She smiled without humor.“Now, I suspect, we have to be impolite.”
“I thought you were all ‘show respect, the foliage is your elder,’” Oakley said dryly.
Syndra forced herself not to smack the young man upside his head as she responded.“Sometimes elders are jackasses and need reminding that respect is earned.”
Tamsin’s gaze sharpened.“What are you thinking?”
“That we should take the path it doesn’twantus to take,” she said.“Every time it nudges, we go the other way.Every push becomes a signpost with an arrow pointing us in another direction.”
Oakley frowned.“So we do the opposite of what the forest is trying to get us to do?”
“Yes.”
“That feels like we’re asking for trouble,” Oakley pointed out.“Remember that whole thing about the forest being able to wrap us up and strangle us with roots?”
“Perhaps,” she agreed.“But sometimes trouble is necessary in order to reach the end goal.I don’t always play fair, not when it comes to people I love.”
Tamsin’s mouth lifted at one corner.“You always did solve problems by being contrary.”
“And you mated me anyway,” she said.
He reached for her hand, fingers threading through hers, grounding.“I consider it one of my better choices.”
The warmth of his touch settled some of the buzzing in her veins.She squeezed his fingers once and then let go, squaring her shoulders.“All right,” she said, turning just enough to feel that subtle, almost intangible pressure against her senses, the forest’s urging, like a hand on the small of her back.With a smirk, she stepped in the opposite direction.Was it a subtle middle finger to an ancient magic that could quite possibly kick her formerly royal ass?Absolutely.But what was the fun in playing it safe?
The pressure spiked, then faltered, as if the woods were momentarily confused.“Come on,” she said over her shoulder.“Before it remembers it’s bigger and badder than we are.”
Oakley muttered something about needing hazard pay, but he followed.Tamsin came last, his light magic brushing the edges of her awareness like a shield.
The trees closed in.The path, if it had ever truly been a path, narrowed, forcing them into a single-file line.Branches snagged at their clothes.The air thickened, tasting of sap and stone and something metallic underneath.Syndra kept moving.
For a heartbeat, for three, for ten, it felt like they were pushing through invisible molasses.Every step a strain.Every breath an effort.Then, something gave.The pressure dropped away so suddenly she stumbled forward a half-step, catching herself on a low branch.The magic around them shifted.It was still wrong.Still heavy.Still humming with the edge of a storm that hadn’t quite broken.But it was no longer trying to turn them around.Behind her, Tamsin let out a slow breath.
“You did it,” Oakley said, voice low with something like awe.“You bullied the forest into cooperating.”
“I strongly encouraged it,” she corrected.“With love.”
“And threats,” Tamsin murmured.
“Mostly empty threats,” she conceded, a total lie.She’d burn the forest to the ground if Elora and Cassie were in trouble.But she felt it best to keep that to herself.
Oakley’s smile flashed, quick and fierce, then faded as he looked deeper into the woods ahead.“Do you feel them?Is your magic able to feel others like you can feel Tamsin’s?”he asked quietly.
Syndra paused and closed her eyes.To touch another's magic was intimate.It was something done mostly between friends and family.And under dire situation.She searched for the power that felt like Trik’s, considering his and Cassie’s were now one, at the same time searching for Elora’s signature darkness.For the girls who had grown into women who carried too much on their shoulders.
It was there, faint, but present.She didn’t know if that meant they wereactuallyin the forest, or if they were back at the castle.But they were distant.Their magic was nearly entwined and pulled taut.Like light and shadow being drawn toward the same point.
“Yes,” she said.Her chest ached.“Too far for me to determine that they are indeed wandering around through a sentient forest, being herded.”
“And the Chamber?”Tamsin asked.“I’ve been searching for the magic I felt in the memory, but it feels blocked.Like it wants me to be aware of it, but not ‘know’ it.”
At the name, Syndra felt the forest shiver.She swallowed back the flash of memory that threatened to break her again–stone, light, screaming shadow–and met her mate’s gaze.
“Also closer,” she said.“Which is why we keep moving.”She turned back to the path-that-wasn’t because the trees were doing their best to keep it from being so.“Hold on, girls,” she whispered under her breath.Then, louder, for the forest that seemed to want the girls.“You know me.You know my mate.We have walked among your leaves, branches and shrubs, protecting you and restoring you.Consider that before you impede us further.Something wants the daughters,” she said.“But you don’t get them alone.We’re a package deal.”She stepped forward, and the trees, reluctantly, grudgingly, let her pass.
* * *
The morning felt wrong.Not in theI didn’t sleep enoughkind of way, though she definitely hadn’t, but in the,I woke and suddenly the world was tilted two degrees to the leftkind of way.
