Chapter 4 Run

~MARA POV~

Another hit struck the strong wood door, breaking the middle part.

"Go, Mara!" Mama hissed, shoving me hard toward the pantry. "Into the floor!"

"Not without you!" I planted my boots on the floorboards, digging my fingers into her sleeve. "Come with me. We can both fit!"

"There's no time!"

BANG.

The iron latch broke straight in two. The door flew in, hitting the rock wall. Mama grabbed my face between her hands, forcing me to look at her. Her palms were burning hot against my cold skin.

"Whatever happens next," she whispered, her eyes wide and desperate, "you run."

I blinked, a strange chill running down my spine. The look in her eyes wasn't just fear for her own life.

She was terrified of what I might do if I stayed.

Three Crown soldiers stepped over the broken doorway, their drawn swords glowing in the pale moonlight.

The commander at the front pulled off his iron gauntlet, his cold gaze sweeping across the dark kitchen until it landed directly on my mother.

"Nessa Veyne," he said, his voice flat and calm.

I froze. My breath caught sharply in my throat.

He knew her name.

Mama immediately stepped in front of me, her body shielding me from their view. "You have no business in this house."

"Twenty-one years," the commander said, taking a slow, intentional step forward. "You really thought you could keep her hidden forever?"

My chest caved in.

They hadn't stumbled into Bellmere on a routine patrol. They hadn't guessed.

They had known.

"Take the girl," the commander ordered.

The soldier on his left lunged forward, reaching past Mama to grab my arm. His iron-clad fingers snapped around my wrist.

Mama didn't hesitate. She didn't scream or beg. She slammed her bare right palm flat against the wooden floorboards.

CRACK.

The oak boards shattered upward. Thick, black-green vines exploded from the dirt beneath the house, thick as a man's arm and covered in razor-sharp spikes.

The vines twisted around the soldier's legs, their thorns biting clean through his leather armor and pinning him to the floor. He shrieked in agony as the wood tore into his flesh.

The commander glanced down at the soldier screaming under the vines. He didn't flinch.

"Kill the woman," he said.

He said it like he was ordering breakfast. My stomach dropped.

I stared at the writhing green stalks in shock.

Green magic. Growing magic.

The kind of magic Mama had spent her entire life pretending she didn't have.

Thornborn.

In a single, terrifying second, twenty-one years of my life were rewritten. I finally understood why she always knew which root could stop a fever, which leaf could numb pain, and which berry could stop a heart in seconds.

"Mara, go!" Mama roared, her face contorting with effort as she pulled more vines from the floorboards to block the doorway.

"Mama, no!" I screamed, stepping toward her.

The commander drew his sword, the steel whistling through the air as he slashed through the thick stalks. Mama raised her hands, casting a wall of dense briars to block his blade. 

She stopped him, forcing him back a step.

She didn't see the third soldier. He flanked her from the right, stepping around the ruined counter with his blade raised.

"Mama! Behind you!"

Mama started to turn.

She was half a second too late. The soldier drove his steel blade straight through her side.

---

The world went dead silent.

The sound of the wind, the crackle of breaking wood, the shrieks of the wounded soldier….all of it vanished.

Mama gasped, her eyes going wide and glassy.

The soldier pulled his blade free. Blood, dark and thick, poured over her apron.

"No!" The scream tore from my chest, raw and rough.

I lunged forward, catching her as her knees buckled. We hit the floorboards together.

"Mama," I sobbed, pressing my hands over the wound in her side. Warm red blood rushed through my fingers, staining my skin. "Mama, please. Look at me."

Mama's hand moved weakly, her bloody fingers brushing against my cheek. Her lips trembled as she fought for air.

"Run..." she whispered.

Her hand dropped lifelessly onto the floorboards. Her eyes went flat and still.

"Mama?"

She didn't answer. Her chest didn't rise.

I couldn't hear the soldiers anymore. I couldn't hear the wind. I couldn't hear my own breathing.

I could only hear my mother's last breath.

Something inside me snapped. The silver ring around my irises widened, swallowing the brown color of my eyes until my pupils disappeared entirely. For the first time in my life, my eyes turned completely, terrifyingly silver.

Cold, dark water burst through my heart, pouring out of me and slamming into the earth beneath the cottage.

Through the broken doorway, something moved in the dark street.

I looked up.

Dozens of dead villagers and fallen soldiers pushed themselves upright from the dirt. Their heads turned toward me, their dark, lifeless eyes locking onto mine.

I stared at them, unable to breathe.

I hadn't summoned them. I hadn't told them to rise. I didn't know how to make them stop, then I felt movement beneath my hands.

I looked down.

Mama's chest thrust up.

Once.

Twice.

Her eyes opened.