Chapter 8
SERIS
Hours later, when the storm had passed and dawn light filtered through the cracked windows, I stood slowly, testing my balance, and walked toward the far wall.
Just as I placed my left hand against it for support, Daemon entered the chamber.
Without a word, he crossed the distance between us and dropped to one knee in front of me.
He gently lifted my right ankle, still covered in cuts and bruises.
In his hand was a sandal woven from straw.
He slipped it onto my foot, and it fit perfectly.
His hands were cool against my skin, but warmth bloomed in my chest all the same. Heat rose to my cheeks before I could stop it.
“Th-thank you,” I managed as he slid the second sandal onto my other foot.
Daemon remained on one knee, his eyes lifting to meet mine. His long, wavy black hair fell partly across his face.
“You’re welcome.”
He held my gaze as he rested his elbow against his knee. I broke the connection first and tested my new shoes, taking a few tentative steps. A quiet chuckle escaped him when I gave a small experimental hop.
Without another word, I left the chamber and descended the stairs, feeling lighter than I had the night before. I heard Daemon’s heavy footsteps follow as I stepped outside and drew in my first breath of fresh air since the storm.
The rain had stopped just before dawn, leaving the world washed clean and scented with wet earth and growing things.
We broke our fast on the last of Daemon’s supplies, dried meat that tasted like leather and water that had taken on the flavor of the skin it was stored in. Not much, but enough to keep us moving.
The watchtower looked different in daylight, less forbidding, more tragic. Ivy had begun reclaiming the stone in places, and birds had built nests in the broken crenellations. It had once been beautiful, before whatever had turned it from guard post to refuge.
“Ready?” Daemon asked, shouldering his pack.
I glanced back at the chamber that had sheltered us through the night, memorizing details I might never see again. The cold hearth where he’d built a fire with assassin’s precision. The cloak he’d spread beneath me without being asked.
Small kindnesses that meant more than they should.
“Ready,” I said.
The Nightwood had changed overnight.
It wasn’t anything I could point to specifically, the trees were still trees, the paths still paths.
But something fundamental had shifted, as if the forest itself were holding its breath.
The colors seemed more vivid, the shadows deeper.
Every sound carried farther than it should, echoing off unseen barriers that bent noise in impossible ways.
And the trees were watching us.
I felt their attention like a weight against my skin. Some of them had stood here since before humans learned to build cities, before the Fae withdrew into hidden places, before magic became something to fear rather than celebrate.
They knew what I was. What I represented.
“The forest is alive,” I said as we picked our way along a path that seemed to shift whenever I wasn’t looking directly at it.
“All forests are alive,” Daemon replied, but his shadows were restless, reaching toward sounds that didn’t exist and movements that flickered just beyond sight.
“Not like this. This is…” I searched for the right word. “Aware. Conscious. Like it’s thinking.”
“Regardless, we have to keep moving. We need to head west. The others should be waiting for us by now.”
Daemon quickened his pace. I followed, letting him take the lead as we made our way toward Kael and the others.
A branch rustled overhead, though there was no wind to stir it. Somewhere in the distance, something that might have been laughter echoed through the trees.
We walked in relative silence after that, both of us listening for sounds that shouldn’t exist. The path curved and twisted, leading us deeper into the forest’s heart, and with each step the sense of otherworldliness grew stronger.
Reality felt thinner here, more malleable.
Like the right word or gesture might tear a hole in the fabric of what was and let in what could be.
Our unease, heightened by the magic saturating the forest, sharpened at the sudden rustling of leaves to our right. Daemon drew his twin daggers faster than I could turn my head. A split second of silence stretched into eternity. I lowered my stance and braced for whatever was coming.
To our relief, Kael stepped out of the treeline.
Daemon straightened slightly, tension easing from his shoulders, but only for a moment. Kane’s massive frame emerged behind Kael, Zephyr draped across his back. The entire team was bloodied and hobbling.
Their eyes were sharp with both alertness and exhaustion.
“Thank the gods,” Kael muttered.
“What happened?” Daemon’s gaze flicked from branch to branch, scanning for threats before settling on his injured companions.
“After we met up with Zephyr, we were engaged by a detachment. The King has hired mercenaries from the south, along with his hunters. We handled them well enough, but we were flanked by trackers and caught off guard. Zephyr was badly wounded, and Kane had to fight while shielding him. I took on both groups at once. We barely made it out alive.”
Looking closer, I saw dried blood coating nearly every limb as Kael spoke. Kane carefully lowered the unconscious Zephyr onto a patch of grass. His back bristled with arrowheads, the shafts snapped off jaggedly. Kane sank down beside him, breathing heavily.
Kael’s left hand trembled.
They were badly injured. If we didn’t get them treatment soon, they could die. Not to mention, Daemon had taken significant damage fighting the wolves, and I was still aching from months of torment and the sigils carved into my skin. The healer being unconscious was the worst-case scenario.
