Chapter 31 Eviana
EVIANA
“Are there wards?” Lange asked in a low voice from her right.
“These woods are the wards,” Eviana replied, scanning the younglings running around the courtyard. “We are taught of the horrors of these woods before we learn to walk.”
“And yet you willingly dragged us into them,” Lange muttered, and she felt his shudder. He’d had a particularly brutal run-in with another Dread-Nymph last night. If it hadn’t been for Corbin shifting and tracking it, she wasn’t sure they’d have ever found it to kill it.
“You grew up on the Serafina Estate?” Corbin asked from Lange’s other side.
Eviana nodded, her eyes still on the children. Would she even recognize her if she saw her? Or would she look like all the other young females?
“What is the plan now, bellana?” Lange asked, sitting back on his heels. A small breeze rustled the trees, and he paused, tilting his head.
“What did they tell you?” Eviana asked, watching a young boy kick a ball to another. There was a group of females playing some kind of clapping game. A few stragglers and loners. None that she felt drawn to, but it was stupid to think she would be.
“Nothing noteworthy,” Lange said.
“Everything the winds say could be noteworthy,” she argued.
“Or it could be nothing,” he sighed. “They are confusing and unrelenting.”
“Maybe it doesn’t seem important to you, but they could be telling you something vital,” she retorted. “What did they just whisper to you?”
He sighed. “It was nothing, Eviana. Something about flowers growing in a flood and whispered nothings when shadows die and new beginnings arise. It doesn’t even make sense.”
“Right,” she murmured. No one spoke for another few minutes before she said, “I’m going to check another angle. Stay here.”
“I don’t think we should be splitting up,” Corbin argued, feline eyes flashing to her.
“You two aren’t. I need you to stay here and alert me if someone is coming. Or if you spot her.”
“We have no idea what she looks like,” Lange said dryly.
“Just tell me if someone ventures too close.”
After reluctant agreement, she crept back the way they’d come and then she headed to the east. If she circled around a cluster of trees, she would be able to see the Chaosphere field. Maybe she was over there.
Or maybe she was inside at a desk by herself, never allowed to be around others. Being kept solely for another.
Eviana gritted her teeth. This was why she was here. She wouldn’t let that happen to her. She’d die before that came to fruition.
“Fucking Silas,” she muttered when her braid got caught on some low hanging branches as she tried to quietly maneuver between the trees. The children wouldn’t venture near, that was true, but disturbances in the trees still sometimes warranted an investigation by the Estate guards.
Finally freeing herself, she turned to continue on, then went still.
A young female stood several feet away. She couldn’t be any older than seven or eight years.
Her hair was more red than brown, and her turquoise eyes were hard as she narrowed them.
She wore the same simple clothing as the other children.
The grey color was stark against her skin tone, a shade lighter than Eviana’s, and gods, she was beautiful.
“Who are you?” the child sneered, her lip curling as she surveyed Eviana.
The obvious disdain was a little jarring, but she didn’t react. She was too well trained to show surprise. Instead, Eviana asked, “What are you doing in these woods? It’s dangerous.”
The girl’s lips curled into something far too sinister for someone who should be innocent. “Is it?”
“Yes,” Eviana answered. “So I’ll ask again, what are you doing here?”
The child shrugged casually. “I’m not allowed near the other children so I come here.”
“Why?”
She shrugged again. “It’s safer.”
That was an absurd statement.
“What are they protecting you from?” Eviana asked tightly.
“Oh, they’re not protecting me from them,” the child said with an eerie giggle. “They’re protecting them from me.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Eviana snapped, stepping closer. “You’re a child.”
“Am I?”
“Yes, you are, but you are in danger.”
“The woods don’t hurt me,” she said with that dark smile.
“The Dreamlock Woods hurt everyone, child,” Eviana retorted.
The child glided forward as though she were floating, her well-worn sneakers not even leaving prints behind. “What do you fear most? The Dread-Nymphs?”
“No,” Eviana answered. “The Sprytes are worse. You do not wish to ever cross paths with one.”
“Clever,” the child mocked, stretching out an arm to glide her fingertips along the leaves of a fern.
“You should go back,” Eviana said, the words making something in her chest ache.
But she couldn’t take her quite yet. She didn’t have an escape plan in place.
Lange had wanted to know what their plan was, and she didn’t have that either.
Then again, she hadn’t expected the girl to simply walk up to her in the Dreamlock Woods.
