Noa sat there with her sleeve pressed to her eyes when something moved in the brush.

  At first it was only a whisper of sound, vegetation shifting softly as something pushed through. A long, lean body coated in fur the color of moss, grey-green and dense along powerful shoulders. Noa froze with the cloth still against her face. She didn’t breathe.

  The animal looked like a massive wolf. Noa’s mind ran to the term dire wolf, but like everything else it didn’t match up exactly. It took another step forward, slow and unhurried. The wolf was still a dozen yards away and not charging, only testing the wind, nose twitching as it mapped the world.

  Then its legs came fully into view.

  One pair. Then back legs. Except they were followed by another pair of legs.

  Six.

  Her brain stalled on the number, refusing to arrange it into anything that made sense. The creature shifted its weight and reared slightly, its front legs lifting and dangling as the body arched like a grotesque echo of a kangaroo’s posture. For half a second the movement was almost cute. The nose quivered again.

  Then its head and yellow eyes snapped toward her.

  The body dropped low in an instant, muscle compressing, fur flattening as it folded into a predatory line so seamlessly that for a heartbeat it nearly vanished into the brush. Adrenaline tore through her and the world did not speed up, it slowed down and action snapped everything into place. Noa snatched her purse tight against her ribs like a football and ran.

  She crashed forward along a direction that seemed to have the least resistance, tearing through roots and brittle vegetation as her breath went ragged almost instantly. The forest tore at her legs, her scraped knee a complaint she ignored. Behind her she heard the thrashing of other foliage as something slammed through the undergrowth behind her with terrifying weight. That wolf was a monster and it was after Noa. Her mind searched for safety, for help. There was a sharp click, teeth snapping together behind her head.

  Pain flared suddenly along her arm as something raked across her skin and fabric together. Cloth shredded. She pitched forward toward a snarl of roots and barely caught herself with a stumbling lurch. Her body felt too slow for her mind.

  She had one rule as she ran. Noa did not look back.

  Looking back would slow her. Like screaming would slow her. She locked her eyes on the gap ahead between two pale trees where something broke the line of the forest. A shape. A structure, maybe. Her mind rejected the idea that she was already caught as her body hurtled forward.

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  Fifty-four meters.

  The number surfaced fully formed.

  If she could clear fifty-four meters, she could climb. She didn’t know why she knew that, only that the certainty existed.

  Another snap of jaws caught the back of her shirt. Fabric bunched hard against her spine. A heavy paw scraped across her back, claws digging into flesh, a small yelp of pain escaping Noa.

  Target: self

  [1] [54 × 3]

  Numbers fractured and reassembled uselessly inside her head as she hit grass instead of roots.

  Soft. Free.

  She tumbled, rolled once on her shoulder and skidded to a stop with a sound torn out of her throat as her arm and back screamed and her fingers burned bright red with pain. She dragged in air in broken gasps. She was not being mauled. She was not being bitten. She was burned and alive.

  The grass beneath her palms was tinted faintly purple. She twisted onto her side.

  The wolf had reared again at the forest’s edge, grotesquely tall on four legs, its yellow eyes locked on her. The distance between them was clean and stupidly precise.

  Fifty-four meters.

  Noa spun towards the stream cut across the forest floor, four feet wide and fast-moving, and beyond it rose a low mound of earth where trees grew in an impossible symmetry. Their bark was white the way she expected bark to look, but streaked through with purple. Branches extended at right angles. Roots and limbs had been woven together into a structure that resembled a giant arbored cage.

  She vaulted the stream in a wild, burning leap, and slammed into the root lattice on the other side. Pain spiked through her hands and knees as she hauled herself upward using nothing but shaking arms and teeth clenched so tight her jaw ached. She slung her body over the interwoven roots and dropped into cool shade and dense, living grass.

  Inside was a clearing.

  ! Lazil's eyes cannot see you

  Eight trees stood equidistant in a perfect ring, limbs intertwined overhead. In the center rested a single slab of black stone, smooth and square, like obsidian sunk into the ground with deliberate care aligned with the trees. Nothing else. No shelter. Just geometry and silence.

  She lunged back to the root railing and peered back through the woven barrier.

  The wolf had stopped at the water’s edge. It paced with eyes never leaving her. It would not cross the stream. The realization wasn’t relief as she peered at the monster. Noa was blowing on her fingertips that were burned. Her nails were freshly bruised with an equally sharp pain. But her mind was still locked on the danger. Just beyond the bend she could see a natural bridge formed from one of the same white-and-purple trees arching across the flow. The wolf didn’t go to the bridge and cross. It growled then withdrew into the brush. There were rules about this place that the wolf was following. While watching the departure, Noa blinked and lost where it was because the fur matched the foliage so well. The instant it vanished into the wilderness, Noa’s legs gave out.

  She slid down against the roots and pressed her forearms into her stomach to silence the sound clawing up her throat. Her fingers throbbed violently. When she lifted her hands into the light filtering through the canopy, she saw thin silver lines in the creases where her fingers met her palms. They were narrow like papercuts. The skin around the silver was inflamed and red-hot, as if something beneath the surface were trying to push through. She fought past the pain, looking for reason and found none.

  Noa had used magic and her hands were on fire because of it.