Chapter Eighteen
Secrets Never Stay Hidden
Miles
The diary sits heavy on my lap, and I’m afraid to touch it. Not because I wouldn’t do anything for Bellamy, but more because once something is learned, there’s no undoing it. Whatever I’m about to discover here will change everything.
Elora had guided me to a back corner of her shop, full of crystals, overstuffed chairs of all colors and patterns, along with a few jars of things I didn’t want to know what.
“You should stay here and read. I have a feeling if everything goes accordingly then I’ll have an answer you seek,” she had said before she spun out of the room like a willow wisp.
That was twenty minutes ago. Yet, I’m still sitting here trying to build up the courage to flip behind the ownership page.
I know there are going to be pages I probably won’t care to read, but I’m hoping to find the answers we need. The paper is thick, with a texture unlike any paper I’ve come across. You can almost feel as though you are sitting in front of a roaring hearth as you spill your heart into it.
Flipping the page, I flip past entries about herbs Ivora tried and meeting her husband. There are pages full of love notes to him, and then pages about building their cabin in the woods.
But this one, this one stops me in my tracks.
January 3, 1665
They are hunting us like hogs. We’ve hidden in our cabin for days, but the stores are low, and eventually Elias will need to go out for food. I hear the dogs in the distance at night—always closer. They say they can smell the witch’s mark on the wind.
Milo curls at my feet, warm despite the frost creeping through the floorboards. He lifts his head when the howls carry, ears pricked as if he, too, is listening for the sound of boots in the snow. The ward still holds… but for how much longer?
Whoa. That had to be terrifying to live through.
I can’t imagine locking myself into my cabin in fear of being hunted and killed.
Pulling out my phone, I quickly search the year and stumble upon what I expected — the mid-1600s witch trials.
Not Salem yet — that storm wouldn’t hit until 1692 — but the colonies were already accusing, trying, and hanging people for witchcraft.
From my understanding, most of the people who perished weren’t even witches — just neighbors someone held a grudge against, or people who owned land someone else wanted.
Flipping slowly, I read through passage after passage, each one steeped in the kind of paranoia that gets under your skin.
Names scratched onto the page—neighbors, friends—followed by a single word in the margin: gone.
Sometimes she notes “taken in the night,” other times “the pyre,” even repeating multiple times that she felt her words burning her tongue.
Their food is down to a small bag of grain and the last of the potatoes from her cellar. The snow is too deep to forage, and Elias can’t risk hunting without drawing attention to their cabin. Every line drips with the same unspoken truth—she knows what’s coming.
Not even her wards can keep the cold from seeping into their bones, and no amount of magic can hold back starvation forever.
January 14, 1665
The snow has not stopped in five days. It muffles the forest, makes the world outside our door feel empty, save for the distant baying of dogs. Milo hardly leaves my side now. He watches me as though he can see the storm in my mind.
The wards weaken with every passing night. I feel the threads fray when I sleep—cold fingers testing the edges. Elias says we must wait for a break in the weather before he can risk a hunt, but I see the truth in his eyes. He fears what hunts him.
I have begun leafing through the older books… the ones my mother forbade me to open. There are ways to turn the loom of fate, if one has the will. But such threads require a weaver’s price.
I can already sense what’s going to happen, her fear a tangible beast sitting in the room as I read her words.
The handwriting isn’t as elegant as it has been.
Some words I can’t even decipher, except one, death.
She keeps speaking of the price she’ll have to pay, it’s even scratched into the margins around her entries. PRICE. Over and over and over again.
My heart rate picks up as I flip the page and read the words I was hoping not to, they are down to one loaf of bread. The time is here, Elias is going to have to go out and I’m worried it won’t be good when he does.
January 15, 1665
The loaf sits on the table like a countdown. I cut it into four thin slices this morning, as if stretching it could change what’s coming. Elias says the ward will hold another week, but the look in his eyes said he didn’t believe it. I heard the dogs closer now — always at night, always circling.
He told me today that tomorrow he will go.
“Just to the stream,” he said, “to see if the fish are running.” But I knew he meant farther.
He thinks if he could reach the old trade road, he might barter for grain or salt.
