My Life From Hell (The Blooming Goddess #3)

Radiance of Memory (Part 3)

"Come on," Kai said. "Let's see if Bethany left any trace of the tree."

We tromped down to the garden.

The sky grew dark. I looked up, knowing I wasn't going to find storm clouds. Sure, it might look that way to humans, but I could clearly see the thousands of Pyrosim and Photokia hovering outside the second ward. More arrived every second. Well, we'd known they'd all be showing up. Dwelling on it wasn't going to change anything.

I turned to face to the garden. I think I would have preferred to stare at the minions. That dead garden, wild and choked with weeds, was downright forbidding. Icy tendrils snaked through my blood. Every step closer left me with the irrational fear that, at any second, the ground beneath me would cave into a field of lava. My friends—and even the minions—would all disappear and I'd be left here. Alone.

The lack of a pomegranate tree didn't relieve me at all. It just made me more anxious. As if I'd already lost. The sight of the flames burning from Pops' ward made me feel worse. They came extremely close to the garden. With the pomegranate tree gone, I couldn't help thinking that if anything was going to be consumed by flame, it would be me.

The terror grew like a weight until I stumbled under it.

Theo grabbed my elbow. "Steady, Magoo."

I clutched his hand, my eyes focused on the garden. I could only manage shallow breaths. No matter how hard I tried to suck in oxygen, I felt like I'd never get enough air again.

Kai stepped into the garden first. He paced slowly through it, meticulously searching for any trace of the tree.

"It was along one of the edges of the garden," I said. And so was I. I'd go in if I had to, but not a second before. It hadn't occurred to me that I'd have to psych myself up to perform the ritual. I'd always just assumed I'd be so eager to defeat Pops and Hades that I'd be raring to go.

It's just a place. I tried to hold on to that thought. It couldn't hurt me. A lot of things in and around it most definitely could, but the garden itself couldn't. Not unless I gave it the power to.

"Tree cutting and yoga, who knew Bethany was so multi-talented," Theo said.

Festos limped into the center of the garden. "Demeter helped her with some kind of magic tool. Trust me. There's no way that child could have obliterated every trace of the tree otherwise."

Kai looked over at me. "Soph? Anything you remember that could help here?"

I forced myself to step into the garden. Nothing happened. I wasn't consumed by lava. No stone grew from the ground to twist up my body and seal me into a sarcophagus.

Hang on. The stone that I'd stood on in my vision. "Look for a low flat rock. One wide enough to stand on comfortably. "

We all took a corner of the garden and started searching. My patch contained a lot of weeds, that yielded no stones underneath. There were a couple of boulders, but they weren't the right size.

"Honeybunch?"

I looked at Festos. He held a tangle of vines aside with his cane, peering down. I hurried over to him. He'd exposed the edge of a stone that could be the one we wanted.

"Can you knock some more of the vines out of the way?" I asked. I bent down and scrabbled in the dirt to pull out some of the plants myself, while Fee hacked at the others.

In a few minutes, the rock was exposed. I squinted down at it. "I think that's it. The one in my vision."

Wimpily, no matter how much I assured myself that it was just a rock and not a tomb, I couldn't step onto it. I stood in front of it instead. "Since I was facing into the garden when I saw the tree ..." I spread my arms out in front of me. "Follow my arms. It was somewhere between them on the other side."