It only tightened around his muscles as Farrah held up a hand. They stopped as she circled back.
“Do you feel this humidity?” Farrah whispered.
“I can smell it,” Serill mumbled. “Does the forest always smell like someone is cooking with way too much pepper?”
Elias’s heart plummeted.
“Shit,” he breathed, reaching out to the low hanging leaves behind Farrah’s head. He pinched the damp leaf between his fingers, thumb brushing over the water. Smelled it. Licked his finger and immediately dropped the leaf. He stumbled back.
Farrah’s face paled when she saw his reaction. “Fuck.”
“What?” Serill asked.
Her lip trembled as she reached her hand up, drawing the moisture out of the air. The subtle pepper scent disappeared. “Hellthorn. How did it… it’s in theair.”
Elias shoved past the tree, no longer caring about being quiet. He sprinted. Sprinted over roots and smashed through low hanging branches. Desperate. Panicked. He tried to keep his thoughts clear, but he couldn’t focus.
Hellthorn was in the air. Someone knew about Brela’s path through the forest. They knew she’d been meeting Ovir. They knew her weakness.
Someone knew about hermagic.
He stumbled to a stop. Farrah and Serill crashed into him.
They stared.
Stared and stared in silence.
Farrah was the only one who dared lift her hand, dared move a muscle. Her fingers wrapped around the hilt of the throwing knife as she yanked it out of the tree and held it in her palm. No blood.
“Brela doesn’t miss,” Serill whispered.
Farrah swallowed. “Not without purpose… or if she can’t see straight.”
Elias didn’t know how he stepped forward when his limbs were both numb and dead weight. His heartbeat banged wildly in his chest, throat, ears. He couldn’t hear anything but the beat, beat, beat of absolute terror pounding through his body as he studied the scene.
The puddle of blood and vomit. The mist of hellthorn humidity that still hung on the leaves and through the air. The scattered throwing knives. The brief drag of her body on the ground before the trail just… disappeared.
Gone.
Farrah let out a sobbing gasp behind him as he dropped to his knees. He couldn’t breathe. His heart was shattering, over and over. Couldn’t feel anything but terror and hollowness and absolute rage.
Brela was gone. Taken. Stolen.
“We can track her,” Serill blurted, stomping to where the tracks disappeared. “We can… find the path again. Figure out who took her.”
“It’s too late.” The voice that came out of Elias was foreign. The words tasted wrong.
“Brela can escape. She’ll get out of this,” the prince gasped.
Farrah’s voice cracked. “Not with this much hellthorn.”
“We can get Ovir,” he stammered. “You get Ovir, I’ll find Cason… he’ll… he’ll help. I’ll make him.”
Elias choked. “It’s over, Serill.”
Serill stumbled back a step. “No… she can’t be dead.”
Tears streamed down Elias’s face. Of course she wasn’t dead. Not yet, but it was only a matter of time before she ended it herself or the people who took her did. They would make a spectacle of it. The Night Terror, the Veil Scholar, a shadow-cursed with a shard in her skin—a death for all to see.
