shrugs and swallows, his gaze locked on Narah. “It has to. She’s rusty and lacks confidence, but if she can just keep steering us around the spells, it should be fine.”
“Do you think the witches will allow us so easily to pass through their land?” I whisper, not wanting others to hear my concern.
“From what I’ve heard, they rarely leave their coven. Maybe they’ve become complacent that no one will ever make it through their maze.”
The thought brings a twist of hope in my chest that our plan of surprise will work.
Ragnar continues, “I intend to blindside them with our arrival, then we’ll take them out.” The way he looks at me comes with darkness and a reminder of the plan we’ve worked out. Our own magical secret weapon. “Until then, we need to keep a close eye on her,” he whispers. “Make sure she feels safe and is on our side.”
We walk for a few moments with only the sound of Nikos and Crius arguing, something I learned to block out long ago. “What do we do with her afterward?” I ask, curious if the possibility of keeping her for myself is even an option.
Ragnar hesitates to answer at first, and shadows cloud under his eyes as he considers my question. “She will be my problem to deal with,” he finally answers.
“Sure.” I have no idea what he means, considering it isn’t his usual response when we deal with an outsider. His go-to tends to be kill them. So this is new, and also leaves a bitter taste on my tongue that he is showing such interest in her this early.
Silence follows us along the path, flanked by a mountain on one side and a cluster of trees on the other with the web.
“Don’t move,” Narah suddenly cries out, and I walk right into Nikos, who growls from me knocking into him.
“What is it?” Crius asks, already grasping his ax in one hand. The guy has been dying to fight anything from the moment we left Denmark.
“A spell just appeared out of the blue across the path.” She points to the ground, which looks pretty ordinary to me, then looks up at Crius, who’s ahead of her.
“Wait, I tripped the invisible spell?” he barks, picking up on her cues instantly.
“Well, you rushed in front of me again,” she snaps back.
“Then it’s my fault?” He’s standing tall, his brow lifting with sarcasm.
Abruptly, Nikos falls over right in front of me and is yanked sideways by his legs.
His yelling pierces the silent woods as a dark serpent wraps around his ankle, hauling him to fuck knows where. His terrified shouting hits me square in the chest where cold fear claws at my insides.
My hand flinches to my belt, and I raise my blade as I leap after Nikos. He’s dragged so fast across the ground, I can barely keep up, so I lunge for the beast that’s taken him. Mid-movement, I reach down and seize the thing that is hard as rock in my grip. I’m still half running, feeling awkward as fuck. Except the rough bark beneath my hand tells me this isn’t a snake.
It's a damn tree root.
I swing my blade down against the wooden limb in a chopping action and hack my knife across its surface.
We come to an abrupt stop, and I fall to my knees to make quick work of sawing the root in two. The thing shudders and fights my grip to escape.
Nikos is kicking it off his leg, his hands frantically pulling at the limb around his ankle.
“Sonofabitch,” he snarls.
Once my blade slices all the way through, I snatch Nikos by his shirt and haul him to his feet.
“What the fuck was that?” he asks.
“Hell if I know.”
But as we retreat, the root I’d chopped rears up in front of us like a viper. I touch my collarbone, igniting the buzz of power across my chest, then I jut out my other arm, a pale blue glow emitting from my hand.
“Return peacefully to the ground,” I mutter, my body humming with energy.
But nothing happens.
The tree root stands upright before us, and I can’t stop staring at the hacked part of the wood, which is just as dark as the bark on the outside. Gods, is it growing another limb? If it’s going to attack, it needs to do it all-fucking-ready.
“You need to touch it,” Nikos tells me.
“Like hell I do,” I answer.
“Well, this isn’t working,” Nikos insists.
“Fine, just stop fucking nagging me.” I march