He hesitated a long moment before answering. “No.”
“Not even from the one Haldis sewed up?”
His brows drew together as if the question had brought up something unpleasant in his mind.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry,” she said, apologetically.
“No, it’s alright. The wound on my side is completely healed. There is no scar.”
Oriana didn’t know what to say to that. She had seen the cut; it was one that would have unquestionably left a scar.
“I think I’ve found some promising texts,” Garren changed the subject.
“These date back nearly seven centuries.” He flipped to the page in the text he had been saving with his finger and pointed to a small section. “Here, it says that the forest was once sparse, that it didn’t even reach to the White Giants in the north or to the Storm Sea in the east, but one day it grew out of nothing. It became thick, reaching across the continent from east to west.”
Oriana shifted uneasily on her stool. “Strange,” she muttered, opening Garren’s book of demons once more, looking intently at the pages, concealing any reaction her face might give to indicate she knew more about the forest than she was letting on.
“Very strange,” he accented, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest, obviously trying to mull things over in his head. “If this text is to be believed, it seems there is some great mystery to the forest. I remember it feeling odd as I was making my way through it, as if it didn’t quite belong.” Oriana almost snorted. It most definitely didn’t belong. “Will you help me search further? Take these texts and I’ll look through these others.”
Garren lifted a small stack of books from the table when a bizarre shriek suddenly escaped from him. His eyes widened, and he began violently smacking the books hard onto the table, over and over again, trapped in some sort of frenzy.
“Garren!” Oriana yelled, leaping from her stool. “What in the name of the Gods are you doing? You’re going to ruin the texts.”
His chest heaved with large, panicked breaths. “There was a spider.”
Oriana just stared at him, blinking, her jaw hanging open. “A…a spider?”
“I hate spiders,” he huffed, backing away from the table, eyes still wide.
“You’re telling me that you have gone up against all the creatures in this book.” She waved the journal at him. “Defeated each one, and you are afraid of a tiny little spider?”
“It wasn’t tiny. Did you see that thing? It was practically the size of my hand.” A shiver shook through his entire body as he sat back down. “They're unnatural. Little abominations.”
Oriana simply shook her head. “You are a very peculiar man.”
Garren ignored her comment, pushing the stack of books across the table to her. “I wonder if there is some sort of connection between the forest and the White Demon?”
Shit. Oriana’s amused smirk dropped from her face. This man was much too clever. It was unsettling. She needed to do something. She needed somehow to deter him from his interest in the Phantom Wood.
A thought occurred to her in that moment, something that frightened her far more than the fact that he sensed the oddity of the forest. Garren had seen her in her natural state the night he had discovered her sanctuary. If these texts described the legendary White Demon, as the townspeople called her, in any great detail, he might discover more than she wanted him to. He might piece together that the demon and the woman he met that night were one and the same.
If he discovered that, he would venture into the forest and attempt to find the woman. She didn’t want him going back into that forest for any reason, especially on the full moon. If he suspected that there was some connection between the woman he saw that night and her dark monstrous self, he would begin to pry and wouldn’t leave until he found answers, until he uncovered her secret.
It was unlikely, but she’d known him for three days and could already tell that he was no fool. Most of the time, at least. She shook her head again at his irrational, outrageous fear of spiders. No, she couldn’t take any chances, no matter how slim they might be.
With only a few more weeks until the next full moon, she needed to get rid of any texts that might describe her. And more than anything, she needed to keep him away from the forest. If the legend was vague–if it didn’t lead him anywhere–maybe he would leave.
“Okay,” she agreed. “I’ll help you.”
13
Garren
4th day of the Eleventh Month, 1774
Oriana had fallen asleep, her head resting peacefully upon the opened tome in front of her. He tried not to stare as her breasts rose and fell in a steady rhythm.
He couldn’t quite place it, but at certain moments, such as this very instant, Oriana seemed more radiant, looking absolutely divine, as if she were the most beautiful creature he had ever laid his eyes upon. It left him breathless and slightly weak at the knees, like nothing he had felt before. They were subtle moments where he again wondered how he could have ever called her ordinary, but in one slight movement–a change of the light, a trick of the eye–her features would transform again, back into the plain, ordinary girl she was when they first met. It was almost as if she were two different people.
