tate asks, his power fluctuating wildly.
