Eyes.Blinking at me from the tree directly behind me.
I lunge forward on pure instinct and tear a man from where he’s been completely camouflaged against the bark of a nearby tree.
“Don’t touch me!” His voice comes out weak, barely more than a wheeze.
I drop him. He tumbles forward, landing face-first in the mud. He’s so covered in moss and earth and god-knows-what that I can barely distinguish where the man ends and forest begins.
“Did Vlad send you to track me?” I demand, fury making my voice shake. “Answer me!”
I nudge him with my foot—not gently.
“Don’t—” He jerks away from me like I’ve burned him. But his movements are pathetic. Weak. Like he barely has any control over his limbs.
What the hell kind of new trick is this, Vlad?
I back away warily, watching him. Waiting for the reveal or ambush. The trap.
“Hey!” I shout, nudging him with my foot. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
He mumbles something so quiet I can’t hear it.
I inch forward despite my better judgment. “What?”
“Leave me,” he whispers, still face-down in the dirt.
Is he just some homeless guy who wandered out from one of the nearby villages and got lost?
I look around, scanning for signs of others. “Are you with anyone? Someone I can get to… help you?”
Against every ounce of common sense I possess, I reach down and grab what I think is his shoulder—it’s hard to tellunder all the mud and plant matter—and heft him back up to sit against the tree.
That’s when I see his eyes.
Clear whites flash up at me. Stunning gray irises—translucent, like storm clouds over water. So alive despite everything else about him that screams he should be near to death.
“Leave,” he says again, voice still wan. Barely there.
Then he lifts one mud-caked arm.
White-blue light sparks suddenly erupt from his hand.
I jerk back as strange shapes begin to form in the air—geometric, beautiful, impossible—and then dissipate like smoke. He slumps back against the tree, unconscious.
I blink once. Twice.
What in the actual hell?
For once, I don’t think this has anything to do with Grandfather. Yes, the tree-man was definitely using some kind of magic at the end there. But there’s no way Vlad knew I was going to pick today to run away, much less that I’d come this direction and stumble across... whatever this man is.
Is he an elf? Some kind of fae?
Does that kind of thing even… exist? I don’t know if there are other magical creatures out there besides my family. Other than Sabra, my best friend who’s a witch, I’ve never met any. But Sabra and I are always theorizing that other beings or spirits might be able to break into this plane the way my ancestors did. Just because we’ve never personally encountered any doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Grandfather has stories about running into...things. He never gets specific. But he always tries to keep a witch in his employ for exactly these situations.
I bite my bottom lip, studying the unconscious man.
Maybe I should leave this guy alone. It’d certainly be much better for him if he never got entangled with my family.
