A rushing wave crashed in the distance over his shoulder, a hollow, thunderous sound echoing through one of the largest caves I’d ever seen.
“She performed her curse of revenge on the locals right on those rocks at the top edge of the cave. I don’t believe it. You’d have to be crazy to crawl up there.”
I thought about Harris’s words. “Far crazier things have happened.”
He didn’t reply, only nodded.
“From ash to dust, from salt to sky…” I breathed aloud like a prayer.
“Wait, you said you didn’t readThe Salt Witchstory yet. How do you know the curse?”
I searched the ether of my mind, trying to find the answer. “I don’t know. I must have read it on the back of the book.”
“It’s only featured once, at the end of the story. Thereisno text on the back of that book.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“I know. So, how do you know it?”
“Maybe I skimmed one of the pages last night before I fell asleep. Maybe that’s why I had all those weird dreams.”
“What dreams? About the witch?”
“No.” I shook my head, entranced by the melodic waves playing hide-and-seek with the stone mounts the witch was said to have cast her spell on. “Have they ever found human remains in the cave?”
“What? I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“Is there a cavern at the base of the cave, or does it go on forever?”
“I don’t know, Fable. Why are you asking all these weird questions?” Harris backed away from the rising ocean tide, which was already swallowing the end of the path ahead of us.
“They’re not weird questions. I’m just asking for facts. My great-aunt disappeared from right here, and it’s as if I can feel her all around me. It’s as if she’s in the soil and the rocks, and I don’t know, I just feel compelled to find out what happened to her, once and for all.”
“Sounds like a curse.”
“No, stop. It’s just a mystery my family has never talked about. I want to breathe air into it, get to the bottom of it. Maybe she just lost her way and fell into the ocean. Maybe it’s that simple, but it doesn’t feel like it to me. Everything about this place has felt ominous and foreboding since I arrived. I want to know why.”
“Maybe it’s you,” Harris said, breaking my spell.
“Yeah.” I sighed, focusing my gaze from the cave back to him. “It’s definitely me.” I turned, coming back the way we’d come as I picked my way between the damp boulders that dotted the winding path. “I should probably go back to bed.”
“It sounds like you had a hell of a night,” Harris commented as we reached the top of the trail and Leith crested in front of our eyes.
“That’s the understatement of the century.”
“I’ll tell you the story about the witch when you’re ready, the real story the locals tell. It’s different from what’s told in that book, but you can’t have one side of the story without the other.”
Harris’s eyes held mine for long beats. My head rushed with a now-familiar pounding, the chill of the clouds that clung to Leith sending goose bumps up my spine. Harris leaned closer, one of his hands threading our fingers together, the other cupping my jawline gently before he dropped a kiss on my cheekbone. “Sleep well, Sleeping Beauty.”
I dashed my eyelids closed, letting the warmth of his lips linger on my skin as feelings of white-hot awareness tore through me. “Why did you choose that fairy tale?”
“Because it’s my favoritefable.”
Harris’s lips pressed against my own, his breath warm and inviting as my lips parted to match his own slow dance. His warmth pebbled my skin like the moment right before touching boiling water. It felt like falling under. It felt like flying. It felt like I needed catching after all.
“You make me feel alive,” were the only words in my mind.
With Harris’s breath hot against mine, our bodies brushed together and lit a fire in my veins. “Your feelings are alie.Good and evil, dark and light, exist everywhere—in everything.” His fingers brushed my temples before he dotted another, more chaste kiss on my lips. “Ineveryone.”
