“Drauge is my responsibility,” Ben said as Daivad climbed astride Maxea. “I should be the one to clean his messes.”

Daivad waved him off. “I know where she’s guiding him.”

“I’ll take Maxea and she can track them. I’ll bring them back,” Ben said, his bass voice as even as ever, his expression stoic. Anyone else might buy the act, but Daivad knew Ben well enough to catch the slight furrow of his brow, the subtle edge in his voice. He thought he’d let Daivad down.

Drauge’s friendliness had always been a problem. They’d been given the Great Wolves as pups during their days in the queen’s army, to train into ridable weapons. They were supposed to be vicious, but obedient. And Drauge had always been too friendly to really be either, and it was only with significant effort on Ben’s and Daivad’s parts that they’d kept their superiors from failing Drauge out of the program.

However, since deserting the army, there hadn’t been much reason to continue to train the friendliness out of him. In fact, they usually relied on it if they needed one of the Wolves to guard the children. But he’d gone running off with a stranger, and now it had become a problem again.

“I know a shortcut,” Daivad said. Daivad let the look he gave Ben assure him that he didn’t blame Ben for this. Daivad cut his eyes to the man standing beside Ben. He blamed Tobei.

“How can you name where she’s headed?” Tobei asked

In response, Daivad shifted his weight and Maxea took off.

“Ay!” Tobei yelled after them. “How can you name it?”

Drauge’s tracks through the undergrowth were an arrow pointed right where Daivad had expected. The spot in the forest that Nyxabella had said was calling her before. But that arrow would only take her and her stolen ride to a ravine so deep and wide not even a Great Wolf could clear the jump.

Lucky for him, Daivad knew exactly where the way across was. Because he’d built it. She may have a few minutes head start, but Daivad knew this forest almost as well as the Wolves.

He didn’t even have to lean for Maxea to know it was time to veer from Drauge’s path. She knew where they were headed.

Daivad had fallen in love with Silvax Forest the first time he’d set foot in it. The rolling hills soaked in the scent of honeysuckle and populated with wooden giants. When Daivad sank his magic deep into the earth, he could feel their roots, enormous and twisting and humming with magic all their own.

“Earthbreaking is more than cutting stone and splitting the ground, Daivad. Look. Trees are Earthbreakers too. The roots of the smallest, softest sapling can reach deep and spread wide. Yes, they break the earth—but in doing so they hold it together, keep it from washing away in the rain. Their leaves fall and decay to nourish the soil. Earthbreaking is more than destruction, if you want it to be.”

Daivad frowned. While that memory wasn’t a terrible one, it was one of many he’d thought he’d left behind the high, stone walls of Broken Earth. He did his best to brush it off like a stray leaf and let it flutter down to rest in his trail.

This part of the forest was dense enough that it was impossible to see the ravine until you were on top of it. Daivad was reassured to find that when the bridge of stone he’d cut across the ravine came into view, Nyxabella’s scent was nowhere to be found. He shifted back and Maxea slowed, then stopped. Now he just had to sit and wait for her to find her way here.

A minute ticked by. Then two.

His confidence wavered. This was the woman whose every turn the night before had been a turn he couldn’t predict. Every word that had passed her lips unimaginable. She knew not only Earthbreaking, but Metalwork, the queen’s own practice, a secret Aran guarded with her life. There was no telling what else Nyxabella could do. What if she had some secret acrobat magic that would let her leap across the ravine or something? What if she had already crossed and was well on her way to the one place he’d kept hidden even from Ben and Tobei?

“Mother damn her,” he muttered, and nudged Maxea across the bridge.

On this side of the ravine, Silvax Forest only grew wilder, more tangled. The trees were so twisted and the canopy so dense that often monsters crept around even during the day. The greenery was no longer only green—there were leaves of deep red that shone as if they’d been painted in blood, and vines of ocean blue as thick as his arm climbing up the trunks, their skin slightly translucent to reveal an almost luminescent substance flowing underneath. Strange, bright blooms—some smaller than his thumbnail and some bigger than his whole body—turned to watch Daivad and his Wolf pass, tempting him with fat, jewel-colored fruit he’d never seen anywhere else, sparkling like brilliant gemstones. He’d given into temptation only once—and gotten himself dragged into the fanged mouth of a flower by its spiked tongue, only for Maxea to rip the thing up by its roots. He had learned his lesson.

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For the millionth time, Daivad thought he really should bring some clippings of these plants back for Ben to examine, and for the millionth time a selfish, secretive part of him refused to share this part of the forest with anyone.

