Chapter 25 · The Voice in the Lock

The eyes didn't blink.

Cole tried to pull the magic back. Tried to smother it the way Warren taught him years ago, the way he'd done a thousand times when a spell got slippery. Nothing happened. The pale eyes kept staring at Ivy, hunger rolling off them in waves he could feel in his teeth. His hands shook. The air tasted like copper and burnt hair.

"Cole." Ivy's voice cracked. "Cole, what—"

The laughter from the forest got louder.

Kael's crossbow swung toward Cole. "What the hell did you do?"

"I don't know." Cole's throat closed up. The eyes were still growing, splitting off the torchlight like tumors, each one a different size. Some small as coins. Some wide as dinner plates. All of them fixed on Ivy. "I can't stop it."

"You brought it here." Greaves's voice was flat. The old soldier took a step forward, blood-marked blade angled low. "The seal's waking up. You fed it."

"I didn't—" Cole started, but the forest cut him off.

The trees moved.

Not the branches. The trunks. They bent inward, slow and wrong, like ribs closing around a chest. The undergrowth shriveled.