Chapter 4
Nightfall
ANNA
Iwoke the next morning, my back stiff and sweaty from sleeping on the ground in a sleeping bag.
Unzipping it violently, I discarded it beside Eiryn, where he snored blissfully.
Everyone else was still asleep, and the campsite was littered with last night’s festivities.
The rustle of the leaves drew my gaze to the forest. A heavy weight settled in my chest as I debated what I was about to do.
Glancing at Eiryn, his mouth open and a trail of drool down his cheek, I giggled.
I sent him a quick text. Eiryn’s words last night had sparked an urge, and I couldn’t get it out of my head. I had to go back to the cabin.
The walk through the forest might have been peaceful for anyone else. The morning dew still clung to the leaves. The mist smelled of pine and mossy earth. For me, it was a descent into memory.
The wind at this altitude was cooler and sharper than in town. It was sharp in my lungs, piercing my hollow chest. Up here, it was like a different world altogether, one that was now twisted with echoes of laughter drowned out by screams.
The sun was slowly rising across the valley. When the cabin came into view, giggles from tickle fights sounded from the vaults in my mind of a night spent with my mom, listening to stories she told and looking at the stars.
But there was no one on the deck, and no one was laughing.
I swallowed against the tightness in my throat as I stepped forward, my boots crunching softly against the gravel path. The small wooden steps leading to the porch creaked under my weight. I could almost hear her voice on the wind, calling me in for dinner.
Every muscle in my body was screaming for me to stop, but I clenched my fists. Leaves layered the unkempt deck and the rocking chair where my mom used to sit.
A lump formed in my throat, and my lungs didn’t want to work. It was trying to crawl from the depths of my memory where it had been buried long ago. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let it out.
I took a deep breath and focused on what was before me.
The evening shadows were stretching, crawling, meddling with time itself, when a sudden clicking disrupted my mind.
A remnant of yellow crime scene tape, caught beneath a fallen trunk, whipped furiously in the wind. The hard plastic snapped relentlessly as it tried to free itself, like a mouse caught in a trap.
I entered the cabin.
The air was stale. The stillness existed as if it were alive, a slumbering creature that didn’t wish to be disturbed. My heartbeat was an intrusion that I wished would fall silent.
To say my mom had lived here was somewhat of a false statement. She had, in fact, slept, eaten, and breathed here, but lived? No. She’d kept me safe for most of my life, though.
A pang of guilt ran through me.
Until I’d betrayed her and gotten her killed.
My chest started hurting again, as if breathing were an Olympic sport. Fuck, Anna. Get it together.
I looked around, identifying everything: chair, table, sink, coffeemaker.
My chest loosened.
Everything was as it had been that night three years ago, with a few exceptions.
The shattered window was now sealed with thick plastic and duct tape. The glass had been cleared, but blood stains were still smeared across the floor from where I’d cut my hand.
I swallowed painfully. I was standing in a tomb. It had been devoid of life for so long that layers of dust covered every surface. My mom’s mug sat exactly where it always had, right beside the coffeemaker. The dish towel still hung haphazardly on the oven.
I was so angry that night.
Her lifeless hand flashed in my mind.
She’d lied to me.
My knees shook.
I’d always been curious about our family, especially my dad.
My knees gave out, and I hit the floor. I tried to breathe, but it didn’t matter. I hated this. I hated this happening to me. I wanted it to stop.
I clenched my thighs, digging my nails into my skin, focusing only on the pain, and forced the air to rip through my chest. Every drag of the stale air where death had once permeated awakened my body.
Focus came in sharp, fragmented memories.
My skin was slick with sweat, and the deepest of my memories surfaced. Something I vowed to never speak of again.
I’d let something evil in that night.
I didn’t know what, or how, but I knew this—it was something no one should ever let in.
It came on the heels of my anger, my selfishness, my doubt.
Doubt in her words. Doubt in her ability to protect me. Doubt in my love for her.
And with my doubt came darkness.
A darkness that had killed her.
I had to get out of here.
I left the cabin, hands shaking, but the stillness of my old home, so devoid of life, lingered. I descended the stairs of the deck, the gravel crunching beneath my boots. The fresh air was like another world. It tore through my lungs like a gale wind. I looked up, my eyes beginning to focus.
