The light hit them like a physical force. Not gentle radiance but harsh, brilliant white that turned the world into nothing but glare. Briar's eyes slammed shut instinctively, but the light burned through her eyelids, disorienting, overwhelming.
She felt Karse's arms torn away from her, felt herself pulled in a different direction. Cooler hands caught her, lifted her, and she knew without seeing that it was Arion. The warmth in her chest sang at his proximity, reaching desperately.
"No—" she tried to say, but the words wouldn't come properly.
Behind them, she heard Karse roar—rage and betrayal mixed into something inhuman. The sound of steam hissing as he fought against the water, roots cracking under immense heat.
"Go!" Halian shouted. "It won't hold long!"
The forest blurred past, each jostle sending pain through her injuries. She could hear Sian and Halian behind them, their footsteps quick but controlled.
The wrongness of it twisted in her stomach. Karse had saved her, had carried her for hours, had killed for her, and they'd trapped him like an animal. But Arion's arms were steady and familiar, and the warmth in her chest pulsed with each heartbeat, settling into something almost like peace after hours of hollow cold. She hated herself for how grateful she felt, how her body relaxed into his hold despite everything.
His light magic still glowed faintly around them, creating a bubble of soft radiance in the dark forest. It felt nothing like Karse's burning heat—this was gentler, like morning sun through windows, like safety she didn't deserve after what they'd just done.
"I'm sorry," Arion murmured against her hair, and she wasn't sure if he meant for the rough handling or for leaving Karse behind. Maybe both. Maybe neither.
She wanted to tell him to go back, to free Karse, to explain that the Drak had been protecting her. But the words wouldn't come, and the shameful truth was that part of her—the exhausted, terrified, human part—was desperately glad to be in familiar arms again. The warmth spreading through her chest felt like coming home, even though home was something she'd never have again.
And further back, getting fainter but not gone, the sound of something burning. Something breaking free.
Something hunting.
Chapter four
Behind them, terrible sounds echoed through the forest, cracking, snapping, a hissing like water thrown on forge-hot metal. Underneath it all, a low continuous sound that made the hair on Briar's arms stand up, not quite a growl, not quite a roar, but something that bypassed human understanding and went straight to primal fear.
"We need to move faster," Halian said, his voice still rough from being choked. "He's almost—"
A tree exploded into flames fifty yards behind them, the light throwing their shadows long and stark against the forest floor.
"Now would be good," Sian added tightly.
Arion shifted Briar in his arms, freeing one hand while somehow still supporting her weight. He whispered something in the old tongue, words that seemed to catch in the air and hang there, visible as soft golden mist. The forest around them grew quiet, that particular stillness that came when something ancient paid attention.
They came from between the trees as if stepping out of moonlight itself.
Three of them, moving with an ethereal grace that made no sound despite their size. They stood taller than any natural deer, their shoulders level with Arion's head. Their coats shifted between white and pearl and silver, not quite solid, as if someone had captured fog and given it form. The antlers rose like carved bone architecture, but within the tines, soft light pulsed in dawn colors of rose and gold and palest blue.
One approached Arion directly, lowering its massive head to breathe against his face. Its eyes held too much intelligence, and when it blinked, Briar saw constellations in the darkness behind its lids.
Arion grew quiet, almost reverent, speaking in low tones she couldn't understand. The formality in his posture, the careful cadence of his words. He was asking, not commanding.
The elk, though calling it that felt like calling the ocean a pond, considered. Its gaze moved to Briar, and she felt the weight of its attention, ancient and assessing. The warmth in her chest pulsed, reaching toward this creature of dawn and light.
It snorted, breath misting in the air despite the warm night, then folded its legs to kneel.
Another roar behind them, closer. The light from burning trees painted the forest orange and violent.
Arion lifted Briar onto the elk's back, the movement jarring every injury she had. The creature's coat felt like nothing she could describe—soft but insubstantial, warm but not quite there. She tried to grip with her legs but her body wouldn't cooperate, everything going loose and weak.
"Hold on," Arion said, mounting behind her. His arms came around her to take the barely-visible reins that seemed made of captured starlight. She sagged back against his chest, unable to keep herself upright any longer.
Sian and Halian mounted the other two elk, their movements quick and practiced. The creatures rose in unison, and Briar's stomach dropped at suddenly being so high. The ground seemed impossibly far below.
"Go," Arion commanded.
The elk moved.
