Who will be the one to kill me? I dully wonder, bracing myself against the inevitability of my fate. Lightning? Or maybe Pine, which is the name I’ve given to the rangy man with pine-bough hair who seems to be in charge. Or maybe it will be the large, silent, branch-antlered Dryad before me with the bear companion, carrying the front of the net. I’ve named this soldier Sithoy for the huge trees of the West’s Sithoy Forest. And then there’s the brooding Dryad who carries my net’s other end.

This Dryad is like a chill at my back.

I’ve managed a single glimpse of him, but that one look is branded into my mind. He’s a slender, wiry young man with a chiseled, triangular face, his lime-green visage shadowed by the hood of his cloak of dark leaves.

But his eyes.

They’re anchored with dark circles and narrowed with easy malice. And the shadows under his eyes don’t make him look wan and sickly.

No.

They make him look like he swallowed the night whole, and he practically radiates the potential for violence. Wooden blades are strapped all over his black-clad body, and I’ve named him Darkness. Perhaps he’ll be the one to kill me, I consider. Or maybe it will be the acorn-decorated, furious young woman with the staff who can’t seem to stop striking me. I’ve named her Vicious.

I’m sure Flora won’t be the one to kill me. Not her. She glances at me, her gaze riddled with conflict. And then, sorrow ripples over her expression. It undoes me, breaking my tightly held grief apart as I murmur the names of the loved ones I’ll never see again—

Rafe. Trystan. Lukas. Yvan. Tierney. Diana. Aislinn. Or’myr...

My captors slow to a stop.

Two huge Black Oak trees stand before us, the branches of their crowns entwined.

Pine stalks forward. He grabs one of the branches sheathed at his waist, murmurs a windswept line of their language, and swipes the branch between the two trees in a circular motion. Wind begins to swirl, leaves and dead brush caught up in the gust’s circular flow, faster and faster, until there’s a blurred but perfectly formed oval between the trees.

The scene in the center of the oval wavers, then mists over, and I’m swamped by a caustic sense of Vogel’s surprise. A portal, I realize. A sense of staggering finality drops down through my soul. Because I know that wherever it leads is where I’ll meet my end.

Pine glares at me over his shoulder, then motions everyone forward as the Forest’s ire pulses like an executioner’s drumbeat. Black Witch. Black Witch. Black Witch.

I steel myself as I’m carried through the swirling wind and the portal closes around me.

CHAPTER TWO

III

Elloren Vogel

Northern Forest