Chapter 12
Chapter
Twelve
Istand on shaky legs as I press myself up off the lounge, my swollen eyes squinting against the morning light through my kitchen window.
I groan as I stand, my feet numb from the cold air floating up between the floorboards. When I look out the window through bleary eyes, I see the shine of the morning dew sitting atop flower petals and fallen leaves.
The spring equinox is coming, but I feel far from any kind of celebratory mood, not after what happened yesterday.
An owl coos from out in the forest, its call echoing through the trees like a warning, and it chills me to my bones.
“Morning.” I jump when Silas speaks from his spot at the table.
“Gods, I didn’t see you there,” I breathe.
He stands immediately and makes his way towards me. “Sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“No, I know,” I say as he drags me into an embrace. I sink into him.
Silas rode us straight here last night, bringing me to the one place I felt safe enough to collapse on the stairs and weep until the wood beneath me was stained with my tears.
Silas just picked me up, not letting go of me as he opened the door and closed it behind us, not as he shut all the windows. Not until he laid me down on the couch, where I stayed all night, hugging my knees, until sleep found me hours into the night.
“Please stay,” I had asked him, not wanting to feel alone on top of all the feelings swirling around in my gut. He stroked my hair as I lay there, tears falling down my cheeks until I had exhausted my body of all liquids. Until I fell asleep on the wet pillow beneath my cheek.
“Did you sleep?” I ask against his chest.
He just mumbles a noise that suggests he didn’t get a wink of slumber all night. My eyes catch on the steaming cup of mint tea sitting on the kitchen top.
“Aren’t you exhausted?”
He just holds me tighter. “Every time I closed my eyes, I saw...all of it.”
I nuzzle my head into his chest. “I can barely fathom that was our reality. It felt like all of the stories we have heard. But hearing about it and seeing it…” I shake my head.
“I know,” Silas says, placing a palm over the back of my head.
In all of this, the one place I feel safe is in this man’s arms. Anything could be going on out there, outside of this embrace, but here I would be safe. I would be protected.
“I need to go to work,” he whispers.
I pull out of his arms. “I am coming with you.”
I brush down my skirts, trying to make it look as if I didn’t spend the night crumpled on the couch in them. But then I think I should burn them. Every time I look at these fabrics, I’ll be reminded of Dahlia and Pearl’s ripped skirts. Of the blood staining them.
“No, Everleigh—” Silas starts.
“Yes, Silas,” I cut his protest short. “I must go to the Pines. I need to see Hazel. I need to see all of them.” I walk through the doors to my small bedchamber, slipping behind the wooden dressing screen to peel last night's clothes from my body before replacing them with my darkest dress.
The bodice and skirts are made of linen that is stained the colour of deep plums, with black frills adorning the square neckline that sits flush across the top of my chest.
I trade my white shift without sleeves for the black one with dark fabric that reaches all the way to my wrists and slip the dress over the top.
“We don’t know what it’s going to be like in town,” Silas yells from the kitchen.
“All the more reason we should go together,” I yell back. His lack of response speaks for him.
I reach behind my back, attempting to reach the buttons that fasten the bodice together, but no twisting of my arm can fit the small wooden circles through the loops on the other side.
“Silas?”
“Hmm?”
“Could you come here for a moment?”
The sound of his boots against the wooden floor grows louder with every step he takes towards my room. All of a sudden, my palms feel damp, and my breath becomes difficult to push from my lungs.
“Where are you?”
“Behind here,” I say. “I need you to...would you mind fastening the buttons of my dress?” Nerves tumble through my stomach as the words fall from my tongue.
Silas and I grew up together, we’ve seen each other in far less than what I am wearing now. Yet asking him to fasten my buttons in the corner of my bedchamber when we are alone feels different than that.
“Uh, I…” He stumbles over his words, and it only makes my nerves intensify.
“I tried, but I—I can’t reach. I—”
“Of course,” Silas’s voice comes out steady this time. I hear three more heavy steps before I suddenly feel his presence behind me, my heartbeat thumping in the side of my neck.
Both of us merely stand here, so close I can feel his breath skating over my neck where I can feel my erratic pulse.
His fingers find the space between the fabric, his knuckles brushing my lower back through my shift before he closes the gap with one button. The touch sends sparks up my spine.
I hold my breath as he fastens one more at an agonising pace.
