Chapter 6
After starting a fire, Grigorios moved fast, gathering stones from the edge of the path. His hands worked with practiced precision, building a loose ring around the okhèma. Not a perfect circle, but intentional. Like he knew what he was trying to keep out.
I stepped out to help, though no one asked me to. One of the younger servants, Filippos, startled at my approach, nearly dropping the rock in his hands.
“Here,” I said, reaching for it.
He blinked, then flushed as our fingers brushed. His mouth opened, then closed again like he couldn’t remember how it worked. Dorian, the other boy, lowered his head quickly, studiously avoiding my eyes.
“You seem to know this place better than most,” I said, taking a stone of my own and setting it beside Grigorios’s.
He paused, one hand curled around a jagged chunk of shale. “Well enough to fear it.”
A chill skittered down my spine.
“My brother came this way once,” he added, placing the stone with a carefulness that didn’t match the haste in his limbs. “Didn’t make it through. The creatures in this forest have rules. Old ones. Older than Sparta. Older than kings.”
His gaze lifted to mine, steady and unblinking. Firelight danced across his eyes, catching the gold at the edges like embers about to flare.
“You don’t sleep against the trees,” Grigorios said evenly. “Not unless you want dreams that wrap around your throat. The kind that don’t let go.”
He set another stone with a soft clack, his eyes flicking to the woods. “And if you see something, someone you love, something you’ve lost … you keep walking. Don’t look twice. The Thornmaids show you what your heart aches for, just long enough to make you step closer. That’s when they catch you.”
I tucked my cloak tight beneath me before dropping to my knees, trying to shield the white folds of my dress from the ground. My hands trembled as I reached for another stone.
Behind us, the fire snapped and spit, throwing shadows that couldn’t seem to reach this far. Out here, the dark pressed closer. The trees too, like they’d crept nearer while we weren’t looking.
Grigorios tilted his head toward where I was staring, to the branches looming like watching gods. “This place isn’t just cursed,” he said. “It’s intentional. Every horror … by design.”
It wasn’t hard to believe that as I stared at the dark leaves, still as death despite the breeze brushing my skin.
“It’s the perfect wall around a king’s throne.
You think any army could cross this? They’d be swallowed whole before they made it a stadion—lost to roots that bleed and branches that whisper lies.
The creatures in this forest don’t need swords.
They are the swords. Silent, patient, and lethal where it hurts most.”
I let out a dry, harsh-sounding laugh. “Wonderful. You’re really making me feel safe.”
Clang.
I flinched and whirled around, only to see Mother crouched by the packs, a cup rolling at her feet. Her eyes snapped to the trees like the sound had called something.
“You want to survive the Twisted Forest, Lady Helena?” Grigorios’s voice lowered to a rasp, the fire painting his face in gold and blood. “Don’t trust anything that makes you feel.”
He leaned closer, like the words were a secret. Or a prayer.
“That’s how they get inside.”
Mother was across the fire, her legs folded beneath her and her back straight as a spear. Her blade lay unsheathed beside her knee, the point angled toward the trees.
Grigorios crouched beside me, elbows on his thighs, staring into the fire like it might blink first. I held a crust of maza in my lap and broke it apart, letting the pieces crumble between my fingers. I wasn’t hungry. I couldn’t even pretend to be.
The other two servants moved around the outer edge of the stone circle, heads ducked, eyes skimming the darkness.
Filippos, the younger one, trailed behind the other, his eyes flicking nervously toward the trees.
He flinched when a twig snapped beneath his heel, then bent quickly to pick up a fresh stone for the barrier.
They spoke in whispers—if they spoke at all—too hushed to reach us. But I felt them glancing my way. Quick looks. Curious ones. Filippos’s ears went red every time we locked eyes. Dorian tripped when I caught him watching me.
The fire cracked again, sounding weary. Its glow caught the edge of the metal clasp at my wrist, bending into crooked, dancing shadows that crawled up my arm.
Mother’s plate lay untouched by her feet. She hadn’t so much as picked at it.
Grigorios stood and crouched near her, bowl in hand. “At least take something warm,” he said gently, offering it toward her. “Just a little.”
She shook her head, her eyes fixed on the trees like she was waiting for something to step out of the dark and call her by name.
Grigorios hesitated. Then, softer—“You’ll need your strength, Hestia. Morning’s a long way off.”
