Page 73 of Renegade Kingdom
“What the fuck is that?” Maddox breathed beside me.
“Prepare yourselves,” Fizzle said, and for the first time since I’d met him, I heard real fear in his voice. “Whatever happens, do not let it touch you.”
For once, I didn’t reach for my sword. Instead, I reached for my magic.
It came easier now than it ever had before. The training with Alyssa, the discovery that my power was mine to command, it had changed something fundamental in my relationship with the storm. I could feel the electricity in the air around me, could sense the wind waiting to answer my call. The magic hummed beneath my skin, eager and ready.
“Careful,” Fizzle warned, his eyes on me. “Be precise. The people you love are somewhere in this fog. If you lash out withuncontrolled magic, you risk hurting them. Or worse, distracting them and giving the fae hounds an opening.”
I swallowed hard, nodding. Precision. Control. I could do that. I had to do that.
Beside me, Maddox’s arms coated in fire. Flames licked up from his wrists to his elbows, casting an orange glow that pushed back the fog a few precious feet. His face was set in hard lines, his lion prowling behind his eyes.
Tank frowned, his massive form tensing as he reached out with his own magic. “Something’s wrong,” he said slowly. “I’m trying to connect with the land, but something is blocking me. It’s like there’s a wall between me and the Spring Court’s magic.”
Before any of us could respond, the trees started to move.
At first, I thought Tank had broken through whatever was blocking him. The branches overhead creaked and groaned, the trunks shuddering like they were waking from a long sleep. But then Tank slammed into me, his massive body knocking me aside just as a huge branch crashed down where I’d been standing.
I hit the ground hard, the breath driven from my lungs. When I looked up, gasping, I saw Tank scrambling to his feet, his eyes wide with shock.
“That wasn’t me,” he said.
The tree behind him twisted. Actually twisted, its trunk rotating with a sound like bones grinding together. And as it turned to face us, I saw the face.
It was carved into the bark, or maybe grown there, a cracked and ancient visage with hollow eyes and a mouth that gaped open in a silent scream. The branches reached toward us like arms, like fingers, grasping and hungry.
The tree lashed out.
The branch moved faster than something that size should have been able to, whipping through the air with a sound likea cracking whip. It caught Tank across the chest and sent him flying back into the fog. One second he was there, and the next he was gone, swallowed by the white.
“Tank!” I screamed, but there was no answer.
I rolled to the side just as another branch slammed into the ground where I’d been lying. The impact shook the earth, leaving a crater in the soft forest floor. I scrambled to my feet, my heart pounding, and backed away from the tree creature that was turning to face me with those horrible hollow eyes.
“The trees are alive,” I blurted out. “The trees are fucking alive!”
Fizzle was in the air now, his wings beating furiously as he dodged between branches that swiped at him. “This isn’t right,” he said, and he sounded absolutely horrified. “I’ve never seen this before. In all my centuries, I’ve never seen anything like this.”
More tree creatures were emerging from the fog. They surrounded us, their bark-faces twisted into expressions of rage or hunger or something that might have been both. Their branches reached for us, forming a cage of wood and malice that tightened with every passing second.
“Isn’t this what happened in the Spring Court?” I demanded, backing up until I felt Maddox’s heat at my back. “With Rhidian’s men? The trees attacked them too.”
“No.” Fizzle’s voice was sharp with denial. “The trees moved, yes, but they were still trees. Plants responding to magic, following commands. These are...” He trailed off, staring at the creatures around us with something like disbelief. “These are something different. Something new. Something that shouldn’t exist.”
“Fucking fantastic,” Maddox snarled. He thrust his hands forward, sending a stream of fire at the nearest tree creature.The flames roared through the air, hot enough that I could feel the sting of the burn on my skin.
But the tree creature absorbed them. The fire hit its bark and just... disappeared. Soaked into the wood like water into a sponge, leaving no mark, causing no damage.
“That’s not good,” I quipped, though there was no humor in it.
Fizzle sent out a wave of air magic, and for a moment, the tree creatures were pushed back. Their branches bent, their trunks leaning away from the force of the wind. But then the air seemed to flow around them instead of against them, parting like a stream around stones, and they advanced again.
“I can’t access all of my magic,” Fizzle said, and now the fear in his voice was undeniable. “It’s like something is absorbing it. Drawing it away before I can use it properly.”
I looked up at the tree creatures. They’d stopped moving now, forming an unbroken wall around us. Their hollow eyes stared down at us, their branch-arms poised to strike but motionless. Waiting.
They’d cut us off from the others. Completely. Whatever was happening to Dean and Alyssa, whatever battles they were fighting, we couldn’t reach them now. We were trapped in our own little prison of bark and leaves and impossible magic.
