Page 11 of The Nymph King

No one did.

His wand came up, and within seconds, Kiran struck first. A sweeping burst of magic caught two soldiers across the chest and locked their bodies rigid before they hit the ground. Another spell froze a third where he stood, wand still raised.

But the Draswood reacted. Roots surged between Kiran and the remaining Norn, forcing his next spell upward. It tore through branches instead of flesh.

Kiran snarled and fired again, yet the roots rose higher.

A pressure built beneath her feet, the forest preventing Kiran from killing them. They were Norn, and the Draswood recognized them as surely as it recognized her.

When Kiran stopped advancing, several soldiers lay paralyzed by his magic, while the others remained trapped behind a dense wall of roots that refused to let him reach them.

He pushed a few strands of hair off his brow and stepped over one of the soldiers he had frozen, staring at Imani. “The Draswood has finally given you up,” he said, his tone deceptively light.

“Are you sure?”

He grinned, wild and manic. Imani’s eyes fell to the fissures.

“Is this you?” Imani demanded. “These snares. What’s happening to the forest?”

Kiran’s mismatched eyes hardened as he looked at the damaged ground. “No.”

“Convenient.”

“Believe whatever makes you feel better, darling. It was breaking before I reached you.”

Beneath the chaos of the skirmish, Imani felt a sudden gathering. The tension in the soil reached a breaking point. The crown burned fiercely, latching onto a subterranean current that was neither hers nor Kiran’s. It was primal. Root-bound.

She didn’t consciously command the Draswood, but it knew her intention. “I will never go back with you,” she said, her words vibrating with a force that shook the air.

The ground answered.

Thick, sinewy roots erupted upward in sweeping arcs, and they went for the filaments. Roots followed the shimmering spell-threads from trunk to trunk, ripping them out of bark and soil wherever they had been anchored. Each severed strand flashed violently before the Draswood dragged it beneath the earth. The magic fought back, sending pulses through the ground, but the roots tightened around every embedded knot until the threads snapped one after another.

Whoever had cast the snares was not her, and since the forest could not reach the witch responsible, she assumed it was attacking what had been left behind. Around them, the soldiers Kiran had paralyzed remained where they had fallen. The others backed away from the upheaval, their weapons raised but forgotten.

Kiran turned his wand toward the barrier between himself and the cart and unleashed a barrage of magic, trying to burn a path to Imani. Roots surged into every opening. His spells scorched bark and splintered branches, but each damaged section was replaced before he could advance.

Imani’s pulse jumped.

Her heartmate took one step closer, but roots broke through the soil, rising into a thick barricade.

A wildness passed over his face. He moved left, yet the roots followed. When he tried the other direction, another wall of living wood rose to meet him.

Imani and Esa exchanged a confused look. The Draswood would not kill Kiran because the tether bound him to her, but it would not surrender her to him either. It must have sensed that he did not intend to murder her, but it also knew she did not want to go with him.

The same instinct that had hidden her beneath its canopy now enforced that refusal. The chapalus had lunged for her with nothing inside it but hunger. The Draswood had recognized the threat and destroyed it before Imani could defend herself.

Kiran possessed a hunger, but it wasn’t the same. Killing him would not be the same as killing the chapalus. The Draswood seemed to distinguish between a creature trying to consume Imani and a man whose obsessive need to possess her made harming her the last thing he wanted.

The heartmate tether stirred beneath her ribs, and she pressed her bound hands there, mind reeling.

Imani still did not understand who had planted the snares or what force was damaging the Draswood beneath them. But she understood its refusal to kill Kiran was restraint for her sake.

Beside her, Esa stopped struggling against her bindings. “Well,” she breathed, staring at the wall of roots. “I guess it has opinions.”

Kiran glared through the roots at Imani, fury making his mismatched eyes almost feverish. She could see that brilliant mind already buzzing with what she’d concluded. He could burn one barrier. Perhaps ten. But every root he destroyed brought another up between them, while the Draswood bent his magic away from the Norn surrounding her.

For once, brute force would not give him what he wanted quickly enough. Indeed, the forest consumed the invasive spellwork, spared the Norn soldiers, and refused to strike Kiran. Three different threats had received three different responses.