Black veins, thick as ropes, pulsed from beneath a great stone ahead. One glance told me they were wrong. Unnatural, alive. I followed them.
Her tracks reappeared between the trees. The deeper I went, the darker the forest grew. The air thickened, sour and wet. Then came the sound, oozing, sluggish, like rot drawing breath.
I reached a clearing veined in black. The earth there glistened as if slick with oil. Evie’s tracks ended in the center.
And there she was.
Sprawled upon the ground, vines coiled around her body. Tendrils had forced their way beneath her clothes, curling like hungry things. My heart clenched so hard I could scarcely breathe.
Instinct broke through reason. I swung down from Grison, lightningalready coiling around my hands. I caught her up in my arms and sent a searing current through the vines. Bolts cracked from my fingers. The tendrils shrieked and recoiled, hissing like struck serpents.
She was breathing. Thank the gods, she was still breathing. Blood streaked her forehead where she’d struck a rock. The vines had torn through her tunic and breeches, but not her skin, yet faint burns marked where they’d begun to feed.
I gathered her closer, her weight light against my chest, and turned back toward the trees. The vines twitched, eager to follow. I sent another surge of power through the air, and the forest glowed white for a heartbeat.
Evie didn’t stir.
I laid her carefully across Grison’s back and mounted behind, one arm keeping her steady. With a click of my tongue and a squeeze of my heels, he leaped forward, and we tore through the woods.
We galloped across the mountain pass until the trail opened to a river, its surface catching the last light of dusk like molten silver. I dismounted Grison and carried Evie to the riverbank. Pebbles shifted beneath my boots as I kneeled and laid her down.
For the first time since finding her, I allowed myself to look. Truly look.
In all that rush, I had not stopped once to see her. And now, with the danger behind us, her beauty was all I could see.
Her lashes lay dark against her cheeks, her expression soft as sleep. Her hair was tangled, strewn with leaves and dirt, yet still managed to gleam in the fading light. And those lips, full, parted… Lips I had tasted, whose memory still burned on my tongue.
I exhaled sharply and shook my head, forcing the thought away. I could not let myself slip into the same hunger that had undone me at the Academy Ball.
I dipped my shoulder cape into the river’s cold current and pressed the damp fabric to her brow. She stirred at the touch, a faintsound slipping from her throat, a small, pained moan. Good. It meant she was conscious.
Gently, I lifted her tunic enough to inspect the burn marks where the vines had reached her skin. The sight of her—the warm olive tone of her stomach, the rise and fall of her breathing—sent a heat through my own hands that taunted the storm I carried. I forced my touch to remain clinical, steady, though it felt like restraint itself might break my bones.
I did not see her eyes open until she whispered, “You…”
Her voice was raw, rasped from exhaustion. Then she startled upright, scrambling away across the stones.
I raised my hands in an open gesture, palms bare. “Easy.”
“What…” she winced, pressing a hand to her temple. “What are you doing here?”
“You need to be careful with that,” I said, nodding toward the wound. “I found you among those black vines. What happened?”
She blinked, searching for the memory. Her gaze flicked to the river, then to me, and something flickered behind it. Sadness…
“I don’t know what they are,” she murmured, “but I saw—” She stopped herself, eyes narrowing. “Ifeellike it’s tied to something that happened not long ago… at a tower, on that mountain.” She pointed to the highest peak looming behind us.
A coldness crept through my bones. A tower…
The plague’s buried truth.
And Evie was a seerling.
What had she seen? What did she know?
I rose slowly and stepped toward her. “You need to let me finish cleaning that wound.”
She shook her head. “Don’t come near me.”
