The cold was cutting. Winter was mere days away, and the world reflected that. Even the sky above my head, what little of it I could see, was dark and cloudy. I wanted to curl up in a pile of blankets, hold my dragoness close, and doze off.

  Instead, I was traipsing through the woods on the tail of one of Kiri’s direwolves, headed towards the first spot where I would start laying our trap. Meanwhile, my new mate was off in town, accompanying Kiri to have a chat with the elders and convince them to support our plan.

  I was unamused, to say the least.

  I thought my anger towards these soldiers of Hergeiros had peaked when Kiri first brought the news, but I was wrong. There was always more rage to be found.

  Thankfully, despite my recent bouts of Summer behavior, I was still very much a scion of Autumn. My temper raged, but rather than rush into something foolish, I could turn that anger towards more productive measures.

  So, when the direwolf finally paused at a narrow trail and turned to look at me, I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t bother asking for confirmation that this was one of the paths along which Kiri would lead our assailants. I just fetched a couple of the seeds I’d brought with me from home and got to work.

  I didn’t have to dig, but I couldn’t skip the step of enriching the soil. Fortunately, I still had fertilizer left over from when I’d set up my garden. It was simply a matter of scattering it around a small area directly beside the path.

  In a more ideal world, where I had time to prepare, I would have mixed the fertilizer into the ground properly. As it was, I just used the Ruby of Waves to soak the spots where I’d scattered the fertilizer. I could only hope it would spare the land somewhat, because I wasn’t going to hold back.

  Next, I scattered the seeds in a close formation. The intent was to make it impossible for anyone to pass by without at least brushing against the trees these seeds would turn into.

  Finally, my mana spiked out of me, bearing all the anger and worry I was indulging in. The collection of seeds soaked it up as if they were sponges. Seeing as the seeds had come from an extremely toxic tree, the mana found purchase in them immediately, swelling them until they cracked. In the blink of an eye, roots drove into the soil and began snaking deeper in.

  The expenditure of my mana was immense at the start. I needed to catalyze this new life in order to strengthen it and make it grow. The moment the roots were in place, things got significantly easier.

  Instead of my mana filling in for every aspect of the trees’ growth, all I had to do was facilitate a rapid plundering of the soil’s content. Nutrients were sucked up mercilessly as the trees continued to grow. Each contained a trunk split into half a dozen separate offshoots, all of which branched further to produce a relatively low crown of leaves. Flowers blossomed on the branches, then swelled into large, heavy fruit. Only then did the process stop.

  I breathed in the fruit’s sweet smell, which resembled apples with just a dash of lavender. Hopefully, one of the invading idiots would somehow mistake the fruit for apples and have a taste. That would honestly be the perfect ending to these soldiers I looked forward to tormenting.

  Some might argue I was being too heavy-handed. I was using manchineel trees, of all things. The manchineel had not one, not two, but three separate toxins.

  The simple act of brushing against its bark and leaves, all of which were coated in poison, would result in at least a painful rash. If we were particularly lucky and it happened to rain when our invaders decided to visit, things would be even easier. Rain washing some of the toxins onto the soldiers would be far more effective than any of them brushing up against the tree.

  Eating a fruit meant swift and certain death. Fortunate victims would asphyxiate due to the swelling of their mouth and throat. Those less fortunate would experience abdominal bleeding and literally lethal diarrhea.

  It was a grisly prospect, to be sure. Yet whoever tried to argue I was overdoing it with my selection of trees had no right to say any such thing.

  These idiots had been ordered to go after my wife.

  A cruel grin stretched across my face as I withdrew another set of seeds, this time of a very special stinging nettle. This was the plant I had accidentally mutated while setting up my garden. While its poison wasn’t quite as deadly as the manchineel’s, it was a powerful neurotoxin. I’d tested it against my own skin, and it had managed to make even my arm go numb briefly. I knew the thing was potent enough to lay out any mortal.

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  On both sides of the trail, I sprinkled nettle seeds in a wide radius and put them through the same process of rapid growth. This way, even if the soldiers stepped off the path to avoid the manchineel trees, we would still have something to rely on.

  In the privacy of my mind, I could admit that it might be better if the stinging nettle was what got to them. It would knock them out of the fight without the threat of killing them directly, so long as I reacted quickly enough. That wasn’t something I could guarantee with the manchineel.

  With that done, I took a moment to look around. The trail’s surroundings were rather pretty now. The mutated stinging nettle’s purple color was quite eye-catchingly picturesque. The manchineel, despite being deadly, was actually a nice-looking tree. Its yellow or orange fruits hung heavy on its branches, spreading that enticing apple-like smell.

