Chapter 9

Puck.I cast a frantic glance at Valerian. Why isn't he conjuring up some illusions to save us?

I made us invisible to her senses, he says, reading the panic on my face. But her plants are aware of us somehow, and I don't know how to fool them.

Plants with senses? I guess that makes sense. How else are they able to lean toward light or grow roots downward into the soil instead of in some random direction?

"Is someone here?" The dryad sits up, and the plants move with greater purpose, tendrils and branches reaching out like arms.

Grasping my hand, Valerian begins to tiptoe out of the room.

The dryad leaps naked out of the bed, grabs a knife, and starts slicing at the air.

Valerian drags me out of the bedroom.

Midway through the living room, a strangle vinesnakes from the ceiling and wraps around my neck. Gasping, I flail my limbs as it pulls me up. Valerian rips at the vine, but all this does is slightly loosen its grip so I suffocate slower.

"Whoever you are, you're not leaving here alive!" Erato shouts, running out of the bedroom. Her gaze is still blindly sweeping the room, not noticing us thanks to Valerian's powers.

Suddenly, she looks directly at me.

Puck.

Knife ready, she lunges at me. The blade slices an inch above my head, cleaving the vine holding me.

As I fall into Valerian's arms, I understand what happened. He made Erato see whatever she needed to see in order to strike where she did—and to accidentally free me from the vine.

He must still be showing her whatever it is because she growls in anger and leaps to the center of the room as Valerian lowers me to my feet.

We run for the door.

The poison hogweedswipes at me, its thorns missing my face by a hair's width.

Pucking puck. Remind me to never break into a dryad's home again.

I glance back and see Erato stumbling into the deadly embrace of the bug trap flower. The flower's giant trap closes, muffling the dryad's confused cry. Before I can celebrate our narrow escape, the pods of the acid seed okraturn toward me, moving as if in slow motion.

I don't even get the chance to think the word "duck" before an acid seed flies at my chest like a bullet.