Page 62 of The Iron Raven

I dove from the rest of the flock and swooped toward them, changing to my regular self in a poof of feathers as I landed. “Princess, you okay?”

“Yes.” Her voice was calm but resigned as she moved beside Ash, gazing up at the raging treant.

Coaleater stampeded around its gnarled ankles, kicking and breathing flames, while Nyx was a quicksilver shadow scrambling over its head and shoulders, moonlight blades flashing.

“It’s not going to stop,” Meghan sighed, watching the treant as it thrashed and bellowed in rage. One of its flailing limbs caught another tree, sending it crashing to the ground, and Meghan winced. “Dammit. I don’t want to, but if we must do this, let’s do it quickly.” She glanced at us, her expression now resolved. “I’ll need the treant to be completely still for a moment,” she told us. “Not long, but it cannot move for at least five seconds. Can you and the others handle that?”

“Easy.” Ash’s smile was grim. Gripping his blade, he looked in my direction, raising an eyebrow. “Ready, Goodfellow?”

I felt a tiny flutter of vindictive defiance and squashed it down. “Just try to keep up, ice-boy.”

We sprinted toward the giant, flailing tree in the center of the clearing. Coaleater had managed to set part of its foot on fire, and the treant wasnothappy with that little development. It howled and lashed out with a gnarled limb, finally catching the Iron faery in the shoulder and smacking him into the thorns. I heard an angry bugle over the crashing and snapping of branches, and figured the iron-encased horse was more annoyed than hurt.

“Oy, big ugly!” I bellowed. Ash paused, and I felt a pulse of Winter glamour go through the air as I continued to charge forward. “Look this way!”

The treant turned toward me, eyes blazing. With a roar, it sank its fingers into the earth, and thick black briars erupted from the ground, curling toward me like talons. I skidded to a stop, dodged a spiny branch that swiped at my head, and leaped through a knot of thorns that tried closing around me. More brambles surged into the air, and I grimaced. “Hey, ice-boy, you can help out anytime.”

Through the writhing branches, I saw Ash drop to one knee and sink his blade point down into the earth. A ripple of freezing glamour spread out from the point of the sword, but directed underground instead of on the surface. Suddenly, the thrashing, flailing brambles and thorns surrounding me slowed, then stopped moving as a thick layer of ice crept up the stalks, freezing them in place with sharp crinkling sounds.

The treant gave a bellow of surprise and rage and tried pulling back, but his fingers were frozen solid now, and he couldn’t break free of the ice.

I grinned viciously. “What’s the matter, spiky? Got a bit of the frostbite on the ol’ fingers, there?” Ducking beneath the ice-covered brambles, I raced up to the giant and leaped onto a gnarled leg. Now that the treant wasn’t thrashing around, it was much easier to balance on the giant tree without being tossed about like a ship in a storm.

Nyx dropped beside me, golden eyes glittering with a dangerous light. Her moonblades were in her hands, and bits of twigs and leaves were caught in her hair as she shook her head, glaring up at the monster tree. “I can’t reach its heart. It’s too well protected.”

I smiled, strangely proud that she knew that. One of the only reliable ways to kill a treant was to stab it in the heart, which, if you could reach it, was oodles easier than chopping or hacking at the monster tree until it died or squished you like a bug. Unfortunately, treants hid their hearts in weird places, like the soles of their feet or their armpits, and protected them behind layers of bark and thick wooden skin. You had to literally peel back their armor to get to the heart, and no treant was going to sit still and let you do that.

Fortunately, we had a few tricks up our sleeve, too.

“Worry not, Miss Assassin,” I told the dubious Forgotten beside me. “This overgrown topiary is already chopped, it just doesn’t know it yet.”

I reached for my Summer glamour, sent it deep into the ground and felt the earth respond. Leafy vines erupted from the dirt, slithering up the treant’s legs. They coiled around its ankles and wrapped around its limbs, anchoring it to the ground. If the treant hadn’t already been occupied, such a trick wouldn’t have worked, but the monster tree was a little distracted with a very bad case of frostbite, so the vines continued their journey until they reached the thing’s chest, then continued to slither up toward its head.

“That’s not going hold it for long,” Nyx said calmly, watching the creeper vines coil around the massive tree.

I grinned. “We don’t need long,” I told her, and raised a dagger with a wink. “Just long enough for this.”

Across the clearing, another ripple of magic went through the air, only much more powerful. The Iron Queen, wielding the glamour of both Summer and Iron, blending them together in the way only she was capable of. The magic raced across the ground and sank into the vines tangling the treant, and the little creeper vines swelled into thick brambles, ropy and flexible but tough as steel. The treant gave a roar as it was suddenly encased in a knot of trunks and branches. It thrashed, rocking its huge body from side to side, making the brambles shake and creak violently, but it wasn’t going anywhere.

I grinned at Nyx, who was watching all this unfold with a stunned look on her face. “Things are a little different when you’ve got a queen behind you. So, where did you say its heart was, again?”

She blinked and shook herself, then pointed a moonblade toward the treant’s chest. “Under the left shoulder,” she replied, “right below where the collarbone would be, if treants had bones.”

I tipped an imaginary hat to the Forgotten and leaped onto an overhead branch, making my way up to the top. The treant’s shiny black eyes suddenly fixed on me, and its lined face contorted with loathing.

“Filth,” it rumbled. “Flesh pods, destroying everything you touch. Kill you all. Crush your bones, turn you to rot, feed you to the roots.”

“Sorry, big guy.” I hauled myself up the final branch, so that I was right below the monster tree’s face, looking at the spot Nyx had pointed out. It was covered with thick wooden plates, but between the cracks, I could see a faint pulse of greenish light. “Afraid you’re not going to be crushing anyone’s bones today.”

“Insects,” the treant howled as I took a step toward the pulsing light. “Filthy destroyers of all that is green. Kill you all! Return you to the earth. Feed your tainted blood to the worms and saplings. The Mother wishes it.”

The Mother wishes it?I felt a chill crawl down my back as I raised a hand, Summer glamour flaring to life once more.Okay, that’s not good. It’s definitely time to end this.Closing my eyes, I felt the connection to the magic and everything it touched, the earth, the forest, even the treant beneath me. The monster tree was strong, but it was still a tree, and I was Robin Goodfellow. The forest, and every living flower, sprout, and tree within it, bent tomywill.

The plates covering the green light shuddered, then peeled back like a flower opening. A cloud of darkness billowed out of the crack, smelling of rot and decay and anger. It buzzed around my head like flies, and the onslaught of rage, loathing, and hatred that accompanied it made my head spin.

With a splintering crash, the ice covering the brambles shattered. The treant wrenched its arms free, surging up with a roar, and I lost my footing on the narrow branch. As I fell backward, I saw the treant’s arm, spiny claws gleaming like polished wood, coming right at me, and I changed into a raven just before the thorny talons sliced the air overhead.

Wheeling around, I ducked the other arm and flapped over its head, intending to spin around and finish the job. There was no need. Nyx leaped off its shoulder, swung on a vine, and drove her blade through the glowing hole I’d opened in the treant’s chest.

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