14. Chapter 14
AMARIA
The fire had gone to embers. Orange light pooled at the edges of camp, leaving the rest to shadow.
Serenya had pulled out the Codex. Her quill scratched across the pages in quick, precise strokes—documenting everything, the way she always did. The herbs we'd found. The paths that shifted. The way the light moved through the canopy.
"You're going to run out of pages," Maxx said, watching her write.
"I'll make more."
"From what? Sentient leaves? Passive-aggressive bark?"
"If necessary." She didn't look up. "Someone has to remember what we learn on this journey."
"Of course," Maxx said. "Because surviving it apparently isn't enough. We also have to archive it."
"If we survive it and learn nothing, that would be the greater waste."
Maxx smiled softly at that. For a moment, no one said anything.
I looked up.
The canopy had no right to look like that.
Not now. Not after everything. Lulling me into believing the world could have beauty.
The willow's silver-veined branches draped down like curtains, swaying in a breeze I couldn't feel.
Glowing spores drifted between them—tiny stars caught in an endless, lazy fall, unbothered by the broken world beneath them.
Beyond the willow, the massive trees of the Sensorium stretched upward, their branches woven together like clasped hands.
"I want to sleep up there."
The words were out before I’d fully thought them. I was already unstrapping blades and dropping them to the ground.
Eryndor's head turned. "What?"
"Up there." I pointed at a broad branch maybe fifteen feet up. "It's—" I didn't have a word that didn't make me sound like a child. "When's the last time I got to sleep somewhere that looked like it belonged in a dream instead of a nightmare?"
His eyes followed my finger up to the branch, then back down to me. The corner of his mouth twitched, then he pressed his lips together.
"When's the last time you fell fifteen feet onto your head?"
"Bold of you to assume I'd land on my head. I'd land on my feet. Like a cat."
"Cats have four legs and better judgment."
"Cats also do whatever they want. So."
I brushed past him toward the tree, letting my shoulder drag across his chest. Glanced back over my shoulder.
"I know I want to sleep in a tree, and I know you have to stay within six feet of me." I smiled sweetly. "So I guess you're sleeping in a tree too."
That muscle jumped beneath his skin—the one that meant he was suppressing something volcanic.
"This is absurd."
"This is the Sensorium. Everything here is absurd." I was already gathering my bedroll. "Come on. Where's your sense of adventure?"
He stayed where he was, feet planted, arms crossed, and definitely still losing.
"I traded it for common sense years ago."
"That's tragic.” I shot him a grin over my shoulder as I reached for the lowest branch. "I'll help you find it again."
Getting the bedding up was harder than I'd anticipated.
The spot I'd chosen was perfect—two trees growing close enough together that their branches intertwined, with a natural cradle of limbs about fifteen feet up. If I could get my bedroll secured between them, it would hang like a hammock. Comfortable. Cozy. The stuff of childhood dreams.
The problem was the fifteen feet of vertical climbing required to reach it, complicated by the fact that neither of us could get more than six feet from the other without the tether complaining.
I grabbed for a low branch. Made it maybe four feet up before the tether yanked at my sternum.
"If you'd just—"
"I am not boosting you."
"I didn't ask you to boost me." I wedged myself into a fork between two branches, legs dangling, while he braced against the trunk below me looking deeply unimpressed. "I asked you to hold the rope while I—"
"That rope is your belt." He caught the leather strap, eyeing it with disdain. "It will not hold your weight."
"It's held plenty of things—"
"Name one."
"My pants, for starters." I jammed my foot against the trunk, trying for leverage. He had to step closer to stay in range, his chest nearly flush to my back.
He made a sound that might have been a laugh, quickly strangled. "Your pants weigh significantly less than your body."
"Was that a comment about my weight?"
"It was a comment about physics."
I grabbed a low-hanging vine to pull myself up onto the first branch—and the vine moved.
It shifted in my grip, curling around my wrist like a helpful hand, offering better purchase.
"That's... odd."
Eryndor was watching the vine with narrow eyes. "Don't trust it."
"It's helping."
"Nothing here helps without a price."
But more vines were drifting down now. Slender, flowering things with pale blooms that glowed faintly in the dark. They wound around the branch I was aiming for, weaving themselves into a natural platform. A cradle. Almost like—
"Are they making us a bed?" I asked.
Eryndor had frozen halfway up the trunk. Vines were curling around his forearms, guiding him toward a branch parallel to mine. Close. Too close.
"I don't like this," he said.
"You don't like anything."
"I like plenty of things. I don't like sentient plants arranging my sleeping situation."
The vines kept working. They wove between our two branches now—delicate tendrils connecting his platform to mine, flowers blooming along the bridge between us. It was beautiful. It was also deeply unsettling.
"Maybe they're just... friendly?" I offered.
"Friendly." His voice was toneless. "The forest that reads intentions and punishes denial has friendly plants."
"You're very negative."
"I'm realistic."
"Same thing, coming from you."
I hauled myself onto my platform. The vines had done good work—it was soft, springy, cradled perfectly between the branches. Almost comfortable. I lay back and stared up at the canopy, watching the spores drift through the silver light.
Eryndor climbed onto his platform with significantly less grace. The vines had positioned it close—close enough that if I reached out, I could touch him. Close enough that the tether had gone quiet and content again.
"There," I said. "Was that so hard?"
"Yes."
"Liar."
More vines crept up while we settled. They wound around the branches, around the platforms, around—
"They're connecting us," Eryndor said quietly.
I looked down. He was right. Thin, flowering tendrils had begun weaving between our two platforms, linking them together. Some of them had started climbing our bedrolls. One was curling around my ankle.
"Should I be concerned?"
"Almost certainly."
From below, Dreadscale's voice drifted up.
"Sympathy vines."
I peered over the edge of my platform. He was still by the fire, not even looking up. Just sharpening his blade, voice flat as ever.
"What?"
"The vines. They grow between bonded beings. Lovers. Blood-kin. Tethered souls." He sheathed his blades and moved toward his own solitary bedroll, sliding in.
Then Maxx's voice floated up, rich with barely contained glee.
"So you're literally growing a garden together. That's adorable."
"Shut up, Maxx."
"Are you going to name the flowers? Can I name the flowers?"
I gripped the edge of my platform and yelled down at him. "I will cut these vines and strangle you with them."
But when I looked—really looked—it wasn't just me.
Small blooms from the vine were sprouting at Serenya's feet where she sat writing in the Codex. Pale flowers, delicate and glowing, with tendrils creeping slowly across the undergrowth. One had already wound around Maxx's ankle. Another was stretching toward Dreadscale's foot.
"Ha!" I pointed. "What's that, then?"
Maxx looked down. His face went through several expressions in quick succession—confusion, recognition, horror.
"That's—those aren't—" He tried to cut the vine off his ankle. It clung tighter. "This proves nothing."
Serenya had gone very still, her quill frozen mid-word. A flush crept up her neck. She didn't look at the tendril reaching for Dreadscale. The not-looking was louder than the flush.
Dreadscale glanced at the tendril inching toward him. Then at Maxx. Then at Serenya.
"The more you resist, the thicker they grow." Dreadscale rolled over and seemingly went to sleep after that comment, or more accurately for Dreadscale, “shut off”.
I lay back on my platform and stared up at the canopy. The vines had started weaving through my hair now—tiny flowers blooming along the strands like I was being prepared for a funeral. Or a wedding.
I couldn't decide which was worse.
Eryndor shifted on his platform. Through the tether, I felt him give up—nothing dramatic, just a quiet surrender to forces beyond his control.
Neither of us said anything.
The forest hummed around us, pleased with its work.