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I take it, and he pulls me onto the seat in front of him.

The engine coughs awake and moves forward as the water narrows and the trees fold overhead. Then a bluff rises around the stream, walls of stone hemming us in. A cave mouth opens in the rock, barely wide enough for the boat to pass.

I tense as we approach, looking back at him for confirmation that this is safe. Edwin reaches out to rest a hand on my bare thigh.

The boat slips into the darkness. Stone scrapes the hull while daylight thins behind us until it vanishes. Edwin switches on a lantern just as the passage tightens so much that we have to bend down to fit.

The air changes immediately. Cold and wet, a stark difference from the heat outside.

My breath grows shallow as memory closes in. Being stuck in that coffin. The slow unraveling of my mind.

I grab Edwin’s hand on my thigh and he gives it a comforting squeeze.

I still can’t shake the feeling we’ll be trapped in here.

Then the cave opens up.

The ceiling rises so high I don’t find its edge. The walls fall away, vast and uneven, their shapes barely suggested by the weak ring of lantern light.

Edwin cuts the motor. Water laps softly against the boat, then settles into stillness. The quiet presses so hard against my ears that my own breathing sounds too loud.

In an instant, lights bloom along the walls.

I suck in a breath as the cave ignites with color. Veins of crystal sparkle through the stone, catching the light and shattering it back in fractured brilliance. They climb the walls and streak across the ceiling, turning the cavern into something celestial beneath the earth.

Bats stir overhead, wings beating as they scatter, their chittering cries skimming the upper reaches before fading.

“Edwin,” I whisper. “It’s gorgeous.”

My jaw hangs open as I take it all in.

“The view has improved considerably.”

When I turn, he isn’t looking at the cave—he’s staring right at me. The light only grazes him enough to catch his eyes.

I have to look away. There’s too much intent in his stare. Too many feelings I can’t figure out.

“This is Hexen Hollow,” he says, breaking the tension. “They say witches came here to do their black magic. That the place holds a lot of energy.”

I believe it. The air almost hums against my skin, as though the cave itself is awake, while the stream carries its own low song through the silence.

Stories are written about places like this. A secret world stumbled upon by a lonely girl.

“It was a tourist attraction,” he adds. “Until too many tourists came around asking questions. Privacy beat the money coming in, and it was shut down.”

Every time I tear my eyes away from the beauty surrounding us, Edwin is staring at me like I’m part of it, made of the same sparkling crystal.

Then the lights cut out.

My gasp ricochets off the walls as darkness crashes down. I turn in my seat, reach blindly until I find him in front of me. I can’t see my hands. I can’t see anything.

It’s like I’ve disappeared.

The boat sways and I clutch the side when the weight shifts. Edwin sits down next to me, and I grab him as my lifeline in the dark, my hand grasping his solid thigh.

“Edwin…” I whisper, afraid to give myself away to the darkness.

“You fell from the sky, burning all the way down. Landing here to pull me from the hell I made for myself.” His fingers glide along my arm, leaving goosebumps behind. “You saved me. With your wings singed black to blend in with the rest of us heathens.”