Lux stepped from the cottage and Morana followed after her, her chain falling to the forest floor. She scooped up the length with a loud oath.
“Are you tryingto get us killed? You’re doing a wonderful job of it so far.”
Morana gripped the chain to her chest with both hands, spearing Lux with a ferocious glare. “And you’re doing a wonderful job of annoying me. Though, as I remember it, you’ve never struggled.”
“Shaw. That’s the only reason you’re doing this.” And Lux continued to mumble to herself as she stepped amongst the trees, her boots silent in comparison to the ringing ones at her back. Her eyes stung in their refusal to cease staring into the shadows. At any moment, she felt sure yellowed eyes would appear. Followed shortly by very white teeth.
But they didn’t come. Maybe the fates had decided to gift her a reprieve at last. She snorted, followed quickly by a huff of irritation as Morana’s voice pierced the air between them.
“Stop! There’s something in my boot. Don’t sneer at me simply because I don’t want an infection. Oh, it may be too late. I think it pierced the skin. Damn!”
Lux rolled her eyes, turning to find Morana swaying on one foot as she removed the boot from the other. She nearly toppled, and to steady herself, she reached for the tree.
“Morana! Don’t—”
The soil shifted beneath their feet.
“What is this? Lux!” Panic-filled, Morana’s voice rose to a shriek as she tried in vain to wrench her hand from the black trunk. However possible, the pitch heightened when the first vining root snaked up her leg.
Lux fell when the next shift occurred, the roots bursting from the moss-covered soil, coated with an oozing gore. It seeped through her skirt, staining her skin, but none of it was meant for her. Lux shoved the hair from her eyes at the blood-curdling scream ripping through the night.
The tree before her appeared as if ruptured from the inside out. It yawned wide, darkness spilling from its pit to dump ice crystals in Morana’s hair and on her clothing. Morana’s terror had finally petrified her into silence. When the roots pulled against her, she didn’t even blink. Her body tipped forward.
But Lux refused to surrender anything to the wood, even a selfish creature like the mayor’s daughter. Her dagger sliced through the empty space at Morana’s wrist.
Black branches fell at their feet to writhe and twist like great snakes. Morana’s voice returned, and she screamed again. Lux winced against it as she bent to hack at the roots too slow in their retreat. They, too, thrashed about as if in pain. Perhaps they were.
Lux gripped Morana’s wrist so tight it’d likely bruise and wrenched her free.
Together, they tumbled sideways before Morana fell to her front, knocking Lux to the ground in the process.
“What the dev—”
Morana sobbed, scrabbling at the moss beneath her fingers, choking against the sludge spraying upward, dousing her open mouth. And for a moment, Lux laid there, unmoving, confused as to why, when slowly, Morana’s body drew backward.
“Lux.”
Her name was a desperate plea on Morana’s tongue, and Lux scrambled to her feet to see a faint glimmer of chain. The chain from the manacle drawn taut through the moss and pulled deep into the belly of the tree.
The steady motion was unyielding. More horrifying was that Lux couldn’t see anything in which to sever. There were no roots. No branches. The tree itself was drawing her forward. And it’d swallow her whole.
“Help me,please. Oh, saints above, save me!”
Lux hacked at the chain. Aside from the barest indentations, it did nothing. “You hellish nightmare,” she growled, spinning to the tree.
She couldfeelits triumph.
Shadow fell across Morana’s ankles when Lux stepped over her, and the scream that shattered the forest wasn’t Morana’s this time but hers, as the trunk snapped around her arm, crushing the bone to the shoulder.
The branches bent, curling and twining toward her, welcoming…only to stop. To shudder. Leaves fell, slick as oil and darkest black.
And when the tree’s expanse opened once more, it wasn’t to draw Lux in further, but to spit her out.
She hurtled back with a silent cry against the pain, her dagger falling to the ground, her fingers unable to hold it any longer. She’d pierced the tree, and now it writhed in agony.
Morana, rather than lying petrified as she’d done prior, hauled the chain up from its depths as fast as she could. When the trunk snapped closed a second time, it was upon nothing. Theywere free. Morana continued to sob with great, heaping gasps, piling the metal into her arms. The final length sent the dagger skittering toward her, and she bent. Picking it up, Morana looked it over once; with tear-streaked cheeks, she held it from her.
Lux stood unmoving, simply attempting to breathe away the pain, but when Morana extended her arm, she reached for the blade. They’d have both been dead without it. She tucked it safely away as the mayor’s daughter quieted at last.
