“I thought the forest wasn’t safe,” I say slowly. “After the convoy attack, Monroe said nobody should go in without security.”
“Not the eastern stretch, no,” she agrees. “But the path to the cove goes north. Completely different patrol zone. It’s fine, Sienna. You just need to know which way to go.” She sets her milk down and uses a finger on the counter to trace an invisible map. “Out the kitchen garden door. Down past the old pump house. There’s a deer track that runs along the stone wall; follow it until the wall ends. Then, you cut left at the three-trunked birch. The track picks up again on the other side and goes straight to the cove. Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty.”
I watch her finger move across the counter.
“I’ll take you,” she repeats. “I can’t tonight, but maybe the next time the sky is clear. It’d do you good, honestly. It’s the kind of thing you need to see when you’re having a hard time.”
I feel one side of my upper lip twitch. “When you’re having a hard time.” Said so softly. Said by the woman currently wearing his ring.
I smile to conceal the twitch. “That’s really kind of you,” I say, and it comes out perfectly even. “Let’s see if we can do that. Thanks, Lydia.”
“Of course.” Her smile does not dim.
She picks up her glass and glides out of the pantry. I hold the door ajar and watch as she heads down the corridor and then up the far stairs.
I stand here for a moment or two with my glass of water and make up my mind.
I am never going to go with her. I am never going to go with anyone. But a glowing cove? In the dark, with no human voices anywhere near it? I need that. I need to stand beside something beautiful for an hour and feel anything at all besides nothingness.
I’ll go alone.
I head upstairs and change into warm, comfortable clothes. It is eleven o’clock by the time I head out, carrying a backpack to stuff everything in if I want to shift and run.
The moon is high and full, and the sky is full of stars, exactly as clear as Lydia said it would be. I decide to walk.
I find the pump house more easily than I expected. The stone is dark with moss, and the old wheel mount has rusted through, but it is exactly where Lydia’s finger traced it on the counter. I follow the wall from there, one hand trailing along the top of it, the stones rough and cold under my palm. The wall goes on for longer than I thought it would. I even count my steps for a while, for lack of anything else to do.
The stone wall ends at a tangle of old roots where a tree must have fallen years ago and was never properly cleared.
I look up.
The three-trunked birch is right there. Moonlight catches the pale bark and makes it glow silver, and my chest relaxes at the sight of it. I had half expected to get lost. Half expected to turn back.
I turn left instead.
The path appears in front of me, narrow and soft with old leaves. I walk toward the dark trees, and my wolf, for the first time in days, lifts her head to pay attention.
Good, I tell her silently. Come back to me.
As I go deeper into the forest, I begin to smile. This feels like an adventure. Maybe it’s a bit reckless going into the woods at this time of night, but there are patrols, so nothing bad will happen. Excitement fills me.
Just then, I hear the sound of a twig breaking, and I prick up my ears.
It’s what I don’t hear that makes my brows knit together.
The owls are gone. There’s no rustling of mice in the undergrowth. Even the tree branches have stopped their ticking. What is left is not exactly quiet. Quiet is restful. This is something pressing down and holding still and waiting.
My wolf snaps to attention so fast, it almost knocks me over.
She is not curious. She is not sniffing at the dark with any trace of the excitement I felt thirty seconds ago. She is flat against the inside of my ribs with every hair raised and her eyes fixed on something I cannot see, and she is not making a sound.
Because prey makes sounds.
The patrols run these woods in wolf form. The creatures here know their scent, have known it for generations. A Silvercrest wolf passing through would not do this. The birds would not care. The mice would not hide.
This is something the forest does not recognize.
My legs have gone cold from the knee down, and my heartbeat is very loud in my own ears. Louder still is the terrible thought arriving too late: nobody knows I am out here.
