Chapter 3
Esa and Imani pressed deeper into the Draswood.
The choking brambles thinned, giving way to a clearing where a narrow stream cut through pale stone.
They washed quickly, the water biting cold against their skin, but even here the forest did not feel whole.
A brittle tension hung in the air, as if something beneath the loam had stretched too tight, poised to snap.
With open space, running water, and dappled light, the clearing should have brought relief. But it set Imani on edge.
A stream ran clear over the stones, but its burbling carried a faint, dissonant distortion, like heat rolling off the ground. When she knelt closer, the moss along the bank dimmed. Esa appeared at ease, but Imani felt the Draswood pressing against her magic signature.
Her gut clenched. The Draswood was not deciding whether Imani belonged here.
It had already answered that question. She was Norn, and the forest had recognized her as its own.
What made its signature press uneasily against hers was the darkness inside her.
Ever since she had tested her shadows with the moss, the forest had reacted to that particular current with caution.
“Something still doesn’t feel right,” Imani murmured, braiding her damp hair.
Beneath the Crown’s branches, a sprawling, foreign awareness slithered around. “You sensed me following you?” Esa asked.
“Not you,” Imani replied, her gaze sweeping the tree line. “Something else.”
Esa frowned. “The Draswood is feeding you.”
Imani didn’t correct her, although the word sounded inaccurate.
The Draswood was pressing down on her, constantly assessing the magic she carried ever since she released her shadows to experiment with the moss.
The immense, almost unfathomable magic needed to meet its own—to become something around which the Draswood orbits—teased her mind’s limits.
It called for patience she doubted she had, making it hard to predict and risky to manage.
Still, they would need to rely on the Draswood’s protection a bit longer. They dressed and hurried on.
The light beneath the canopy grew thin, and the moss lining the path flickered, struggling to maintain its bioluminescence.
Whatever was happening to the Draswood no longer felt like natural decay.
Magic was putting sustained pressure on the Fabric here, repeatedly disturbing the same currents until the forest couldn’t recover between assaults.
How they were doing it—and what they were using—remained hidden to her.
Kiran hunting her came to mind in a rush of worry.
So did Tanyl. Imani had no evidence that either man was responsible, much less that they were working together, and the thought irritated her because she still couldn't separate reasonable suspicion from fear.
Kiran had been searching for her through these woods, but that was not the same thing as attacking the Draswood.
Esa stumbled. Her foot caught on something nearly invisible, stretched between two ancient trunks. Imani grabbed her arm before she fell, catching a shimmering glint of spell-thread woven directly into the forest’s undercurrent.
When it snapped, a concussive pulse spread outward.
Imani gasped as her glamour detached, peeling from her skin.
Her true features reasserted themselves instantly, the brands blazing hot against her arms. Moss darkened in a rapidly widening ring, and the stream shivered violently.
Air compressed as the Fabric tightened around her in a targeted, suffocating grip.
Her magic flickered, then flared in defiance. The snare had exposed her.
“This trap is anchored to the Fabric,” Imani breathed.
Before Esa could respond, a voice cut through the trees. “Move!”
They bolted, but the forest no longer moved in harmony with them. The birds fell silent, and the trees froze as the breeze dissipated. Imani tripped over a second filament, and the resulting pulse cracked the earth beneath her hand.
And the men moving through the brush did not seem to notice the traps. Still pumping her legs, Imani stole a glance over her shoulder, recognizing the insignia on the first dark leather before Esa fired a spell: Vathis. These were Ellisar’s soldiers.
They had probably been sent into the eastern territories for the same reason everyone else was searching—to find the Norn woman whose face Tanyl had spread across every wanted notice.
Whatever magic had woven the invisible filaments through the Draswood belonged to someone else, though. The soldiers had simply followed the hunt into the same ground.
The distinction did little to help when one of them raised his wand at her.
“Imani Aowyn,” he shouted. “By order of High Sentinel Ellisar, surrender your wand.”
