Page 75
“I checked it before the Hunt.”
“Then someone added it after.”
“No one could have.”
Frustration claws up my throat. “You can’t know that.”
“I can.”
“How?”
He goes still. He looks like he wishes he could take back something before he’s even said it. When he finally speaks his voice is lower. “Because there hasn’t been a red ribbon used at Ward Farm since 1791.”
The chaos around me seems to recede. The screaming. The shouting. The crackle of the bonfires. All of it becomes distant beneath the sudden pounding of my heart. “What?”
I look at Malakai. He’s already watching Ezra. Waiting but he doesn’t interrupt him. He doesn’t tell him to stop.
Good.
Because I swear to God, if either of them tells me nothing one more time, I’m setting this whole fucking cornfield on fire. Although apparently the ground might fight back. “What happened in 1791?”
Ezra’s jaw tightens but Malakai answers. “The last Harvest Bride.”
I look at him. The kiss flashes through my head. His mouth. His hand in my hair. The ground moving beneath us. The blood. Bride. Hundreds of voices saying it. I step away from him. “Don’t.”
His expression changes. “Don’t what?”
“Talk to me like that right now.”
“Like what?”
“Like any of this is fucking normal.”
“It isn’t.”
“Then explain it!”
A scream cuts through the chaos behind us. We both turn. One thick vine has coiled around the leg of a picnic table. Not a person. The fucking table.
Wood scrapes violently across the ground as it drags the entire thing sideways, sending drinks and plates crashing into the dirt. People scatter, stumbling over another to get out of the path.
Ezra swears under his breath. “Barn. Now.”
“I’m not going anywhere until Rhett comes back with my friends.”
“He’ll bring them to the barn.”
I turn on him. “And how the fuck do I know that?”
Ezra doesn’t hesitate. “Because I trust him.”
The answer stops me.
No riddles. No bullshit. No not now or you need to leave.
Just certainty and somehow, coming from a man who hasn’t given me a straight answer all fucking night, that carries more weight than it should.
I search the crowd again, desperate for any glimpses of Mariah or Ali.
