12. Chapter 12 #2
Fine. Different route. Back the way we came, there was a clearing, if I—
I glanced behind me. The path had vanished. Just more woods, dense and breathing and completely impassable.
My chest tightened.
Okay. Okay. Up, then. The canopy's thick but there has to be a break somewhere, a—
"Stop."
Eryndor's voice, low and close to my ear.
I hadn't realized I'd stopped walking. Hadn't realized my hands had curled into fists at my sides, nails cutting crescents into my palms.
"Stop what?"
"Looking for exits." He was watching me with that unreadable expression—the one that made me want to punch him or run or both. "You're scanning."
"I'm not—"
"Every six seconds. Your eyes move. Perimeter check, exit calculation, threat assessment.
" He stepped into my sightline. Purposely, filling the space where the northern gap had been, blocking the exit my eyes kept reaching for.
The tether hummed. His voice dropped, deep and reassuring. "I know because I do it too."
Something about that admission caught in my throat.
Dreadscale glanced back once. "This stretch is called the Path of Intention. Act accordingly."
Eryndor nodded. "The forest is responding to the part of you that still thinks survival means finding a way out," he said. "So it keeps giving you more to run from."
"Maybe I do want a way out."
His gaze held mine. "Exactly."
I stared at him. At the certainty in his face. At the forest pressing in around us, patient and vast and utterly indifferent to my panic.
"I can't just—" My voice cracked. "I can't just stop. It's not a choice. It's—"
"Survival." He said it like he understood. Like he lived in the same skin I did. "I know."
He lifted his hand slowly, leaving me every chance to flinch, or pull back, or any of the things my body usually did when someone reached for me.
I didn't move.
His palm came to rest against my collarbone. Right over my Marks. Right over the tether point where it anchored into my chest.
Heat bloomed through the contact—not the sharp flare of the bond, but steadier. My heartbeat pounded against his hand. He felt it. The grounding took hold anyway, a slow calm spreading through me.
His other hand found my chin and tipped it up until I met his eyes.
"But right now, your survival instinct is the obstacle." His tone softened. "You have to choose to stop running."
Choose to stop running.
The words landed somewhere deep. Somewhere that had nothing to do with the forest and everything to do with the life I'd spent running.
His touch stayed where it was. Warm. Anchoring. The tether quieted between us like a held breath. Tension was draining out of me.
"Eyes on me, Little Fox," he said. Low. Steady. "Nowhere else."
I couldn't have looked away if I wanted to. He filled my entire field of vision—broad shoulders blocking the trees, blocking the exits, blocking every escape route my mind kept trying to calculate.
"Breathe with me. In—two—three—four."
His chest expanded. I matched it without thinking, pulling air into lungs that had forgotten how.
"Hold—two—three—four."
His eyes stayed on mine. Dark. Unwavering. I held.
"Out—two—three—four."
The breath left me in a smooth, steady rhythm. His palm firmed against my sternum, tracking the gradual slow of my heartbeat beneath it.
“Again.”
We breathed together. His voice was the only sound, his body the only thing I could see, that steady contact the only thing keeping me tethered to the ground beneath my feet. All the noise and the worry faded.
The forest exhaled around us. The canopy lifted—just slightly. The path ahead brightened.
"Better," he said quietly.
I didn't trust my voice. I just nodded, still breathing in fours, still looking at nothing but him.
The clearing the forest offered us was too perfect to be accidental.
Soft moss carpeted the ground in swirls of silver and green. Bioluminescent fungi dotted the base of the trees, casting everything in a faint blue glow as the daylight faded. A stream cut through one corner—clear water over smooth stones, burbling a melody that almost sounded intentional.
Maxx was already wandering toward it, flask in hand. "One sip won't—"
"No." Dreadscale didn't even look up from unpacking his pack.
"I'm just going to—"
"No."
Maxx paused at the water's edge, peering down at his reflection. "It looks fine. It looks better than fine. It looks like the best water I've ever—"
"The more inviting it looks, the worse it is." Dreadscale's tone suggested this was ancient, obvious, and not up for debate. "Waterskins only. Touch that stream and I'll let the forest have you."
