The Forest did not begin at the tree line.

  It began three steps in.

  The snow thinned first. It was still there, but it simply stopped falling the way snow should. Beneath the canopy, the flakes drifted sideways, as though reconsidering their descent, before dissolving into dampness long before they touched the ground. The air felt heavier, close in a way that had nothing to do with wind.

  Nadine slowed beside me.

  “Do you feel that?” she asked quietly.

  “Yes.”

  The sounds from the wall behind us did not fade so much as collapse. The crackle of torches, the distant murmur of guards, even the steady hiss of winter wind all dulled at once, like a door had been shut on the world. Our footsteps pressed into the loam with a muffled softness that swallowed echo. Even our breathing seemed immodest.

  Nadine drew in a slow breath and let it out carefully, watching the faint silver cloud linger too long before thinning. “It’s warmer.”

  “It will not stay that way,” I said.

  She flexed her fingers once, then twice, subtly as if she hoped I would not notice. A faint shimmer stirred around her hand and died almost immediately.

  Her brows narrowed in confusion. “My magic feels… wrong. Like it’s there, but further away. As if I’m reaching through cloth.”

  I did not answer right away. The forest pressed in, branches arching overhead in interlocking patterns that let almost no moonlight through. What little illumination reached us came fractured and uneven, pale ribbons that shifted with no wind to move them. Beyond that, we had only the faint glow of the lichen.

  “You are not imagining it,” I said at last. “There is a nexus of five ley lines at the center of the Forest.”

  “Five?” she asked, startled.

  I nodded. “That is some of what you feel. The Forest absorbs and channels most of the mana, so it won't overwhelm you, but the process will affect your spells. The ones that the Forest allows, anyway.”

  That did not comfort her, but we walked on.

  The path that led toward the interior did not so much disappear as surrender. It faded until it became suggestion, then memory. Roots swelled up beneath the soil in uneven ridges, forcing Nadine to adjust her stride. Low branches angled in ways that seemed accidental until one noticed they always angled toward the same narrow corridors between trunks.

  “You said there were shortcuts,” she murmured, a wry tone attempting to cover the fear underneath.

  “There are.”

  She glanced at me. “And we are not taking them.”

  “No.”

  “For my sake.”

  “For your sake. We’d need to travel paths carved into The Shade. You would shine like a beacon there. It’s not safe.”

  Just mentioning The Shade sent a shiver down her spine. She didn’t ask anything further, only adjusting again as her boot slid half an inch on a patch of damp moss hidden in the thick leaf layer. After a few more steps, she lifted her hand again, this time more deliberately. A whisper of light flickered between her fingers, faint and unstable. It guttered before fully forming.

  She lowered her hand slowly. “If something attacks us—“

  “It won’t,” I said. “We will avoid the monsters. The way through isn’t by fighting.”

  She looked at me sharply. “That is not reassuring.”

  I allowed myself the smallest smile. “If something attacks us, you will still be capable of defending yourself, but I will keep you safe.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  Her anxiety melted when she took in my expression, and she deflated with a halfhearted glare.

  The air carried a faint sweetness beneath the rot, something floral and thin that did not belong to winter. Spores, perhaps. They drifted in patterns too regular to be natural, catching what little light there was and turning it opalescent for a heartbeat before vanishing.

  Nadine noticed them too. “Is that normal?”

  “Yes,” I answered, leading us on.

  Her eyes wandered the forest around us. “I see it all over the place… and I can feel the magic. I bet that wreaks havoc on spells out here.”

  I gave a non-committal hum.

  She exhaled slowly. “You knew it would.”

  “I’ve heard stories.”

  “That is not the same thing.”

  “No,” I agreed. “It is not. I did not roam so far from the Deep Woods until recently.”

  We walked in silence for a time. The deeper we went, the less I felt the pressure I had carried within the city walls. The forest did not welcome me, precisely, but it recognized the shape of me. The air settled differently in my lungs. My steps grew lighter without conscious effort.

  Nadine noticed that as well.

  “You seem comfortable,” she said.

  “I am. Every step forward feels more like home.”

  “That’s unsettling,” she said, a tremor of teasing in her tone.

  I grinned. “It should be.”

  She huffed softly, though it did not hold humor for long. Her shoulders remained tight, her attention flicking from shadow to shadow as though expecting something to lunge from each one.

  “It was nice to see you dancing,” I said.

