“It is.”
She studies me for a long moment. “Are we safe?”
I nod once. “For now.”
“And tomorrow?”
“I’ll keep watch.”
She exhales, like she wants to say more but thinks better of it. “Thank you. For always being around, even when you act like you don’t want to be.”
I glance past her to the cottage, to the glimmering outline of magic stitched into the roofline, faint and comforting. “This place remembers her,” I say quietly. “Your aunt.”
“Sometimes I think she’s still here.”
“She is. In pieces.”
Krista looks down at the herbs in her basket. “I don’t know what I’m doing. With any of this.”
“You’re doing enough.”
She looks up. “Do you think the Hollow is trying to figure out if it wants me here?”
“I think it already decided.”
CHAPTER 7
KRISTA
Hardin doesn’t come inside right away. He lingers at the back fence like it might ask him to stay or shove him off the land entirely. The light has gone soft, autumn golden, the kind that drips through branches and makes the whole world look like a memory you never actually lived. Mari’s inside painting with one of Delphina’s handmade brushes, humming something that might be a tune or might just be her own thoughts leaking out into sound.
I’m standing in the patchy grass, fingers still dusted with the scent of crushed sage, and I watch Hardin like I’m waiting for the sky to decide whether or not it wants to rain. He’s too still for comfort. Like a statue someone left in the woods with flannel and a pulse.
“You’ve got that look,” I say softly, not bothering to pretend I don’t notice his mood.
He lifts his gaze to mine without shifting anything else about his posture. “What look?”
“Like something’s coming and you already hate the sound of it.”
He doesn’t answer. Just walks forward a few slow steps, boots silent on the grass, then nods toward the back steps. “We should talk.”
My stomach curls a little, but I don’t let it show. I wipe my hands on my jeans and follow him up, where we both sink onto the top step. The wood is cold and a little damp beneath me, and I realize I forgot to bring a sweater. Doesn’t matter. The air is charged anyway. No use pretending otherwise.
“There’s things you don’t know about this place,” he says, voice low, like the trees might be listening.
“Things like magical tree lines and beasts that slip through cracks in the world?” I ask, tone dry but not mocking. “Because I’m starting to piece that together.”
He cuts his eyes to me, like he’s weighing how much I already understand. “You should be more afraid.”
I shake my head. “I’ve spent years scared of things I couldn’t name. My own husband’s voice in my head. The slow silence of realizing you’re not who you thought you’d be. That’s real fear. This? This is something else. This feels like stepping into a story that was already mine.”
His jaw tightens. “The Hollow isn’t just a story. It’s alive. It remembers. And it protects itself, sometimes violently.”
“And you think it brought me here.”
He nods. Once.
I sit with that for a moment. The idea that something as old and secretive as this town could reach out through time and bloodlines to pluck me and Mari out of our tired, echoing life and drop us right here, in the middle of fog and moss and warnings wrapped in flannel.
