Before Rendel could answer, the shadows shifted.
Until then, they’d attacked like animals…wild and chaotic. Now they pulled back together, climbing higher into the trees, circling above us in widening loops.
The air grew colder, and the light dimmed again.
Somewhere far away, thunder rolled, even though the sky had been clear when we walked into these woods.
My stomach dropped.
“They’re regrouping,” I said.
Rendel stood slowly and helped me up.
“No,” he said. “They’re being called.”
By whom?
I didn’t ask aloud.
I already knew. The same way you know a storm has turned toward you before the rain starts falling.
The shadows above us stopped circling.
Every one of them pointed toward a single place deeper in the forest.
And then they bowed.
It wasn’t like birds landing or smoke sinking.
They bowed.
A path opened through the trees ahead of us—not because branches moved, but because the darkness itself drew back.
Something stood at the far end where the last of the daylight failed.
I couldn’t see a face.
Only a shape.
Tall.
Still.
Watching.
Twobble’s fingers grabbed my wrist and squeezed so hard it hurt.
“Maeve,” he whispered, and for once, there wasn’t a trace of humor in his voice. “Tell me that’s just another weird tree.”
“It’s not a tree,” Rendel said.
The figure lifted one hand, and every shadow in the woods screamed.
And the one on my shoulder answered.
Chapter Thirty-Three
I fell to my knees as my birthmark flared hot beneath my skin, and suddenly every shadow in the woods turned toward me.