  She blinked at the abrupt shift. “What?”

  “In the Guild. You looked happy.”

  Color rose faintly in her cheeks despite the dim light. “That is a strange thing to bring up now.”

  “Is it?”

  “We are walking through a forest that eats people.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you wish to discuss dancing.”

  “I prefer it to discussing how poorly your magic is responding.”

  She made a small, frustrated sound. “I didn’t think you’d notice one dance.”

  “I notice many things. Like how it was more than one dance, for example.”

  She walked three more steps in silence before muttering, “Mara insisted.”

  “She did not look as though you required much convincing.”

  “That is not—“ She stopped herself, then sighed. “It was a distraction.”

  “It appeared to be more than that.”

  Her jaw tightened again, but this time not from fear. “Back home, appearances are often… unhelpful.”

  I shrugged, “You and Mara have been very close.”

  She stumbled half a step, catching herself on a low branch. “That is not something you should say so plainly.”

  “There is no one around to overhear.”

  “That is not the point.”

  “Then what is?”

  She hesitated, and for a moment I thought she might refuse to answer at all.

  “It is not allowed,” she said finally. “Not properly. Not if one intends to remain… respectable.”

  “And do you?”

  “Remain respectable?” She gave a thin, humorless laugh. “I am walking into this place with you. I suspect that ship has sailed.”

  I did not press.

  We walked a few more paces, the ground soft and uneven beneath our boots. Nadine’s shoulders had eased a fraction, as though merely speaking the thing aloud had loosened something tight in her chest.

  “I had thought,” I said mildly, “that perhaps you were interested in Perrin.”

  She stopped outright.

  The silence that followed was sharp.

  “In Perrin,” she repeated carefully.

  “The spellbreaker,” I clarified. “He watched you rather intently. And you did not seem displeased by the attention.”

  Color rose again, hotter this time. “He is—“ She cut herself off, visibly regrouping. “He is a very suitable match.”

  “That was not what I asked.”

  Her jaw set. “He is kind. Competent. Respected. In the right circumstances, my parents would approve.”

  “Mm.”

  “That matters,” she said, more defensively than before.

  “I am sure it does.”

  She resumed walking, but there was stiffness in her steps. “It would be easy,” she continued after a moment. “To choose that. To accept what is expected. I would not be miserable.”

  “No?”

  “No.” Her voice softened despite herself. “I might even be… comfortable.”

  “But.”

  She drew in a slow breath.

  “But I would never love him.”

  I only nodded in silent understanding.

  She kept her eyes forward. “I could build a life beside him. I could share a table, raise children, manage a household. He would treat me well. I do not doubt that.”

  “And yet.”

  “And yet it would always feel like I was standing slightly to the side of my own life.” Her fingers curled at her sides. “Watching it happen instead of living it.”

  The forest swallowed the admission whole.

  I regarded her profile for a moment. “You do not want comfort,” I said. “You want truth.”

  She glanced at me sharply, as though the word itself were dangerous.

  “I want,” she began, then stopped. Her throat worked before she tried again. “I want what I felt when Mara laughed and pulled me into that dance. I want it without having to look over my shoulder afterward.”

  And that was it. Not some defiance of tradition or rebellion. Just longing.

  “And Perrin, or anyone like him, will never be that.”

  She shook her head. “He deserves someone who looks at him and feels that first. Not someone who chooses him because he is safe.”

  I nodded, and we continued for several steps.

  “It was nice to see you so happy,” I said.

  She studied me, wary, searching for mockery or disapproval. She found neither.

  “That is all?” she asked quietly.

  “That is all.”

  Something in her posture eased then, not entirely, but enough that her next breath did not catch on the way out.

  Then, from somewhere ahead and to our right, a voice rang out through the trees.

  “Is someone there?” it called. “Help! I’m lost!

  Nadine turned toward the sound at once. “That’s—“

  I caught her wrist before she could take a step. “Wait.”

  The voice came again, thinner this time, threaded with strain. “Please! I can’t walk. I think I twisted something!”

  Nadine tried to pull free. “She’s hurt.”

  “Yes,” I agreed quietly.

  “And you’re just—“

  “Up,” I said, already guiding her toward a low branch thick enough to bear weight. “Now.”

  There was protest in her eyes, but she trusted me enough not to argue twice. I boosted her easily, then followed, settling along the limb and drawing a thin veil of shadow across us more out of habit than necessity.

