Page 69 of On Brutal Thrones

I slam both hands toward the ground and reach for the rune.

Nothing.

Panic claws through me.

“No, no, no.”

Fenric hacks at the vine around his ankle with his spear point while Thorian scrambles back to his feet. Another flower begins folding toward us.

I close my eyes. For one terrifying heartbeat, all I hear is my own breathing. Then I find it. That warmth. That pulse beneath the earth.

Please.

Gold bursts beneath my boots, and the vines freeze. The flower stops halfway through its descent. For one long second, the entire field seems suspended around us. Then everything slowly retreats.

I nearly collapse.

Talon catches my elbow. “Easy.”

“I’m okay.”

I’m absolutely not okay.

My arms are shaking, my legs feel strangely hollow, and each breath burns in my lungs. We’ve already survived the blood field today. I ran through the forest terrified that Talon might find me. Fenric went berserk. Thorian dragged us forward when half of us could barely stand.

And now I’m holding back an entire field with magic I’ve spent my whole life hiding, never imagining I could use it like this… but the clearing is twenty feet away. Maybe less.

“We’re almost there,” I pant. “Go.”

Nobody argues. We move faster.

Ten feet.

Five.

Then the towering plants abruptly end. Sunlight pours over us, and I stumble into ordinary grass and almost fall to my knees.

We made it.

All four of us simply stare. The clearing is small, surrounded on every side by enormous flowers facing outward like guards. But I barely notice them.

Gold gleams everywhere.

Weapons cover the grass.

Swords. Axes. Spears. Bows. Daggers. Weapons with hooked blades and strange curved handles I don’t recognize, all of them shining so brightly in the sun that I have to squint.

“Wow,” Fenric breathes.

That snaps us out of it.

“Quickly,” I say. “I don’t know how long I can hold the path.”

They move.

Thorian goes straight for the swords… of course he does. He tests two before closing his hand around the hilt of a long golden blade. He gives it one controlled swing, then another, testing its balance. Whatever he feels seems to satisfy him because he abandons his old sword and takes the golden one.

Fenric is already searching through the longer weapons.