A violent flash of heat shot straight through my chest.
I sucked in a sharp breath as the pain hit as I tried to stand.
My knees wobbled, and the hedge around the clearing reacted instantly. The vines shuddered like something had yanked a wire through them. Thorns rattled against one another as the entire wall of greenery rippled outward.
Twobble made a small noise behind me. “Oh geez.”
The shadows weren’t just going for Keegan anymore.
They were reacting to me.
One slammed straight into the hedge.
The vines recoiled as if they’d been struck with lightning. A ripple of movement ran along the entire wall of thorns, leaves shaking violently.
And then something strange happened.
The shadow didn’t fight the hedge.
It slipped through it.
It didn’t tear through the vines or blast them apart.
Just sliding and threading its way between the branches like smoke slipping through the cracks in a door.
My stomach dropped.
“They’re using your magic!” Skonk shouted behind me.
“I know!”
Another wave of shadows dove toward the clearing.
Keegan leapt to intercept them, knocking one aside with his shoulder. Another twisted past him and brushed against his back leg before dissolving into mist.
He stumbled again.
The sight hit me like a punch to the ribs.
Keegan didn’t stumble.
Not unless things were already very bad.
Fear clawed up the inside of my chest.
If he went down—
No.
I shoved the thought away before it could finish forming.
The mark burned hotter against my shoulder as the shadows had worked their way into the hedge.
They slipped along the vines, winding through the bramble like dark threads stitched into the green. Every time the branches shifted, the shadows shifted with them, moving where the hedge moved.
I’d never seen magic do that before.
They weren’t tearing the spell apart.
