“I’ve been known to try. The results are usually unfortunate.”
“That’s because your delivery needs work.” I stood on my toes to kiss him quickly, tasting concern and something softer beneath it. “But I appreciate the effort.”
He pulled me closer for just a moment, pressing his forehead to mine. Through the bond, I felt what he couldn’t say: I can’t lose you. Not when I just found you. Not like this.
“I’ll be careful,” I promised.
“You’re terrible at careful.”
“Then it’s lucky I have you to keep me from doing anything stupid.”
Something flickered across his face—grief, maybe, or guilt. Because we both knew his time to keep me safe was running out, measured in days now, not weeks.
For the next hour, I helped the others set up camp properly. Refilled everyone’s canteens from a small stream that fed into the lake—but from a safe distance, always with Kaelren watching. The water from the streamwas cold and tasted of minerals and something green, like drinking the essence of the forest itself.
“At least eat something,” Vashael insisted, pressing dried fruit and something that might have been jerky into my hands. “You barely touched breakfast.”
The food tasted like nothing, my appetite gone since we’d left the Thornwood, but I forced it down anyway. Everyone was trying so hard to act normal, like this was just another day on the run, not the prelude to something terrible.
“I need to…” I gestured vaguely toward the tree line, the universal signal for bathroom needs.
“Take Peeble,” Kaelren said immediately.
“I don’t need a bathroom buddy,” I protested. “I’m twenty-nine years old.”
“Take Peeble,” he repeated, and there was no room for argument in his tone.
“Oh joy, I get to be the pee guardian,” Peeble complained but landed on my shoulder anyway. “The glamorous life of a cosmic beetle.”
I walked into the trees, found a suitable spot, and took care of business while Peeble politely faced the other direction, humming something off-key and vaguely rhythmic.
“Are you making that up or is that an actual song?” I asked as I finished.
“Does it matter? I’m a beetle with excellent taste.”
On the way back to camp, I took a slightly different path—not intentionally, but the trees seemed to have shifted while I wasn’t looking. Or maybe I was just disoriented. The forest did that sometimes, rearranged itself when you weren’t paying attention.
That’s when I saw it again—the lake, but from a different angle. This side was hidden from the camp by a thick stand of willows whose branches trailed in the water like fingers. The surface here was even more still, even more perfect.
And in the reflection, I saw her.
“Jo?” The name escaped before I could stop it.
My grandmother stood in the water’s reflection, young and beautiful, wearing a crown of roses that bloomed and died and bloomed again. She was pressing her hand against the surface from below, her mouth moving urgently, and this time I could almost hear her—
“Elle, don’t—” Peeble started, but I was already moving.
The closer I got, the clearer she became. Not just clear—actively luminous, as if lit from below by something that had never known the sun. The surface tension looked wrong too, more like mercury than water, holding its shape with an unnatural perfection.
My reflection stared back at me, but it was wrong in ways that made my skin crawl. My marks glowed brighter in the reflection than they did on my actual skin, pulsing with a rhythm that didn’t match my heartbeat. My eyes held knowledge I didn’t possess, older and sadder than they should be. And there was something about my expression—a resignation that didn’t belong on my face.
Then the surface rippled, though no wind touched it. The ripples moved in perfect concentric circles, originating from nowhere and everywhere at once.
The reflection changed.
Not me anymore—or not just me. I saw the Hunt behind my reflected self, tall figures in armor curated from my worst nightmare, their edges blurring where they met regular air. They stood motionless, patient, waiting with the terrible patience of predators who knew their prey had nowhere to run. Their mounts stamped feet that might have been hooves or claws or something worse.
But that wasn’t what made my breath catch, what made my heart stutter in my chest.
