“Where’s your rift blade?” Bella asked Bryce.
“I don’t know. I… I must have dropped it.”
“Shit.” Poppy stood hand on hips, looking back the way we’d come.
“Should we go back and look for it?” Bella asked.
“No,” Bryce said. “I can fight in Thrope form. It’s what I’ll be doing on a real hunt anyway.”
It was true. Thropes didn’t always wield blades, they fought alongside the blade-wielding Hunters to incapacitate and maul a Horror while the Hunter finished it off.
“Let’s move,” Poppy ordered. Then to the crows, “Let’s hope you don’t call our next catch a glitch.”
In another time and place, Poppy and I could have been friends.
* * *
It wasanother half hour before we made it into the forest. It was dark beneath the thick canopy, but the nocturnal sounds of nature made it less ominous. We stuck to the trail that wove between the slender tree trunks, walking in pairs.
“We have three hours left till midnight,” Bella said, looking up from the timekeeper on her wrist.
“Then we’d better catch a Horror,” Poppy replied.
Timekeepers were expensive. Bella must come from money. Tyler Damascus probably had one too, which left me wondering how the heck the rest of us were meant to keep track of time.
My question was answered a moment later when Walter’s voice drifted through the canopy above.
“You have three hours and ten minutes remaining until the conclusion of your grading.”
We picked up the pace, and I took up the rear with Bryce. His large Thrope form emanated heat, which was the only thing keeping my circulation going. A soft haze surrounded Bella and Poppy, some kind of warming spell, no doubt.
“How did you do that, back there?” Poppy asked over her shoulder. “With the echo? How did you repel it? I thought you didn’t have Weave access.”
“I don’t. The Weave Watchers removed my mark. But that’s all they did. I think the Weave might be protecting me somehow.”
“Why didn’t you tell us that earlier?” Bella asked. “We’d have kept you with us.”
“It doesn’t always work.”
But I had been running through the occasions when ithadworked, and I was starting to believe it only worked on Horrors and Echoes, andonlywhen I was in dire peril. But I wasn’t sure yet.
“You did well, though,” Poppy said. “Smart, taking out Bryce like that.”
“My head still hurts,” Bryce said. “But yeah, good call.”
The trees thickened here, the trunks wider, the canopy denser, allowing only slivers of moonlight to make it through.
“Bella, can you light the way?” Poppy asked.
A small ball of light appeared a few feet ahead of us, hovering six feet above the ground, illuminating the path.
“Can you smell anything odd, Bryce?” Poppy asked him.
“Nothing but the forest,” he said. “And Bella’s blood.”
“Is it still bleeding?” Poppy asked, her tone sharpening.
“No. I’m fine,” Bella said.
