“Get down!” He tackled me from the platform, and we landed hard, whirling as branches shot forth from the very earth, splintering the church steps. They didn’t stop there. Dozens more surfaced rapidly, larger than life, growing trunks and roots, shattering the beautiful stained-glass windows. Growing through them. Stone rained down on our heads, forcing us to scatter into the crowd. I immediately lost sight of Coco and Beau, Célie and Jean Luc. Too short, too slight, I couldn’t navigate the tide of people. I couldn’t tell friend from foe.

Only Reid’s hand in mine kept a loup garou from knocking me back to the ground.

The trees kept growing. They crushed spires and mangled arches until Cathédral Saint-Cécile d’Cesarine crumbled in ruin. Until the forest reclaimed it.

That explained the spiders.

But it didn’t make sense. The forest belonged to Claud, not Morgane. How had she—?

The trees have mobilized, and we shall follow, striking hard and true.

The trees around the Chateau. My stomach twisted. She’d brought her own soldiers.

They didn’t stop there, however, fracturing the street now, their branches catching hair and cloaks as they stretched toward the sky. The woman next to me screamed as one hooked her skirt. As it lifted her higher and higher until the fabric tore. The branch snapped.

She plummeted toward the street.

My magic darted wildly. Panicked, I fought to calm it, to concentrate, but the woman fell too quickly—

Scant seconds before she hit the ground, the tree seemed to shudder. I stared incredulously as Claud Deveraux strolled into view. As he whistled a merry tune. As the tree itself bent—creaking and groaning—and its branches curled to catch the woman midair. To cradle her in a macabre embrace.

Claud winked at me. “Fancy meeting you here, poppet. How did you like my sister?”

I choked on a laugh while the woman shrieked, contorting her limbs to escape the tree. It had ceased moving. “I thought—I thought you couldn’t intervene?” And if not— “Where have you been all this time?”

He clicked his tongue playfully. His mere presence seemed to act as a shield; the crush of bodies waned around us, parted, as if all instinctively knew to change direction. “Tut, tut, Louise,” he said, “or I shall think you self-absorbed. Though it pains me to admit, you and your friends manage quite well without me, and I have an entire realm of the natural world to govern.”

“Like hell we can.” Bemused, I helped Reid untangle the woman from the tree. Self-absorbed. Pfft. “But again, I thought you couldn’t—”