Esa spun first. Her wand flashed toward the movement behind them, and a blast of pixie magic struck the nearest soldier hard enough to throw him backward into a tree.
A second man came through the brush from her left.
Esa ducked beneath his spell, drove her elbow into his ribs, then snapped her wand upward and sent him sprawling beside the first.
“Run,” she barked.
Imani barely made three strides before more figures emerged ahead of them.
The men had spread through the woodland routes ahead of them, using the roads and settlements to narrow the search. She didn’t think they had known about the spell-threads any more than Imani had. No, they had simply closed around her at the worst possible moment.
A spell tore past Imani’s shoulder. She turned and raised her wand, shadows answering before she consciously called them. Darkness rushed up her arms and pooled around her boots, eager enough that she could already feel how easily it would become lethal.
Then the moss beneath her feet went black, and a fracture opened beside her boot with a brittle crack.
Imani stopped with a gasp.
Her shadows had barely entered the world, yet the wounded Fabric was already reacting to them.
If she released enough power to tear through six armed witches, she had no idea what would happen to the Draswood around them.
The strained ground might split farther.
The roots that had protected her could die.
Whatever force had woven these snares into the forest might gain another opening.
With a trembling hand, she swirled her wand in the air and dragged the shadows back into herself.
The decision cost her, and a heartbeat later, she collided with a wall of muscle and leather armor.
She drove the heel of her palm into his throat and twisted away from the arm reaching for her wand, but another spell struck the ground beside her.
The concussion knocked her off balance. Fingers closed around her wrist.
Imani punched the man across the mouth.
He swore and tightened his grip.
Across the clearing, Esa was still fighting.
Blue light burst from her wand as she drove two soldiers backward, her wings beating hard enough to lift her briefly above another spell.
She turned in the air and fired again, but one of the spell-threads stretched between the trees and flared as her magic crossed it.
The backlash hit her first. Esa cried out and dropped hard to one knee. The moss around her darkened, and another fracture raced through the soil.
“Esa, stop!” Imani shouted.
Esa looked at the spreading crack, then at Imani.
That instant of distraction was enough.
A soldier caught Esa from behind while two more closed on Imani.
Imani kicked one in the knee and tore her arm free, but there were too many bodies and too little ground she could safely destroy.
Every instinct screamed at her to unleash the shadows.
They pressed beneath her skin, ready to rip through flesh and bone.
A second crack split the earth.
Agony ripped through her, knowing she couldn’t.
Someone’s fist struck her hand. Her wand fell into the moss. Imani lunged for it, but a boot came down over her wrist before her fingers reached the handle. Pain shot up her arm. A soldier wrenched both hands behind her back.
“Don’t touch her!” Esa shouted.
Another male twisted Esa’s arm until her wand dropped as well.
Imani tested the restraint around her wrists, and the shadows answered immediately. So did the Draswood. Moss dimmed beneath her knees. Her teeth ground together.
“Enough,” she said.
Esa glared at the men as Imani studied the cracked ground between them. She gave Esa a subtle shake of her head, ordering her not to release her Nightmare Dust.
Understanding crossed her friend’s face. Her fury remained, but she stopped fighting.
The Draswood magic signature tensed around the violence, but these were Norn men, and nothing in their magic carried the killing intent the forest had recognized in the chapalus. They were restraining her, not trying to destroy her. Apparently, that distinction mattered.
Only then did the soldiers manage to bind them and force them toward the wooden cart. One of them retrieved Imani’s wand from the moss and tucked it beneath his belt before helping shove her inside.
Bound, Imani forced her breathing to steady. Her shadows remained immediately available. Nothing prevented her from using them except the widening fractures beneath the wheels and the blackened moss left behind by every surge of unstable magic.
She could probably kill the soldiers, but she might kill part of the Draswood with them.
Beside her, Esa struggled against her bindings, angling herself closer as if a bound pixie could somehow put her body between Imani and whatever came next.
Above them, a vast, winged shadow eclipsed the canopy.