Magnolia's jaw is set. Her hands are fists at her sides.
Mark hears the hedge screaming behind him. Turns.
I fill the entire gap, branches still writhing around my shoulders like a living frame.
Mark runs.
Give him credit for one thing: his survival instincts work faster than his brain. He ducks under Magnolia's arm and bolts before I've taken two steps into the clearing. Gone through the eastern path, dress shoes slapping stone, champagne glass abandoned and shattering on the bench.
I reach Magnolia first. She's pressed against the hedge, breathing hard, fingers still balled into white-knuckled fists at her sides.
"Did he touch you?"
"No. He was just talking."
"What did he say?"
Her jaw works. "Nothing worth repeating."
The eastern path is already closing. Silverleaf branches knitting together like a wound healing in real time, sealing the gap Mark slipped through. In thirty seconds it'll be solid wall.
I look at Magnolia. Look at the closing path.
"Stay near the fountain. Find your sister."
"Dash, don't..."
But I'm already moving.
The path seals shut two feet from my face. Fresh wall. Dense. The branches pulse with old magic, thick as my forearm, woven in a pattern that would take a machete twenty minutes to penetrate.
I don't own a machete. Don't need one.
Both hands are on the wall. Fingers dig into the gaps between branches. The Silverleaf recoils at my touch, thorns extending to full length, three inches of crystallized sap sharp enough to draw blood. They puncture my palms. Hot pinpricks. Nothing.
I pull.
The wall comes apart with a sound like a ship's hull cracking. Branches splinter and whip back. Sap sprays in luminous green arcs. The hedgeshrieksagain, that glass-on-metal wail, and every tiki torch within fifty feet gutters and dims.
Through.
New corridor. Stone path. Champagne trays spinning in panicked circles near the ceiling. Mark's cologne hangs in the air like a trail of breadcrumbs. Cedar and synthetic musk. Cheap. Two days ago I tracked a wounded wyvern across forty miles of frozen tundra by scent alone. Mark wearing department store cologne through a garden maze is not a challenge.
He went left.
The maze shifts around me. Walls rearranging, paths collapsing, new routes opening. The Silverleaf is trying to compensate for the damage, redirecting its growth patterns, routing guests away from the breach I've torn through its structure. Smart magic. Adaptive.
Not smart enough.
I hit the next wall at a walk. Don't even stop. Shoulder-first, the way you breach a rotten door. The Silverleaf is thicker here, four feet deep, and the branches wrap around my arms and torso as I push through. Thorns find the gaps in the armor-silk. Collar. Cuffs. The soft skin behind my ear. Blood runs down my neck in a thin warm line.
The hedge fights. Genuinely fights. Vines coil around my right wrist andpull, trying to drag my arm back into the wall, trying to absorb me into its structure the way old Silverleaf absorbs deer and lost hikers. Digestive magic. Slow and patient.
I am not patient.
My fist closes around the thickest vine. Twist. Snap. The broken end spurts glowing sap across me. I tear free and stumble through the far side into another corridor, trailing shredded leaves and broken branches.
Mark's heartbeat. Close. Twenty feet. Through one more wall.
