Chapter 20 #2
She wouldn’t run from me. She wouldn’t hide. Not unless she had a reason. Unless she saw something. Unless someone saw her.
Panic flares, sharp and sudden. If the guards even suspect she’s spying on them, they won’t hesitate. They’ll give her to Delphara like they did Clara, like I’m sure they’re going to do to this girl.
We can’t save the maid I don’t recognize, not with the Masked guard crawling over the beach like maggots on a fresh kill. But Sylvie? We still have time. We still have a chance.
“Sylvie, wait!”
Still no answer. Just the echo of her name swallowed by trees and wind.
But I’m already moving. My slippers slap the path, breath heaving as I break into a run. Instinct drives me forward, faster than I thought I could go.
Branches scrape at my arms as I tear through the trees, fear surging behind my ribs, Alder shouting my name as I disappear into the brush after a girl who should not be here—and maybe never should’ve been trusted at all.
She ducks between the trunks, weaving through the forest like she knows every inch of it, slipping in and out of the fog-draped shadows like a ghost.
My breath saws through my lungs as I push harder, faster, the trees whipping past as I close the distance between us.
And then she’s gone. Like she was never here at all.
My heart pounds as I spin, breath ragged, scanning the dense trees and shifting shadows.
Alder crashes through the underbrush and comes to a stop beside me, sharp-eyed and silent.
“Where did she—” I choke out, freezing when a branch to my left snaps.
A blur of movement explodes from the brush. Steel flashes, and I stumble back.
Alder is fast. His hand whips out, catching the attacker’s wrist mid-strike. The blade glints an inch from my throat before it’s wrenched away.
Sylvie struggles against his grip, twisting, kicking, wild-eyed, and feral, but he doesn’t let go. Her chest heaves. Her hair’s tangled, damp with sweat or mist or both. Her eyes dart between us, bright with panic and something sharper.
“I’ll let you go,” Alder says, voice even, “but I need to know you won’t come at us with that blade again.”
Her gaze flicks between us, calculating, cautious, weighing options we can’t see. Her fingers tighten around the hilt of her dagger. Then, slowly, she nods.
Alder releases her, but his posture stays rigid, his eyes never leaving her.
Sylvie jerks her arm back and rubs her wrist where he held her. Then her attention snaps to him.
“You,” she snarls, nostrils flaring, “blistering asshole!”
Alder’s brows shoot up. “Asshole? You came at Gemma’s throat with a knife.” He gestures toward me, incredulous. “Forgive me if I thought that warranted a response.”
Sylvie’s jaw twitches. Her fingers squeeze around the dagger again, the leather-wrapped grip creaking under the force of her hold. Then, abruptly, she turns to me.
“What are you doing here?” she demands. “I thought the two of you had stolen away for a tryst. Yet here I find you, skulking about the woods on an island where you have no rightful business.”
“I could ask you the same thing.” I cross my arms and tilt my head. “You ran after I called your name. Twice.”
Her expression doesn’t soften. “And you chased me. Why?”
“Because I was worried. Because I thought—” With a shrug, I throw up my arms. “I don’t know, you were doing something nefarious.”
“Nefarious? Me?” Sylvie scoffs. “Hardly. More likely you feared I’d seen something you wished to keep hidden.” Her eyes narrow. “You’re the one sneaking around in the shadows.”
Alder lets out a breathy chuckle. “That’s rich coming from someone hiding in the forest with a dagger.”
Sylvie’s lips press into a thin line. “I came to find Clara.”
The wind rips through the trees, bending the branches and carrying the scent of the forest and the sea.
I swallow, but the words still taste like iron. “Sylvie…” My voice cracks. I try again, softer this time, like gentling my tone might lessen the blow. “Clara’s dead.”
“I know.”
Her words land like a stone. “You know?”
“I found out. I—” Pain cracks across her face, raw and sudden. Her hands tighten into fists at her sides. “I’ve been looking for her. For her body. I thought—” She cuts herself off, breathing hard. “She deserves a proper burial. Not to be left on this deserted island like she was nothing.”
Alder shifts beside me, but before he can speak, Sylvie rounds on him.
“And don’t pretend to be innocent in this.” Her voice turns to venom. “I heard you speaking with Queen Rothmore.”
A ripple of tension rolls through Alder, his entire body locking into place.
I blink, turning to him. “What is she talking about? I thought you were discussing trade deals and our way back home…”
“There are matters within the palace you cannot begin to understand, Gemma.” Sylvie’s voice drops, fierce and trembling. “If you have any sense, you’ll leave. Return home and forget you ever set foot in Cups.”
The wind howls through the trees as the sky presses lower, thick with a coming storm.
Sylvie steps closer, her gaze boring into mine. Something in it roots me to the ground, holds me captive. “And you’ll run far away from him.”
She doesn’t raise her voice. She doesn’t need to. Because in the way she says it—in the steel behind her softness, the fear she’s trying to hide—I hear it for what it is.
Not a warning.
A death sentence.
I glance at Alder, expecting him to react, to snap back with a comment that will make everything Sylvie is saying make sense. But he doesn’t.
Instead, his fingers flex at his sides. His jaw tightens. His breath is slow and measured. His gaze is distant, calculating, like he’s rewriting something in his head—some timeline he thought he could control.
Goose bumps prickle across my arms. Something is wrong. Not just with Sylvie. With him. It thrums in the space between us like a silent alarm.
I glance at him. Then back at Sylvie.
The wrongness of it all coils around my ribs, tightening, waiting.
I could go. I could turn around, walk away, try to figure out my way back home, pretend none of this ever happened.
But I don’t.
Because I can’t.
Not just because this world makes no sense, not just because I don’t know how to fight masked guards or survive in a forest or find my way home. But because as messed up as this is, as confusing, as dangerous, there’s something between Alder and me that I can’t walk away from.
The gravity of him, the force that holds us together, isn’t just attraction. It isn’t just survival. It’s deeper, woven into my being, stitched into the spaces between my heartbeats.
With him, I don’t feel like I’m drowning.
With him, I feel like me.
Sylvie looks my direction one last time, and there’s something in her gaze—grief, regret, resolve. And then she turns.
She runs.
And this time, I let her go.