22. Chapter 22
B etween the trees, Ren caught a flash of emerald green eyes that gleamed in the darkness.
Hello, little sister.
The voice was a low whisper, a memory dragged out from some forgotten place in Ren’s soul.
You’ve come at last.
A silhouette emerged between the trees, flickering in and out of view like candlelight in a storm. Eve’s face smiled at her. Same moon-pale skin. Same chestnut curls tumbling over one shoulder.
The creature tilted its head just like Eve once had, one hand reaching playfully toward the tree beside it.
And suddenly, Ren was six again. Barefoot in a summer field, wind tugging at her braids. Laughter echoed through the trees – Eve’s laugh. Always too loud, too free.
“Come find me, Ren!”
They’d play hide and seek for hours, but Eve always made it easy, leaving behind clues. A trail of snapped twigs. A bright ribbon tied around a low branch. Emerald eyes peeking out from behind a tree trunk that was far too thin to properly hide behind.
“You always find me,” Eve used to whisper when Ren caught her .
Ren’s vision swam, the memory bleeding back into the present. She stumbled forward. The forest blurred.
“ I finally came for you, ” the voice’s whisper turned into a hiss.
Ren’s knees buckled. Her weapon slipped from her fingers.
She spun, only to see Eve standing just a few feet away. The sight of her hit Ren like a blow to the chest.
She hadn’t realized how much time had eroded the edges of memory, how Eve’s face had started to blur in her mind.
But seeing her face again, it all came rushing back.
The delicate curve of her sister’s cheekbones, the pointed nose and chin they both shared.
But it was the eyes that undid Ren, their mother’s eyes, staring out from a face Ren thought she’d never see again in her lifetime.
Somewhere beyond the haze, Talen was shouting her name, but she didn’t hear him. All she saw was Eve.
When Talen suddenly charged, sword drawn, Ren lunged forward instinctively. “No!”
But Talen caught her by the arm, shoving her hard behind a tree. The bark scraped her back as Talen pressed her to it. “Ren, it’s not real. Do you hear me? It’s deceiving you.”
She blinked, heart pounding, the world snapping back into focus. Her heart ached at his words, but she couldn’t help peering around the tree, longing for one more glimpse of her sister. Even knowing it was a lie.
There she is. Eve moved closer, and her smile curled unnaturally, splitting too wide.
“ You always find me .”
Just as Ren remembered her before that night. Dark hair in loose curls, wearing a nightgown Eve used to wear when pulling Ren into her bedroom, when shouts and glasses of ale or rum or wine shattering sounded from the kitchen, followed by her mother’s cries and father’s bellows.
A sob tore through Ren’s chest. Tears burned hot trails down her cheeks.
As much as Ren feared her sister for the night that split her world open, Eve still haunted her in quieter ways. The memory of her laughter. Her protective hugs. The warmth of her bed when the house below was a battlefield .
The grief inside her was a sea, but she didn’t let it drown her. She forced herself to swim in it, to breathe it in, to let it fill every hollow place inside her. Because the image she fought was the sister she ached for, the sister she remembered.
Not the sister who betrayed them all that night.
“Eve,” Ren sobbed through the tears as she came around the tree and into the open, “I never stopped looking for you. But I couldn’t find you this time.”
Her chest ached with the weight of the words she had never spoken, the ones that had haunted every sleepless night. Because deep down, she had always known the truth.
Her sister hadn’t wanted to be found.
The creature tilted its head.
“ I enjoyed hearing their screams. Your mother first, her throat breaking open under the sharpness of the blade, so fragile humans are, the sound of her pathetically gurgling as she tried to breathe, choking on her own blood. And your father – I enjoyed watching the light drain from his eyes as he clutched at nothing. Did you know that your father begged them to spare him? He even tried to give them your life, if it meant saving his own. A coward to the end.” It licked its lips.
“ When I tear you to shreds, will you beg for your life like your cowardly father did?”
Ren’s jaw locked, teeth grinding. “Here’s an idea,” she snarled through her teeth. “Why don’t you come find out for yourself?”
Its voice seethed with anticipation. “ Very well. I shall enjoy hearing your screams.”
It lunged.
Smoke curled from its limbs, long and skeletal, unraveling like tendrils of ash. Its face melted mid-air, features distorting into a swirling, dark void.
Ren’s scream tore from her throat, not of terror, but of fury so raw, it felt as though it had lived in her bones for years, waiting for this moment to be unleashed. The weight of every betrayal, every loss, every night she’d endured gasping from the nightmares.
The creature struck, slamming Ren into the earth, its jaws opening wide to devour her.
But Ren didn’t get to her feet and run.
She didn’t beg .
She burned .
The flames burst from her like a falling star made flesh – a light so pure and furious that the creature recoiled. Her fire struck it head-on, ripping through shadow and devouring the void where its heart should have been.
And the thing screamed as Ren’s flames consumed it whole. Its illusion flickered and collapsed, revealing the truth beneath. A twisted, withered corpse, and in its sunken sockets were eyes as black as coal.
Ren stood trembling in the scorched ring of earth, and she whispered the name she hadn’t spoken aloud in years.
“Goodbye, Eve.”
Her knees buckled, the strength bleeding out of her all at once, and she collapsed. The world around her felt muted, as though the roar of her flames had stolen all sound and left behind only silence.
Talen was at her side in an instant, sword lowered. The creature disintegrated before them, ash caught in the wind.
Talen knelt beside Ren’s shaking frame. He didn’t speak at first. He simply stayed there, grounding her with his quiet presence while she tried to remember how to breathe.
Finally, his voice broke through. “It fed on your grief. It tried to twist it, to turn it into darkness.”
Her eyes burned as tears gathered.
Talen’s gaze held hers. “But instead, you turned it into light.”
As the heavy silence settled around them, Ren understood with bone-deep certainty that this was only the beginning.
And she needed a better weapon.