Maxx sighed dramatically but stepped back.
We set up camp in the strange twilight. Maxx gathered wood that practically arranged itself into a fire pit.
Serenya unpacked rations, her movements slower than usual—the Wood was taking something out of all of us.
I helped stake the bedrolls, trying not to think about how close mine would need to be to Eryndor's.
The trees watched. They always watched here.
Their branches swayed in patterns that had nothing to do with wind, and occasionally I caught movement in my peripheral vision—shapes that dissolved when I looked directly at them.
Once, I thought I heard a burst of laughter—high and quick and gone so fast I couldn't tell whether it had come from a creature or the trees themselves.
Eryndor lasted about two hours before he tried to scout ahead for any danger.
He murmured a stiff excuse about “checking the path” and disappeared into the trees in that quiet, purposeful way of his. I watched him as the tether stretched past the comfortable limit, pulling low and sour through my ribs, but not enough to drag him back.
"Five coins says he ends up right back here, next to Flameheart," Maxx said, smirking knowingly into the rations he was sorting.
"He's scouting," Serenya said. "It's tactical."
"Mmhmm. What’d you say the name of this path was, Dreadscale?”
Dreadscale glanced back at him, a mischievous glint in his eye.
“Ha! Five coins." Maxx insisted.
Ten minutes passed. Fifteen.
Then the underbrush rustled behind me, and Eryndor emerged from the trees. Right behind me. Exactly where he'd started.
His expression was carefully blank.
"Path loops," he said. "Before the bond became a problem." He shifted his weight once. "I'll try a different direction."
I caught Maxx's eye. Looked away fast, biting the inside of my cheek to stop from laughing.
Eryndor veered left this time, disappearing into a grove of silver-barked trees that sang when the wind touched them. Military precision. Straight line. Due west. Like that would help him.
I went back to unrolling the bedding, shaking it out with more focus than necessary.
The grove rustled. Parted.
Eryndor stepped out of the trees directly in front of me. Close enough that his boots nearly touched the edge of my bedroll.
"Still scouting?" I smiled up at him.
His jaw tightened. "The terrain is... uncooperative."
"Mmhmm."
He held my gaze for one defiant beat, then pivoted and marched back into the forest like sheer determination would make it behave this time.
The third time broke him.
He stood. Squared his shoulders. Picked a direction—due north—and walked.
Three steps.
He stopped.
His boot had pivoted mid-stride, turning him around without his permission. He was facing the fire again. Facing me.
No one breathed.
Eryndor looked down at his own feet like they had betrayed him.
"I—" He stopped. Tried to turn north again. His body refused.
Maxx stuffed his fist in his mouth.
Eryndor closed his eyes. Stood there for a long moment. Then walked back to the fire, about to lower himself onto a lichen-covered boulder—the one a full two feet away from me.
The boulder slid closer.
He froze.
I froze.
He lowered himself anyway—slowly, cautiously—and the damned thing closed the remaining distance, stopping only when it was flush against my seat.
Eryndor hovered there for a moment, suspended an inch above the stone, as if refusing to sit would somehow undo the last five minutes.
It wouldn't.
He lowered himself the rest of the way. Shoulder to shoulder. Pressed together like the forest had arranged us for a portrait.
Maxx held out his palm to Serenya. She dropped an invisible bag of coins into it, face split into a beaming grin.
"I hate this forest," Eryndor muttered.
The trees rustled. Cheerfully.
Maxx broke first. A snort—sharp, uncontrollable—that cracked the silence wide open. Then Serenya's shoulders started shaking. Even Dreadscale made a sound that might have been a cough but definitely wasn't.
I tried to hold it together. I really did.
I failed.
The laugh ripped out of me before I could stop it—loud and ungraceful and bordering on hysterical. Eryndor sat rigid beside me, dignity in tatters, which only made it worse.
"I'm glad," he said flatly, "that my suffering amuses you all."
That set Maxx off again.