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I turn around.

Des leans against a neighboring oak, watching me with those eyes that see everything, his white hair stirring in the breeze.

His arms are folded over his chest, his biceps looking massive and his tattoos seeming particularly menacing. I have to remind myself that the three bronze bands on his other arm are for valor because right now, even clad in fae attire, he simply looks like the Bargainer, the man who strikes deals for gain and breaks bones for slights against me.

“If my mate is going to break the law, she should atleastinvite me along,” he says, pushing away from the tree.

His face changes seconds later when he takes in the scene.

“What happened?” Des asks, all humor gone from his voice.

I wipe my bloodied hands off on my dress. “I think I found the missing soldiers.”

Chapter 48

Des disappears before materializing at my side a moment later. He scrutinizes the man sleeping in the tree.

“Mara,” he whispers.

Mara, the vain Queen of Flora, has been hiding men in her sacred oak forest, one of the places where it’s forbidden to strike down a tree.

No wonder no one had found the soldiers—they’d been hidden inside the one place that could not be disturbed. Only an outsider like me would be ignorant and ballsy enough to desecrate this grove.

I feel the breath of Des’s magic a second before it hits the vines. The tree shrieks as it blackens and decays, the vines that hold the man fast now curling away.

Motioning with his hand, the Bargainer uses magic to pry the sleeping soldier out of the tree. Vines groan and snap as the man is released.

His body is covered in gore like a new baby’s might be when Des’s magic settles him onto the grass. And in some ways, this is a dark rebirth.

“The bleeding trees,” I say to Des. Each one must house a missing soldier, his body cocooned inside it.

The Bargainer nods. “I know, cherub.” His eyes meet mine.

The plants aren’t rotting from a disease at all—they’re coffins.

Des leans over the sleeping soldier, his eyes scouring the man. “He’s just like the women.” A muscle in his cheek ticks.

The trees rustle and shake as a wind kicks up. It lifts my hair and lashes it about.

“Mara’s coming,” Des says, his voice ominous.

My skin chills. This whole time, the Queen of Flora was behind the men’s disappearances.

The wind picks up speed, beginning to tear leaves from their branches.

I feel rather than hear her approach, her magic thickening the air with scents of pine and honeysuckle.

When I finally see her, her dress is whipping behind her, her bright red hair billowing around her like a fiery corona. At her back, a regiment of guards follow, their faces solemn.

“Who has struck down one of my trees?”

Struck down—like it was a man, not a plant. Perhaps to her it was. Perhaps these trees are far more beloved than the men lying dormant inside them.

I straighten as she closes in on our group.

Mara’s eyes move to the tree I just demolished, and her low moan carries on the wind, rising higher and higher until it becomes a shriek.

“My sacred oak!”