The fletching on one of Amira’s arrows whispers against another as she draws it. I hear the same sound again—definitely a voice.
Making a fist with my left hand, I move my arm out to the left and then back again twice, signaling to the others that someone is close.
Amira’s bow groans softly as she draws. My heart thuds as I wait for another sound.
It won’t be all of Ingrid’s soldiers at once. They’ll be spread out.
Carefully, I turn my feet so I’m facing the five people behind me. There’s enough light for me to make out their serious expressions now.
I hold up my hand and flash five fingers, then close my hand into a fist and flash my fingers again, doing it twice so I know everyone sees it.
That’s our signal forno guns. Whoever is nearby, we need to take them out as quietly as possible. It’s riskier because we have to get very close without being detected, but we can’t risk alerting Voss’s people to our location.
Olin relays the meaning of my signal to Pax through hand signals. Pax nods. He doesn’t even have a gun that I know of.
I hear footsteps now. They’re almost undetectable; it’s someone trained to walk quietly through the jungle.
Closing my eyes, I mentally reach into my mind. I won’t lose a single one of the people behind me. I’m not scared. Instead of worrying about someone else’s bloodthirst, I access my own.
They took Marcus from me. They might as well have killed him. They want to take everyone else I care about on this island. Other than Mae, these friends who are more like family are all I have left.
My veins flood. I don’t open my eyes because I don’t need to. A new sense has awakened in me, and the only way I can describe it is that Ifeelwhat’s happening. Beneath the ground, tree roots awaken. Above it, thick, thorny vines twist and wind around trees and across the ground.
I could control a four-piece string quartet before, but now that my fear is gone and I’m only calling on my rage, it’s an entire orchestra. I can conduct this earthy symphony with absolute precision.
When I summon the lianas—the heavy, woody ropes that spring from the soil and climb and loop around trees—their music is deep and heavy. Even though some of them are as thick as a strong man’s forearm, they’re nimble. They join the thorny vines, defying the laws of nature as they rapidly untangle themselves and mobilize.
Strangler figs unwrap themselves from around the ancient trees they were slowly suffocating, answering the rise of my invisible baton.
These trees and vines and even the leaves—from the tiniest bright-green sprouts to the massive elephant ears dragging on the jungle floor—have always been peaceful. But I feel their fury, too: for the volcano that decimated them, for the storms that crack and ruin the branches they’ve lovingly grown over hundreds of years, but mostly for the people who came here and stole from them.
Humans stole their flowers, their trunks, and their water. They killed and maimed nature with no regard. Just like they see my rage, I see theirs.
Fight with us, they say. And fightfor us.
My eyes remain closed, but I see Theron racing toward us. He’s snarling, his eyes narrowed. Spit flies from the side of his mouth. He’s wielding a huge axe, the end a stone knapped into a deadly edge. He lashed the stone onto a solid branch for ahandle. With the weapon raised in the air and his thick, corded muscles flexing, he looks like hell itself about to drag us into its depths.
It’s not through my own eyes that I see the six people behind him, but through the vines. I don’t see them in a traditional sense, but I know. It must be the exiles who left Pax’s camp.
An arrow lodges in Theron’s chest. At his size, it’s like a pushpin. He pulls it out easily and casts it aside.
He’s not getting any closer to Amira. I dig as deeply into my mind as I can and send my command through the connection.
Attack. Protect us.
A deep hissing sensation floods through me. Lianas and vines lunge at Theron, pulling him to the ground.
A vine easily takes the axe from his hand. He bellows with alarm, reaching toward the people behind him as he’s dragged by the lianas, his lower legs tightly encircled.
My connection flickers, like a new message incoming and interrupting my flow.
There are more predators coming from a different direction. They’re close.
Energy is leached out of me as I try to focus on both groups of people at the same time. There are more in the second group. Closer to a dozen.
Ingrid’s soldiers. My frustration flickers like a hot coal. I don’t know how to send my defenders in two different directions at the same time.
The six people behind Theron are retreating. I want to finish him, but I don’t know how close Ingrid’s soldiers are.
