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.