Someone was there.
Was it someone from that night? Had they come back?
I was rooted to the ground as my vision finally focused. No. This was… my fear dissipated, leaving disbelief.
My eyes had to be deceiving me. It’d been three years since I last saw him. The day my mom died.
He loomed like a ghost, hauntingly unchanged despite the years that had passed.
Clad in black from head to toe, he looked like a warrior that had stepped straight out of a gothic novel—his boots strapped tight, his coat fitted like armor, and at his hip, the same sword he’d used when he trained me from dusk ‘til dawn all those years ago.
My own had been auctioned off after that night.
Now, I only had the training sword I used in Taekwondo—nothing like the sharp steel blades Derrick and I once trained with.
Derrick was a handsome, stoic man. Eiryn and Katie had seen him once, and Eiryn wouldn’t shut up about him.
I never saw him like that, though. He was something else to me.
A mentor. A friend. A guardian. Still, I saw why Eiryn had the reaction he did.
His face looked like it’d been carved from marble—the chiseled jawline, smooth skin, and stoic expression.
The only thing that didn’t fit was the deep blue eyes.
The sight of him sent a sharp, twisting pain through my chest, and anger flashing hot across my skin.
“What’re you doing here?” I snapped.
Resentment coiled in my muscles, and my body tensed.
Derrick was motionless as he watched me.
“Anna.”
I directed the wrath I felt in my bones toward the man who’d curated it.
He was exactly as I remembered him.
Stoic, collected, and impossibly controlled.
It irritated me to no end.
“Fight me,” he said.
He drew his sword from its sheath at his hip, the sound of steel scraping steel quickening my pulse.
Adrenaline rushed through my veins as I watched the blade slide. My hands shook as they tightened reflexively, itching to feel the heavy fibers of the hilt against my palm.
Without warning, he tossed me the sword. My arm shot out instinctively, catching the hilt and grasping it tightly.
A wave of satisfaction came over me.
Power.
The answer to fear.
Derrick reached for another sword from his back before turning and walking into the forest.
I gritted my teeth and closed my fist tightly on the hilt.
My heart was racing from the adrenaline of holding a sword again—a real sword. Not the wooden training blade I used in classes. It’d been so long since I last saw Derrick. I was shaking as I watched him, my anger converted to something I hadn’t felt in years—excitement.
I knew where he was going—our old training area.
It was a clearing in the pines, flat and large enough for training. When I got there, he was facing away.
“We always communicated best with our swords, don’t you think?” he asked.
His presence filled the space, towering over me as if I were still a child.
My breath caught, my chest tightening as if his presence alone was able to suffocate the air of oxygen. The years had stretched between us like an unbridgeable chasm, yet here he stood, as if time had merely blinked past him.
This whole time I’d been trying to forget him. To stop trying to understand why he’d made the decisions he had, why he’d never returned when I was found. But the sight of him now threatened to tear down every wall I’d built.
He turned to face me, unblinking, his body relaxed.
I held his gaze, daring him to speak to me about any of what had transpired since we last parted.
“You left,” I said.
His eyes tightened, and my anger deepened. He didn’t get to be sad about it.
“I did—and I’ve always regretted it.”
The words struck like a punch to the gut. I gripped the hilt tighter. He regretted it?
“It’s too late now,” I whispered.
His demeanor darkened, piercing and unreadable. “No. I’ve waited until exactly the right moment.”
The energy within me was stirring, and as it burned, it coalesced into something more potent—raw strength. “Cage your fear, harness your anger, control your body.” He’d taught me this.
I fell into a familiar stance from years of training: one foot forward, knees bent, the blade grasped tightly in my right hand and positioned at my hip.
The muscle memory evoked such nostalgia that it stifled my anger.
I stretched my left arm before me, my wrist bent upward, and my palm flat like a blade. I loosened my elbow, bent, ready for battle.
The fight was a part of me.
As it was for Derrick.
He was a man of few words, but never had I felt like I didn’t understand him. The exchange of blows said far more than words ever could, and I had so much to say. So many feelings that words could never convey. There was only one way to express my fury at his betrayal—with a blade.
The rocky terrain and thick canopy of the mountain made for little undergrowth in this part of the forest. I watched Derrick closely, but he never moved. He was waiting for me.