“This is where we must part.”
Amma spun around, heart shooting up into her throat and freezing. Damien’s voice had been so calm, such an easy thing for him to say despite that it stabbed through her with a frantic and paralyzing fear. Her throat tightened around the words that were about to be blurted out:whyandnoandnever.
But Damien was only speaking to Peter, his horse, not her, standing beside it and awkwardly running a hand down its snout. The horse pulled away from him, and Damien sighed. “Yes, I know, you are very torn up about it.”
“We can’t take the horses?” Amma shook off the fear that had taken her at the thought of Damien leaving, but her voice still wavered.
“Traversing this place is better on foot, and without plains to gallop through, they are little more than clumsy prey here.” Damien stepped back from the stallion as Kaz skittered down off its back, jumping to the ground where he immediately began to grumble about the wetness.
Amma said her goodbyes to the two and led them back a few steps. The forest, however, didn’t change around her again, only more of the thick, new jungle in all directions. “Will they figure out how to get back?”
“Only your gods would know,” said Damien, then he cleared his throat, “I mean, yes, I’m sure.” He waved awkwardly to the animals.
Amma left them, hoping they wouldn’t wait this time as she imagined they would never find this exact place again. The thickness of the foliage swallowed up the horses as they trotted off in the opposite direction. “So, there are, what, packs of wolves out here? Or bears?”
Damien smirked. “Not exactly.”
“Worse,” said Kaz as he scampered out before the two of them, throwing his claws up and baring all of his fangs.
Amma made a worried sound in her throat, pushing past a leaf with saggy edges, beautifully yellow-green and as long as her arm. It was lovely, but she was suddenly worried about what could be hiding behind it. She quickly ran over the steps in her mind to load and shoot her crossbow, simultaneously checking for the dagger strapped to her thigh.
“Yes, worse,” said Damien, “terrible, little creatures just like Kaz here with pointy teeth and bad attitudes.”
Amma took a stalwart breath, more of that heady air filling her lungs and with it something like courage. Damien clearly wasn’t afraid, and she need not be either. “All right then. How do we find the witches?”
“I’m not sure we do,” mused Damien, eyes narrowed on the way ahead as he pushed past a fern. “Much like the wildwood, I think they find us. That is what happened to me before.”
“When you came to break into the Everdark?”
“The Everdarque. But, no, I was unfortunate enough to run into them the time before that when I was seeking out unique blood,” he said casually. “That was long ago. I think I was sixteen?”
“When I was sixteen, I was perfecting my chain stitch,” said Amma with a huff. She’d always known she was lucky to be relatively safe and more than provided for with her station in life, but imagining she could have beenheredoingthisinstead of embroidery almost a decade ago sparked jealousy in her chest.
“I did almost die. Twice,” he told her as if the admittance was painful. “You would be surprised just how many things are poisonous out here and how quickly they can affect you even if you’re meant to be an expert at filtering toxins out of your blood. Which reminds me—anything that color, leafy, scaled or furry, will almost definitely paralyze you.”
Amma had just been eyeing the exact magenta flower that Damien pointed out. “Noted. Was the blood for the talisman?”
“No, no, this was before I had the idea of enthralling Archibald. Back then I was just honing my senses, exposing myself to as much as possible. The things here are different, as we discussed, and their innate arcana is often hidden, harder to identify as it’s older and more primal. Apparently I did not do a very thorough job, though, as I missed it in you.”
Amma came to a stop—old, primal, innate arcana? Inside her? She laughed. “Well, there probably just isn’t that much in there.”
“You made a tree,” he said plainly.
She hummed, heading toward a cluster of blue mushrooms that were suddenly the most interesting thing in the world to her. “Well, you know, I had an acorn on me.”
Damien swept around to stand before her, stopping them both short. “Amma, youmadea tree. I saw it. You are more capable than you think, and I’d wager it’s because you believe the ability is coming from outside you, the acorn or liathau wood, and not from within.”
She shrugged—that was the case, after all.
“I’ve been pondering an experiment,” he said hesitantly. “Something I’ve been wanting to try, if you’d be willing.”
Intrigued, Amma eyed him, waiting for more. Damien had experimented with her before, when they’d sent the raven, and she’d quite liked that.
“Do you think you could resist the talisman?”
The creatures called out into the thick foliage around them, something slithered through the underbrush, and there was a flutter of wings above, but Amma ignored it all. “You mean, like, overpoweryou?”
“Ah, yes, I suppose?” It was his turn to shrug, as if it were such a simple thing.
