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I straightened like a prairie dog looking out of its hole. “Across? Across what? Who are you throwing? I’ve seen that river carry giant fallen trees away in seconds. And there’s this handy thing we call a bridge right over there.”

“I might be able to jump across with her on my back,” Madigan said, ignoring my protest. Madigan and Austri walked to the river’s edge. They were too deep in serious planning mode to answer me.

“Uh, hello? The bridge?” I repeated. This time I looked at Lyric. She was doing that lip bite again, so she had something to tell me that she was sure would not sit well. “Bestie?” I said with emphasis. “We can just use the bridge.”

Lyric’s thin shoulders fell with a sigh. “You can’t get to Troikana over the bridge. You must travel straight, as the crow flies.” Right then, Omni flew over us. He disappeared between the shale cliffs. The whole scene took me back to the day I’d spent at Dante Fell with my mom, the day I crossed the bridge alone and then caught her talking to the raven. Was it Omni? How long did ravens live, and if it was Omni, did that mean Mom had something to do with this place Troikana?

“But there’s a bridge.” I gave it one last try, but even I could hear the defeat in my tone.

Lyric took my hand. “The bridge was built hundreds of years ago by the Valian. It was to keep humans from accidentally landing in Troikana, or, more specifically, Ironfall Wilds. That’s the dangerous stretch of forest past the shale cliffs. No human has a chance to make it through safely.”

“That doesn’t bode well for me then,” I said.

Lyric’s mouth twisted side to side. “You’re not technically human, remember?”

“Sorry, I’ve been human for twenty-five years, so it’s kind of hard to just drop the whole human act. One thing I know for sure is I won’t survive crossing that river. Unless, of course, I’m immortal.” My chin dropped. “Am I immortal?”

“Not anymore. None of us are, on account of our great ancestors all got in trouble for having so many wars. The Triumvirate of Sorcerers took away their mortality, so we all just live regular two-hundred-year lives.” Lyric spotted a dandelion, bent down and plucked it. She pursed her lips and blew on it.

“Wait, two hundred years?”

“That’s right.”

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Hmm. I’m kind of lost on that because of being on your shelf for eleven years and, apparently, I haven’t aged since I turned to wood.” She held out her hands and looked at them. “Nope still around fifty years I think.”

“But we look the same age.”

Lyric watched her dandelion seeds fly over the meadow and get lost in the grass. “That’s right. Aging happens twice as fast in the human world. It didn’t affect us because we⁠—”

“Were wood. I see. I think.”

The pleasant, but entirely perplexing, conversation stopped abruptly when Madigan hissed for us to be quiet.

Austri pulled the knife from his belt, and Madigan crouched low with her bow and arrow. Across the river, the trees vibrated. The shade of the tall cliffs seemed to grow darker and denser. An acrid, musty smell filled the air, like a pungent mixture of blood and sweat. My pulse raced. I could feel it in my ears.

“Prince Fenrick’s warriors,” Lyric said in a frightened, hushed tone. She took hold of my hand.

“Now might be a good time for this glitch to end.” I squeezed her hand tightly in mine.

Abject fear gripped me, and I couldn’t move, talk or catch a decent breath. The trees parted in several places, and massive black wolves, eight of them, stepped out from the wavering shadows. Amber eyes stared at us, and my mind raced back to my last glitch. It had happened right there, in the same place where we stood now. These weren’t regular wolves. These weren’t the thickly-furred gray wolves from photos and wildlife documentaries. It was hard to judge size because they were a good distance away, but they looked impossibly tall and long, like massive creatures from a horror movie or bad dream. As they reached the edge of the cliffs’ shadows, they squinted briefly in the light. The same light caused the streaks in their fur to glow silver.

One of the beasts walked forward with an elegant, calculating stride. He rocked back on his haunches and arced into the air. In a terrifying blur, the beast flew over the rushing river. An ear-piercing yowl of pain split the thick, tense atmosphere. The beast’s massive paws flailed at the arrow sticking out of its chest. Its limp, bloody body fell into the river below. The arrow stuck straight up from its body as it floated gracefully in the bloody current. One of the other beasts trotted downstream and snatched the dead wolf’s leg in his big jaw. Blood-tinged water sprayed everywhere as he yanked his fallen pack member out of the water and dropped him on the shore.

My purse fell to my feet, and my hand flew to my mouth to stifle a cry. The dead beast’s thick black fur vanished, replaced by skin wrapped tightly over a muscular chest. The long snout, the fangs, the paws faded away and were replaced by a man’s face and limbs. The beast was gone and a man lay limp on the bank of the river, Madigan’s deadly arrow still sticking up from his chest.

The beast that pulled him from the river paused over its fallen friend for a moment, then lifted its head. Blood flung off its fangs as it released a terrifying growl. The seven remaining beasts raced toward the water’s edge and leapt over the river, each landing with a horrifying thud on our side. The smell of blood and sweat intensified, and their rage-filled breath warmed the air.

Lyric pulled the knife from the leather sheath on her thigh. She held it up, but the small silver blade looked wholly insufficient given the size and menace of the creatures we faced. Lyric moved in front of me.

“No, Lyric, they’re too big. I can’t lose you,” I whispered in her ear.

Austri held up his knife. “You’ll have to go through us to get her.” Austri threw the knife, and it shot like a bullet through the air. Another howl of pain split the air, but the knife landed in the beast’s shoulder. The animal dropped its massive head, grabbed the handle of the knife with its teeth and howled again as he yanked it free. Blood sprayed across his face as he threw the knife into the river.

“That was my best knife, you mangy Regna mutt.”

A chorus of menacing growls followed. They seemed to be communicating a plan of attack, and most of their focus was on Madigan and her lethal arsenal of arrows. Then their focus shifted. Predatory gazes all turned in the direction of Lyric … and me. Lyric’s hand was shaking as she raised her knife.