The rune shrieked—a sound that made my bones ache. Black veins stretched across the earth in every direction, radiating outward like cracks in glass. Ferns wilted. Moss dried out and curled. Even the roots of nearby trees withered.
This was why Ihatedrunes. To the fae, they were tools of war. To humans, they were traps waiting to kill us. It was wrong. All of it.
But I could fix it.
I lurched forward and dropped to my knees beside the rune, ignoring Kairos’s sharp intake of breath. My fingers found its lines, and magic seared up my arms like lightning through water. The black veins shuddered, halting their spread. Then, slowly, they retreated.
A tendril shot out. It coiled around my throat like a noose and yanked. My feet left the ground. The world lurched as it hauled me up, my legs kicking, fingers clawing at the shadow choking me. The forest tilted and shrank until the treetops were level with my boots.
I couldn’t breathe.
Kairos snarled, and flames erupted below me. The heat slammed into me, and the tendril recoiled with a hiss. Its grip loosened just enough for me to gasp. Through the haze, Kairos blasted the rune with torrents of flame.
The tendril released.
I plummeted. Too fast. The ground hit me like a fist, and my shoulder popped. I lay there, gasping like a landed fish.
Boots crunched beside me. Then gentle hands lifted me from the dirt. One cradled my head, fingers threading throughmy hair.
“What is it?” he rasped.
I groped at my neck, trying to inhale. It felt like swallowing shattered glass.
Kairos snarled and batted my hands aside.
My fingers went limp as his palm pressed against my throat, and heat flooded into me. The world blurred. The trees swayed as darkness crept in from the edges of my vision, swallowing everything.
16
THE SILK TRAP
Pain.
So much…pain.
Worse than brittle fever, which almost killed me at fifteen. I’d spent weeks bedridden, unable to roll over without feeling like my ribs would snap.
And gods, the fear. I remembered lying there, trying not to breathe wrong.
I’d felt so fragile.
This pain was different. Every breath scraped against raw flesh. I woke up on something…soft?
Wait. What?
I cracked my eyes open, blinking at the sunlight. A bed. Huge and plush. It made the cot in the attic feel like a slab of stone. Even the inns Vaeris had snuck me into hadn’t been this fine, and the sheets weren’t coarse at all.
I shifted, and smooth fabric glided on my skin. My fingers traced the embroidery of my shift, wonder prickling through me—but it curdled fast.
Where was my dress?
I sat up, staring at myself. Bare arms and legs. Someone had undressed me and put me in this.
Where am I?
The walls were polished wood, their grains swirling in hypnotic patterns. The ceiling arched high and a large window stretched across the side of the room.
I pushed back the sheets and stumbled toward the window. Mist clung to a forest that ran as far as I could see. Ferns blanketed the ground in impossible shades of green—emerald, jade, moss so vivid it almost hurt to look at. Tiny red stones gleamed along the paths, flickering through the mist like scattered rubies.
