Blood to root and root to stone,
Dark One, close our blackest road.”
Shadows burst outward from the trunk in jagged veins, splitting through fallen leaves as though a mirror has cracked beneath our feet. The earth darkens wherever the black lines spread, racing toward us fast enough that I stumble back with a curse and skip over one before it can brush my boots. The obsidian surface at the heart of the tree ripples, distorts, then caves inward with a low, intimate shudder.
Roots twist around themselves and seal the path closed, spiraling into blackened whorls. The spilled blood flares scarlet, then gutters out, sinking into the earth with a hiss until nothing remains.
The birds begin to chirp again, but dark scars remain carved at the base of the tree trunk.
“Mabel is going to kill us when she finds out,” I say with a cringe.
The passage was likely woven by her second husband—or rather, her false husband and father to her children, the late Shadow King.
Nick wipes his bloodied hand on his pants and meets my eyes. There’s no triumph in his face, only resolve. “We had to, Max.”
Our only way home is gone.
Behind us stands an ordinary tree.
Ahead, the Red Forest awaits.
“Look.” Nick points to a dark shape at the very back of the meadow.
A derelict cabin stands beyond a thin row of trees, tucked beneath the sprawling trunk of a gigantic rowan. It’s not one I remember. It’s bigger than the cabins we grew up in, wider at the base, with a double-slanted roof. Still, it’s unmistakably a witch’s hut. One of us lived here once upon a time, before the covens fell and the new order outlawed our way of life.
We move toward it, our boots brushing through tall grass gone copper and brittle.
“And this is the creek from the map,” E says from the top of the ravine.
I climb the mossy hill and look down. A rumbling creek cuts through the earth and slithers toward the cabin, its water tinged red as it slides over slick stones. The air turns colder near it,thick with the scent of wet earth and rot. The bend in the stream forms a perfect U, just like the one featured on Mabel’s map.
“Oof.”
The violent rustle of a heavy weight sliding down the ravine slices through the air. Leaves and grass crumple inward under sudden pressure. Branches snap, wet earth gives way in clumps, and bushes fold and break around the invisible outline of a body barreling downhill. It slips, rolls, catches briefly on a root, then tumbles the rest of the way into the creek with a loud splash, muddy water bursting outward across the stones.
For a breathless moment, all I can do is stare at the imprint E left in the crushed leaves and the ripples spreading across the water.
E fell.
The realization hits harder than the sound of his body slamming into the creek.
I put down his lantern and scramble down the slope, my heart hammering. “Are you alright?”
Water rushes around my ankles, mud sucking at the soles of my boots.
“Yes… I think I—I slipped.” His voice is rough, edged with a hint of irritation but softened by awe.
He shifts, and dark sludge curves around something solid beneath the water. “Fuck, it’s cold.”
My stomach flip-flops, and I reach forward. My fingers meet nothing at first, then collide with the firm line of a shoulder. Warm. Shaking.
I trace the slope of his arm, then the solid width of his chest beneath clothing I still cannot see. My palm drags over soaked fabric and hard muscle, and E inhales sharply.
I’m trembling as much as he is as I map him with my hands, inch by impossible inch. I’ve touched him before, but never likethis. There’s nothing standing between us now, and it’s not just the parts I reach for that exist, but all of him.
Nick appears at the top of the ravine with both daggers unsheathed. His gaze sweeps the clearing, hunting for a threat.
“What happened?” he asks.