  “Why are we hiding?” she whispered.

  I pointed.

  Through the layered trunks ahead, a small clearing opened in unnatural symmetry. Snow had not settled there at all. The ground was a dense weave of pale roots and creeping vines, all radiating from a single bloom at its center.

  The woman sat within it. She wore travel leathers, muddied at the hem. One boot was unlaced. She cradled her ankle as if it pained her and turned her head slowly from side to side, searching the trees with wide, imploring eyes.

  “Help,” she called again. “Is someone there?”

  Nadine inhaled sharply. “She’s real.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Movement flickered at the far edge of the clearing. A man leaned from behind a trunk, armor dulled with ash and travel grime. His stance was cautious, blade low but ready.

  “Psst,” he hissed. “Over here. Can you stand?”

  The woman looked toward him, relief blooming across her face. “I can’t. I tried. It hurts too much.”

  Another shape shifted further back. A second man, similarly armed. I recognized the cut of their coats, the tools hanging from their belts. Stakes. Silvered hooks. Glyph-etched chains.

  Hunters.

  “They followed us,” Nadine breathed.

  “Yes.”

  The first man stepped into the clearing. He did not test the ground. He did not look down. He crossed the line of roots and reached for her.

  Everything happened at once.

  The woman’s jaw dropped far wider than bone should permit. Skin stretched without tearing. From her throat burst a cluster of vines as thick as fingers, slick and pale, lashing outward with startling speed.

  They struck his wrists, his shoulders, his throat.

  He managed half a cry before the vines cinched tight and yanked him forward.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  The bloom beneath her split fully open, petals peeling back to reveal a deeper cavity lined in fibrous ridges.

  He was pulled headfirst into her mouth.

  His boots kicked once.

  Twice.

  Then the vines recoiled, drawing him down in a single, fluid motion. Her torso swelled grotesquely around the shape of him, distending bonelessly as he struggled within.

  It lasted no more than a heartbeat. Perhaps two. The clearing fell silent.

  Nadine’s fingers dug into the bark beside her.

  The remaining hunters froze at the perimeter. One took an involuntary step forward, axe lifting in reflex, but the third caught his shoulder and dragged him back.

  “Don’t,” he snapped in a harsh whisper. “You rush that and you’re next.”

  The woman’s body shuddered, then the bloom snapped shut around her with a sound like wet canvas folding. Roots tightened, and the entire structure sank.

  Snow drifted back into the space it had occupied as though nothing had disturbed it. For a long moment, the two remaining hunters stood staring at the patch of earth where their companion had vanished.

  “He was right there,” one said hoarsely.

  “We don’t know what it is,” the other replied. “We go back. We regroup.”

  “You’re leaving him?”

  “He’s already gone!”

  As they argued, the ground shifted again. Two new buds pressed upward through the loam several paces apart. They rose quickly, swelling, unfurling.

  Petals peeled back. In one bloom, the same injured woman sat once more, clutching her ankle.

  In the other, their companion knelt in the center of the flower, face pale, eyes wide and unfocused.

  His mouth opened.

  “Is someone there?” he called, voice perfectly pitched to the earlier plea. “Help! I’m lost!”

  The woman turned her head and echoed him a breath later.

  “Is someone there? Help! I’m lost!”

  The hunters went very still.

  Beside me, Nadine’s breath came quick and shallow.

  “That isn’t possible,” she whispered.

  I took her hand and squeezed it, but that didn’t stop her shaking.

  One of the hunters made a strangled sound that might have been his friend’s name.

  I shifted my weight on the branch.

  “That will slow them,” I murmured.

  Nadine tore her gaze from the clearing to stare at me. “Slow them?”

  “They will argue,” I said. “Fear does that.”

  The replicated voices continued their plaintive call into the trees.

  “We should move,” I added quietly.

  We did not drop from the branch immediately. I waited until the hunters’ voices shifted from panic to harsh, strained whispering. Until the clearing filled again with false pleas.

  “Now,” I said softly.

  Nadine descended more stiffly than she had climbed. When her boots touched the ground, she did not look at me. She looked back toward the clearing. The voice drifted faintly through the trees.

  “Help…”

  She swallowed.

  We moved without speaking at first, angling away from the clearing and deeper along a path that would have looked indistinct to anyone without reason to notice it. The forest swallowed sound quickly, but not quickly enough to erase memory.

