A Clove of Fates

14. Defense Mechanism

She must have been from Sveit, I decided then, because no one who'd ever spent two days in Musteri—or anywhere that wasn't firmly planted beneath a rock, for that matter—would have done something so stupid.

I grabbed her shoulder and jerked her back just as she'd plucked the Astralia Flower from its vine. The shock caused her to drop the thing, but it didn't matter. The damage had been done.

Very quickly her eyes went from wide and wonder-filled to narrow and venomous. "What are you—"

But I didn't have time to explain to her why she was an idiot. I grabbed her wrist and ran.

I'm not 100% sure why I decided it was a good idea to save my kidnapper's life in that moment. I told myself that in saving her ass I was saving mine, but it felt like there was some deeper, Soul Magic JuJu at play here, and my "ass" was just a happy bonus. Which was completely fine with me, to be clear.

Okay, so maybe all that life and death stuff was a bit over dramatic. But I didn't pay much attention in the Nymph Relations portion of my tutoring, and gossip didn't do our local tribe any favors.

She was still sputtering as we ran, but I'd learned that it's pretty hard to yank your wrist out of someone's hand while running, lest you are a fan of tripping over yourself, so she stayed secure.

I threw a quick glance over my shoulder. There was her glowering face, which I wasn't surprised by, grass, trees, and dirt. We were alone.

This of course, also meant that Fraed was no longer with us.

And, with a jolt of joy, I realized that I was free from that dog.

I would have smiled if I wasn't out of breath.

Adrenaline was only able to take me so far. I slowed, not by much, but it was enough to give Jarelis the ability to yank her arm away from me. She fell into the dirt, but still, she was free.

"What are you doing?" She scrambled for her bag and pulled out that shard of glass, pointing it at me. "We're going back, or else—"

"You don't understand." My voice was strained. I glanced up, swearing that I could hear the sound of rustling leaves. "If we don't keep moving they'll find us."

Her eyebrows sank even lower toward her nose, if you could believe it. "Who'll find us? What are you–"

He appeared in the tree first, and in seconds Jarelis's Shard was pointed at him.

He was made out of bark, he was the bark, I reminded myself. He was the entire forest, they all were.

He glanced at the thing, at the girl, at me, and above my head. He nodded, and I too looked in that direction.

There was a woman of leaves poking her torso out of the canopy of green branches above me. She was nodding back.

I returned my gaze to the man to see that he'd grabbed Jarelis from behind by the arms, no longer in his tree. She let out a grunt, struggling for a moment, but then her whole body relaxed.