I clench my jaw.
I would burn the world before I let it touch her.
I stay long after the boy’s scent has faded.
The Grove feels it too—agitated, the roots near the edge flexing, leaves twitching at invisible tension. It remembers pain. Fire. Screams. The last time someone crossed a ward with magic in their veins and destruction in their eyes.
And now Clara walks those same paths every day.
Unshielded. Unaware.
She’s no threat to the Grove—but what if others see her as a bridge?
The girl who talks to trees.
The girl who draws life out of the roots like a song.
What happens when the wrong eyes notice?
I grind my fingers into the dirt, jaw locked tight. My palms burn with the effort of keeping the ward sealed.
Clara doesn’t understand how visible she’s become. To the Grove. To me.
Tothem.
Casters. Collectors. Anyone who feels the tug of ancient magic like a scent on the wind. Her presence disturbs the balance—and balance is what predators watch for.
She thinks this place is safety.
And for now, it is.
But the more the Grove stirs around her, the more the veil thins.
And when that veil finally tears, she’ll be the first they come for.
I don’t meet her at the clearing the next evening.
Or the next.
I stay hidden, deeper in the Grove’s spine, pressed into the cool hollows of bark and silence. The trees hush around me, sensing the shift. Even the vines recoil slightly when she arrives.
I hear her voice.
“Thorn?”
It’s soft. Hesitant.
Hopeful.
And it cuts through me like a blade made of moss and guilt.
She steps into the usual glade, sketchbook clutched to her chest. Her eyes scan the canopy, the roots, the stone. Her hands twitch at her sides. She doesn’t sit. Doesn’t read.
She just waits.
For me.
I don’t move.
