Page 88 of The Stolen Heir

Oak hauls me up. He’s swearing, a streak of filthy words and phrases running into one another, some in mortal languages and some not.

The monstrous creatures are closing in. The nearer they get, the more clearly I can see the roots writhing through their bodies, the bits of skin and unblinking eyes, the great fang-like stone teeth.

“Keep going,” he tells me, and whirls around, drawing his blade. “We’re almost to the Citadel. If anyone can stop her, it’s you.”

“I can’t—” I start.

His eyes meet mine. “Go!”

I run, but not far before I draw my borrowed knife and duck behind a tree. If I do not have Oak’s skill, at least I have ferocity on my side. I will stab anything I can, and if something gets close enough, I will bite out whatever seems most like a throat.

My plan is immediately cut short. When I step out, an arrow skims over my leg, taking skin with it. A twisted creature with a bow lumbers toward me, notching another arrow. Aiming for my head.

Only to have its weapon cut in half as Oak strikes from the side, slashing through the bow and into the stick thing’s stomach. Its mouth opens once, but no sound comes out as Oak pivots and beheads it. The creature goes down in a shower of dirt, berries, and blood that scatter across the snow.

Oak’s face is still, but the frenzy of battle is back in his eyes. I think of his father, the redcap, whom he plans to rescue, and of how the prince must have been trained. I wonder if he has ever dipped a cap in someone’s blood.

More of the stick creatures come at him, with their claws and fangs and stolen flesh, their shining ice arrows and black-stained blades.

Oak might be a great swordsman, but it seems impossible that any one person could hold them all off. Nonetheless, he looks prepared to try.

His gaze darts to me. “Hide,” he mouths.

I scramble behind the black boulder and suck in a breath. The Stone Forest is so full of magic that even that is dizzying. A pulse of enchantment echoes off the trees and branches, ferns and rocks. I had heard the stories, but it was another thing to be inside it, to feel it surround me.The whole forest is cursed.

Before I can stop it, I am drawn into the spell. I can feel stone all around, and pressure, and thoughts that flow like honey.

Let me be flesh again. Me. Me.Two voices boom, loud enough to cause me to cover my ears, even though I hear the words only in my mind. Their raw power feels like touching a live wire. This boulder was once a troll king, turned to rock by the sun, and its twin is somewhere deeper in the forest. Their curse has grown, expanding to encompass the entire Stone Forest. I can smell it in the pine and the split blue fruit, so potent that I cannot understand how I could have not known before.

Anticipation whispers through the trees, like an indrawn breath. Urging me on.

I reach into the root of the enchantment, knotted tightly through everything around me. It started with the original curse of all trolls, to be turned to stone in the sunlight. As the magic has weakened, the trolls in Elfhame turn back to flesh at nightfall, but this curse is from a time when the magic was stronger, when stone was forever.

That curse grew outward, feeding on the magic of the troll kings. Nourished by their anger at being trapped, now their curse imprisoned their people and their people’s descendants.

I can feel the magic trying to bind me into it, to pull me into its heart the way the woods tried to envelop us. I feel as though I am being buried alive. Digging through dirt, ripping apart the hairy roots that attempt to encircle my limbs like snakes. But even as I pull myself free, the curse on the Stone Forest itself remains as sure as iron.

But now that I have its attention, perhaps I can give the magic another target.

There are invaders, I whisper in my mind, imagining the stick creatures as clearly as I am able.They will take your people from you.

I feel the strands of magic curl away from me with a sigh. And then the earth itself cracks, the force of it enough to throw me back. I open my eyes to see a fissure splitting along the ground, wider than a giant’s mouth.

A few minutes later, Oak stumbles out from between two trees, frost-covered ferns crackling beneath his steps. A wind blows through the branches to his left, sending a scattering of bladelike pieces of ice plummeting into the snow. The prince is bleeding from a cut on his shoulder, and both the bear fur and his cloak are gone.

I push myself to my feet. My hands are scratched raw, and my knee is bruised. The wound where the arrow grazed my leg is throbbing.

“What happened?” I ask.

A bellow comes from the forest.

“This place,” he says, giving the crack in the ground a wide berth. “Some of them fell into the earth as it opened. I cut a few apart. But there are still more. We have to keep moving.”

He reaches for my hand.

I take his, and together, we dart between trees. “Have you seen Tiernan?”

“Not yet.” I admire how thoroughly he is not letting himself think of any other possibility.