Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ryder
The fog swallowed us whole, and suddenly I couldn’t see anything but white.
One second we were walking through the forest, tense but together, the fae hounds circling in the shadows beyond our sight.
I could feel Damon and Alyssa somewhere ahead of me, Maddox’s heat at my side, Tank’s solid presence bringing up the rear.
We were a pack. We were together. We were going to make it through this forest, no matter what it threw at us.
The next second, none of that was true.
The wall of mist rolled over us like a living thing, so thick I couldn’t see my own hand in front of my face.
It was cold, unnaturally so, and it seemed to muffle everything.
Sound, light, even the bonds that tied me to my packmates.
One moment I could feel Dean’s steady presence like a beacon in my mind.
The next, he was just... gone. Faded to a distant whisper that I couldn’t quite grasp.
I reached out blindly, grasping for the person who’d been beside me a moment ago, and my fingers closed around fabric.
Maddox. I could tell by the heat radiating off him, his fire magic simmering just below the surface. The warmth was a comfort, a reminder that I wasn’t completely alone in this sudden, suffocating whiteness.
“Everyone stay close,” Fizzle’s voice cut through the muffled silence. “Do not separate. Whatever happens, do not let the fog split you apart.”
Easy for him to say. The fog was so dense it was like being wrapped in cotton. Like being buried alive in clouds. I couldn’t even tell which direction was up anymore. Every direction looked the same. Every direction felt the same.
“Where are the others?” Tank’s voice came from somewhere to my left. Close, thank the gods. His voice was strained in a way I rarely heard from him. “Dean? Alyssa?”
No answer. Not even an echo. The fog seemed to swallow sound as completely as it swallowed light. My heart clenched with sudden, terrible fear.
Then I heard it. Fighting. The clash of steel, the crack of magic, screams that were cut off too quickly.
Somewhere out there in the fog, my pack was under attack, and I couldn’t see them.
Couldn’t help them. Couldn’t do anything but stand here like an idiot while the people I loved were being torn apart.
“We need to find them,” I said, already starting to move toward the sounds.
Fizzle’s talons dug into my shoulder as he landed on me, as if he was trying to hold me in place. “No. We stay together. Separating is exactly what they want.”
“But Alyssa…”
“Is capable of handling herself. As is Dean.” Fizzle’s voice was firm, but I could hear the strain underneath. He was worried too. He just hid it better. “The best thing we can do for them is survive. If we scatter, if we let ourselves be picked off one by one, we help no one.”
I hated it. Hated every word of it. But I knew he was right.
We huddled together, the four of us, straining to see through the impenetrable white.
The sounds of battle continued somewhere in the distance, muffled and distorted by the fog until I couldn’t tell if they were getting closer or further away.
My wolf paced restlessly in my mind, desperate to run toward the danger, to find our packmates, to fight.
Then I saw the shadow.
It moved at the edge of my vision, a darker shape against the white. My first thought was fae hound, and I reached for my sword. But as it drew closer, as I could make out more of its form, I realised I was wrong.
It was too big. Far too big.
The shadow loomed at least twenty feet tall, its shape vaguely humanoid but wrong in ways I couldn’t articulate. Too many limbs, maybe. Or limbs that bent in the wrong directions. It moved with a ponderous, inevitable pace, like a glacier slowly grinding its way across a landscape.
“What the fuck is that?” Maddox breathed beside me.
“Prepare yourselves,” Fizzle said, and for the first time since I’d met him, I heard real fear in his voice. “Whatever happens, do not let it touch you.”
For once, I didn’t reach for my sword. Instead, I reached for my magic.
It came easier now than it ever had before.
The training with Alyssa, the discovery that my power was mine to command, it had changed something fundamental in my relationship with the storm.
I could feel the electricity in the air around me, could sense the wind waiting to answer my call.
The magic hummed beneath my skin, eager and ready.
“Careful,” Fizzle warned, his eyes on me. “Be precise. The people you love are somewhere in this fog. If you lash out with uncontrolled magic, you risk hurting them. Or worse, distracting them and giving the fae hounds an opening.”
I swallowed hard, nodding. Precision. Control. I could do that. I had to do that.
