Chapter 2
AURA
I'm a ghost in the forest. A whisper, a wraith, friendless and forgotten. A girl forced to become a woman against her will, before she was ready, and now a woman forced to survive against all odds.
I touch the jagged scar on my neck, a reminder of a past I continue to run from, even though Gregory, the thing that inflicted it, is dead.
My shack is wedged against the roots of an ancient oak, half-sheltered by the thick, knotted rise of its trunk.
Calling it a shack is generous. It is more a collection of stolen boards and branches, lashed together with twine I braided from torn cloth, roofed with bark and fallen branches, and saturated with my desperation.
Sadly, it’s the only place I’ve ever been able to call mine.
The bark is rough and dark, twisting like old scars. Moss grows in soft patches, and when it rains, water runs through the grooves like tears. I sleep with my back against the tree, as close to its center as I can, hoping its age might protect me because I’ve made myself small in its shadow.
The air smells of wet earth, rotting leaves, and pine resin. Sometimes it’s sweet and damp, like mushrooms. Other times, if the wind changes, I catch the faint smell of woodsmoke from the bear shifter house beyond the trees, and my chest tightens until it hurts.
I’ve never had a real home. The group home I lived in as a child was a place to sleep.
The people who were supposed to care for me did so without love, and often without much care at all.
I was hungry more often than I was full, dirty more than I was clean, and lonely most days.
Love has always felt like something distant and unreal to me, something I could never reach.
I didn’t try to make close friends because I knew they would fade away over time.
When I was kicked out at eighteen, I wasn’t prepared for the outside world.
I had almost nothing, no skills, and no one who cared about me.
After leaving the group home, curiosity led me to the edge of Blackwood Forest, farther than I’d ever gone.
Fear and hopelessness felt like something alive inside me, clawing at my chest.
Little did I know that the pulsing was the germination of magic, and the worst kind of creatures could sense it.
It’s been months since I crawled away from the wolves’ den, wounded and alone, to give birth by myself. Months since I left my daughter somewhere she’d be found and escaped before I changed my mind. Months since I promised I’d come back for her when I was strong enough.
I haven’t been strong enough yet.
I live like a ghost, half-starved and half-wild, always listening and waiting. The forest never lets you forget how easy it is to be found.
I keep warm the same way I handle everything else: carefully.
Fire is dangerous. Smoke and light travel far, and even warmth feels like a signal to anyone with sharper senses than mine.
I never build fires or let flames rise into the night.
Instead, I hold small sparks of magic in my palm, no bigger than a candle flame, keeping them under tight control.
The flame is soft blue-white, barely visible unless you’re close.
It doesn’t crackle like real fire but curls in my hand like a tiny creature and beats like a living heart.
I press my hands to a ring of stones and coax warmth into them, channeling the heat until the rocks grow hot enough.
Then I tuck those stones beneath my thin blankets and curl around them, letting them leak warmth into my ribs and belly.
On the worst nights, when the cold turns sharp, I draw the heat into my own skin, forcing my blood to run hotter and my body to pretend it isn’t failing.
Magic works that way. It does what you ask, but it always wants more.
The first time I tried this, months ago, I was clumsy and terrified that even the smallest flicker would betray me.
My hands shook so badly that I burned my palm with the backlash of power that doesn’t like being constrained.
Gregory, my vicious captor, used to tell me I didn’t have enough discipline, like control was a virtue he could beat or bite into me.
He wanted to use my magic, but he grew frustrated when I didn’t know how to channel it. He called me weak.
Now I have discipline because I have no choice, because the alternative is death.
I get food the same way I get warmth. When I’m lucky, I catch rabbits in snares and thank the forest with shaking hands before I do what I must. I hate how my stomach growls at the sight of blood.
I hate that I’ve learned to move quietly through the trees, skin animals without flinching, and cook thin slices of meat over hot stones instead of an open fire.
When I’m unlucky and the traps are empty, I use magic.
I can’t magically create full meals or feasts. Magic doesn’t make something from nothing. It borrows. It steals. It reshapes. It pulls from somewhere, and I’m terrified because I don't know where somewhere is. I have no idea what sacrifices I might have to make for the power I have channeled.
