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Was it anger after all, then?

He had to just be playing the game. I repeated it to myself again and again as I finally gave up and left to pack my bags; I shouldn’t be drawing any rushed conclusions from that unmistakable coldness in his last glance, or from the way he paid more attention to the dust on the floor than to my presence. He was simply doing his part to hide our relationship, as I’d asked him to …

Except that this was not what I’d asked him at all.

I was trying to hide that I loved him, yes. Was hiding that I’d spent every night of the last three months sleeping in his bed, too. But it wasn’t a secret that we harboured friendly feelings for each other, was it? We’d been chatting away under Tared’s watchful eye last night. There was no need to pretend we barely knew each other – so why had he decided upon this useless change in strategy all of a sudden?

I packed my luggage too fast, making a mess of my careful arrangement of clothes and food. It had to be strategy, some clever solution to a problem I hadn't even seen yet.He’d said he was alright. There really was no reason to suspect any other motives behind his deliberate disregard.

He wouldn’t be doing this just to make a point, as some childish attempt to make me equally unhappy about this entire situation … but I wished I was able to push that thought away with more conviction.

For hell’s sake. Time to do the dishes and focus on anything other than Lyn’s ceaseless questions on the opposite side of the room. As soon as we were back on the road, all would doubtlessly revert to the usual routine.

The others were fast, their preparation a habit of centuries. By the time I returned from the brook behind the house with a pile of clean bowls, the bags were tied, the food packed, the coats and weapons fastened. Even Naxi needed no more than five minutes after Lyn woke her up last, her cheerful reports of the previous night a sharp contrast to the tangible tension hovering in the living room.

Creon still barely glanced at me.

Just playing the game.

I had to repeat that very firmly to myself as we gathered around Beyla and he casually took her arm rather than mine.

But there was no time to ask questions, no time to kick him in the annoyingly muscular shins and tell him to stop this nonsense. The sun-streaked farmhouse blurred around us, and half a heartbeat of pulsing colours morphed into the emerald and periwinkle hues of a forest unlike any other I’d seen in my life – a sight that wiped even Creon’s icy looks from my mind for a dazed heartbeat or two.

The star-flecked foliage I’d seen from the distance hadn't prepared me forthis.

Even Edored was silent as I let go of Beyla’s arm and tiptoed a few steps forwards over the flagstone path. Towards the woodline. Towards the abrupt, ruler-straight border where unremarkable vines and shrubbery became … something else entirely.

Something as unnerving as it was beautiful.

The trees of Zera’s woods were too high and too straight, towering hundreds of feet into the pale morning sky like marble pillars covered in smooth, grey bark. Hardly any sunlight filtered through the deep green canopies and the veils of mist that floated between the branches. The little of it that reached the moss- and fern-covered forest floor twinkled like starlight, reflecting off leaves and creeks in shades of silvery lavender.

The place smelled like dusk. A sultry, seductive fragrance, the scent of secrets about to be revealed.

A pretty nightmare, Beyla had called it, and that was a kind way to describe it – this world that could lure you in like a siren’s song and never let you go again. And yet …

Something about it seemed familiar.

I took another step forward.

‘Em,’ Tared said under his breath, the warning obvious in that single syllable.

‘How old is this place?’ I turned around, eyes reflexively seeking Creon. He stood two steps away from the others, his left hand on the black surface of his coat. His eyes were unreadable as they scanned the purple-grey depths of the forest. ‘Because something about it reminds me …’

He nodded before I’d finished my sentence, reading my mind even with his gaze stubbornly avoiding me.

‘There’s not much written about it,’ Lyn said, fidgeting with her curls as she threw him a cautious look. ‘The oldest sources seem to suggest the forest was already fully formed when the first human cities rose, which may mean …’

‘It was here before the gods?’

She worried her bottom lip. ‘You’re saying it reminds you of the Labyrinth.’

I glanced back at the silent, motionless forest, the quiet threat shimmering below every bark- and moss-covered surface. Not the same, not even remotely the same really, as the Labyrinth’s gem-lit darkness deep below the Crimson Court … but the sensation of sleeping magic was similar, of an atmosphere drenched with aeons and aeons of power.

‘Let’s be appropriately polite to it,’ I said.

‘Let’s bewhat?’ Edored echoed.

‘Polite.’ I glared at him. ‘Complimentary. Generally pleasant and non-confrontational. Do you think you’re capable of it?’