Chapter 6
Chapter Six
A Forest Like No Other
Where Steps Must be Watched
Bria stumbled as Kaelan pulled her forward, the ground beneath her feet changing almost at once.
The forest swallowed the light.
What little sunlight had managed to follow them through the trees seemed to vanish beyond the boundary of Driochmor, leaving only a dim gray haze that clung between the trunks like lingering smoke.
The air grew colder with each hurried step, damp against her skin, carrying the scent of rot and wet earth so thick it settled heavily in her chest.
“Kaelan—slow down,” she pleaded, struggling to keep pace as he led her deeper through the twisted woodland.
He did not answer.
Branches snagged at her cloak as though trying to pull her back. Gnarled roots curled across the forest floor like skeletal fingers waiting to trip the unwary, and more than once Kaelan tightened his grip and steadied her before she could stumble.
Bria scarcely noticed, her attention darting everywhere at once.
The trees looked strange, not dead, nor living, somewhere between the two.
Their bark twisted in unnatural swirls, thick knots bulging from the trunks like misshapen faces caught in silent agony. Bare branches stretched overhead, long and crooked, scraping against one another with sharp, dry sounds that reminded her disturbingly of whispered voices.
A sudden rustling near her feet made her gasp softly.
Something pale and thin skittered across a fallen branch before disappearing beneath a mound of blackened leaves. She caught only the briefest glimpse of too many legs and a body that writhed more than crawled.
Her grip tightened painfully around Kaelan’s hand.
Ravens sat, scattered through the trees above them. Their dark eyes followed her every movement, heads turning in eerie unison as she passed beneath them. One gave a slow ruffle of its wings, the sound startlingly loud in the heavy stillness.
Bria tried not to look up again after that.
The deeper they went, the more the forest seemed to close around them.
Thick brush reached out near enough to brush her skirt.
Low branches curved inward overhead as though trying to seal the path behind them.
More than once, she thought she saw movement just beyond the trees, a shifting shadow, something slipping silently between the trunks only to vanish when she looked directly at it.
Fear settled steadily deeper inside her. Not the sharp fear brought by the beast. Something worse. Something ancient that lay in wait. Something that made her feel unwelcome and something that warned they did not belong here.
Then Kaelan stopped so abruptly she nearly stumbled but caught herself.
He lowered himself into a crouch, drawing her down beside him before she could question why. The damp earth soaked through the hem of her skirt at once, the smell of decay stronger here.
Bria watched uneasily as he swept aside rotted leaves and dark soil with his hand.
“What are you doing?” she whispered.
Kaelan scooped up a handful of earth and lifted it toward his face. Then he inhaled.
Bria stared at him in disbelief. “You sniff the ground?”
“The tracks faded,” he said, his attention remaining fixed on the disturbed earth. “I hoped to catch the creature’s scent.”
“And did you?”
For the first time since entering Driochmor, uncertainty touched his expression.
“Nay.”
A chill slid through her.
“We need to leave,” she said quickly, her voice unsteady now despite her effort to control it. “Now. This is no place for us. We do not belong here.”
Kaelan released her hand briefly to brush the dirt from his hand before reaching once again for hers and stood.
Bria stood with him and turned at once, desperate to leave, to go home.
Her breath caught painfully in her throat and her brow knitted tightly. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible. The forest behind them no longer looked the same.
The trees stood thicker now, packed so tightly together she could scarcely see between them. Tangled growth choked the ground where they had walked only moments before, thorned vines twisting over fallen branches as though no path had ever existed there at all.
“Nay…” she whispered, her pulse quickening. “We just came through there.”
Yet there was no sign of an opening. No break in the trees. No sign of the way they had entered. No trace of the world they left behind. Only the forest, watching, waiting, and holding them fast within it.
Bria could not stop staring at the wall of tangled growth behind them.
“We just came through there,” she said again, though the words sounded weaker this time, as though even she no longer believed them.
Kaelan remained still beside her, his gaze moving slowly through the forest around them.
“How ever will we find our way home?” she asked.
The fear in her voice got Kaelan’s full attention. She inched closer to him without being aware that she did so. And her hand remained wrapped tightly around his, as though letting go would leave her swallowed by the forest itself.
“Do not let fear rule you,” he cautioned.
He shouldn’t have brought her with him, but then he couldn’t leave her behind. There was much they both needed to learn. And here was where they would find the truth.
Her eyes lifted sharply to his. “How can it not? This place…” She glanced uneasily around them.
“Is different,” he said.
“It is more than different. It is evil.”
The quiet certainty in him unsettled her almost as much as the forest itself. He stood as though Driochmor held no fear for him, no threat he could not face.
“You speak as though you have no fear of this place,” she said as if that could even be possible, unless… “Are you familiar with Driochmor?” She gasped. “Or is it evil you are familiar with?”
Silence met her questions.
Bria tugged her hand free, though she knew he had released it, his strength far too great for her to win against.
“I will have the truth,” she demanded, shielding herself with a hug as useless as it was.
“I know some of both,” Kaelan said reluctantly.
“How?” She stared at him, wondering how she could have been so foolish to feel something for him—a stranger. “Who truly are you?”
“Now is not the time or place—”
“It is the perfect time and place,” she argued, though he might be right about that.
He turned his head away for a moment and when he turned back, his dark eyes seemed to grab hold of her and secure her to him, not as chains would but with something far more compelling and far more difficult to escape.
“I cannot answer you now. You must trust me. I mean you no harm.”
She shook her head the whole time she spoke. “I should trust your word when I cannot even trust who you are?”
“In time—”
“I don’t want to hear that,” she said, dismissing it with a wave of her hand as she took a step away from him.
Kaelan’s arm swung out, snagging her around the waist and yanking her against him, then taking several steps back.
