“I told you I would be.” She sets aside her work, a small bundle of herbs tied with twine, and comes to sit beside me. “How do you feel?”
I take inventory. The bone-deep ache has receded, but in its place is a hollow emptiness where my magic should be. I reach for it instinctively, trying to call water to my fingertips, but there’s nothing. Just the echo of what once was.
“Broken,” I admit, my voice small.
She takes my hand, turning it palm up. Traces the lines there with a gentle finger. “Not broken. Changed.”
“She took everything.” The words taste bitter. “My magic, my sight. My. . .” I can’t finish, my hand drifting to my flat stomach.
“Not everything.” My mother’s voice is firm, her eyes steady on mine. “You’re still here, Esmeralda. Still fighting. Still my daughter. Magic doesn’t make you who you are. You are more, Little Fish. So much more.”
“Then what does?” I ask, the question barely audible.
Her smile is soft, a little sad. “That’s for you to discover now.”
CHAPTER TWO
SAM
The trees are moving. It’s as if they’ve sprouted legs and shifted just to play tricks on me.
I pause in the middle of the clearing, eyes tracking the moss-covered trunks that weren’t there a minute ago. I swear they weren’t. The ancient bark seems to shimmer in my peripheral vision, and when I turn my head to focus, they’ve settled back into stillness, as if they were never moving at all. A sharp wind rustles the canopy above, sending leaves cascading down like whispered warnings, and for a moment I feel like the entire forest is watching me breathe. Studying the rhythm of my chest, cataloging the scent of my uncertainty.
Vanir is unlike anything I’ve ever known. Okay, so the Mortal Realm is all I’ve ever known besides the Underworld, but still, there’s definitely some crazy shit going on here. The air is thick with magic, buzzing just beneath the surface of the earth like a live wire waiting to spark. It hums beneath my feet, a constant vibration that travels up through my bones and slithers up my spine. The deeper I venture into these woods, the more I feel like I’m trespassing on sacred ground. My curiosity is being observed, every step measured and weighed against someancient standard. Possibly even judged by forces I can’t see or comprehend. I wouldn’t be surprised if the trees themselves whispered their displeasure in languages older than mortal memory.
The very air tastes different here, sweet with nectar from flowers that bloom in impossible colors, sharp with the metallic tang of old magic, heavy with secrets that make my teeth ache. Even my enhanced senses, usually so reliable, feel dull and confused in this place. Scents shift mid-breath, sounds echo from directions that don’t exist, and shadows fall at angles that defy the sun’s position overhead.
I move in place, my boots sinking into the moss-soft ground as my wolf paces just beneath the surface of my skin. He doesn’t like it here. He’s unsettled, on edge, ears pricked for sounds that don’t belong to any world we’ve known. The rustling isn’t just the wind, there’s intention behind it, intelligence. The shadows aren’t just shade, they move with purpose, reaching toward me with tendrils of darkness that retreat the moment I focus on them.
There are creatures here, some that slither through the undergrowth with scales that catch light like scattered gems, some that fly overhead on wings too large and strange to belong to any bird, some that simply appear in the corner of your vision like a bad dream made manifest. I’ve caught glimpses over the past few days. Shapes that don’t make sense, part animal, part something else entirely. Eyes that reflect no light but seem to glow from within. Cries that don’t belong to any mortal thing, haunting melodies that make my chest tight with longing for places I’ve never been.
The forest floor beneath my feet pulses with its own heartbeat, and more than once I’ve felt the ground shift subtly, as if the earth itself is breathing. Flowers turn to follow my passage, their petals opening and closing in sync withmovements I can’t predict. Even the streams here flow uphill when they choose to, defying every natural law I thought I understood.
If it weren’t for my heightened senses, I’d be hopelessly lost. Even now, I keep catching the scent of bark and stone and wild things, only for them to shift mid-breath into something completely different, honey and starlight, copper and rain. My internal compass is faulty. The magnetic pull that usually guides wolves home spins uselessly, pointing to everywhere and nowhere at once. Everything about it is off. Unnatural. Alive in ways I can’t begin to explain. Ugh!
This forest is sentient, and it doesn’t want me here. I can feel its disapproval like a weight on my shoulders, pressing down with each step I take deeper into its domain.
I shake off the chill crawling up my neck, turning back toward the direction of the cottage. Cashira’s home. The one constant in this shifting maze of magic and mystery. I haven’t gone far, just needed to run, to shift and burn some of the restless energy before it swallowed me whole. The wolf in me has been caged too long, cooped up in that small room while Esme lay unconscious, and the need for movement, for the stretch of muscle and the burn of exertion, had become almost unbearable.
It’s the only thing that calms my wolf when everything else feels wrong. When he’s overwhelmed by magic he can’t understand, by a realm that doesn’t acknowledge his existence, he needs open space, movement, something physical to ground him. Even in wolf form, though, I have to keep close to the cottage. If I stray too far from Cashira’s protective wards, the trees change again, the trail disappears, and suddenly I’m somewhere I shouldn’t be. Standing at the edge of a cliff that wasn’t there moments before, or facing down a clearing filled with flowers that sing in voices too beautiful and terrible to bear.
“Kasamere can be unforgiving. This forest is cunning. So, stay within my protective wards or you may find yourself lost or much worse.” Cashira had warned me on my first venture outside the cottage.
“You make it seem as if the forest is alive,” I said in disbelief.
She looked at me, seriously, without an ounce of playfulness. “It is.”
Taking her warning to heart, I’m grateful now that I marked the boundary with my scent during my first tentative explorations. The familiar markers of my own presence are the only reliable navigation points in this place. Otherwise, I might’ve never found my way back to the one person who matters more than my own discomfort.
Still, the forest watches. Even as I retrace my steps, even as I follow the fading trail of my own scent markers back toward safety.
I feel it even now, more intensely than before. The press of invisible eyes, tracking my every move with the patience of something that has all the time in the world. My skin prickles with awareness as I glance over my shoulder, sensing something or someone lurking just beyond the trees. The sensation is so strong I can almost hear breathing that isn’t my own, almost feel the weight of a gaze that sees too much.
The shadows flicker and shift, and a growl crawls up my throat unbidden, low in my chest. My wolf’s hackles rise, every instinct screaming that we’re being hunted by something far more dangerous than any predator from the Mortal Realm.
When I search again, turning fully to scan the tree line, there’s nothing. Just branches and bark, their surfaces are innocent and still. Leaves fluttering like whispered laughter, as if the forest is amused by my paranoia. The feeling doesn’t fade, though. If anything, it intensifies, that certainty that I’m being watched growing stronger with each passing second.
I don’t know if it’s the forest itself, some vast intelligence woven into root and branch, or something in it. Some creature that calls these woods home and finds my presence an unwelcome intrusion.
