Chapter 2
Chapter
Two
Irap my knuckles against the doorframe leading into the stables. “Anyone here?”
All I see are shiny coats of chestnut and grey as I take a step onto the hay scattered across the ground.
It was a sleepy morning in my corner of the woods this morning, and somehow, I found myself wandering closer to town in search of a little comfort in the form of a certain stablehand.
I’ve been restless since Hazel surprised me in the woods yesterday. My imagination continues to haunt me with different depictions of women burning in Lenthara’s town square.
The horse nearest to me snorts as I get close and moves his head over the stall door as if to greet me. I whisper a quiet hello as I run my palm down his nose.
“Is that my Everleigh?”
I walk further into the barn, bidding the horse goodbye as I fight a grin. “Since when am I your Everleigh?”
A head of shaggy brown hair pops up over a stall door, and I can’t help but smile as Silas crosses his arms. “Always,” he says simply.
“I think my brother would have killed you had you ever called me that when he was around.”
His eyes soften, and I almost regret my words, wishing I hadn’t immediately dragged the energy down, until he smiles. “Lucky I only ever said it under my breath then.”
I roll my eyes as if his words don’t make me blush from the inside out. “You’re ludicrous.”
I’ve known Silas for as long as I can remember. All of my earliest memories include him and his goofy smile.
When I was nothing more than a baby, my older brother Finnick returned home after venturing into town by himself with this scruffy kid standing next to him, and told our parents he was one of us now.
He was always like that, my brother. He saw life through a single lens, as if there was never another option than to help people who needed it, people like Silas.
There wasn’t a single bad bone in his body.
Maybe that’s why he made for such a good healer.
Maybe that’s what got him where he is now—wherever that is.
Silas was shy, quiet, and far thinner than he ought to have been. At least that’s how my mother used to tell the story. She said she never wanted a third child, but when my brother brought Silas to our front door, she couldn’t turn him away.
They were glued to each other's sides throughout my entire childhood. You would never see one of them without the other, and they were insufferable together. Two rascals, my mother used to call them, but she always did so with a grin on her face.
When I got older and pestered her enough times, she finally told me how Silas ended up with us.
His mother had simply told him to wait, that she would be back in a moment.
But he spent three days in those woods, never walking more than five steps from where she left him, yet she never came back.
He didn’t know what to do, whether to keep waiting, but then Finnick showed up, and I knew the rest of the story.
I cried a lot that day. Sad for the little boy who was left behind. Sad for the boy I knew like a brother, and what he had lost that day. I cried because I loved my brother’s heart, because I was glad that he found Silas, and in some ways rebuilt what he had lost.
I cried because I knew my parents’ love for me would prevent them from ever doing something so cruel. But how I lost them somehow felt more cruel than anything I could have imagined.
Their loss hit Silas just as hard as Finnick and me, if not more. They were the people who gave him a chance, who gave him a life. A family.
And then we lost Finnick.
“Ludicrous, huh?” Silas’s voice drags me out of my miserable memories. He starts to say something else only to be interrupted as the head of a white horse appears in front of him, causing him to stumble back in the stall.
He’s the town's only stabler, yet somehow he is so unaware of the fact that he’s surrounded by enormous creatures that could trample him at any given moment.
He got a job here when he was only fifteen after the head stabler took pity on him. The older man had hoped the job would give Silas something to do other than harassing him like he had been.
When he passed away a few years ago, Silas took on the role of head stabler. Now at five and twenty, most of the citizens of Sylvan take him seriously in his work. Some of the older folk, however, still see him as the grubby little kid who used to run around causing trouble with Finnick.
“Hello, beautiful,” I say, unable to hold back from giving the horse a rub on the nose. “What’s your name?”
Silas ducks under the horse's neck, coming back into view. “This is Merlin.”
I cut him a sideways glare. “Who in the gods’ names is naming their horse Merlin in this current environment?”
“Someone with a sense of humour.” He shrugs.
“That’s not funny, Silas,” I scold. “This stuff is getting closer and closer to Sylvan; it’s not something far away anymore.”