  After perhaps a hundred paces, the replicated voices faded to something imagined, and Nadine finally exhaled.

  “That was…” She stopped.

  “Yes.”

  “That was a woman.”

  “It resembled one.”

  She flinched at the correction.

  “How did you know?” she asked.

  “This is my home.”

  She was quiet for a few steps before saying, “You stopped me.”

  “Mhm.”

  “If I had gone—“

  “You would have crossed the roots.”

  She closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them again, there was no anger in them. Only the dawning weight of what might have happened.

  “And the hunters,” she continued. “That thing wasn’t hunting us.”

  “No. We didn’t alert it.”

  “It was waiting for them.”

  “Yes.”

  We walked on.

  The ground grew denser with undergrowth, the trees older, their trunks thick enough that three people might not have encircled them fully. The air cooled as we descended into a shallow basin where mist gathered low and slow, clinging to the earth like breath that refused to rise.

  After several minutes, Nadine spoke again, quieter.

  “It copied him.”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “I do not know the exact mechanism.”

  “That is not what I meant.”

  I glanced at her.

  “How did it know what to say?” she pressed. “The same words. The same cadence.”

  “It did not need to understand the meaning,” I said. “Only the pattern.”

  “That makes it worse.”

  “Yes, I suppose it does.”

  We crossed a fallen trunk slick with damp moss. Nadine moved more carefully now, eyes scanning the ground as often as the shadows ahead.

  “This place isn’t wild,” she said after a time.

  “It’s a forest.”

  “No, I mean, it’s arranged.”

  I allowed myself the smallest tilt of my head. “I thought I explained that… though, I guess it is easier to understand once you see it.”

  Her breath shuddered. “You see it clearly enough, and somehow you’re perfectly comfortable.”

  I raised a brow at her. “This is my home, Nadine.”

  “That should frighten me.”

  “It probably does.”

  She huffed once, though it lacked humor.

  We walked.

  Time stretched differently beneath the canopy. The moon did not travel in any visible arc above us. Light thinned by increments rather than degrees. The sweetness in the air deepened, threaded now with damp earth and something metallic beneath it.

  Nadine’s steps slowed as the terrain shifted again. The forest floor dipped, then rose, forming subtle corridors between root-walls and thorned brush.

  “This is guiding us,” she said.

  “Yes. Much of the Forest does. It’s just a matter of following the right paths and signs.”

  “Where do the signs say this one is taking us?”

  “Further,” I said, my tone light.

  “That is not an answer.”

  “Don’t worry. This is the safest version of the right way.”

  She was silent for several paces.

  “The hunters followed us,” she said at last. “They must have been waiting in the city, or near it.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “And the Forest… responded.”

  “The Forest responds to any who trespass.”

  She glanced sideways at me. “But not us. That’s not coincidence, then?”

  “Not exactly. We know where to walk,” I said, glancing at her. “It helps.”

  “Did you know it would happen?”

  I considered that.

  “I hoped,” I said.

  She absorbed that without immediate reply.

  The trees grew taller as we moved, the night sky above nearly impossible to find. More of the glowing lichen and fungus appeared, tinting the air purple and blue. The undergrowth thinned in some places and thickened in others, forming a pattern that became clearer the longer one looked at it. Animal calls, faint and distant earlier, had ceased entirely. No birds stirred. No small creatures darted between trunks.

  The forest was not asleep, I knew. It was attentive.

  After what might have been another hour, Nadine’s breathing deepened with the steady rhythm of exertion. The initial shock had not left her, but it had settled into something steadier as she processed things.

  “Those shortcuts you mentioned. Are we close to them?”

  I gave her a cautious look. “We are often close to them, yes.”

  “Can we use them in an emergency?”

  Ah.

  “We could, but it would be dangerous. We couldn’t do it twice.”

  I glanced ahead, to where the trees thickened into shadow so complete it seemed almost solid.

  “Do not worry. It won’t come to that.”

  She followed my gaze and swallowed.

  She nearly stumbled as I led her across that line, and the world around us changed. One moment we were pushing through layered brush and uneven roots, and the next the forest opened as though a curtain had been drawn aside.

  The undergrowth vanished. No thorned tangles. No creeping vines. No low branches snagging at cloaks or hair. The ground beneath our boots was firm, dark, and almost smooth, broken only by the occasional exposed root that curved in deliberate arcs before sinking back into the earth.