It doesn’t feel as if he’s merely doing up my dress.
It feels as if he’s undoing me.
Like we are crossing an invisible boundary, one I've been toying with for longer than I care to admit.
“I like this dress on you,” he murmurs, his voice low in the quiet room. “I don’t think I’ve seen you wear this one before.”
“I bought it last year from Aurelia. I was never quite sure when to wear it. It felt too dark to wear on a bright day.”
The seamstress wouldn’t let me leave without it, telling me that I looked like a winter berry. But what made me walk out of her door with it was when she said, “It looks like something your mother would have worn.”
Silas fastens the top button, but he doesn’t step away, and I find myself aching for another whisper of his touch.
“Well, I believe you look radiant in anything that you wear.” His fingertip traces my skin along the edge of the dress, sending gooseflesh across my back and my heart pounding.
“Even my linen skirts I dirty running through the forest?” I jest.
“Even those.” I nearly choke on my gulp before I hastily turn around, landing myself inches away from Silas’s chest.
I see the way it expands and retracts at a pace perhaps even faster than my own.
See the way his hands are curled into fists at his side, almost as if he dared to let them go, they would be on my skin again.
I am not certain what I would do. Or maybe I am, and I'm just afraid of what he would think if I latched onto him and never let go.
“Shall we?” I say, the words coming out breathier than I had intended.
He only nods, his posture tight as he steps aside. “Ladies first.”
I exhale a deep breath as I move past him, chiding myself for letting my mind wander. I know Silas feels it too, the heat between us that sparks every time we touch. It is nearly impossible to ignore. But I don't know what would happen if one day we acted on it.
Silas is my person. He’s the one person who knows me down to my bones, who understands me in a way only he could because of everything we have shared—all the joy, and all the pain.
I’m not certain I want to risk damaging what we are now, even if every time we get close, my heart is screaming at me to do exactly that. To risk it all.
When I push my front door open, I see Rylan sitting on my front steps. When he hears the door, his head turns, looking over his shoulder to see me. He stands, dropping the piece of grass he had between his fingers and turns to face me. “Hi.”
He stands two steps down, yet still I’m looking up to meet his gaze. “Hi,” I breathe. I don’t know why, but I feel something like relief seeing him standing in front of me.
“Hi.” The word is sharp from Silas’s tongue behind me.
Rylan’s gaze jumps to Silas, barely acknowledging that he spoke before his eyes are back on me. “I heard what happened. I just came to see if you were all right—if you were there?”
“Yes, we were there,” Silas says from behind me. Rylan ignores him, his forest green eyes trained on mine.
“Where were you?” I ask. “I didn’t see you there—not that I was looking for you, per se, but…everyone was there.”
His brows pull together in concern. “I was out working on a gate in the fields since the early morning. I didn’t hear about it until…” His sentence fades away. He doesn’t need to finish it.
I merely nod. It feels so quiet, this moment between us, like we are speaking without words. I can see everything he’s not saying in his eyes— unease, concern, regret.
“I’m sorry,” Silas cuts through it, “but how exactly do you know where Everleigh lives?”
My mind plays the image of Rylan outside my window some nights ago. I am still unsure how he found me in the first place, but if Silas found out that he was watching me through my window…Rylan better be quick on his feet.
My worried eyes cut to his, and I see that gleam in the dark forest. “Me and Rosie here had tea some days ago.”
“You and Rosie?” Rylan’s nickname for me sounds sour on Silas’s tongue.
Rylan just leans up against the stair railing, a raise of his brows his only answer.
“You had tea?” This time Silas’s question is directed at me, his frame coming to stand beside me so he can see my face.
My eyes flick back to Rylan—for what, I’m not sure, but all I see are those eyes taking their time moving down my body, glancing over the curve of my hips where my dress flares out and suddenly, I feel extremely warm.
I turn back to where Silas is looking down at me for an answer with his eyes narrowed in an expression I can’t pinpoint. “Yes, tea,” is all I manage.
Silas’s face contorts into confusion. “Why?”
“She makes such a nice cup, doesn’t she?” Rylan cuts in and based on the taunting tone of his voice, I know he is taking far too much pleasure in this lie he has dragged me into. “What was it?” He scratches his eyebrow in faux thought. “Mint tea, right, Rosie?”