“I know,” he admits, and his eyes turn serious. “I’m sorry, Evie, I just—” he stutters. “I’m trying to eliminate some of the heaviness. It’s like this entire town is under a rain cloud right now; everyone is slightly on edge.” He unhooks the latch, slipping out of the small space.
“For good reason,” I add.
Merlin snorts in front of me as if in agreement.
I spread my hands over his coat, letting him feel the love my hands carry on their path down his neck.
His dark eyes lock with mine, and I don’t look away.
I feel like he’s sharing his life’s worth of wisdom with me in one look. I just don’t know how to decipher it.
“You want to take him for a ride?”
I drag my eyes away from Merlin’s to look over at where Silas is leaning against a beam with his arms crossed. “Really?”
He nods. “He hasn’t had his exercise for the day yet. I can keep you company on the ride back to yours…if you want?”
I smile. “Please.”
His face breaks into a wide grin. “Saddle up.”
I can’t help but laugh as the wind whips my hair behind me as I ride through the forest.
I grip Merlin’s mane alongside the leather reins, not wanting to chance falling off of his strong back as we race past the trees in the direction of my cabin. I can hear Silas whooping from behind me, and I look back to see him grinning from ear to ear as he looks straight back at me.
He kicks the belly of his chestnut mare, driving her faster towards us.
I turn my attention back in front of me to see what’s ahead, just in time to realize an enormous tree branch is hanging in my path.
I squeal as I duck, and the leaves graze the top of my head before I’m up again.
I look back to see Silas performing the same manoeuvre to avoid being thrown off his horse.
But his body is denser than mine, meaning the branch scrapes over his back and I see him wince when he comes upright once again.
“Are you all right?” I yell out, pulling on the reins, but Merlin is not in the mood to slow down. Silas just nods before pointing to where my cabin is fast approaching.
“Woah,” I rub a hand across Merlin’s neck, soothing him as I pull on the reins with a firmer grip, willing him to slow down as I steer him towards my place. “Woah, boy.”
His head jerks in protest, but eventually he slows, trotting towards where my cabin sits by itself in the clearing.
It’s shining today—a rarity—-as the sun beams through the trees, warming up the wooden logs that make up my small house, and the even smaller apothecary built right beside it.
I give Merlin some rubs along his neck before I jump off his back and tie a long lead up to my veranda railing so he can have space to move.
Silas rides up beside me, performing the same ritual before he brushes his hands off on the front of his pants.
His hair is even scruffier than usual, and he’s got bits of tree all over him. I chuckle as I walk up to him. “You look just like you used to when you’re like this,” I say, plucking twigs from the front of his shirt, already grubby from his work.
His calloused hand reaches up, picking a leaf from my hair and dropping it into my open palm. I look down and see a delicate ladybug tiptoeing across the leaf’s surface.
Silas’s hand comes into view once more, his fingers tucking my hair behind my ear.
“You look nothing like you used to.” His tone makes my breath hitch before I raise my gaze to meet his warm brown eyes.
They remind me of the forest floor in autumn, the colour of the leaves burning against the dark soil.
“But in some ways, you’re exactly the same.
” His gaze drops to the insect now crawling over the skin on my palm.
My heart takes a second to stop racing now that his eyes aren’t fixed on mine.
I’ve always had butterflies around Silas, even when we were kids.
I’d do anything for his attention, often finding myself on the receiving end of his and Finnick’s jests and mischief as a result, but if Silas was smiling at me, I didn’t mind it so much.
A breeze rushes through the trees, carrying the scent of Silas with it, and it’s simply intoxicating. He smells of horses, hay, and of something smoky. He smells like my childhood, and something about it is utterly comforting.
As we’ve gotten older, my feelings for him have done nothing but intensify. What used to be a young crush is now something more—a longing. Something that sits deep in my chest, hiding behind my heart, almost using it as a shield.
“Let’s go inside,” he says, breaking the charged silence between us.
I nod, and he follows close behind me as I step up the few stairs onto my small veranda and open the door to my cabin. Silas settles on the lounge as I put a pot on to brew in the small kitchen.