  Nadine slowed.

  “This is…” She trailed off.

  “The Deep Woods,” I said.

  The canopy overhead knit itself so densely that even the fractured moonlight disappeared. What illumination remained came from no clear source at all. A faint, diffuse pallor that seemed to rise from the bark itself.

  Before us stretched a path wide enough for a wagon, or something larger. It ran straight for perhaps fifty paces before curving out of sight.

  Nadine turned slowly, taking it in. “There’s no brush.”

  “No. There is no need for it here.”

  “No more thorns?” she asked, looking hopeful.

  “Not one.”

  She started to smile, then stopped. “It’s because there are worse things, isn’t it?”

  “Worse? Or better?” I asked with a grin.

  She was not amused.

  The world had shifted between one step and the next. The ground became steady underfoot, our strides lengthened without effort, and the oppressive closeness of earlier terrain was gone, replaced by open vertical space that felt almost cathedral in scale.

  This was home. I smiled as some of the tension leaked out of me. Nadine looked torn between relief and the instinct to run for cover.

  Her voice was almost a whisper as she said, “It’s easier.”

  “In a way, yes.”

  She looked up at me sharply. “The way you said that doesn’t make me feel better.”

  “It should not.”

  We walked for perhaps a minute before I veered sharply left off the path and into a narrower corridor between two massive trunks.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered.

  “Avoiding that.”

  “That what?”

  I did not slow. “The clearing.”

  “There is no clearing.”

  “Exactly.”

  She hesitated only half a heartbeat before following. Behind us, the main path continued in a perfect, inviting arc. We did not take it. Instead, I led her through a space barely wide enough for us to pass single file, emerging onto a second broad way that ran perpendicular to the first.

  Nadine stared. “There are intersections.”

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  “Like roads?”

  “I guess you could say it’s something like that.”

  Her gaze tipped upward, toward the trees. The branches above were not random. They curved inward in layered tiers, leaving the central path entirely unobstructed.

  “For wagons?” she asked quietly.

  “For something,” I said, giving her a teasing grin.

  We moved again, and twice more, I changed direction without explanation. Once to avoid a stretch of ground that appeared pristine and undisturbed, and once to circle wide around a cluster of trees whose bark bore faint vertical striations that most would have mistaken for age.

  Nadine finally caught my sleeve.

  “That one looked… normal.”

  I blinked at her in surprise. “It was not.”

  “Yeah, obviously not. I get that. How do you know?”

  “I live here. I’ve had time to learn. It would be difficult and dangerous to try to show you now. I can teach you when we have time—closer to Ebonhold, where it's safer.”

  She took a deep breath, letting out some tension. “That might be for the best.”

  “Don’t worry. Once you’ve learned the patterns, things are easy to spot.”

  She nodded. “It feels so engineered.”

  “Now you’re getting it.”

  She looked back at the path we’d just avoided. “It makes you wonder who, or what, could have done all of this.”

  I allowed myself the faintest curve of a smile. “You are walking through Father’s domain,” I said.

  We continued on, deeper still, until the air itself seemed to thin and cool. The paths grew broader here. One stretched wide enough that three wagons might have traveled abreast. The ground bore faint compressions, subtle depressions that suggested weight had passed through long ago.

  I did not step onto that one either. Instead, I angled sharply toward a narrower trail along the edge. Nadine followed, though she did not look pleased.

  “Are we avoiding something,” she asked, “or being avoided?”

  “Yes,” I answered simply.

  She stared at me, unamused.

  Before she could press further, a sensation brushed against the back of my awareness. It wasn’t a sound or scent, but more of a disturbance in the Forest.

  I stopped.

  Nadine nearly walked into me. “What—?”

  “Quiet.”

  We stood motionless. For several heartbeats, there was nothing. Then, faintly, from somewhere behind us and far to the right, came the soft crack of wood under weight. Not the random settling of branches, but the break of old, dry wood under the measured and controlled step of someone attempting to move silently.

  Nadine’s eyes widened.

  “They’re still following,” she breathed.

  I nodded.

  “That flower—“

  “I’d hoped it would slow them more.”

  Another faint sound, closer this time. A muted scrape, like metal brushing bark.

  “They found the path,” she whispered.

  “It seems that way.”

  Her voice sharpened. “How?”

  I tilted my head slightly, listening. There it was again. We left no tracks here, but they were moving where we had.