I begged him not to go, but his hands on my face were warm and certain, and he kissed me like it was both hello and goodbye.
Milo watched from the hearth, his eyes never leaving mine. Sometimes I wonder if he knows more than I do — if he can already see the thread The Weaver has set before me.
My eyes sting as the tears build. I almost feel as though she has pulled me through the pages and into the room with her. The pangs of hunger, the fear, and the impending decision that lingers in the air. Don’t go, Elias. Stay with her.
I don’t want to read more, I want to grab him by the shoulders, and shake him. Beg him to reconsider.
The first tear drops to my cheek as I flip the page.
January 16, 1665
I had dreamt of fire the previous night.
It had licked the sky, roaring until the stars disappeared.
Somewhere in the blaze, a woman screamed — a sound so sharp it split the world in two.
Men’s voices rose above it, rough with laughter and something worse.
When I woke, my hands smelled of smoke. Elias left at first light.
He kissed my temple, said it would be quick, and pressed a scrap of bread into my hand as if that could keep me from following.
Milo sat by the door, hackles raised, but did not move to stop him.
The snow had not melted from his footprints yet.
Did she have a premonition of what was to come?
I know Elora has visions, so it’s part of the ancestry somewhere right?
Not that I know anything when it comes to this.
I look up from the journal, my cheeks damp from the tears, to find Elora solemn and nodding her head.
As if she heard my question without me speaking a word.
And maybe she did, but in some wisp of a vision she was gifted.
My hands shake as I flip the page, fear racking up my heart rate. There’s nothing good that will come from the next entry. I can feel it in my soul, as if I was once Elias and I’m reading my wife’s words. Words I never knew.
January 17, 1665
Three days. The snow has swallowed his trail, but I knew which way he went.
I had walked until my bones felt hollow, until the cold bite so deep I could no longer tell where my skin ended. The pines whispered his name — Elias, Elias — and Milo walked by my side, his paws were silent in the snow.
I crested the ridge and heard it before I saw it — the scream. My scream. The one I dreamed of.
It shreded the air, followed by the guttural sound of men jeering.
I broke into a run. The snow burned my lungs, my skirts tore on low branches, but I did not stop until the clearing opened before me.
They had hung him from a crude wooden cross, his body swayed in the wind like a warning. Pinned to the post beside him is his wolfskin, tattered and stained.
My breath caught. The world narrowed to ash and ice.
I slam the book shut, unable to read a word more.
My heart is squeezing so tightly, I almost can’t breathe.
I can’t imagine losing Bellamy and not being able to protect her.
Let alone fearing for my own life. What they did to her mate, her love.
It’s unthinkable. I can’t believe someone would hunt us as if we are monsters, as if we are the evil living in the world.
Feeling split between the past and the present, I whisper the words, the ones that have been plaguing me. Not sure if it’s my voice or Elias’s.
Elora studies me, then rises from behind her desk and crosses to a tall cabinet along the wall beside her.
She unlatches a brass hook and pulls out a slim leather folio tied with a faded ribbon.
“Before I ever had the diary, I found this behind a false paneling in our Coven House. It felt as though someone didn’t want to see it anymore, but couldn’t bear to get rid of it either. It didn’t take long to figure out why.”
She flips open to the first page and there, charcoal blooms across the first sheet.
A woman in profile by firelight, hair unbound, a stubborn tilt to her chin.
Even in the rough strokes, I know her. Those sharp cheekbones, the mouth that looks like it’s two seconds from either offering words of wisdom or hexing you into oblivion.
“Ivora,” I whisper, and the word tastes like Bellamy.
Elora nods, “One of our coven members from back then drew this in honor of her as our founder. Ivora, at one point, had someone sketch Elias from her memory.”
She flips to the next sketch. A man stands with a pelt hung over one arm, broad-shouldered, messy curls, a smile that looks like it’s halfway between a grin and halfway to a snarl. Someone scrawled Elias in the corner, and beneath it, a single word: Alpha.
My throat tightens as I look at what could easily be me in 1665. It’s not an exact match, but the echo is still there. Him and me. Her and Bellamy. The shape of us in an era I never would have imagined I was part of.
“He was a wolf,” Elora says softly, “of a mountain pack that roamed the Whispering Pines before Pumpkinridge even existed.”