She tried to break free of his grip when he turned her around, keeping his arm at her waist. Her eyes went wide and she pressed back hard against him unable to get close enough.
“It’s a silver hugger snake,” he said. “It doesn’t bite, but it loves to wrap things in a tight hug. Sometimes too tightly.” He shook his finger at the snake. “She’s mine. You cannot hug her.”
Bria watched, its silver skin shimmering, as it wrapped itself around the tree branch it was hanging from and slithered along it.
Kaelan saw the conflict move across her face and felt the pull toward her strengthen again, deep and unrelenting. Every instinct within him urged him to keep her near, protect her, and give her time.
She was not ready for truths that would change everything she believed about herself, about him, and about what now bound them together. Pushing her too quickly would only drive her toward fear. And fear was already growing around her fast enough within these woods.
A harsh cry sounded overhead as it swept down between the trees close to them.
Instinctively, Bria turned to press herself against his chest.
Kaelan’s arm tightened around her.
“How can you remain so calm?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper for fear any sound might stir something unnatural.
“Fear doesn’t allow wise decisions,” he said, glancing around.
She felt it then, his calm, it drifted slowly through her, easing her fear. It was like her own touch when she comforted those in need. She purposely rested her hand on his arm, seeing what she could feel.
Calm that mixed with her own, then a shot of confidence so strong that she could almost believe she had nothing to fear. He would keep her safe. But then she felt something far beneath that, so deep she could not reach it, but it stirred as though waiting to be released.
Bria lifted her head to look at him, not realizing she had rested it on his chest.
He dipped his head so that his lips nearly touched hers. “Be careful how deep you go, Bria, you may not be ready for what you find.”
He brushed his lips across hers, a whisper of a touch that sent a pleasant shudder through her that caught her breath for a moment. Then his arm fell from around her waist, his hand slipping around hers as he took a step away from her.
Briefly, before his hand took hold of hers, when there was no touch between them, she felt that odd emptiness rush over her again. It vanished as soon as his hand gripped hers. She could not make sense of it, and right now, she had no time to dwell on it. Not here, not in Driochmor.
Kaelan gave her hand a gentle tug. “We need to keep moving.”
Bria remained where she was for a moment longer, unsettled by how easily his calm had slipped through her, easing fear that had moments before threatened to consume her.
“The deeper we go, the more difficult it will be to find our way out,” she warned.
His gaze drifted briefly through the trees surrounding them before returning to her. “Standing still will not serve us any better.”
Something in the way he said it sent another chill through her.
As though remaining in one place carried dangers of its own.
Bria glanced uneasily around. The forest had grown strangely quiet again. Even the ravens had gone still, watching from their branches with unsettling patience.
“Then where are we going?” she asked.
“A place where we will be safer once darkness falls.”
Her stomach tightened instantly. “Darkness falls?” She shook her head. “Nay. We are not remaining here through the night.”
Kaelan did not argue. But neither did he agree. He simply started forward again, drawing her along beside him.
Bria followed reluctantly, though not because she trusted Driochmor any more than before. She followed because remaining alone in this place frightened her far more.
The forest thickened steadily around them.
Roots twisted across the ground in thick coils, forcing her to watch every step while Kaelan moved with unnerving ease, avoiding hidden holes and tangled growth as though he already knew where they lay.
Once, his arm swept suddenly across her path, halting her just before her foot touched a patch of pale vines creeping low across the forest floor.
The vines moved, not by wind—by themselves.
Bria jerked back with a startled gasp.
“They feed on warmth,” Kaelan said calmly. “Step into them and they tighten until nothing remains.”
Fear stirred harder inside her, though not entirely of Driochmor. How did he know that? How had he known about the silver hugger snake? How was it Kaelan never hesitated, never searched for direction, when the forest around them grew steadily stranger?
She kept a wary watch as they walked. Pale mushrooms clung to rotting trunks in thick clusters that gave off a faint silver glow.
Bones, small and brittle with age, hung tangled among low branches as though placed there deliberately.
She spotted markings carved into the bark of a massive tree, deep jagged symbols she did not recognize.
Uneasy over what evil they might represent, she looked quickly away from them.
The farther they traveled, the more she became aware of something else.
Nothing approached Kaelan.
The crawling creatures vanished before he reached them. Ravens watched but did not swoop low near him. Even the forest itself seemed to shift around his presence rather than against it.
And Kaelan noticed everything. A broken branch. A disturbed patch of earth. A sound so faint she heard nothing at all. Each time, his attention sharpened briefly before he moved on.
He knows where he is going.
The thought almost caused her to gasp, but she caught it before it could slip out. That could mean only one thing. He had been here before and with how easily he maneuvered through the forest, she would think it had been often.
Kaelan slowed, catching her attention and she saw that the trees ahead began to thin.
The change came gradually at first, the tangled growth giving way to a small clearing swallowed in shadows and silence.
Then she saw it… stone.
Massive weatherworn stones rose from the earth ahead, some broken, others still standing tall despite age and ruin. Thick vines twisted around them, and moss covered nearly every surface, though strange markings remained visible beneath the growth.
At the center stood the remains of what had once been a structure of some sort, little more now than crumbling walls and a partially collapsed roof overtaken by the forest.
Bria stopped walking entirely. Her pulse quickened as her gaze moved slowly over the ruins.
Kaelan finally released her hand and glanced around.
A terrible realization began to settle over her as she watched him. He looked at the area as if it was familiar to him, as if he was glad to see it again.
He had not been wandering blindly through Driochmor. Not even close. This had been his destination all along. But was she meant to come here with him, or had she stumbled into his plan, and he had no choice but to take her with him?
Suddenly, standing among the ruins of the forbidden land, Bria no longer knew whether she should fear Driochmor most… or the man beside her.