  “That is unexpected,” I said quietly. “They have something that is helping them follow us.”

  “A spell?”

  “Perhaps. Or just one of their tools they use to hunt vampires.”

  Her hand twitched instinctively as she reached for her magic.

  “Save your energy unless you have no choice,” I warned. “It will not respond how you expect, and you should not need it.”

  “I know.”

  The sound came again. They were steadily getting closer, somehow navigating around the dangers as we had.

  Nadine’s breathing quickened. “Can we lose them?”

  I considered the paths before us.

  “Something like that,” I said.

  I turned sharply off the manicured trail and into a corridor so narrow and unassuming that most would not have seen it at all.

  “Stay close,” I murmured.

  Behind us, the hunters advanced along the broad way. They were closer than they had any right to be.

  We did not run. The narrow corridor we had taken bent twice in sharp angles before emptying into a smaller crossing of paths. The manicured breadth narrowed here, but it was more art than a lack of maintenance.

  They stepped into view less than a minute later, but only three of them remained, and all of them fresh faces I did not recognize. The forest had been far less kind to their group than I’d initially thought.

  Their formation was tight and disciplined. One carried a hooked polearm etched with silver script. Another bore a compact crossbow already cranked and loaded. The third held something that hummed faintly in his palm—a disk of layered metal inscribed with concentric rings that caught what little light there was.

  The disk pulsed once, and he finally looked up and met my eyes.

  “There,” he said.

  They fanned out just enough to block the corridor behind us. Nadine shifted her stance beside me, not hiding her unease but not retreating either.

  The man with the polearm spoke first. “Release the Saint.”

  I blinked at him.

  “Release her,” he repeated, voice firm. “You will not escape with her again.”

  Nadine and I exchanged a look.

  I lifted a hand and gestured lightly toward my cousin. “Are you talking about her?”

  The hunters hesitated.

  “Yes,” the crossbowman snapped. “The girl. Step away from her.”

  Nadine frowned. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You are under compulsion,” the polearm wielder continued, as though explaining something obvious. “She has enthralled you. Stand clear and we will free you.”

  Nadine stared at them for a long moment, then glanced at me.

  “They think I’m the Saint,” she said quietly.

  “It would appear so. This feels oddly familiar.”

  The man with the disk narrowed his eyes. “Do not attempt deception. We have confirmed the Saint was seen entering the forest with you.”

  “Yes,” I agreed pleasantly. “She was.”

  Nadine’s brows lifted slightly. “Do you really have to antagonize them?”

  I shrugged.

  “She has been taken once already,” the crossbowman pressed. “We will not allow it again.”

  Nadine cleared her throat. “I am not taken,” she said, very politely. “And she is not my captor.”

  The polearm shifted. “You are under her influence.”

  “I assure you,” Nadine replied, composure settling over her like a cloak, “if I were under anyone’s influence, I would be far less argumentative.”

  Silence stretched between us.

  The man with the disk stepped closer, studying her face, then mine.

  “Release her,” he said again, but there was less certainty in it now.

  I inclined my head slightly. “You are mistaken.”

  “We do not make mistakes,” the crossbowman snapped.

  “I guess that explains why there are only three of you here,” I said.

  Nadine pointedly ignored me and looked at them steadily. “She is the Saint.”

  All three men froze.

  “That is impossible,” the polearm wielder said flatly.

  “She cannot be,” the crossbowman added. “The Saint is human.”

  “Yes,” Nadine agreed.

  Their gazes flicked to my face. To my eyes. To the absence of breath fogging in the same rhythm as theirs.

  The man with the disk stiffened. “Abomination.”

  I sighed softly. “You followed us far deeper than was wise,” I said. “You should leave.”

  The crossbow lifted a fraction. “We will not allow a vampire to wear the mantle of sanctity.”

  “The what?” I replied, reaching up and exposing the mantle under my cloak, tugging at its fabric. “That is not what it’s called.”

  The disk flared faintly, lines igniting in pale gold. The man holding it winced as the light resisted him.

  “Return with us,” the polearm wielder demanded. “Submit to examination. If there has been corruption, we will purge it.”

  Nadine’s expression hardened. “She is not corrupted.”

  “Step away from her,” the crossbowman barked.

  “I’m confused. Which of us should step away from who, now?” I asked, genuinely unsure.

  The disk’s glow brightened again, then stuttered.

