The darkness around her grew denser and more suffocating. She made it only a few more paces when suddenly she was back in the Oubliette—forgotten, alone, waiting to die in the dark. Her breath came in sharp gasps, panic clawing at her chest.
Breathe,she told herself, but she couldn’t get her lungs to cooperate.
Then she saw it. A single golden flower, pale and luminous, growing from bare stone.
Another bloomed beside it. Then another. A path of impossible blooms once again unfurling in the darkness, their soft light revealing a passage she wouldn't have seen otherwise.
The warmth in her chest suddenly pulled with an urgency that had her stumbling. It yanked her forward like a rope around her ribs, and she followed without thought, crawling over stone, squeezing through spaces that scraped her raw.
The flowers bloomed brighter where her blood struck earth, the warmth pulled harder, almost painful in its intensity, as if something on the other side was calling it home.
Her fingers found empty air where stone should have been. A gap barely wide enough for her shoulders. She didn't think, just pushed herself through, ignoring the way her body protested the tight space. For a terrifying moment she stuck, the rock pressing from all sides, her chest too tight to breathe—
Something exploded behind her with enough force to shake the mountain. The blast drove her forward and she tumbled out the other side, landing hard on moss damp with morning dew.
She had emerged on the far side of the hill, gasping, bleeding, but free. As much as she wanted to simply collapse and catch her breath, she knew that was impossible. The victor of the fight would come for her next. She couldn't still be here when they did.
Picking her way carefully down the rocky slope, she reached flatter ground and then she ran.
Her bare feet were numb now, which was better than the agony they'd been an hour ago. She'd stopped looking at them after seeing how much blood she was leaving with each step. The warmth in her chest had gone quiet again, that brief moment of connection in the cave feeling more like cruel mockery with each passing moment.
Without warning, her legs buckled.
Briar went down hard, catching herself on her hands before her face hit the ground. Her arms shook with the effort of holding her weight. She tried to push herself back up but her body refused.
This was it, then. This was how it ended.
She'd thought she was strong. Had survived months with Eliam, had learned to navigate court politics and cruel games. Had believed that made her capable of surviving anything.
Stupid. She was just a silly human girl who'd gotten lucky for a while. But like everything else in her life, that luck had finally abandoned her.
Her arms gave out and she collapsed fully, the ground cold against her cheek. The forest floor smelled of earth and decay and she could feel her heartbeat in her throat, too fast.
They would find her here. Maybe in an hour. Maybe less. She was too tired to care anymore. Soon it would be over and she could finally rest. Her vision had begun narrowing at the edges, darkness creeping in, when something moved beneath her.
Not the shift of an animal or the rustle of wind through leaves. Something deliberate. The roots she'd collapsed between, massive things as thick as her torso, were shifting. Growing. Curving up and around her like protective arms.
She should be terrified after the trees’ earlier attempts to harm her, should have tried to drag herself away, but her body had nothing left to give.
The roots did not attempt to crush her, instead they formed a hollow around her, shielding her from view. Moss spread beneath her, thick and impossibly soft, cushioning her broken body. She could smell the green scent of new growth even in the cold air.
The forest was hiding her.
Protecting her.
But why?
The thought barely had time to form as darkness took her between one breath and the next.
Briar woke to the sensation of something crawling on her skin.
Her eyes snapped open, but she forced herself to stay still, terror ice-cold in her veins. Something soft and barely-there traced along the cuts on her arms. Multiple somethings. Moving with gentle touches that—
Themoss. The moss was moving.
Tiny tendrils had grown over her while she slept, delicate as hair, creeping across her wounds with purpose. Where they touched, the sharp sting of her cuts had dulled to aching memory. She could feel them exploring each injury like curious fingers, leaving behind a strange coolness that numbed the worst of the pain.
A tendril brushed across a deep gash on her palm, and she watched in horrified fascination as the wound looked... smaller. Still there, still angry, but no longer gaping. No longer bleeding.