  I could only wonder if the soldiers would find the sight enchanting or alarming. Would any of them pause to stare, either in fear or admiration? The answer would likely be no, considering we planned to put the pressure of a chase on them at once, but I kept musing on the question as I decided to indulge.

  I plucked two manchineel fruits, one for seeds and one for my stomach. The one I bit into was orange, not that the color affected the flavor. It was pleasingly sweet and tasted a bit like plum. A cloying, spicy aftertaste coated the mouth and lingered, as if reluctant to leave.

  My throat itched a little, making me quickly conjure up some water with the ruby, but I enjoyed my manchineel snack. Even more, I enjoyed the fact that our invaders would absolutely regret eating one of these fruits.

  One by one, I visited the locations Kiri had indicated, planting more manchineel and nettle. One by one, I covered every route we planned to use, even if plenty of them were just-in-case options we didn’t think would be necessary.

  I understood well the importance of over-preparing. If we wanted things to go our way, no matter what, then we needed to put in the work.

  We also needed to keep careful track of the areas we meddled with, because the forest would be much more lethal after I was done. I left that up to Kiri and her ever-present web of eyes and ears. If there was anyone who could keep our hunters safe until they learned new routes, it would be Kiri.

  Thunder boomed overhead. Moments later, I heard the first few tentative drops of rain hit the forest canopy.

  Good, I thought. That will only help.

  Although…

  “Kiri, make sure to keep your wolf away from the trees I’m growing if it starts raining heavily enough for raindrops to reach us. Water could wash the poison off the trees and hurt the wolf.”

  Taking cover under a manchineel tree during a storm was an excellent route towards a painful death.

  In spite of everything going well, I couldn’t help feeling like a child sneaking around and about to be scolded. This little project was draining the forest soil heavily in every area I worked over. Growing entire trees from nothing demanded a vast amount of nutrients. I was doing what I could to mitigate this with my fertilizer, but I still felt like I was doing something deeply wrong.

  Unbidden, a memory flashed through my mind.

  I was but a child, four or five years of age, when I snuck out to my family’s garden and just… let myself play. My mother found me surrounded on all sides by stunningly beautiful flowers. I’d been giggling as I admired them.

  I couldn’t remember ever seeing her angrier, before or since. The beating I received, though strictly of the disciplinarian kind and not designed solely to hurt, still lingered as phantom sensations when I really gave in to the memory.

  She hadn’t been angry about how I’d overdrafted the garden and almost killed half the plants. She’d been terrified at the sight of me playing with flowers that were so toxic, most fae were afraid to be within sight of them.

  I was a Belladonna, obviously, but I was young enough that my tolerance hadn’t been built up yet. Exposure to those flowers might very well have killed me had she not discovered me in time. As it was, I still suffered under a fever for nearly a full day.

  I came out of it with a much higher tolerance for all things toxic. Next time I touched the flowers, they only made my fingers itch a little. My training was pushed forward as a result. I had skipped right over months, if not years, of requisite inoculation. My father, though livid about the risk to his heir, was pleased with the results.

  I hadn’t exactly forgotten the whole thing, but the memory had definitely been suppressed. Was it because of the suffering I endured that day while my body fought off the poison? Or did it have something to do with remembering my mother’s fingers against the feverish skin of my forehead? The exasperated, worried, yet fond look in her eyes I glimpsed every time I managed to crack my own eyes open?

  She had stayed by my side through every moment. Her first reaction was to punish me in a fluster, certainly, but then she stayed. It was one of the few times I could remember having her full, undivided attention. When I seemed to be more important than my father.

  My fingers curled up into fists until my knuckles ached from the pressure. I didn’t want to remember moments like that.

  It was so much easier when I could focus solely on resentment. On the bad that truly had overwhelmed the good so often.

  Besides, this was hardly the time for me to reminisce.

  I shook off my maudlin mood to find I had nearly conjured up too many trees at my current location. I was ready to do the same with nettle and then flee to the next place, but when I took a closer look at my handiwork, I could only blink in shock.

  These manchineels were… twisted. What were supposed to be normal tree limbs were spiral-like growths, gnarled and stabbing towards the sky.

  Did I mutate the trees, somehow?

  I reached out to them with my mana. They didn’t feel different from the other specimens I’d grown. They still had leaves and fruit. Yet the sheer wrongness of their appearance was enough to make a shiver race down my spine, and I was their creator.

  I hesitated, but ultimately shrugged, grew some nettles, and moved on. I had things to do. I couldn’t stand here dwelling on the emotions that had gripped me while these trees were being born. So long as the plants did their job properly, that was all that mattered.

  Seasons, I just wanted to go back to Alys already.