Page 25 of The Girl in the Forest

That evening, I carried a blanket outside and curled in an Adirondack chair, watching, minute by minute, as the sun sank behind distant mountains. The dusk moved in with imperfect yet indescribably beautiful shades of pink, orange, lavender. Then the symphony of blues followed until a mere thread of light remained. There were no croaking frogs—the mating season was long past. The chirping in the shrubs came from the crickets. Stars blinked on, one by one. I searched for familiar constellations. Picked them out in the late summer sky. Wondering if the ancient queens had looked at those same stars, making the same wishes I made.

And if those wishes ever came true.

My first week back in Azul followed a pattern. Hattie would knock on the front door every morning, holding a basket of food. I’d invite her in. She’d decline like a clucking hen. It became our game until the awkward disappeared and she accepted my offer of coffee.

Of course, we ended up drinking tea—chamomile, Hattie’s favorite when sharing confidences. I told her about Aine. How I’d thought she was Metis. Hattie clicked her tongue in sympathy, then laughed when I told her about the curly-winged bird in Aine’s hair.

I described the magic, trying so hard to please, and Effa’s outlandish outfits.

“Oh, I wish I could have seen those dresses.” She laughed, clapping her hands while my smile wavered. I couldn’t forget about Oscar’s wolf, sleeping in the rain, and Hattie coming to find him. I’d thought he was wild and lost in the woods. Had I truly not cared? Been so absorbed in my life that I never even wondered if I knew him? If he’d been looking for me?

I felt lost without connection—like the wildflowers plucked out of the meadow. Effa’s meadow, where she’d nurtured failles over the centuries.

I missed Caerwen and her marvelous massages.

Missed the mushrooms in Grayson’s cave, and asking, “Know any good jokes, magic? No?”

During the day, when I was alone, I read the faille journals, but each night, I trained.

I ran at midnight because I wanted no one to know—to see how weak I’d become.

Fall had barely begun. The weather hadn’t changed, so the days were still warm and the nights crisp and invigorating.

I didn’t dare follow the lake circuit in case Fallon was holding night drills, but I thought the forested hills around Azul were safe enough if I kept within sight of the clustered lights. I savored the woodsy scents of pine needles and damp wood, loamy leaves and late-blooming flowers—all of it natural and not manufactured by Aine. The night birds hunting in the dark became my companions, the soft whooshing of their wings a comfort. I was not alone. I was part of their moon-lit world, where the silvered streak in my hair gleamed like polished silver and the runes on my arm glowed. But the black wolf rune remained silent, and the irritation drove me hard up an incline.

What was the point in having a dread lord sigil when it wouldn’t work? Wasn’t he supposed to be this all-powerful descendent of kings?

Then I thought maybe I hadn’t broken the wolf rune by going into Aine’s wrinkle. Maybe Grayson could turn the rune off or on, because a dread lord could reach anyone he wanted whenever he wanted.

Unless he didn’t want to.

I hated those doubts. And that I couldn’t turn them off, or forget the sound of his voice. I remembered his scent late at night. The press of his hand against my back. He was still in Carmag territory. No one would tell me anything, not that I asked, and I trained harder. Longer. Pushing myself toward exhaustion because everything felt off… as if I’d forgotten how raw my nerves would be, overloaded from energy syphoned from Oscar. Even from Leo. But I wanted to help them, and remembering how I could heal offset those nights when my thoughts swirled around how I could destroy.

Out of caution, I kept my training secret. I still could not control the syphoned energy, so I practiced. More often than not, my efforts failed. Tree branches sagged like empty hoses instead of snapping. Pebbles flopped across the ground. The closest I came to exploding anything was the bush I destroyed, although it looked close to dead, with the leaves already brown.

But as my strength returned, I challenged myself, searching for downed logs and leaping over them. I raced across moss-covered rocks, slippery in a stream, and ducked beneath low branches. Until the night when raised tree stumps blocked my path; I recognized them from the lake circuit, set in a pattern to test agility and strength, and I leapt from stump to stump without pausing.

Night after night, more barriers waited in the dark. Mud pits beneath crossed ropes. Low wooden walls. Hidden snares meant to catch my ankle before I could react.

I was euphoric. Alarmed.

I questioned whether the King of the Forest was doing it, or if I was—creating the obstacles the way I’d created things in the wrinkle. Just by thinking about them.

Perhaps it was Fallon. Or Mace, testing me. If the alphas were aware of my midnight training, they could be watching.

But as my muscles burned and my feet skidded over various surfaces, a different worry worked its way to the surface. I’d read enough testimonies to know some failles had gloried in their ability to destroy. They’d craved the power, and after the way I’d slaughtered the pig… it took mere seconds of drowning in the heat and gore and stench before I realized I was doing more than protecting Catrina.

With the boar between… beneath… on my hands, what lived inside me had snapped its tether, flared like a bright bloom feeding on the violence. I’d delighted in the flow of heat, addicted and unable to stop. I hadn’t wanted to stop, and a sharp, awful laugh caught in my throat. Caerwen said the queens were cursed to learn compassion, and in that frenzy, I’d been so far gone I hadn’t even understood the word.

I’d been the weapon Grayson said he wanted. The weapon a dread lord said he wanted, and he’d never been honest with me, not about what he was or what he expected. We’d never talked about the Gathering. About Azul. There’d only been a few days between when Grayson inked his sigil on my skin and when the carnage began—then a few minutes after the rite. Neither of us had wanted the conversation.

But now, three months had passed. We could never go back to the way we were before, not when he’d kept me in the dark about the sins of the kings. He let me believe the Green Man’s magic was benevolent when it wasn’t. What else had he lied about? Hadn’t he told Leo to fake his own death, to lure me back? And when that hadn’t worked, he’d come up with the idea of a will, leaving Leo’s house to me. A spider spinning a sticky web.

But would he do that? The thoughts were hateful and not like me. I’d always been willing to trust. To believe in people. Could I be that naïve? To fall for him because he seemed… lonely? Because he could be kind, and funny, and he was sexy as hell?

I’d never fallen for a man because of his body. But I couldn’t forget the first night I saw him, standing alone in the vet clinic, bare feet, bare chest, wearing blue scrubs that hung low on his hips. His stillness had been alarming, but his isolation continued to haunt me.

I’d seen in him someone I understood. Pain beneath that monstrous beauty. Honor beneath the dark dominance that should have been terrifying.

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