The woods thicken around us, then open to a small clearing.
And there it is.
The tree.
It’s massive, and easily a hundred years old, with a trunk so wide it would take three people holding hands to circle it. The bark is scarred and weathered, and about ten feet up, the trunk splits into a perfect Y shape.
“Wow,” Chief breathes. “That’s some tree.”
“I told you.” Clover reaches out, her hands tracing over something carved into the bark.
C.S. + V. S.
Clover Styx and Valen Stone.
My vision blurs as my heart rate accelerates. “I remember this.” Past and present are colliding, but neither is perfectly clear. “Not all of it. I remember—” A flash of a memory, sharp and so sudden it’s blinding.
Clover giggling as I carved our initials with a butter knife I’d smuggled from a caterer after one of Terra’s parties.
“You said we’d be together forever.” Something hot scalds my cheek, and when I wipe it away, I realize it’s a tear. “And I promised I’d always protect you.”
But I didn’t protect her.
“You carved it the summer—” Clover’s voice breaks. “Everything happened.”
I step closer, running my own fingers over the carving. The wood has grown around it over the years, but it’s still there. Still visible. As if life grew lovingly around the scar, holding the pain and giving new, better life because of it.
It’s proof that we existed here, together. That we loved each other. That all the fucked-up shit we went through mattered.
“The hiding spot is up there,” Clover says, pointing to where the tree splits. “In the hollow between the branches. We’d climb up—well, you’d boost me first, then pull yourself up—and there’s a gap in the trunk. Like a natural pocket.”
“You want me to check it?” Chief offers.
I snort. Right. Like I’m going to let this seventy-year-old man climb a tree.
“I’ll do it,” I say. This is personal. This is me and Clover.
I grab the lowest branch and haul myself up, and my left foot naturally finds the hitch in the bark that acts as a step. It’sbeen fourteen years, but my body remembers this. The angle of the branches, the rough texture of the bark, the way you have to twist your torso to get by that one spot where the branches grew close together.
I reach the Y split and look down into the hollow, then push away the piece of plywood I recall stealing from the shed, hoping it would be enough to protect our belongings. But when I lift the weathered piece of wood out, the hole is empty.
Not just empty. Wrong.
I flip over the plywood, ready to replace it when I see it. Red writing.
Fourteen years too late.
“Valen?” Clover calls up. “Did you find it?”
“No, it’s gone. Someone took it.” And they left a message in its place.
“Shit,” Chief curses.
Tucking the piece of plywood under my arm, I climb down and hold out the message so they can both see it.
Clover’s face pales. “Fourteen years too late.”
No one dares look away from the message, the implications settling over us like a shroud.
