Then it smiles.
Deer don’t have lips. Don’t have the facial muscles for expression.
This one smiles anyway. Too wide. Too many teeth. Teeth that don’t belong in any herbivore’s mouth.
“Run,” I breathe. Because sometimes the fear strikes hotter than fight.
We run.
Not tactical retreat. Not strategic withdrawal. Pure animal flight, branches whipping our faces, roots catching our feet, the dark alive around us with things that move wrong, things that watch, things that pace us through the trees with patient, terrible hunger.
My thorns flare. Blue-green light stuttering beneath my skin like a dying heartbeat. I reach for the forest, for the wild magic that should answer to my blood, that hasalwaysanswered?—
Bow. Bend. OBEY.
The command hits the trees. They shudder, lean toward me, almost?—
Something else pushes back.
Cold. Old. Amused.
The trees straighten. Turn away. The path stays dark.
“It’s not listening,” I gasp. My voice sounds wrong. Small. “Something else is holding the leash.”
“What do you mean not listening?” Orion hauls me over a fallen log. “You’re the fucking wild queen, we are in the wi?—”
“I’m aware!”
The forest I was born to rule just chose another master.
White shapes in the trees. More than one now. Five. Seven. I lose count.
They’re not chasing us.
They’re pacing us. Matching our speed. Drifting closer when we slow, falling back when we sprint. Patient. Playful.
Herding us.
“Kieran.” I can barely get the word out. “Can you?—”
His shadows lash out at the nearest shape. The darkness reaches, stretches, and passes through empty air like the thing isn’t even there.
“I can’t touch them.” His voice cracks. Kieran’s voice never cracks. “They’re not made of anything I can reach. They’re not—” He swallows. “They might not be real.”
“They feel pretty fucking real,” Orion snarls.
One of them laughs. That broken-instrument sound, like wind through a shattered flute. Like it heard him. Like it thinks he’s funny.
The path keeps twisting. Folding back on itself.
That rock. I’ve seen that rock. That twisted tree with the split trunk. We passed it two minutes ago. Three minutes ago. I don’t know anymore.
“We’re going in circles,” Finnian breathes.
We’re not going anywhere. The forest won’t let us.
Somewhere in the dark, something laughs.
