“Yes.” My heart shatters, and I tremble. I can’t stop trembling. “That is what I want.”
“Then come to me.”
Tears burn my eyes. Mentioning the library to Arion was foolish. I don’t want to see the trees, the woodsy shore, the saltwater cattails and lilies and the stalls Jacin pulled me to along the way. I don’t want to remember his laughter, or how quickly it all fell apart.
Pulling my legs into my chest, I sneak another glance outside. The timber wall beckons with emerald firs lining the road, and the silvered cord sways in the new, cool wintry breeze. It’s all exactly the same. It’s all so painfully different. I shut my eyes before I can see anything else. I need to focus. Banish the memories and fears and regrets. If a single bad thought creeps in once we enter the isle, I’ll be ensuring our death in the exact spot I ensured Jacin’s damnation so long ago.
The sorcerer already ruined my life once.
I can’t let him do it again.
As we disembark from the carriage and step onto the Greenwood Isles’ damp soil, I plaster an intense smile on my face, forcing my eyes wide and merry. Unfortunately, the isle looks exactly as it did eight years ago, as if I’ve unburied a time capsule and am now living inside the remains of a past I’ve tried so hard to forget. To my left—a fisherman’s shack Jacin dragged me inside to rip off my short black wig and kiss me senseless. Up ahead—a marketplace carved from the hollow of a dozen massive willow trees where Jacin and I bargained for fruit with loose buttons and pocket lint. And behind me, away from the port, on the sharpest edge of the isle, just inches from the sea—the place where a dryad uprooted and killed him. Dark, twisted thoughts skitter through the shallows of my mind, but I push them away, every single one, and smile even wider. Harder.
Arion glances at me with a startled curse. “What in Mortem’s name are you doing? You look ridiculous.”
I turn slowly, baring my teeth at him in the kindest way I can muster. “Thinkhappythoughts, warlock.” I want so badly to add,if you have any—but it doesn’t matter that I stop myself. The enchantments hear it regardless. The canopy of emerald above us shifts, just slightly, but enough that they point arrows of sharp branches at my head. A warning. A threat.
I swallow.
Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy thoughts.
Arion manages a small grin, appearing almost pained by the action. “Lovely day today,” he lies through his teeth.
I nod. “Just lovely.”
I stifle the pain in my chest, inhaling through the haunted memories.Eight years ago.I was a different person then. I was a child. And now—even as I smile, as I laugh and play pretend for the isle’s sake, I’m just a ghost. Jacin would hate who I’ve become.
I would hate who I’ve become.
That thought wrecks me more than any other, and my knees nearly buckle right there, on the leaf-strewn street of the marketplace. Arion reaches out to catch me, already breaking my number one rule, but I leap away from him and smack into the rough bark of a tree.
“What is it?” His gaze darts upward, his wings spreading wide to shield us from the eyes of our many onlookers. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t… mythoughts…” I manage through shallow breaths.
I can’t stop picturing Jacin’s bloody corpse. Can’t stop imagining what would have happened if I’d attacked the dryad first. If I’d clawed through this place and ripped it apart.
And with that, the tree at my backmoves. Slender willow branches tangle around my wrists and twist. I hiss at the sudden burn, struggling to break away. Arion steps closer, and the branches start to tangle around his ankles too. His gaze darkens. “Happythoughts, Zephyra,” he commands.
But I can’t. I c-can’t…
A branch curls around my neck like a noose.
Shit shit shit.
“Oh, petunias. Knock that off, Cheshire.”
A strange, lilting accent sounds from behind Arion’s wings, and he just manages to twist away in time for a pale, stubby man towaddle up to the tree and smack it with a lavender umbrella. “Bad. Bad.” He smacks it thrice more with a sigh before plucking a razor blade from his plaid pocket and aiming it at—at me.
Fuck.
I squirm, fighting the branches cutting into my skin, conjuring any happy thought that has ever crossed my mind.Seahorses wearing rouge. Blowfish trombones. The sorcerer gutted and flayed.
The branches loosen then, but it doesn’t matter. The man leverages that razor at me and—and slices easily through the leafy ropes.
He grins at my expression. “Cheshire is a newborn dryad. She is more sensitive to negative thoughts than the rest. Forgive her; she’s still learning.” He whacks the trunk with his palm, and the tree emits a rustling giggle. I gape between them, unsure what to say, but he spares me from responding when he asks, “You are from out of town, yes?”
Arion pulls limp branches from my neck, my wrists, as the man beams at us, exchanging the razor blade for a monocle and pressing it to his left eye with an absurdly cartoonish gasp. “Oh my! Have you two—have you beenmarooned? You look as if a whale swallowed you whole and spat you out on our shore.” He twirls his thick white mustache and winces upon glimpsing Arion’s excruciatingly bare chest. “No shirt! No shirt in the isles? That won’t do. That just won’t do. Youmustcome with me. Now. Now!”