The girl was drifting closer when Eviana asked, “How often do you come here?” Because none of this felt right. Something was off.
“Sometimes I am sent here. Other times I come here myself. I’ve been coming to these woods as long as I can remember,” she answered.
“And you’ve never seen a Dread-Nymph? Or a Spryte?”
“Oh, I see them all the time,” she answered, gesturing to her right.
Eviana stilled, her eyes falling closed. Of course this was all a godsdamn trap.
She turned slowly to see the towering woman. Her flowing dress was made entirely of greenery and florals. Antlers jutted out from her flowing hair the color of tree bark. Ivy wound around her head like a crown, and her eyes were red as blood.
A Spryte.
They were so much worse than the Dread-Nymphs.
While the Imps preyed on your worst memories and the Nymphs survived on your fears and nightmares, the Sprytes were different.
They stalked your dreams. Your heart’s deepest desires.
Your fears didn’t paralyze you with a Spryte.
No, they made you believe you were achieving your goals and desires.
She’d been standing here, a willing target for minutes conversing with an apparition the Spryte wanted her to see.
She could have been attacked at any time, too enamored with seeing the one thing that had kept her surviving and fighting.
Eviana reached for the dagger she had secured to her thigh, her fingers wrapping around the cool hilt.
It was only then she realized she was trembling.
Not out of fear, but because for these last minutes, she’d thought she’d been conversing with her daughter, and it had been nothing but bait. That tremble was from anger.
“Bold of you to reveal yourself before you had me bleeding,” she sneered at the Spryte.
The Spryte only smiled, something just as sinister as the child’s features had twisted into.
“And stupid of you to reveal your strategy. There’s nothing left to lure me with,” Eviana continued.
The Spryte lifted a hand, gesturing behind her.
Eviana glanced over her shoulder, where the child was still standing, watching her with interest. “The apparition is nothing anymore,” she scoffed. “As I said, you foolishly gave up your element of surprise.”
“She doesn’t speak,” the child said. “None of them do. Not the Sprytes or the Nymphs or the Imps. Not the trees or the flowers.”
Then Eviana froze for an entirely different reason. Her blood went cold as she realized this truly was her, and she had…befriended the Dreamlock Woods? But why? And how?
The sound of leaves and twigs crunching had both the child and the Spryte spinning. The Spryte gestured once again to the child, and she nodded, turning and running back in the direction of the Estate. When Eviana turned back, the Spryte had disappeared just as Lange and Corbin came into view.
“I told you to wait,” she snapped at the males.
“The children were all called inside, bellana,” Lange said, scanning their surroundings. “What have you been doing? I thought you were going to see a different angle.”
“I was. I mean, I am,” she retorted, looking back the way the girl had run.
If that had truly been her…
How was she ever going to convince the girl to come with her?
“We can’t just snatch a child off the Chaosphere field and drag her into the woods,” Corbin was arguing. “She’ll be terrified.”
“I don’t hear you offering any better ideas,” Lange retorted, popping some small berries they’d found into his mouth.
“And when she screams and cries? What’s the plan then, genius?” Corbin deadpanned.
Lange shrugged. “Maybe you should just shift into a giant kitty cat and let her cuddle you.”
“Shut up,” Corbin muttered, kicking at him with his foot.
They were all seated around a small fire, trying to come up with something—anything—to move forward. The longer they stayed here, the more likely they were to be discovered. Maybe they already were. Maybe the child had already reported their presence, and they were already fucked.
The only saving grace in this right now was that Valter wasn’t here yet. She’d know. Just like she’d known when he was close while they were in the back of the truck. Bond or no bond, she would know.
“We don’t even know what she looks like,” Corbin added, passing a piece of bread smeared with peanut butter to Eviana.
“True,” Lange answered.
“Not entirely,” she offered, taking the bread.
“That would have been helpful earlier,” Lange deadpanned.
“I didn’t know until this afternoon.”
They both paused, and it was Corbin who was rubbing at his brow when he said, “Something you need to share, nightmare?
“She has reddish hair. More red than brown. Her eyes match mine,” she answered, shifting where she sat.
She hadn’t shared about the encounter, wanting to keep it to herself for a little while.
Why? She had no idea. But it was something that was hers.
Hers and her daughter’s. Theirs alone. Talking about it felt like she was letting too much in.
Letting them too close.