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I’m just one person,she realised. It was a ridiculous feat for one person.
Her best bet, she decided, was to find a safe place to sleep and at least explore what was going on in Acanthia from the dream side of things. With any luck, she’d find Hawthorn there, and he could help her with his control over the vines.
Yes, that was definitely her best shot.
If he let himself be found.
Determined, she shimmied down the tree and crept into a deeper part of the woodlands, searching for somewhere concealed and far away from the gates. Deeper and deeper she went, through copses and glades. She couldn’t be too close to the patrol, couldn’t risk leaving her body so defenceless.
It felt wrong to be moving away from the city. She was so close—
Her eyes fell across a mark on one of the trees, a circular symbol. No way it was made by accident, and it appeared to have been etched recently. It looked familiar to her, yet, at the same time, she couldn’t place it. It wasn’t a rune, nothing she’d learnt at school—
She crept closer, examining the carving. It had been made with a blade, and not particularly well.
She peered harder into the forest. The symbol appeared on other trunks too. Almost… almost like signposts.
Juliana followed the line, the overgrowth twisting beneath her feet before flattening into something that resembled a path. Someone—a group of people—had moved through here recently.
Juliana pressed her hand against one of the markings, and a memory jolted through her.
Dillon. He’d drawn this symbol on the back of her hand before he died. She’d never stopped to recall it before because Mabel must have cleaned it off as she slept. What had he said to her?
Think, think—
“Halt!”
Juliana stilled, fingers inching for her sword. The voice sounded Unseelie—deep, thunderous, slightly animal. But why wouldn’t an Unseelie simply cut her down?
“Identify yourself!” the voice called again.
The depth of the voice sounded loosely familiar to her, wavering slightly, as if unused to giving orders. She decided to tell the truth.
“Juliana Ardencourt,” she responded.
“Juliana?” The voice turned into something else, and before Juliana could turn, there came a rustling in the bushes. Half a dozen faces peered out of the leaves, streaked with mud, loaded with bows and sticks.
Juliana recognised almost every face. Servants of the castle, mortal subjects—and Barney the Minotaur, dressed in the same muddy armour, a ring of daisies tied to one of his horns.
“Julie!” A round-faced woman with nut-brown hair tumbled out from behind a tree trunk, launching herself at Juliana with such ferocity she was almost knocked off her feet. “We thought… we were sure—”
“Iona.” Juliana breathed her in. Gone from her clothes was the smell of bread and vanilla, replaced by earth and sweat. It hardly mattered. She still felt like home. “What are you doing here?”
“What does it look like, lass?” said a cheery voice.
Juliana wheeled around, and found herself face-to-face with Dillon’s father. He carried an axe in one hand and wore a smile on his face.
Her stomach dropped.He didn’t know.
Albert Woodfern continued to grin, shouldering his axe. “We’re the Resistance!”
It was considered far too dangerous to chat for long out in the open, so Albert and Iona left the younger ones still on patrol and took Juliana towards a thick oak in the centre of the wood. They pressed on a concealed knot between one of the branches, and a tunnel opened up in its roots.
Tunnel.That’s what Dillon had been trying to tell her. There was a secret tunnel under the gate. It was how he’d gotten out of Acanthia to begin with.
“What is this place?” Juliana asked, as they descended beneath the earth, the dank walls lit with crystal.
“Maytree built them,” Albert explained. “And pretty much by herself, over the years. A way to get the mortals out if the curse came to pass. She told precious few they existed until the day before, when she…”