But I can coax the memory of nourishment into being.
A fist-sized roll that tastes bland but fills my stomach, a bowl of broth that’s more warmth than flavor, or a handful of berries that look sweeter than they actually are.
Each time I do it, my magic prickles with satisfaction, and I feel the invisible thread between me and the thing I’ve pulled into the world tighten slightly, as if it wants to lead someplace I don’t want to go.
So I only use magic for food when I have no other choice.
Even when I eat, I do it quickly, hunched over like a thief, listening for a twig snapping or a breath that doesn’t belong. I watch for the source of my magic, afraid of what it might want from me.
I’m too thin. I don’t need a mirror to know it.
My hair used to be something strangers complimented, with its thick, red, glossy waves.
Now it hangs in knots and tangles, dulled by dirt, and ratty with neglect.
When I run my fingers through it, leaves and twigs fall out.
Once, I found a small beetle caught in the mess, struggling like it had been trapped in a net.
My skin is pale beneath the grime, stretched too tight over bones that were never meant to protrude like this.
My cheeks are hollow, and my collarbones are sharp enough to hurt when I lie on my side.
My hands are cracked from the cold and stained with earth.
The scars at my throat are raised lines that catch beneath my fingers when I press too hard, reminders of a past I wish could be wiped from my memory.
Sometimes, in my dreams, I’m the girl I used to be. Back then, I thought the worst thing was being hungry and alone.
Now I'm hungry and alone, but it isn’t the worst thing.
The worst part is knowing why I’m alone and being unable to change it.
The moment my magic rose inside me on my eighteenth birthday, bright and sweet, monsters sensed it.
Like wolves can scent blood on the wind, they came from places I didn’t know existed, wearing human faces and carrying ancient hunger in their eyes.
Gregory was only the first of them. The one who grabbed me and claimed me, even though I was never his to claim.
The one who welcomed others to defile me set a plan in motion that I was too innocent to comprehend.
And even now, even after everything, I'm still unsafe.
They keep coming.
I keep running.
Sometimes it’s just a pressure in the air. Sometimes it’s tracks that are too large and deep, circling close to my shelter. Sometimes it’s the distant, unmistakable howl of something that isn’t entirely animal.
I move my shack when I have to. I erase my traces with branches that sweep awkwardly. I sleep in different places, under different boughs, wrapped in different shadows. I tell myself I’m clever. I tell myself I’m surviving.
But survival isn’t living. It is only not dying.
Tonight, the forest smells sharper than usual; a thin mist coils between the trees, silvering the undergrowth.
The moonlight makes the frost glitter like scattered salt.
My breath comes out in white puffs that vanish too quickly, swallowed by the dark.
I tug conjured blankets closer, hooking them over my head.
I should sleep, but fear holds dreams at knifepoint.
Instead, I sit with my knees drawn to my chest, back pressed to the oak, my small stones of heat tucked beneath my blankets.
I hold a flicker of magic in my palm only for long enough to warm my fingers, then snuff it out before it can grow curious or draw unwanted attention.
I listen to the distant call of an owl and the soft skitter of something small in the leaves.
And beneath it all, like a second heartbeat, I feel it.
A wrongness at the edges of my consciousness.
At first, it’s faint, easy to dismiss as imagination. My nerves have been frayed for months; fear can make specters from nothing, especially under the torture of exhaustion. But it doesn’t go away, brushing closer, and my magic responds instinctively, rising beneath my skin like a startled animal.
I freeze.
The leaves are still. Even the insects seem to fall silent.
There are more of them this time. Multiple presences prowling at the edge of my senses. Several move through the trees in a loose circle, closing in. Their intentions are predatory and coordinated.
My stomach drops with cold, stony dread. I’ve been running for months, but tonight, the threat is different. Tonight, it feels like they’re finally done playing. They are weary of the chase. The thrill will now be in capture.
My pulse stutters, and my fingers curl around the edge of my blanket as if I can hold myself together by will alone.
The oak behind me is solid and ancient, but it can’t hide me from something that can taste my power.