Scarlett
The heart is a living thing.
It pulses under the roots like it has veins, lungs, and its own voice. The closer we get, the more violently the ground seems to breathe. Rhodes carries me in his human arms through the red-hued mist until the path ends.
There, in a clearing wrapped in the thickest, blackest vines yet, is Isabella.
She’s wrapped up like spider prey in a cocoon. Thorns spiral around her chest. Her face is pale. Still.
My heart lurches. I try to scramble from Rhodes’s arms to get to her, but he holds me tighter.
“Don’t touch the vines,” he warns. “They’re aware.”
I blink at him, but he’s deadly serious. And something about the way the vines curl and uncurl like twitching fingers makes me believe him.
The vines are definitely aware. The very roots of them seem to