I huff out a laugh that I don’t feel. “That’s not funny, Fate.”
She turns one more page. A quick, smaller sketch. There at the feet of Ivora is none other than a sleek, black fox. One that looks awfully familiar…A name is inked beneath it in a sure hand: Milo.
Something electric snaps down my spine and I look away quickly. Squeezing my eyes shut, trying to block out the image. But it’s too late. It’s seared into my mind, playing behind my closed eyes.
Elora notices. “You see it, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” I say, my throat tight. “I see it.”
We sit with it…the image sitting there between us—four hundred years of threads tugging tight between the sketch and my skin. The binds that tie us echoing across the eras.
When my eyes flick back up to Elora’s, she isn’t looking at me. Her eyes are still roaming over the sketches. “When you’re ready,” Elora says at last, closing the folio, “the rest of her words are waiting. I won’t tell you the price she paid. It’s something you need to read for yourself.”
Elora bundles the diary back into its clothwrap, tucking the folio of sketches on top. “Don’t stay up too late reading it,” she says, though her smirk tells me she knows I will.
“I won’t. But first, I’ve got a witch to see,” I say with a soft smile.
She gives me a look like she’s examining my soul, weighing the truth. Outside, the air bites cold, the kind that sharpens every sound. We walk together to the cobblestone road, and Elora wraps her arms around herself as she turns towards me.
“You care about her,” she says, not a question, but a truth instead.
“Yeah,” I admit, shoving my hands deep into my pockets. “She might be stubborn, but I love every second of it.”
“She’s going to fight you every step of the way.” Her eyes crinkle. “But keep showing up anyway. She needs that. Someone who will weather every storm, no matter the cost.”
She taps my shoulder with her delicate hand. I watch as she drifts back up the path to her cottage, almost as if her feet aren’t touching the ground.
As I walk through town watching as the leaves fall across the path.
The crisp air breezes across my flannel shirt, pushing me down the path towards Bellamy’s shop.
I have no way to know if she’s still there, but I have to try at least. The journal entries sit heavy on my heart and mind, and I just wish she would let me talk to her about them.
The lights are off, the closed sign hanging in the window, but I stand there for a moment like the proximity to it will be enough. A shadow shifts in the front window. Nyx. I suck in a breath, maybe luck is on my side tonight.
Pushing the door open, I find him curling up into his bed until he sees me. He sits up and stares blankly at me. That’s right buddy, I know. I know all about how you can talk.
I walk over to him, squatting down until our noses are almost touching. “So…” I murmur. “You can talk, huh?”
He tilts his head, slow and deliberate, as if he wants to keep up the game just a little longer.
Bellamy comes from somewhere in the back. Nyx looks at her for a moment before looking back at me.
“Yeah, I don’t know what he’s doing,” Bellamy says as she puts her spell book back on the shelf.
I look over my shoulder at her. “Alright, I know you’re talking to Nyx.”
She smirks as she lifts an eyebrow in question. “Do you now? What makes you think that?”
I stand up, puffing my chest out. “I heard Astraea talk and she said that familiars do talk. Not in those words, but close enough.”
She cuts her eyes at me. “You’ve been to see my sister, have you?”
I tilt my nose up. “I did have a free reading card in my basket. Someone,” I look at her, “told me to look through my welcome basket.”
She shrugs her shoulders. “Didn’t know you would take me so literal, good to know.”
“I take everything you say to heart,” I say before I swivel back to stare at Nyx. The resemblance is uncanny. As if he lived all these centuries without aging a bit.
Nyx’s whiskers twitch. He doesn’t break eye contact.
“What are you doing?” Bellamy says as she leans over my shoulder.
“Waiting,” I tell her. “And I’ve got all the time in the world.”
“Right, well I’m going to clean up before I head home.”
Looking over my shoulder, I watch her move around her table, grabbing different things as she goes. I wonder if I can prod her for some information. See what she knows.
Pointing to my eyes, then to Nyx, I swear I see him smirk. I walk over to where she’s mid-reaching the top shelf when I grab the item and place it for her.
“So…what do you know about curses?”
Her forehead scrunches. “Why?”