  The man holding it glanced down, frowning. “The resonance is unstable.”

  “Then stabilize it,” the polearm snapped.

  That’s when I felt something I’d been anticipating. The air shifted in a subtle but distinct way. The paths leading away darkened by a degree so slight it might have been imagined. The canopy above tightened imperceptibly.

  “You are standing in the wrong place,” I said gently. “It’s time to run.”

  The polearm lifted fully now. “Bind her.”

  The disk-bearer thrust his hand forward. The concentric rings flared, lines of light attempting to arc outward in a circular pattern meant to anchor and restrict. The circle formed—then refracted. The lines bent, curving along the grain of the roots beneath our feet instead of completing their pattern. The glow paled and skewed, as though being drawn sideways into something larger.

  “What—“ the man began.

  The crossbow fired. The bolt left the string true, then veered just enough in a sudden gust of wind. It struck a trunk two feet to my left with a dull thunk.

  “That is enough,” I said.

  That is when everyone else began to notice the change, too. At first, it was only a shift in the air, a pressure change subtle enough that Nadine might have mistaken it for wind had there been any wind to speak of. Then came the sound, a dry rustling, like silk dragged across stone.

  The man with the disk faltered mid-gesture. The rings in his palm flickered again, weaker this time. “The interference is building—“

  “Yes,” I agreed. “You should have run.”

  A shadow peeled itself from the upper branches and poured downward, thick as ink, gathering weight as it fell. Bats poured downward in a spiraling column, dozens at first, then scores, their bodies small and angular, wings catching the faint ambient light in quick, irregular flashes. The mass held its shape as it descended, the pattern narrowing with purpose.

  The hunters reacted as professionals do. They closed ranks.

  “Circle!” the polearm wielder barked.

  They shifted back to back, weapons outward, disk raised high as though light alone might drive the swarm away.

  The bats did not care. They struck as one.

  The first impact was not claws or teeth. It was force. The swarm hit the man with the disk like a collapsing curtain, wings beating in coordinated fury, bodies layering over one another in a churning mass that obscured him entirely. He screamed once, then the sound cut off abruptly.

  The disk fell from his hand, its glow guttering out before it struck the ground.

  The crossbowman pivoted, firing blindly into the mass. His bolt vanished into the swarm with no visible effect. His attempt to reload was interrupted as something small and dark collided with his face, claws scraping across his cheek.

  He staggered, and the swarm shifted. The mass slid from the first man to the second in a single fluid motion, as though the ground itself had tilted and redirected it. Wings beat in unison, the air filled with their deliberate cadence.

  The polearm wielder roared and thrust upward, silvered blade slicing through a dozen bodies at once, trying to intercept them. They dissolved, but not into blood. Into more bats. The severed forms broke apart midair, multiplying, reforming, the swarm thickening rather than thinning.

  “Back!” the polearm shouted. “Back!”

  But there was nowhere to retreat. The paths behind them had closed without their noticing. The wide corridor they had advanced along now seemed constricted, the trees closer than before.

  The swarm enveloped the crossbowman. His weapon clattered to the ground as he clawed at his face, at his throat, at the dark mass that swallowed him to the shoulders. The bats crawled over him, beneath armor seams, into every gap.

  He fell a moment later, and the polearm wielder stood alone.

  He turned toward us, and for a fraction of a heartbeat, our gazes met. There was no pleading in his eyes, only fury.

  “Abomination,” he spat.

  The swarm surged.

  It struck him from all directions at once, rising from the fallen bodies of his companions as though they had never been separate creatures at all.

  His polearm swept in a wide arc, silver flashing. The bats parted just enough to avoid the blade, then closed again around him, a tightening vortex of leathered wings and dark bodies.

  His roar became a strangled cry. Then nothing.

  The swarm did not linger. It contracted, bodies collapsing inward toward a single point several paces above the ground. Wings folded into one another, shapes merging in a way that defied simple anatomy.

  Where there had been hundreds of bats, there was now a man.

  He hovered for a breath, cloak settling as though gravity had only just remembered him. His hair was dark, his expression composed, eyes reflecting faint crimson in the dim light.

  He did not look at the fallen hunters, nor even at Nadine. His eyes met only my own.

  “You took your time,” I said quietly.

  His lips curved faintly. “The perimeter was… cluttered.”

  Below him, the bodies of the hunters lay still, their forms already beginning to desiccate, as though something essential had been drawn from them in passing.

