The forest darkness engulfs them quickly. Maybe it’s the thickness of the canopy. Or maybe it’s that Solma knows Vulkan and his treacherous son are somewhere nearby. Solma keeps thinking she sees the orange flash of a fire starting out of the corner of her eye, but when she turns, there’s never anyone there.
Olive watches her with a frown. “It’s alright, Sol,” she says. “It ain’t just you out here.”
Solma smiles weakly and tries to calm down, but her shoulders are bunched and her fist grips her hunting knife. The kids scurry ahead, bees drawing frantic halos around their heads.
Yenn sticks close to Taipan and the bees hover around them, occasionally landing on their hands to dance again. They’re insistent and always directing them west—the opposite direction to where Orchid’s sick bees
