He barked a laugh. Tiny vine fingers tugged at the blanket and squirmed over top of them. Bastiaan pictured the fire oak creating a dome of burning tendrils that they’d have to claw through. Then what sounded like large raindrops pelted the blanket. The wasps.

“We can’t stay like this forever.”

“I needed a moment to think.” Her body pressed against his at odd angles and her breath tickled the back of his neck.

“The vines and wasps can’t get through this thick cloth.” He didn’t mention they’d somehow gotten inside his clothes.

“Do you have an extra blanket in your pack?”

“No, but I have my cloak.”

“That’ll work on me.” She rummaged blindly in his pack and tugged the roll of material free. “We’ll wrap ourselves as best we can and make a bolt for it.”

The plan sounded feeble at best, but the vines and wasps were creating an intimidating pressure from above, and they needed to move. She’d beat Winter. He had to hope Myrthe’s line of thinking would work a second time. Why had he never asked the hired Trial expert how he defeated them?

“Let’s go!” Myrthe flung the blanket off herself, threw his cloak about her shoulders, and took off, her movements half hobble, half skate glide. If Bastiaan hadn’t seen the vine-covered ground with his own eyes, he would have thought Myrthe was skating over ice. She’d removed her skate guards and every step sliced through the vine arms, sending them curling away in pain.

And leaving a brief path for him.

He didn’t waste the opening. Blanket over his head like an oma’s scarf, he rushed through the forest after her toward the clearing between the woods and the third Trial wall.

Myrthe shrieked but kept plowing forward. The vines tried wrapping around the angles of her skate blade, tripping her, but she kept her balance.

Something moved near the base of the Trial wall. Bastiaan couldn’t quite tell what the brown lumps were, so he risked pushing the blanket off his face a bit more. Bear cubs. Two of them. Sitting innocently and stripping the bushes of their berries.

The sight seemed so odd compared to the attack of the fire oak and wasps. So calm and almost . . . cute.

Then he remembered. “Myrthe! Wait!”

She was almost to the wall when the mama bear burst out of another patch of berries and lumbered toward her. Myrthe spotted the bear at the last moment and dove out of the way of a deadly paw strike. Bastiaan threw one of his discs, and it struck the bear in the shoulder. She didn’t even flinch.

Myrthe rolled onto her back and threw up her skate blades as the bear snapped with her wide-open maw. Blood spurted. Bastiaan’s heart stopped.