  Nadine stood rigid beside me, unable to take her eyes away from them. I reached over to squeeze her hand, and she relaxed slightly.

  The vampire inclined his head slightly.

  “Lord Dragomir is aware of your return,” he said.

  “I assumed as much.”

  His gaze finally flicked toward Nadine, assessing without hostility, then back to me.

  “You should not linger here.”

  “I was about to correct that,” I replied.

  He did not smile again. The swarm reformed without transition, cloak dissolving into wings as his body fractured into motion. The bats rose in a tight spiral, vanishing into the canopy as swiftly as they had descended.

  Silence returned, and the path widened again as though nothing had occurred.

  I did not release Nadine’s hand immediately. Her fingers were cold where they gripped mine, pulse quick beneath the skin. I gave them another gentle squeeze, drawing her attention back from the space where the hunters had stood only moments ago.

  “It’s done,” I said softly.

  She looked at me, still pale, still trying to reconcile what she had witnessed.

  “That was not—“ She stopped, shook her head once. “That was not what I expected… You don’t feed like that, do you?”

  “No, I can’t take on the form of a bat at all.”

  She paused for a moment. “You knew him. Did you know he would come?”

  “I suspected someone would.”

  She stared at the place where the swarm had vanished, then back at me. I tugged lightly at her hand.

  “Come,” I said.

  I guided her onto one of the broader paths, the ground firm and unbroken beneath our steps. The corridor opened ahead of us, tall trunks rising in ordered intervals, the canopy seamless overhead.

  Nadine walked beside me in silence for several paces.

  “I suppose,” she said at last, voice steadier now, “this means we’re nearly there.”

  I smiled. “Yes.”

  Her brows lifted faintly. “I know that tone.”

  “It is only another two days or so on foot.”

  She stopped. “Two days.”

  “Yes, only two days.”

  She glanced around at the path, at the vast interior of the deep woods stretching ahead. “You said nearly.”

  “I did.”

  “That is not nearly.”

  “It is, comparatively.”

  She stared at me.

  “Do not look at me like that,” I said lightly. “We are safe here. There are places to rest along the way. You will not lack shelter.”

  As I spoke, the Forest shifted, sending a ripple through the canopy. It was subtle at first. A haze in the distance ahead, as though the space between the trees had grown slightly denser.

  Nadine took another step, then another. Then, she slowed.

  “Did you see that?”

  “See what?”

  “The—“ She gestured vaguely forward. “The line of trunks. They were further apart.”

  I glanced around. “You know, I think you’re right.”

  She glared for an instant at my light tone, then turned in a slow circle.

  The path behind us did not look as it had moments ago. The angle of the crossing had shifted. A stand of pale-barked trees that had flanked the corridor was gone, replaced by older growth, darker and thicker.

  Her breath caught.

  “We did not walk that far!”

  “Technically...”

  She dragged me three quick steps forward, then stopped again.

  “This isn’t the same stretch of forest.”

  “Nope,” I agreed.

  She looked at me sharply. “You’re not surprised.”

  I suppressed a grin. “I am not.”

  The space ahead of us folded inward without motion. It was no visible or dramatic effect—it simply became less. The path that had seemed to run straight for hundreds of paces now curved closer, the next intersection appearing as though it had always been there.

  Nadine turned again.

  “The ground,” she said. “It was uneven there. It’s not now.”

  She looked back at me, but I only gave her a shrug.

  We took another handful of steps, and the air cooled slightly, though no wind passed through the canopy. The faint metallic thread beneath the scent of earth strengthened, and the trees ahead thinned, though not in the way of a clearing. More like we approached a perimeter.

  Nadine stopped walking.

  “We should not be this far,” she said quietly.

  “I don’t see why not.”

  Her eyes widened. “Mirela!”

  I could not quite keep the curve from my lips this time.

  “It seems,” I said pleasantly, “that my father is not interested in waiting two days to see us.”

  Nadine stared at me.

  “You’re saying—“

  “That the journey is shorter than it was.”

  Another step.

  The deep woods opened, and far ahead, beyond the last line of ancient trunks, a structure rose against the darkened sky where there should have been only more forest.

  Nadine’s hand tightened reflexively in mine.

  “That is not possible,” she whispered.

  “And yet,” I answered. “It is.”

  Amareth's Tower is back! And he's got two more entire books of content to post! Check it out!