Page 47 of The Heart of Nym (The Twisted Roots Duology #1)

The Choking Vines were just as she remembered. Dark and looming. Ominous. They wove around one another like snakes searching for mice, slithering and hissing as they sensed their approach.

Aziel moving in her peripheral caught her attention.

Nymiria tore her eyes away from the vines to watch as Aziel walked to one of the nearby trees and pulled a bag from a hole in the trunk.

The bag contained hooded cloaks and masks.

When he handed them to her, Nymiria moved to shrug off the jacket he’d given her, but his hand falling upon her shoulder stilled her movements.

“Keep it on.”

She didn’t understand his command, but seeing as he’d traveled this path far more often than herself, Nymiria kept his jacket on, slipping the cloak around her shoulders and pulling the mask over her face before lifting the hood.

Aziel watched her, his eyes flickering over her before giving an approving nod. She was ready.

Hands clammy with sweat and her heart pounding, Nymiria and Aziel stepped towards the vines. She couldn’t help but to marvel at the length of their thorns—all of them nearly the size of her forearm and just the right girth to impale someone if they wished.

How she’d made that mad dash through these vines at the age of fifteen was beyond her.

The story of the vines was one she'd heard as a child, sitting upon a burly guard's lap as he rocked her to sleep.

She could remember the darkness of his eyes and the various, intricate braids in his dark hair.

He'd told her that the vines were created by the gods as a means for protection from the outside world—magicked to not just keep the evil out, but to keep their people in.

It was too much of a risk to allow anyone out.

All those that managed to escape their realm either came back changed or they never came back at all.

Nymiria understood. After spending ten years in the human realm, she could see how that darkness could have changed someone.

"Are we supposed to run?" Nymiria asked, adjusting the ends of her hair so that they were secured under the cloak.

She could hear the smirk in Aziel's voice when he spoke, the glimmer of wild excitement in his eyes making her heart feel like it was plummeting to her feet. "Like hell." He confirmed with a nod.

There wasn't a moment to think before Aziel's hand was slipping into hers and tugging her towards the vines.

He began to pick up his speed once they were roughly thirty feet away, his grip on her hand never faltering.

With the single hand that was available, he pulled the sword from it's place at his side and wielded it, the metal shining so brightly that it nearly looked as if it were made of glass.

She braced herself for the impact of the thorns, to feel them brushing against her clothes in an attempt to snatch her up.

Ten feet.

Five feet.

Her heart was in her throat, her ears ringing as she continued to look at the thorns on the crawling vines. Small puffs of fog filtered out from the gaps, clouding the air in front of them with an ominous, misty smoke.

Two feet.

Aziel picked up his pace, both of them moving in a blur as they charged straight into the bramble.

He let out a grunt, his sword whistling through the air as he swung at the vines to hack them away.

But, instead of hearing the crunch of the impact of his blade against the vines, Nymiria felt his hand slip from hers and heard his sword clatter to the ground.

She opened her eyes, only for them to open wider when she saw what was happening.

The thorns were lifting into the sky, unfurling and twisting in new directions to form an archway.

The fog that surrounded them dissipated, spilling out into the surrounding foliage and settling into the dirt from whence they came.

Sunlight spilled through the arch, giving light to a path that was blooming with purple flowers the size of Nymiria's head.

It took everything in her not to extend her fingers and touch them, being sure to keep a safe distance as they passed through the tunnel.

Aziel was hesitant, his sword returned to his hand and gripped tightly as they passed through, his eyes moving from one side of the tunnel to the other and then to the front where the sunlight bled in and to the back again.

He looked at the vines as if they would betray them at any moment—like this was all just a trick to lure them into the belly of the tunnel in order to trap a new meal.

Despite his worst fears, the vines never moved from their arched position.

Their flowers shivered as they approached them, all of the blooms swaying and dipping as if they were greeting them.

Nymiria, letting the whispers of their life spread over her skin.

She felt each silver dust flake of life tingling against her pores.

Swelling around her—filling her with a ball of something so powerful that it nearly brought her to her knees.

Upon feeling that she'd fallen behind, Aziel turned to her.

He watched as she walked towards one wall of the tunnel and used her index finger to lightly stroke over the purple blooms.

She had to have noticed by now.

He wished that he would have told her from the beginning, but he knew how that would end—the same way it’d ended for him. Drinking himself into a stupor, using his Grace in the most ruthless ways possible…

It was a path that he didn’t want her to take.

Seeing her joy and her bewilderment as the truth unfolded right in front of her eyes was far better an outcome than the alternative.

The world had quite literally opened up for her.

The vines bloomed for her, danced for her, and praised her as she walked through them.

Not to say goodbye to her, but to welcome her home.

They did not lash out at her with their thorns, they tucked their thorns away from her and let her fingers trail over them with a gentleness they had not felt in a painfully long time.

The last being to ever tend to them had been Greia.

Nymiria lifted her hood and let it fall to her shoulders before slipping the mask from her head. She revealed her face to them, let them see her only because it felt like the right thing to do.

Aziel also deeply wished that he didn’t have to take her back.

This place was her home. It was where she belonged.

No matter what had happened in the Beyond ten years ago, this place was still written in her bones, bred into her blood.

He saw these things in the gleam in her eyes, the brightness of her smile.

It was a livelihood that did not exist in her across that damned border.

He wanted her to stay. He wanted her to flourish and find herself here. Seeing all of this now, he was glad he refused Trio's offer to return them via shadows. She needed this.

Going back to Yaar would be added to his long list of regrets, but it needed to be done.

Dorid’s men were already searching for her and the Duke of Fairnam.

In the days that Nymiria had been rendered unconscious, Aziel spent his time traveling back and forth between Yaar and the Beyond to maintain his credibility and to not be seen as a suspect.

Rumors had started to spread that they’d eloped, both of them entangled in some frivolous affair.

So it was not just her reputation that was at stake, but the safety of this place that he wanted to bring her back to.

Her having a place to call home, a place that made her smile like this, it was all that mattered at the moment and he could not risk Dorid’s Huntsmen stumbling into their resurrected kingdom and ruin all of the hard work he and his people had put into rebuilding it.

Allowing her a moment of peace before crossing the border back into the world they both dreaded returning to was the most that he could do for her.

There was no denying the thrill in her heart, nor the comfort she must have felt at seeing the flowers and vines reacting to her in such a way.

If what she'd said was true, Nymiria had not felt her Grace in the last ten years.

It was a surprise, to say the least, that the king was in such a frenzy to find her. He didn't believe that Dorid would care this much, but the king wasn't eating—he wasn't even leaving his office. Dorid spent all hours of the day scouring maps and deriving plans to bring Nymiria back.

But Dorid's protectiveness was not out of love. It was an obsession.

There was no other way to explain away the crazed look in his father's eyes other than that. It was evident that Nymiria was like a sacred blade—a preferred weapon—and Dorid had become so accustomed to having her at his side that he felt vulnerable without her.

It reminded Aziel so much of how Dorid was with his mother that it made his heart ache.

He refused for history to continue repeating itself.

"You're staring at me."

The sound of her voice made him jolt, his eyes snapping back into focus as he took in the look she wore on her face. She didn't seem aggravated. She seemed… at peace.

And he was going to have to ruin it all.