Her feet, locked around his midsection, bloomed with a red-and-pink rash atop the black spots of frostbite. How long had she stood on the fire oak? “Can you get them on?”

She twisted her limbs to reach her burned feet, all the while muttering, “My skates’ll be ruined after this.”

The fire oak crawled toward them like stray fingers. Faster and faster, growing longer and thicker. Bastiaan backpedaled, but there was no place to backpedal to other than through the mist and into the arrow tip of idiot Sven. His mind spun. His throwing discs were useless against the vines and he wasn’t about to waste them.

“We could climb the trees.” Myrthe yanked the laces tight on her first skate.

“So can they.”

Something pricked his neck. He swatted at it. A bug carcass smeared on the palm on his hand. Myrthe jerked and nearly dropped her second skate. “Bees!”

“Wasps.” Silent black wasps. What Bastiaan had first thought were tree shadows were actually clumps of wasps. Crawling on the ground, hovering beneath boughs. Coming for them.

She got her second skate on and jumped to the ground, ducking a diving wasp. “What do we do?” she shrieked.

He offered the same suggestion he gave anyone facing wasps during a regular nonenchanted spring. “Run!”

They took off through the forest, dodging the fire oak and wasps. Myrthe’s running in skates was clunky and her limp put her at more of a jogging speed, though she expelled breath and energy as if she were sprinting.

“Turn left!” At least he knew which way to go. “To the third Trial!” He hoped they could bolt through the sunset-orange hue of mist that was a hundred yards off.

Wasps converged like a cloud about his body. He dropped and tumbled, losing his sleeping roll from the top of his pack. The fire oak leaped upon him with viscious tentacles, burning everywhere it touched exposed skin.

He wrenched it off his body and sprang back to his feet, but the small tickling legs of wasps crawled beneath his clothing. A shuddering panic built in his chest as he swatted the creatures. Attacking him from the outside was one thing; getting inside his clothes was a nightmare.

All went dark. Cloth pressed on him from above, and he dropped to his knees. Myrthe had flung his sleeping blanket over them both. He tucked the edges down around them, smashed a wasp in his armpit area, and they hunkered down beneath the cloth shield.

Within seconds their hot breaths mingled and grew stuffy.

“This is romantic,” he joked, hardly caring whether it was appropriate.

“It’s certainly not how I pictured my first foray beneath a blanket with a man,” she replied.