Heir to Light | Fablehaven AU

XVI - old (and new) friends

"No,  only cousins." Ronodin flicked his hand away with disgust. "I'll leave  Kendra alone. But, Garreth is too fun to stop. Do you see how his little  eyebrows pinch together when I talk to Kendra?"

Seth chuckled  despite himself. He wrapped the folded tent fabric around his tent  sticks and held it against his hip. Forcing his grin down, he turned to  Ronodin. "Stop it."

Ronodin grinned as Seth failed to force his own away. They both laughed.

Maybe  if Seth had been more focused on his surroundings, he would've noticed  something important—that the birds weren't singing anymore. But, alas,  he wasn't and so the absence of song went unnoticed.

"Did you practice that little fire trick I showed you?" Ronodin asked.

Last  night, Ronodin showed him how to quench the flames of the fire. Warren  was mad when they kept putting out his fire. Eve couldn't stop laughing.

"Yeah, it's easy."

"Well,  good." Ronodin leaned back against a tree. He relaxed as Seth smushed  the snow into a ball and then froze it into ice. The ice ball landed  with a impression on the snow.

"Can you teach me another thing  tonight?" Seth made another ball of ice and then another. He could  probably make a game out of this somehow. Maybe set up targets and smash  the ice balls against them. Seth filed his burgeoning ideas away; Eve  could refine them later.

When Ronodin still hadn't answered, Seth looked up from his ice spheres and found the man rigid.

"Ronodin?"

Ronodin's  eyes flicked down to Seth and he held a finger to his lips. Seth blew  out a breath quietly and stood up, careful of the crunchy, snowy ground.

An  arrow striked the tent bundle, forcing Seth to stumble back. He looked  down in horror. He had been holding the bundle against his hip. A few  more inches and...

Ronodin grabbed his forearm and pulled him deeper  into the treeline. Arrows splattered across the snow. They picked up  into a jog, lost the arrows, hit a small cliffside, and began to climb.  When they reached the top, they found Garreth holding a bundle of  sticks. Presumably for the fire...that Seth had put out like half an hour  ago practicing his new little trick. Oopsie.

Garreth knit his eyebrows together upon seeing them.

Huh.  Now that Ronodin had mentioned it, Seth realized Garreth did do that  thing with his eyebrows a lot. But, that was not important whatsoever  right now. Adrenaline rushed through his veins and his thoughts bounced  around at a million miles an hour. "Guys?"

"We need to run," Ronodin said.

Garreth put down his bundle of sticks. "Where's everyone else?"

"Don't know. Don't care. We need to go."

"No. What about them?" Seth asked. "We can't leave them behind."

Ronodin ran his hands down his face. "You all are going to be the death of me. We need to run. We'll find them all later."

"Ronodin, no," Seth said.