Maxea trotted to a stop right before the entryway hidden within the mangled wall of trees that separated this place from that. Here from there. One world from another. He called it a wall of trees, but he wasn’t sure it wasn’t stone. The tendrils were as cool and hard and slick as smooth stone, but not even he, an Earthbreaker, had ever seen stone that looked like it had been woven like that. Then again, he'd only ever seen trees like that when a nature practitioner like Ben wove them that way.

The entryway was only just big enough for someone his size to slip through, a mossy gap in the wall, hidden behind some undergrowth. How he’d ever found it in the first place, he didn’t know.

Daivad took a deep breath, the intoxicating scents of this part of the forest and that of the place beyond the wall buzzing in his head. Cool, earthy, floral, sweet—but none of the scents that hit him were hers. He relaxed. She hadn’t made it here yet.

Maybe she wouldn’t find this place at all. Maybe her asking what was out here, saying it was calling to her, was just another of the strange things she said, and she was actually on her way somewhere else.

He almost had himself convinced when he heard her singing.

It was a sweet, melancholy melody—he realized, suddenly, that it was the one her Mama T had sung in the story she’d told him. Her voice was still a ways away, and Drauge’s pawsteps fell at a leisurely pace, so Daivad nudged Maxea toward them.

When they came into view, Nyxabella was standing on Drauge’s back as he walked, one of her hands trailing along the woven wall. Drauge wagged his tail and quickened his pace towards Maxea, but Nyxabella seemed not to notice them until Drauge finally stopped to touch noses with Maxea.

Her song cut short and she blinked at Daivad, surprised. Then she grinned.

“You liar,” she said, propping her hands on her hips. “Nothing out here, huh?”

“There is nothing out here.”

“Sweet shit.” She bent at the waist, braced a hand on Drauge’s back and jumped down.

Before she could even take a step, Maxea blocked her path, a cavernous growl building in her chest.

She just stared up at Daivad. “Why don’t you want me to find it?”

“We’re going back to camp,” he ordered.

“Sure, you do that.”

She danced around Maxea, but Drauge followed Maxea’s lead and swerved around to block her as well.

Nyxabella gasped at him. “Traitor!”

The russet Wolf ducked his head, apologetic, but didn’t move.

“The Dark Mother led me here, just as she led me to you.” Nyxabella peered up at Daivad, her eyes an even truer green than usual in this part of the forest. “I’m supposed to see … whatever it is.”

Daivad’s stomach turned at the thought. He’d never been devout, he’d never given the Mothers or any deities much thought at all, but the idea of being a pawn in some overpowered, ageless entity’s scheme, no matter what the scheme was, made his fucking skin crawl. He’d been controlled, manipulated all his life, first by the Colonel and then by Aran. He’d sooner set the world on fire than put up with that again.

“I don’t care,” he growled. “We’re going back to camp.”

Nyxabella’s gaze darted around him again—he’d come to understand this was her looking at his magic. He’d heard of people who were born with the ability to “see” magic before, but he’d never put much stock into it. Magic was a practice. It was developed, not inherent. And, though Masters spent their entire lives training their Eyes to see magic the way those who claimed to be born with the ability could, no one had ever managed it, as far as Daivad knew. He found it much more likely that the rumors of Eyes to see magic were merely rumors.

Whatever Nyxabella thought she saw made her ease off. Her shoulders deflated and she mumbled, “Fine.”

He’d expected much more of a fight, so her sudden acquiescence put him on his guard. When she gave Drauge a kiss and a scratch behind his ear, assured him she still loved him despite his betrayal, and was about to vault onto his back, Daivad stopped her.

“You’re riding with me,” he said.

“Why?”

“I’m tired of chasing you, so I’m keeping you close.”

“Drauge just proved his loyalty lies with you. He won’t run off with me while you’re right here, and I don’t want to hurt his feelings.”

“He’ll live.”

“Fiiiine,” she huffed. But then she just looked at him expectantly.

“What? You need her to lie down to get on?”

“No, but … Well, last time I rode up front.”

“Just get on behind me.”

“But I want to ride up front.”

“Why does it matter?”

“Because you’re built like a damn barn and I won’t be able to see anything if I’m behind you.”

“You were blindfolded last time, and you were fine.”

“Even more reason that I want to be able to actually see this time!”

“Mother–” Exasperated, he dismounted, glaring at her the whole time.

Her grin made her freckled cheeks even rounder. “Thank you, Daivad.”