She followed Freya into the warm amber light of the apothecary, but she couldn't shake the feeling that whatever was wrong with the land wasn't going to wait.
2
CORIN
Corin pulled his truck to a stop at the very edge of the orchard, engine ticking in the silence as he studied the rows of bare apple trees stretching toward the gray horizon. Frost clung to every branch, every fence post, turning the world into something brittle and crystalline. Beautiful, if you didn't know what that kind of cold could do to a hive.
He grabbed his smoker and veil from the passenger seat and headed for the apiaries.
The Vane family had kept bees for four generations. His grandfather had built the first hives. His father had expanded them. Corin had inherited them five years ago, along with the orchard and the quiet understanding that some people were meant to tend things rather than lead them.
He didn't mind. Tending suited him.
The first hive looked fine from the outside with its white-painted wood dusted with frost, the entrance reducer was in place, no signs of moisture damage. Corin lit the smoker, let it build to a steady stream, and eased off the outer cover.
"Morning, ladies."
The bees barely stirred.
That was wrong.
Even in winter, even in cold this sharp, there should have been movement at the top of the frames. A cluster of bodies generating heat, protecting the queen, keeping the colony alive through sheer collective will. Instead, he found them sluggish, scattered, some crawling in confused circles on the inner cover like they'd forgotten what they were supposed to be doing.
This was wrong.
He worked through the hive methodically, checking frames, looking for signs of disease or mites or starvation. Nothing obvious. Plenty of honey stores. No foulbrood smell, no deformed wings. Just bees that seemed... lost.
"What's going on with you?"
He sealed the hive and moved to the next. Same story. And the next. By the fourth hive, his jaw had set into a hard line and his bear was restless in a way it hadn't been in months.
Something was wrong. Something he couldn't see or smell or fix with smoke and sugar water.
Corin stripped off his gloves and crouched beside the last hive, pressing his bare palm to the frozen ground. The earth should have felt dormant, as though it were sleeping, waiting for spring. Instead, it felt dead. Sour, the way he'd described it to Freya and Chloe that morning.
The thought of Chloe lingered before he could stop it. Her pale blonde hair escaping in pieces, dirt under her fingernails, that furrow between her brows as she'd studied her failing herbs. She'd felt it too. He'd seen it in the way she'd touched the soil. Not just checking temperature, but listening. The same way he listened to his bees.
She had good hands. Careful hands. He'd noticed them the first time she'd wandered out to the orchard last spring, curious about the hives, asking questions most people never thought to ask. She'd wanted to know how the bees communicated. Whatthe different dances meant. Whether they recognized him when he came to check on them.
He couldn’t seem to help but answer in more detail than he usually would have.
That should have been his first warning.
"Why the pouting?"
Corin straightened. His cousin Finn stood at the very edge of the apiary, hands shoved in his jacket pockets, breath clouding around his grin. Youngest of the Vane brothers, built leaner than the rest of them, with the same dark hair but none of Corin's patience. Finn ran the equipment side of Vane Construction. Deliveries, mostly.
"I'm checking hives."
"You're crouching in the dirt, staring at nothing. That's pouting." Finn wandered closer, eyeing the hives with the casual disinterest of someone who'd been stung too many times as a kid. "Dad sent me to grab the post driver. Said you borrowed it last week."
"Shed. South wall."
"Cool." Finn didn't move. "So what's wrong with them?"
"Don't know yet."
"But something is."