Daemon shifted from worry to action in an instant. He strode to Zephyr and lifted him over his shoulder before extending a hand to Kane. Kane clasped it and forced himself upright with a labored grunt.
“We have to keep moving,” Daemon said. “We need to find Vaelthorne.”
This was no longer just about the mission. The lives of Daemon’s chosen family were at stake.
Kael and Kane were starting to lag farther and farther behind us, though we weren’t moving at the same brisk pace as before. Zephyr’s breath and pulse were growing dangerously faint. We were running out of time.
By midday, I was sure we were being followed.
Not by anything physical, Daemon’s shadows would have detected any living creature stalking us.
But a presence moved through the trees parallel to our path, keeping pace without ever showing itself.
Sometimes I caught glimpses of movement in my peripheral vision, but when I turned to look, there was nothing there.
“Do you feel that?” I asked during a brief rest beside a stream that flowed uphill.
Daemon’s eyes were already scanning the treeline, his hand resting on his dagger hilt. “Something’s tracking us. Has been for the past hour.”
“But not something dangerous.”
“How can you tell?”
“Because it feels…” I struggled to find the right words. “Familiar. Like it knows me.”
A shimmer of light appeared between two massive oaks, faint as moonbeams but unmistakably there. It curved away into the depths of the forest, leading in a direction that felt right in ways I couldn’t explain.
“The path,” I breathed.
Daemon followed my gaze and frowned. “I don’t see anything.”
“You’re not supposed to. It’s not meant for you.” I started toward the light, drawn by something deeper than curiosity. “This is the way to Vaelthorne.”
“Seris, wait,”
But I was already moving, following the silver thread through trees that bent aside to let me pass. Behind me, I heard Daemon curse and hurry to catch up, his shadows writhing with agitation as they struggled to keep pace with something they couldn’t see or touch.
The forest grew stranger with every step.
Trees moved when I wasn’t looking directly at them, rearranging themselves into new configurations that somehow felt more right than what had been there before.
Violet flowers bloomed and withered in seconds, their petals falling upward to disappear into branches that shouldn’t have been able to catch them.
“This isn’t natural,” Daemon said, his voice tight with strain.
“Nothing about the Nightwood is natural.”
“This place… it feels like,”
Home. The word felt strange on my tongue.
I’d never seen Vaelthorne, had no memories of the place my mother had described in her stories.
But as we followed the silver path deeper into the forest’s heart, I felt something in my chest loosening.
Recognition. Belonging. The sense that every step was bringing me closer to where I was meant to be.
The voice came again as the sun began to set, painting the forest in shades of gold and crimson.
Almost there. Almost home.
“I hear a voice. Someone is leading us,” I told Daemon. My thoughts immediately went to my mother. My brain began to plant seeds of hope, that she was still alive. That she had survived the flames and was here now.
He didn’t argue, but I could see the skepticism in his dark eyes. Death magic users didn’t believe in gentle ghosts or protective spirits. To them, the dead were either gone completely or twisted into something hungry and malevolent.
But my mother had always been stronger than death.
The silver path led us through a grove of trees. Beyond the grove, the path began to descend, winding down into a valley hidden from the outside world by mists that moved without any breeze to drive them.
At the bottom, light shimmered between two trees. It was as if the space wasn’t a part of this world. As we got closer, I could feel the magic held within it. It was a portal in the shape of a mirror, adorned by a flowery silver frame.
And there, nestled in the valley’s heart like a jewel in a velvet box, was Vaelthorne.
But it wasn’t in ruins.
The village was unlike anything I had ever seen.
The trees blended flawlessly with the buildings, intertwined into perfection.
Streams flowed through the streets in careful patterns, their water so clear I could see the bottom despite the depth.
Gardens bloomed in impossible profusion, flowers in colors that had no names growing beside herbs that sparkled with their own inner light.
It was beautiful. Alive. Perfect.
And completely impossible.
“It’s preserved,” Daemon said, his voice full of wonder and suspicion in equal measure. “This place… it’s not our world.”
“How is that possible?”
“Someone with incredible power would have had to anchor it. Pin it to some… space and maintain the binding for…” He looked around at the village that should have been ash and memory. “Decades. Maybe longer.”
That’s when I saw her.
A figure stood at the village’s edge, tall and graceful and achingly familiar, despite the fact that I’d never seen her before.
Silver hair that moved like water. Eyes the color of deep forest shadows.
Skin that seemed to hold its own inner light.
She wore robes that shifted between blue and green and silver, changing with each breath like the surface of a deep pool.
Fae. Unmistakably, undeniably Fae.
I knew immediately she was the one who had been speaking to me. The one who had led us here.
“Seris, daughter of Lyanna,” she called, her voice carrying easily across the distance. “Welcome home.”