A figure stepped through; broad shoulders, dark hair plastered to his forehead with sweat.
“Jaden?” The name came out small, disbelieving.
We had seen illusions, heard voices whisper and seen faces that weren’t there. The forest had been playing tricks on us since we crossed its threshold.
He stopped a few paces away, hands open, empty. His expression was tight, drawn. “It’s me.”
“How do I know that for sure?” I snapped.
His mouth twitched faintly, not a smile. “Can’t really blame you.” He burrowed his foot deeper in the sand and parts of the ground pushed into the air, levitating at his command.
I hesitated, but we hadn’t seen a shapeshifter able to mimic our elemental magic.
“I came after you,” he said, voice rough, lower than usual. “After what happened earlier… I couldn’t just stand still.”
Something in his tone—guilt, maybe—tugged at me. It felt real, human.
I swallowed. “Thatthing, she took Malakai.”
“What thing?” His gaze slid past me, into the fog. “A demon?”
“A spider-demon,” I chuckled dryly, shivering at the mere thought of her. “We have to go.” I turned, already moving.
His hand caught my arm.
“Malakai’s a demon,” Jaden said, calmly. “He can handle himself.”
I stared at him, eyes narrowing, blood boiling.
The image flashed before my eyes again, Malakai caught in that leg, his magic quickly fading. The web tightening slowly as his breath shortened.
“She weakened him,” I said. My voice shook, and I hated it. “You didn’t see her. That thing—”
“He’s not helpless,” Jaden insisted. “Running blindly in there—”
“Every second we stand here talking, she’s wrapping more silk around him!” The words ripped out of me, heat surging with them. Flames burst higher along my arms, lighting the fog. “You want to help? Then help. If not, get the fuck out of my way.”
Jaden blinked, like I’d struck him physically, but I had no intention of hanging around. I began moving, his boots following right behind me.
Once he was next to me, he nodded once. “Fine. We do it your way.”
We shouted Malakai’s name into the fog, our voices bouncing back warped and hollow. I burned a few trunks, marking our path and Jaden slammed his foot into the ground every now and then, earth magic rippling outward, feeling for hollows, for movement beneath the roots.
Then—
“There!”Jaden pointed.
The fog thinned just enough to reveal a shape ahead. A larger tree, dead and blackened, its bark split and peeling like charred skin. It towered above every other tree we had seen in this forsaken place.
Something hung from its branches.
My heart stopped.
Malakai was suspended several feet off the ground, cocooned in layers of grey web that pinned his arms to his sides and bound his legs together, strings crossing his throat, his chest. His head hung forward, white hair falling into his face.
He struggled with low grunts, barely audible.
The web around him twitched when he moved, as if the silk itself was alive.
