Jude smiled back, but it was equally unconvincing. "It's not that I don't think you can convince the trees to help, I just…" He leaned closer and lowered his voice to a whisper, the sound of boots impatiently shuffling over gravel urging us from outside of the carriage. "Will you make it back out?"
Jude's eyes were pale, the corners creased with worry, his brow wrinkled too. Jude was the only one who'd seen me in the woods, although I'd told them all about the rosemary pot that had broken in my kitchen the night of my attack. My being able to communicate with the trees, to beg them to do my bidding, wasn't our only option tonight. The monsters could all charge the building, break down the doors and battle Birsha's guards.
My plan just happened to have better odds of our side making it out alive.
But I'd told Jude how it had felt to lose myself in old roots, to hide in the network of trees in Asterion's woods. He was right to be worried.
"I will," I said, nodding my head firmly. Jude's eyes narrowed at me. "I will. I'll be fine. It's the safest place for me."
His lips pursed. I'd used that argument with Hunter and the others, and it'd done a fair job of convincing them all that I could come help.
"This is bigger than hide and seek," Jude pressed.
"I know, but it's also much more important," I whispered, reaching for Jude's shoulders, leaning in and kissing him. "I will be fine. In the woods, it was you who called me out again. I want Con back. I want…I want all of us together, more than anything." I breathed the words out, too fragile to speak openly. "So I will make it out. I have very good reason to."
Jude sighed, grazing his lips against mine again.
"Miss Nix," Asterion prompted gently from outside of the carriage.
"I want that too, but it only works if we have you, Hazel," Jude murmured with another firm kiss, dragging it to my cheek and jaw.
We both breathed in deeply before pulling away, and Jude slid past me, stepping down from the carriage and escorting me out.
"Have a look," Asterion said, gesturing around the carriage toward the house.
We were still far enough away to comfortably study without worrying about being seen. The house was tall and built of dark stone, with spindly turrets piercing the sky and torches burning eerie green fire from the broad front steps. Two great rowan trees grew closest on either side of the house, their branches extending toward stained glass windows.
"What do you think?" Asterion asked.
There was a ring of oaks around the property too, and I closed my eyes, reached out to the trees, and felt them answer, a gloomy and sorrowful warning passing to me. Don't enter, child, don't come closer.
I called back to them, studied them through a foggy distance, the whole property repeating the same refrain of caution.
"The roots are already close to the basement level," I said, opening my eyes. "The trees don't like the house. I think they'll help, but there is a sort of…poisonous flavor in the ground."
The werewolf nodded, grunting, as Asterion stared down at me. "You can tell so much from here?" Asterion asked.
I shrugged. "It's easier when I'm somewhere farther from so many buildings and people. Breaking the foundation won't be hard, coaxing roots up to the first level isn't a great stretch, but I'm not sure how much I can push before it's dangerous for those inside."
"Leave that to us," Asterion said. "If you can convince roots to break stone and shatter doorframes, that's more than enough."
"The imp is in the sky," Byron said, looking up into the shadows of the trees around us, his dark hair falling back from his face and revealing the riotous tangle of old wounds on the sides of his face and throat.
Asterion nodded. "Ronan and Jude will watch over you. You'll be able to find your way back out?"
"Yes," I said, although it was mostly a guess, and Jude must've known as much. He didn't give me away, setting a hand on my shoulder and squeezing me gently.
"Then I will see you on the other side of victory, Miss Nix," Asterion said with a gentlemanly bow I didn't know how to answer.
Jude pulled me into the shadows of trees as the minotaur and werewolf marched toward the house. "How close do you need to be?"
I bit my lip and searched the woods, pointing toward the outer circle of oaks, where a few younger trees were growing under the shadow of the oldest circle. They were less cautious and more curious than the others, and I had a feeling they would help me rally the woods to my cause.
Jude wrapped a cool shadow around us that dimmed the outside world and pulled me along by a steady grip on my hand. The house had a soft murmur of noise from inside, eerie music and a thrum of conversation, and we'd nearly reached our destination when the broad front doors opened to greet the approaching figures of Asterion and Byron. A sharp scream spilled out of the building and into the quiet woods. An owl answered from its perch, swooping through branches and arching in front of the house, talons stretched toward the red glass windows.
I shivered, and Jude and I held ourselves frozen behind one of the slender oaks, waiting for the doors to shut and the cry for help to break into silence again.
"Do you think Con—" Jude started, but I cut him off with a shake of my head.
"No. Birsha has him trapped somewhere," I whispered. Con wouldn't be in a parlor torturing some helpless girl. Not while Antin was withering and bleeding. They weren't two opposing forces bound together in one man. They were a perfect balance, a measured union.
And they were mine.
We stopped on the left side of the house, close enough to see shadows moving by the windows, hands pressed and sliding over the glass in the upper stories.
"We may not be alone in these woods," Jude said.