With a deep breath, she said. “Close your eyes. Whatever you do, don’t say a word. Don’t move, no matter what you hear. Put…” She swallowed hard. “Put your free arm around me and don’t let go until I tell you to.”
His eyes searched hers, his face pale. “I don’t understand.”
Another horn blast.
The hunters would find them in a matter of seconds.
She held his gaze, trying to convey everything she was feeling. The urgency. The hope. The gut sensation that told herthis—no matter how absurd it seemed—was what they had to do.
Finally, he stepped closer, the baby unicorn the only thing that separated their chests. He closed his eyes and hooked his free arm around her waist.
Her eyelids closed next, and she reached out for the trunk of the tree. Her palm met rough bark, thrummed with the pulse of its life force, of the elements surging through its roots, its branches, its leaves. She drew her attention to her feet, to the firmness of the ground below, and felt another thrum. The tree’s roots extended deep underground, merging with the soil, the water that fed them, the air and sunlight that helped them grow strong. Cora pressed harder against the tree, imagined she was no different. She too was nourished by the same elements. They fed her body the same way they fed her Art. She was no different from the tree, her skin so like bark she might as well be a sapling. A steady energy began to pulse through her, stilling her mind. She was aware of two distinct energies pressed close to her and extended this same feeling outward.
They were one and the same.
She, the tree, the boy, the fae.
The heartbeat of the tree was her own. Hers was the unicorn’s. The unicorn’s was the boy’s. The boy’s was hers. She could almost hear it pounding through her, vibrating up the hand that held her waist, echoing the beat in her chest. When she breathed, he did too. When they breathed, so too did the unicorn, the tree, the soil, the sky. Everything breathed.
There was nothing here but a tree.
One with vast root systems that shuddered beneath the soil, stirring the top layer of dirt until not a footprint could be seen where once there’d been many. No longer was there a sign of the boy, the girl, and the small fae creature.
They’d never been there at all.
Just a tree.
A tree.
Only a tree.
The tree hardly acknowledged the men that stalked by. They prowled like wolves, eyes keen, but they found not what they sought. Nothing but a wood empty of everything but what should be there. The tree didn’t count in minutes or seconds, but time did pass. Soon—or maybe not so soon—the men passed too, shoulders slumped with disappointment of a catch not had.
Only then did the tree unravel.
Only then did one become two, and two separated into three.
32
Teryn didn’t know how many minutes had passed. All he knew was that he couldn’t look away from Cora. He’d only obeyed her order to close his eyes for a few moments before his eyelids flew open. At first, it had been out of panic, but as her face filled his vision, calm settled over him. They were so close he could count every one of Cora’s dark eyelashes, every freckle dancing over her nose. His hand felt warm on her back, and where they both held the unicorn, their arms touched. Anothernesshad surrounded them then, something Teryn wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to explain. He didn’t see it with his eyes or feel it with his senses. It was just there. The indescribable buzz of magic.
He hadn’t known what Cora was doing, had seen nothing to explain what made the hunters walk by without giving them a second glance. He’d only seenher. For one strange moment, he’d felt connected to her in a way that defied reason. He’d felt her heart thrum as his own. Felt her breath move through his lungs. It was unsettling and yet completely noninvasive. He’d welcomed it. Yearned for it.
But now theothernesswas beginning to fade with every breath. His pulse became his own, no longer entangled with Cora’s and the unicorn’s. He realized Cora’s eyes were open now too and were locked on his. Slowly, she pulled her hand away from the tree trunk, but still, they didn’t separate. She said something to him then, but his mind was too befuddled to comprehend it.
“What?”
“You’re still holding on to me,” she whispered, her voice unsteady.
He gulped, finding his tongue heavy as he searched for words. “You said not to let you go until you said so.”
“Oh.” A soft smile crossed her lips, a hint of a blush coloring her cheeks. “You can let me go now.”
He held on a beat longer, then slowly slid his hand from around her waist. The baby unicorn, who’d grown surprisingly calm in the wake of such strange events, was all that connected them.
“I can carry her,” Teryn said. “I think it’s safe to say she feels comfortable enough with me now.”
“All right.” Teryn was surprised she didn’t argue. She slipped her arm from the unicorn and stepped away. Teryn felt oddly cold. Empty. Whatever had happened at the tree…it had severely messed with his mind.
