Thaine moved. He feinted high at Halian, used the staff's block to vault over it, and came down between the defenders and their target. His blade swept toward them in a perfect arc.
Arion shoved Briar aside and drew in one motion—a blade from his back, silver-white, singing as it cleared the sheath. He caught Thaine's strike inches from Briar's neck.
"Take her," Arion commanded without looking back. "Run. Now."
"We're not leaving you," Halian said.
"That's an order."
The forest itself seemed to recoil from Arion's blade. Where Thaine's weapon ate light, this one created it—not gentle illumination but harsh, painful radiance.
They met in the center of the clearing, the impact sending shockwaves through the ground. The earth actually cracked, moss blackening where their power bled into it. They moved too fast for Briar's eyes to follow properly, just indistinguishable blurs of dark and light.
Mesmerizing and terrifying at once, Briar couldn't bring herself to look away.
"Go!" Ferria grabbed Briar's arm, jerking her from whatever strange spell had settled over her.
Thaine disengaged, spinning away from Arion's strike. His free hand dipped to a pouch on his belt and came up with a handful of what looked like dirt. He threw it, not towards them, but at the trees they were fleeing towards. The substance wasn't dirt but dark seeds that burst on impact, sprouting into thorned barriers.
"No one leaves until this is finished," he said, breathing hard for the first time. Blood ran down his arm where Arion had cut him. "The forest is already calling him. He'll be here soon, and then—"
Arion struck again, driving Thaine back. "Then you'll get to explain why you let her escape."
"Let her?" Thaine laughed, parrying desperately now. The sunforged blade was taking its toll, the skin of his arm blackening where the blade had touched him. "Do you think this changes anything? The mark remains despite your meddling. The bargain stands. All you've done is buy her hours instead of minutes."
"Sometimes hours are enough," Sian replied. She'd been gathering water from the air, from the soil, from the trees themselves. Now she released it, not at Thaine, but at the ground beneath the barriers. The earth turned to mud, the thorned walls sinking and toppling as their foundation gave way.
"Clever," Thaine said, then cursed as Arion's blade found his shoulder. The cut went deep this time, causing him to stagger back and land hard on one knee.
"Go! Now!" Arion commanded.
They ran. Ferria maintained what illusions she could, but they flickered and failed. Halian limped, one hand pressed to his side. Sian was barely corporeal, exhausted from the fight.
Behind them, Thaine's laughter echoed through the trees, but it held no triumph now. "You are fools if you think you can protect her! He's already moving, already hunting! Do you think your little sanctuary will hold against him?"
"Don't listen," Arion said, suddenly beside them. His blade was sheathed, but light still bled from him in wisps. "Keep moving."
"You didn't kill him," Briar said, though it wasn't really a question.
"Couldn't. Killing him would..." Arion shook his head. "Result in complications we can't afford."
As if affirming his words, the mark on her wrist pulsed, Arion's dampening already fading. Soon it would burn again, call again.
"This won't stop him," Thaine's voice carried on the wind, fainter now but still reaching them. "Nothing stops him when he wants something. And he wants her more than you can possibly understand!"
They ran deeper into the forest, away from Thaine's warnings and toward an uncertain sanctuary. The trees grew different here, less oppressive, more neutral. Border territory. The ground beneath their feet changed from soft moss to packed earth, and the air lost that cloying sweetness that marked Eliam's domain.
Exhaustion weighted Briar's legs with each step. The mark on her wrist throbbed in time with her heartbeat, Arion's dampening spell fading with every passing moment. She could feel it calling, pulling her back toward the darker woods, toward him.
"Why isn't he following?" she asked when they finally slowed, one hand braced against a silver-barked tree as she struggled to catch her breath.
"I don't know." Arion's admission came quiet, troubled. He kept glancing back the way they'd come, arrow half-nocked despite his severed bowstring. "Thaine doesn't give up easily."
"Maybe he can't cross here?" Halian suggested, but his voice carried no conviction. He pressed his hand harder against the wound in his side, and Briar saw blood seeping between his fingers—more than she'd realized during the fight.
"Or he's choosing not to." Sian materialized fully for the first time since they'd run, her form solidifying from the mist she'd been traveling as. Her clothing was damp and water dripped from her dark hair. "Which is worse."
The silence that followed pressed against Briar's ears. Everyone kept checking over their shoulders, hands on weapons, magic held ready but flickering with exhaustion.The forest around them felt too quiet—not the oppressive silence of Eliam's domain, but something expectant. Waiting.
