Page 18 of The Girl in the Forest

If I couldn’t learn to limit what I absorbed, and then release it safely, I would become like my mother, slipping deeper into the headaches, the delusions, finally losing myself in the dark depths of my mind. The one fear I’d always had above dying. The fear Grayson had used to gain my cooperation, months ago. But my mother had been both right and wrong about avoiding wolves—the danger wasn’t in being exposed to too much wolf energy, but in not knowing how to release the pressure.

Tears stung my eyes long after Caerwen left, and I gazed at the embers, losing myself in the fire’s soft glow. I thought of the many times I’d resented my mother’s weakness, when I had to be strong for her. How she’d said I should not ask questions she wouldn’t answer.

So much of what I’d believed about my mother had been wrong. I was ashamed, and wished now that she’d had the chance to learn what I was learning. She might not have suffered, if she’d known.

But the truth remained hidden in this wrinkle, and she hadn’t wanted—no, because of me, she refused to stay here.

I had no doubt now that my mother hid Aine’s book, along with the tarnished necklace, so that I’d find it one day. Learn to read it… and the thought trembled like a dewdrop at the edge of a leaf… had she found a way to read it?

Was that why she’d been so desperate when Stewart buried the book in the backyard?

No answers, Noa. Not yet.

Time passed. Caerwen taught me more about the energy. How to sense the ebb and flow and use it, let the pressure build, then release it without destroying myself. I blew up a foot of sand the first time I tried, coating us in grit.

I tried again in the bath and soaked the entire room. When I pelted the cave with the remnants of an exploding rock, I doubted if I’d ever figure it out.

But Caerwen thought my skill was improving. Then she would run her hands along the runes Grayson inked on my skin, pulling the tension from my body. When I asked, she said others could ease the pressure for me. But when I asked who those others were, she fluttered as if she would disappear, and I debated whether it was because she wouldn’t tell me… or because I wasn’t ready to hear what she would say.

We kept reading the journals, often by firelight. One night, I wasn’t able to sleep, so I read until dawn. The tears were still on my face when Effa arrived, and when she asked why, I told her about a faille. Her mate died in her arms from battle wounds that were too grave to heal. “She suffered for years, Effa. Their bond… she said she wanted to die with him.”

“She was one of the lucky ones,” Caerwen said as she sat beside Effa. “I knew her, but I was unable to ease her grief. Her mate was a dread lord, and their love had gone too deep.”

“Tell me about the dread lords, Caerwen,” I asked. “Did you know them?”

“Some of them. They were not always kind. They were the sons of the kings, and the sons of the sons. They did not fear what the old kings feared. They thought the failles were weapons to be used.”

I shuddered, and tears still haunted me, a lingering grief from the story in the journal—a last bloody battle against corrupted pigs not unlike those Grayson and I battled in a meadow. Then, in Azul.

“Some say the dread lords were driven by hate,” Caerwen said. “Others said it was ambition, a thirst for power. A faille and a dread lord fueled each other—he used the energy she syphoned—and failles were coveted for this reason. Wolves went to war over girls who had the silver streaks in their hair, by nature and not by the curse.”

“It was rare,” Effa said, “for the dread lords to find authentic failles.”

“When they did?”

Caerwen said, “The dread lord and faille became mirrors of each other, light against dark. They grew stronger and more destructive. The dread lords were known for devastation, but the faille learned to ruin just as easily. Together, they were balanced. He eased the pressure building in her. She calmed his demons. But when they were at odds, the dread lord would mis-use the faille, refuse to syphon her excess energy until she lost control and became his weapon.”

Something in the nymph’s tone made me smooth the journal and set it aside.

Caerwen continued, “What the dread lords did not understand was that the kings had a curse of their own. If a dread lord found a faille and she asked for protection… or if he offered it and she accepted… he would have no choice but to ink his sigil on her skin. Promise to protect her with his life. Give up a part of himself.”

She drew a half-circle in the sand. “But once his sigil was on her skin, he could demand her promise in return. And if he demanded protection, or if she offered the same to him and he accepted…”

Caerwen drew the other half of the circle. “She, too, would have no choice. The circle would close. Fate would lock in place, and they were forever bound. It would not matter if they loved or hated each other. This was what the King of the Forest decreed as payment for sins of the kings and the queens. That the dread lord would repair what the kings destroyed, and the failles would learn what the queens did not—compassion. And love.”

A chill ran across my skin. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because Grayson Devante is descended from the kings. And this...” Caerwen gripped my hand and brushed her fingers over the black rune on my wrist. “This is a dread lord’s sigil.”

I tried to snatch my hand back, but she held on with more strength than I expected from someone so insubstantial.

“The night you asked for the Green Man’s runes,” she said. “A wheel began to turn. He had to ink this sigil on your skin, draw the first half of the circle. Now, fate waits for you.”

“I have no sigil.”

“It will appear if he asks you for protection—or if you offer it and he accepts.” Effa’s eyes were hard upon me, but dark with concern. “You’ll have no choice.”

“You can’t know this.”

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