His brown eyes glimmered as he stared at her face. It took me a moment to recognize what I was seeing. The fondness in his eyes. That faint, aching pull beneath his words.
He wasn’t just worried. He was yearning. For her. For my mother.
Gods.
She didn’t even look at him. Just gave the slightest nod … like swatting at a gnat.
Grigorios soaked up her acknowledgment like a dying flower chasing the last drop of sunlight.
His eyes clung to her face, wide, unblinking, as if he’d never seen anything he’d wanted more and couldn’t bear to look away.
I shifted, uneasy. Pity stirred in my chest. He wanted what he could never have.
Her heart belonged to someone else … and it always would.
He stared a moment longer before his shoulders sagged, and he dropped his gaze to the fire like it shamed him.
I bit into the maza because my mother wouldn’t. It collapsed like ash in my mouth, dry and bitter as dust.
The fire burned low, and my thoughts scattered like birds startled from the brush, wild, frantic, refusing to settle. They shot through worst-case endings and twisted paths, always wheeling back to the same bleak center.
What would tomorrow bring?
The question gnawed at the edges of everything, consuming any moment of stillness.
I stood. My legs were stiff, my knees popping as I moved past the dying firelight so that I could get some privacy just behind the okhèma.
The cold bit lower out here, past the fire’s reach.
I crouched just beyond the line of warmth and pulled up my cloak, relieving myself with one eye on the woods, my skin crawling like it expected something to lunge.
The trees pressed close—silent, watching.
When I finished, I stood too fast, half hoping the ache in my thighs would chase the unease away.
It didn’t.
I turned and caught sight of the injured jergin, still tethered near the edge of camp. Its foot was wrapped in linen, dark with seepage. Its eyes tracked me lazily. A piece of the maza was still in my cloak pocket, and I flung it toward the beast, needing it to gain its strength back.
It landed beside its claws. The jergin sniffed it once, then dragged its thick tongue over the crumbs with a wet, sucking sound. Grotesque. It licked again, slower this time—then looked up. Its eyes locked on mine, like it was imagining me as dessert.
I stepped back, spine tightening.
By the time I returned to the fire, my mother had already lain down, her eyes closed, and her face turned away.
I eased down beside her, drawing my cloak tight around my shoulders.
The ground was cold and unforgiving beneath me, rocks and roots digging into my spine, but it didn’t matter. This was what we had—wool and silence.
The servants murmured a few paces away, keeping watch as they were ordered, their silhouettes barely visible against the trees. One sat up straighter when I glanced over, as if to reassure me they were still alert.
Grigorios sat cross-legged just beyond the fire’s glow, his back to us. His blade whispered against the whetstone in a steady rhythm, catching glints of firelight with each pass. He watched everything—the flames, the tree line, my mother—in a silent, methodical loop.
But even with him there, alert and armed, I didn’t feel safe.
I stared up at the sky. There were no stars.
Just the pitch-black canopy looming over us like it wanted to smother us.
The twisted branches clawed at the darkness, reaching like they wanted to tear something down.
They didn’t move. Not even a whisper of wind stirred them, like the forest had warned it off.
I wondered if the storm we’d left behind was still raging beyond the trees, and what damage it had done to our village.
There wasn’t any sound but the grind of steel and the faint twitch of my mother’s breath beside me.
She was curled tight, like something folding in on itself. We hadn’t slept this close in years … not since I was a girl who still reached for her without thinking. There was no comfort in her nearness now. Just heat shared out of necessity.
But I let myself pretend for a breath, pretend her warmth was a shield instead of a reminder of everything we weren’t.
My eyes burned, but I refused to close them. Calismae’s voice rang insistently in my mind: Lower your gaze just enough. Let them think you’re soft. Blush if you can make yourself. Tilt your head when you lie—it makes it sweeter. Make them talk. Make them confident. Then take what you need.
I tried to keep myself awake by running through every lesson, every trick she’d drilled into me until it lived in my soul.
But sleep came anyway.
Not like a gentle thing … but like the ground giving way beneath my feet.
Sunlight spilled through the trees, warm and golden, threading between the leaves like spun silk.
Wildflowers carpeted the forest floor in bursts of violet and light blue, their scent thick and sweet in the air.
The light was soft, almost tender, and the breeze that brushed my skin carried the faint sound of laughter.