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Every instinct in me wants to ask what the fuck we’re looking at. Wants to name it, to defang it with language. But I know better. Lucien’s shoulders are tight, controlled in the way that means his Dominion is flaring under his skin. Orin’s eyes aren’t on the trees. They’re on me. Warning.
So I keep quiet. Even as the silence presses in.
The trees weren’t here before. This isn't natural. This is the Hollow's memory rearranging itself. Punishing us. Testing me. The limbs twitch. Shift. I feel something brush across my mind, slick and sweet and venom-laced. A whisper that doesn’t use words, just intent—come closer, little light. Come see what you were.
Elias steps up beside me, loud on purpose.
“Okay, so either the forest just developed a very dramatic flair for landscaping, or we’re all about to get sacrificed to a tree cult. Anyone packing holy water? Anti-druid spray?”
He says it like a joke, but there’s an edge under it. A tightness in his jaw that betrays how very not-funny he finds this.
Silas leans into me again, lowering his voice.
“You think if I start stripping, the trees will get shy and move?”
I don’t look at him. If I do, I might laugh—and I can’t risk even a whisper with Lucien and Orin this close. I just shoot him a look. He grins like I kissed him.
Lucien steps closer to the line of trees, not touching, just watching. I feel the moment Branwen pulls at him—his breath stutters, his eyes glaze for half a second, then he’s back, jaw clenched so hard I think it might crack.
Riven shifts beside me and finally says it.
“We can’t go through that.”
“Then where the hell do we go?” Elias asks, his voice hard now. “Back into the Hollow? The dead halls?”
Silas turns toward the edge of the trees, tilting his head like he’s listening to something we can’t hear. “I think it’sshowingus something. Not blocking us.”
I glance at him.
His grin is gone. He’s serious.
Riven moves forward first, slow, careful. He doesn’t touch the trees. He just circles. Testing. Feeling. I follow him with my eyes but don’t move. Not yet.
And then Lucien’s voice—quiet, low, almost strangled. “It wants her.”
It takes everything in me not to respond.
He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t need to.
“She doesn’t speak,” Orin says beside him, calm, measured. “She listens.”
Orin looks at me for the briefest second—just enough time for me to understand.
It’s going to make us choose.
This doesn’t make sense. Branwen’s waiting. That much is certain. We’re on the path she left behind—Lucien and Orin both pulled by the leash she still keeps wrapped around their throats. The Hollow obeys her. The ruin of Daemon echoes with her laughter. So why would the path—her path—suddenly seal shut with gnarled, writhing trees?
Unless it isn’t her doing.
Unless this place, this memory of a school that shouldn’t exist, is turning against her too.
Or us.
The idea wedges itself beneath my ribs. Sharp. Twisting. We were supposed to be the invaders. The trespassers. But what ifthe Hollow isn’t loyal to her anymore? What if it’s stalling us because it knows what’s waiting on the other side?
Or worse—what if Branwen’s stalling us?
The others are still arguing behind me, voices low and strained. Silas calls the trees rude. Elias offers to seduce them. Riven hasn’t stopped watching me since the branches began to grow. I feel his gaze like pressure against the back of my neck, like I’ve already done something he’ll kill me for.