My breath caught in my throat as I watched Hytham swing out over the water. Overhead, the vine groaned at the sudden weight, and the vine swung lower than either of us had meant for it to. Just before he reached the opposite shore, the vine slipped, dropping the Hume half a dozen feet.

  I gasped as his grip slipped and Hytham landed, splash, straight in the water. Immediately, he began to sink from the weight of his armor. His arms flailed once, twice, and then the river tugged him under.

  “Hytham!” I called. My heart pounded, breaths shallow as I waited for the rope to swing back to me. Without the added momentum of being tossed back, I knew it wouldn’t return all the way to me, not fully, and so as it glided back, I shuffled along the branch, ready to launch myself off the tree and out to catch the vine.

  It slowed in its approach, and I crouched low. Just as it came almost to a stop, I leapt off the branch, my arms extended.

  I caught it with a jolt in my stomach, not thinking of the dangers or the practicalities of having never swung across a river before. A few miscalculations became quickly apparent as I flew over the river, the first of which was the difference in weight between myself and Hytham and the second was the now more-secure vine rope.

  The spindly branches on the opposite side of the river reached out for me. I screamed as I pelted into them, tucking my face into my elbow to avoid the branches’ scratches. The tangle of limbs stopped my swing and caught me in their embrace.

  I scrambled to free myself from the branches’ scraping fingers and crawled down the tree as fast as I might, leaping from branch to branch until the earth was near enough that I launched myself out of the tree and onto the ground below.

  My second attempt was less successful than the first. My legs buckled underneath me as I fell, flipping me onto my rear with a heavy oof. But the very nature of being in this predicament was that there was no one to see my ungraceful landing.

  Instead, the river had started sweeping the flailing Hume away, and already, Hytham’s movements were slower in fighting the river’s tug. I sprinted after him, but the current was quick. I would have one chance, little more. But already I knew he would do everything in his power if not more for me.

  I stretched out my hand, willing a soft tangle of branches to catch him as had caught me.

  But would that be enough? As I willed the roots into being, I suddenly recalled the tangling swirl of roots I’d found that surrounded the Seed, that had emerged from it.

  The spirit energy slunk from my chest with the thought—I nearly cried out at its surprising sting. Tears prickled in the corners of my eyes, and my breath grew even shorter than before, but the next moment, a spray of dark, twisted roots burst out of the riverbank and slithered across the water. They tangled around the Hume’s armor, solid as a bank of rocks.

  The twisted roots held him in place, preventing him from floating away.

  I leapt over a worn boulder and slid down the embankment, plunging into the water at the Hume’s side. Water rushed over Hytham’s face and chest, holding him under. He no longer had the strength to fight water and rapids. I caught my arms around his shoulders, lifting his head out of the water and holding him against my shoulder.

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  The vine-roots shifted beneath me, latching onto my thighs under where I straddled Hytham’s hips, holding me in place so I might counterbalance his weight with the water’s pull.

  Hytham coughed water across my shoulder and I gripped the curls at the back of his head, trying to offer a sense of security. He struggled against me instead, yanking his arms free each time the roots I’d called caught onto his arm. “Bloody dark forest,” he grumbled, blinking to clear his vision.

  “Shh,” I soothed. “Stop struggling. I called the roots.”

  His eyes widened and he yanked out of my grasp, ripping himself away from the entangled roots and crawling across them to the safety of the riverbank where he collapsed.

  I hurried after, carefully extricating the soaked end of my shawl from the roots’ gnarled fingers. I knelt by his side, trying to ascertain whether or not he was alright.

  Hytham balked and crawled further away from me. “You called them?”

  “Yes, I—”

  “Lifkin witchcraft? You used it against me?” The Hume’s eyes were wide and panicked.

  “What? No. Hytham, I’ve never done that before, but—”

  “And you told me that what Bansaerin had done wasn’t possible.” He was breathing quickly, crawling away from me as fast as he could while choking on river water.

  “It isn’t!” I insisted. All the work I’d done to save him, his insistence that he trusted me, and here he was, exactly like the others. Staring up at me in open horror. I held back. Crossed my arms over my chest. “What does that even have to do with the river?”

  “You cast a spell on me.” He had hauled himself up and limped away from me, toward the bank we’d first tried to land ourselves beside.

  I reached toward him and he shuddered back, his gaze sharp as any blade. My throat thickened, but I swallowed it down. “You were floating away.” Much as I tried, I couldn’t keep the hurt from my voice. “I-I didn’t know what to do.”

  The Hume turned from me to the roots behind us. They were dark and frightening in appearance, but they had saved him all the same.

  “You conjured them?”

  I hugged my shawl more tightly around myself. It was dripping and torn, but it was the lone comfort I had available. “Yes.”

  “You cast something you’ve never done before . . . to help me?”

  “Yes, Hytham. You were floating away. I was scared—I didn’t know what to do.”

  His lips had parted as he stared between me and the roots. Hytham stepped closer and I tightened the grip on my shawl, flinching away from him. I had thought before that he wouldn’t hurt me, but all that seemed so much less certain now.

  “Thank you.” He spoke softly, the fear gone from his voice. His eyes had returned nearer to their normal size, though he still watched me strangely, caught somewhere between caution and awe.

  I turned further toward the river, hugging my arms against my waist. Is this what traveling with a Hume would be like? The accusation and anger ready at a moment’s notice even when I was trying to help, simply because of misunderstanding?

  “Draeza.”

  I met his gaze then. His brow had furrowed, and he half-reached out toward me. I shuffled a half-step closer, keeping my hands hidden beneath my shawl.

  “I’m sorry. Thank you for helping me.”

  I nodded. “Are you alright?”

  He was damp, covered in mud, and I feared he’d twisted his ankle as the river carried him away, but he straightened himself, towering above me with broad, self-assured shoulders, and I relaxed. Perhaps the danger was not as pressing as it had seemed. “Come, let’s search the riverbank.”

  I tiptoed after him. Beads of water formed in the curls of his hair, dripping onto his shoulders and forming eddies of water that washed clean his armor, creating swirls of dirt along the metal. There was dirt along his cheekbone and above his brow, but I dared not reach out toward him again. We walked in silence back to the embankment where the drag marks stretched into the forest, toward the yawning dark of the caves beyond.