“I’m going to link them.” She raises her wand and fashions small linking runes to join each of the five elemental markings, the entire wreath of runes taking on a brighter violet glow.

Awareness pricks at the back of my mind, leaves rustling.

A sizzle of fright spears through me. “Sage,” I rasp out. “The trees...they know.”

The cavern’s opal walls suddenly punch inward and I cry out, recoiling as the stone walls bulge with the image of embossed trees, root-shapes popping up from the stone floor as everyone surrounding me blinks out of sight.

“They’re here!” I cry out. “The trees are coming through the walls!”

“It’s an illusion!” Or’myr’s voice growls from the air before me as the feel of strong, invisible arms come around me from behind, grasping tight hold of my wrists.

Black-opal branches burst through the cave’s walls and ceiling. I struggle against the restraining grip, desperate for my blades, the stone forest morphing into a real, storm-darkened forest, living branches now restraining me.

They wrap around my neck, my chest, my legs, smaller branches shooting from the limbs and knifing into me and through my lines with shearing pain.

I cry out in agony, wrestling against the trees’ hold as my lines are hooked into and pulled in all directions, as if the Forest is attempting to rip them clear out of my body. The branches around my throat and chest tighten, the breath choked from my lungs.

“They’re attacking!” I force out in a sandpaper rasp. “Help me...”

Violet lightning flashes through the Forest’s canopy at the same time that purple flame leaps up from its ground, scorching heat mounting as the Forest rumbles in fury, limbs and leaves and roots swept up in the all-encompassing violet blaze.

“Rafe! Don’t!” Sage cries as the cave snaps back into sight and the pressure around my chest, my throat, gives way, the hooks in my lines releasing so abruptly I almost retch.

I’m glazed with sweat, my elder brother’s arms wrapped tight around me, his hands grasping my wrists, his teeth releasing from the base of my throat as I gasp for breath, multiple wands as well as Ra’Ven’s emerald stylus all pointed toward the runes marked on my abdomen, the Lupines ringing the room.

Everyone is breathing heavily and looking spooked and wide-eyed, Sage’s entire wand hand and lower arm glowing a bright, incandescent violet.

“They’re gone,” I rasp.

“For the moment,” Or’myr growls, green eyes narrowed as if he’s staring down the Forest through me. “They’ll roar right back. We need to ward her now!” he urges Sage.

“I will turn her if they cut off her breath again,” Rafe growls from behind me.