You gave your word to shelter us!Tane shot back.She was moving now, sweeping backwards in a form that was half herself, half smoke.
Adalia scoffed, her face transforming into a ghastly smile.She was still lovely, still poised and regal in her gossamer robe, but her features hardened into jagged, wrathful lines.I protect my own, and you have risked them all.
“Mary, can we risk leaving her?”Samuel asked me.
“Of course we fucking leave her,” Benedict snapped.
“If Tane and I are separated, she can be killed,” I snapped back.I found my footing, watching over Samuel’s shoulder as ghisten light swelled.It filled his face with shadows, half-turned as he was, and I saw the prompt in his eyes.
He had no idea what to do.Ghistings were my world, not his.
We all startled as Tane seized Adalia’s spear from the tiled floor and lunged at the supposed Saint, stabbing and sweeping with speed and ferocity.
As she moved, even as Adalia shattered the wooden beam aboveher head and armed herself with long shards of wood like daggers, Tane’s voice came to me.
Run.Through the observatory.There is another way out.
What about you?
I am right behind you.Go!
“Through the observatory,” I said to Samuel.I grabbed my sword from Benedict, who glared and took up his pistol again.I held out my other hand for Samuel.He took it, warm and tight, and we hastened up the stairs.“She’ll follow.”
Adalia’s head snapped up and dust began to fall from the ceiling.The structure around us trembled.
Roots erupted from the floor.I darted aside as a thick tendril lanced towards my ankle, coiling like a snake.
Benedict was not so quick.He elected to stomp on a reaching root and succeeded only in making his leg more accessible.The root wrapped around his calf, and he smashed it unsuccessfully with his pistol butt.Samuel, meanwhile, was driven away by a rush of smaller roots.
“Move!”I raised my sword.Ben froze, more in shock than capitulation, and I hacked down at the tendril.It did not yield, too fresh and green and strong.
Benedict cursed and tried to take the sword from me, but I elbowed him aside and hacked again and again.Samuel intercepted another root trying to claw my robes and pinned yet another to the floor with his musket butt.
The root holding Benedict finally yielded, but more rose up.Three lunged directly for my hand and wrapped around my sword—I let go rather than see my fingers snapped.More roots peeled out of the walls, reaching for the three of us as we stumbled on down the passage, around a corner, and into sight of the observatory door.
Now weaponless, I glanced back, watching the tether between Tane and I thin more and more, its glow fading until it was little more than a thread.
Tane!
Ghisten light swelled.The thread thickened, and Tane burst around the corner.She lunged back into my bones as Samuel led us through the observatory’s already yawning doorway.
No roots reached for us here, though a rumble persisted in the ground beneath our feet.
What did you do to Adalia?I hissed to Tane.
I should have burned her from her tree, was Tane’s only response.
We glanced around an octagonal room dominated by its huge spyglass on a stand.I ignored walls covered with star charts and diagrams, noting a dragonfly lantern on an iron hook.I ran over, my body steady again thanks to Tane’s support, and took it.
Its golden light washed around us as Samuel passed through another door on the far side of the chamber and down a sloping passageway.A curve, a drop, and we faced another iron-banded barrier.
Samuel shoved, and the door swung outward a few inches before it jammed.Others had clearly fled this way before, the passageway scattered with snow and forest debris, but roots had attempted to close it again.
Samuel pushed a second time.Dry leaves rustled and rained through the gap, accompanied by a rush of cold, fresh air and the groan of straining roots.
I glanced back down the passage, sure at any second the tunnel would explode with knotted branches and clawing roots.The floor rumbled again, and dust rained from the ceiling.
“Sam?”I prompted, backing closer to the door.