Beside me, Maddox’s arms coated in fire. Flames licked up from his wrists to his elbows, casting an orange glow that pushed back the fog a few precious feet. His face was set in hard lines, his lion prowling behind his eyes.
Tank frowned, his massive form tensing as he reached out with his own magic. “Something’s wrong,” he said slowly. “I’m trying to connect with the land, but something is blocking me. It’s like there’s a wall between me and the Spring Court’s magic.”
Before any of us could respond, the trees started to move.
At first, I thought Tank had broken through whatever was blocking him.
The branches overhead creaked and groaned, the trunks shuddering like they were waking from a long sleep.
But then Tank slammed into me, his massive body knocking me aside just as a huge branch crashed down where I’d been standing.
I hit the ground hard, the breath driven from my lungs. When I looked up, gasping, I saw Tank scrambling to his feet, his eyes wide with shock.
“That wasn’t me,” he said.
The tree behind him twisted. Actually twisted, its trunk rotating with a sound like bones grinding together. And as it turned to face us, I saw the face.
It was carved into the bark, or maybe grown there, a cracked and ancient visage with hollow eyes and a mouth that gaped open in a silent scream. The branches reached toward us like arms, like fingers, grasping and hungry.
The tree lashed out.
The branch moved faster than something that size should have been able to, whipping through the air with a sound like a cracking whip. It caught Tank across the chest and sent him flying back into the fog. One second he was there, and the next he was gone, swallowed by the white.
“Tank!” I screamed, but there was no answer.
I rolled to the side just as another branch slammed into the ground where I’d been lying.
The impact shook the earth, leaving a crater in the soft forest floor.
I scrambled to my feet, my heart pounding, and backed away from the tree creature that was turning to face me with those horrible hollow eyes.
“The trees are alive,” I blurted out. “The trees are fucking alive!”
Fizzle was in the air now, his wings beating furiously as he dodged between branches that swiped at him. “This isn’t right,” he said, and he sounded absolutely horrified. “I’ve never seen this before. In all my centuries, I’ve never seen anything like this.”
More tree creatures were emerging from the fog. They surrounded us, their bark-faces twisted into expressions of rage or hunger or something that might have been both. Their branches reached for us, forming a cage of wood and malice that tightened with every passing second.
“Isn’t this what happened in the Spring Court?” I demanded, backing up until I felt Maddox’s heat at my back. “With Rhidian’s men? The trees attacked them too.”
“No.” Fizzle’s voice was sharp with denial.
“The trees moved, yes, but they were still trees. Plants responding to magic, following commands. These are...” He trailed off, staring at the creatures around us with something like disbelief.
“These are something different. Something new. Something that shouldn’t exist.”
“Fucking fantastic,” Maddox snarled. He thrust his hands forward, sending a stream of fire at the nearest tree creature. The flames roared through the air, hot enough that I could feel the sting of the burn on my skin.
But the tree creature absorbed them. The fire hit its bark and just... disappeared. Soaked into the wood like water into a sponge, leaving no mark, causing no damage.
“That’s not good,” I quipped, though there was no humor in it.
Fizzle sent out a wave of air magic, and for a moment, the tree creatures were pushed back. Their branches bent, their trunks leaning away from the force of the wind. But then the air seemed to flow around them instead of against them, parting like a stream around stones, and they advanced again.
“I can’t access all of my magic,” Fizzle said, and now the fear in his voice was undeniable. “It’s like something is absorbing it. Drawing it away before I can use it properly.”
I looked up at the tree creatures. They’d stopped moving now, forming an unbroken wall around us. Their hollow eyes stared down at us, their branch-arms poised to strike but motionless. Waiting.
They’d cut us off from the others. Completely. Whatever was happening to Dean and Alyssa, whatever battles they were fighting, we couldn’t reach them now. We were trapped in our own little prison of bark and leaves and impossible magic.
Unless...
“What if this isn’t something new?” I said slowly, an idea forming in the back of my mind.
Fizzle snapped at me, his patience clearly fraying. “I would know if these creatures existed in Nymeria. I am centuries old. There isn’t a single place in this realm that I haven’t been, a single creature I haven’t catalogued. These things do not exist.”