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Her breather mask dangles next to her head, held in the prehensile grasp of a creeping vine tendril.

I suck in a breath and start forward, lower hands clenching on the handles of my thorn daggers. More vines shoot out from the floor, finding miniscule cracks in the seedpod to worm their way through. They wrap around my ankles and arms. Thorns prick my skin, a warning.

“Cousins,” I murmur, releasing my weapons. Even when being attacked by the trees, I can’t bring myself to disrespect them.

The vines encircling Sinead’s arms and legs pull her horizontal, carrying her as if on an invisible stretcher, and begin to push her out the window.

They’re taking her.

One of the vines puts out a bud, which blooms into a flower before my eyes. The scent is beguiling. Even with the energy from the stimulant coursing through me, I feel my eyelids droop, my breathing beginning to slow.

I let myself slump to the ground as the vines let me go. It takes all my self-control to lie still, silent, as the trees steal away the woman I’m sworn to protect.

When the rustling subsides and all is still, I leap to my feet and bolt for the front door. Following Sinead’s scent is not hard; it calls to me, even at a distance. I spread my wings, floating down from branch to branch, thorn-daggers drawn in my lower hands.

They’re taking her to the forest floor. My stomach turns, recalling the Old Kin tale.They sent out their roots to drag him into the depths of the earth. He was never seen again.

The trees buried that long-ago ancestor because he was beyond reason, unrepentant in the evil he was doing. I didn’t know the eleven former ambassadors very well—they could’ve been just as hard-headed as Berry.

But I know Sinead. They’re making a mistake to condemn her.

I just hope I’m in time to stop them.

chapterfive

sinead

In my dream,I’m being carried through the sky. Not by Jalus. The arms encircling me are cold, with fingernails that bite painfully into my skin. I struggle to wake, to roll over and comfort myself in his warm, strong embrace, but there is no waking. Only a cool breeze against my bare skin.

And there will be no Jalus in the morning,some distant part of my brain recalls.I fucked that up, didn’t I?

It’s only because it’s a dream that a hot tear leaks out of the corner of my eye.

At last, the dream lays me down on a carpet of soft, wet leaves and moss. I inhale the earthy scent and realize that my mask is gone, allowing me to breathe in the dangerous perfume of Eiris.

Isthis a dream? Or am I hallucinating? Surely it can’t be real…

I sit up with a wince. Vines wrap around my limbs, their thorns digging into my skin. I watch in horror as they slide, snakelike, to more firmly encircle my upper arm. My instinct is to struggle, to rip them off, but when I try, they only bind me tighter.

Surrounding me are five enormous trees grown in a perfect circle. The clearing reminds me of one of the ancient stone rings I’ve read about from Old Earth’s prehistory. Offerings scatter the ground and hang from the trees’ limbs: feathered ornaments, cloth woven from moss fiber, smooth pebbles with veins of crystal knotted into the drape of a necklace.

Vines writhe and tangle all around me. The trees lean in, their branches unfurling to reach for me. I catch my breath, but then force myself to reason through this weird figment of my brain’s deepest fears. If the trees wanted to kill me, they could have sliced me to bits already.

They want me to do something. Dance? I don’t speak tree language. How am I supposed to know? This feels like one of those nightmares where I show up to a royal ball, but everyone else knows some gossip I don’t know, and they’re all giggling behind my back.

Funny—I’m usually naked in those dreams, too.

The ground buckles under my feet and I stumble aside, staring as a root rises from underground. It’s wrapped around something. What is?—

Oh stars.My stomach lurches.That’s Ambassador Cora.

More roots are worming their way up from the forest floor, carrying the rest of the missing diplomats. Eleven in total. None of them are decomposed, even though some of them have been missing for close to a year. They all appear to be asleep, limp in the grasp of the tree roots that hold them captive.

And now another root is pushing up underneath me, vines holding me in place as it wraps around my legs…

“NO!”

My head jerks up in time to see Jalus descending from the treetops above, wings spread in bright glory. Vines tangle toward him, but he slashes at them with his thorn weapons. His limbs move fluidly, a dancer’s grace in a warrior’s body. He lands at my side and takes hold of my arms, trying to wrestle me out of the trees’ grasp.