Chapter Eight
I tried to tell myself it was just my nerves.
That the stormy gusts twisting through the streets and following me back from the Pines were nothing out of the ordinary.
They didn't feel like soft hugs, protecting me from the world.
They didn't feel like kisses danced along my skin, promising to take me somewhere I'd never been before.
They didn't feel like Rowan.
But even as I hurried down the winding paths, steps echoing hollow against the cobblestones, I couldn't shake the feeling.
Couldn't stop every thought circling back to him.
The sun hadn't risen yet, the only real light coming from the lanterns lining Main Street, flickering, throwing eerie, dancing shadows on the ground.
For the first time in years, the town felt different.
Like something had shifted, like the boundaries that had once kept the magic contained were fraying at the edges.
Subtle. Almost imperceptible. But I felt it in my bones.
Everything was strange. Off. Foreign.
I felt whole and hollow at once. Calm and wrecked. Nervous and something dangerously close to excited.
The street leading toward the old house was empty, the town not yet stirring, the only sound the soft rustle of leaves skittering across the road.
I passed shops I'd known my whole life and still found myself glancing at the dark windows, half-expecting something to stare back.
Nothing did. Just the quiet, waiting town, holding its breath before the day started.
My heart hadn't slowed since I'd run out of the Pines.
I could still feel the heat of Rowan's gaze on me, the way his eyes — that impossible glowing pink bleeding to violet — had cut through the dark like they knew something I didn't. That brief encounter had left me shaken in a way I couldn't fully name. His words kept looping in my head.
He'd told me to leave. Told me not to trust the whispers, that I wouldn't find what I wanted out there.
But that wasn't true. There was something in that forest, something that had been calling me long before Rowan ever stepped back into my life.
I'd felt it in the air, in the whispers threaded through weeks of dreams. Now that I'd seen the oak, the same tree from my vision, I knew there was more to this than I understood.
Now that I'd found him again, in exactly that place, I knew I'd been right to go.
I also knew I'd done something entirely irreversible.
I hurried up the stone path toward the house I'd grown up in — the one Orias and Rowan lived in now, ivy climbing the walls, the garden still better kept than it had any right to be given how little time either of them had for it before one of them had ran away. It was a cozy place.
I'd never been scared here before.
I was now.
My fingers trembled as I fumbled the key into the lock, finally getting the door open and stepping inside. The familiar warmth wrapped around me, and I shut the door behind me with a shaky exhale. Even here, in the place I'd grown up, I couldn't shake the feeling of being watched.
Something was out there. In the wind. In the shadows. In the very bones of Autumn's Hollow.
Something that wanted me.
The house sat quiet, floorboards creaking underfoot as I made my way down the hallway.
Light spilled from the kitchen, along with the low, warm smell of cinnamon and clove and something simmering on the stove, which meant Orias was already up and doing exactly what Orias did best — making a mess of a Tuesday morning look like a small event.
"You're up early." His voice drifted out before I'd even reached the doorway. "Or suspiciously late. I genuinely can't tell with you anymore. You seem to be telling tales, Halloway."
I stepped into the kitchen to find him at the stove, sleeves shoved up, stirring a pot of something dark red and steaming that smelled like mulled wine at half past six in the morning, which was so exactly him I nearly laughed despite everything sitting cold in my chest.
"Please tell me you're not day-drinking before sunrise."
"It's for medicinal purposes." He shot me a look over his shoulder, easy and warm, though something sharper flickered underneath it when he actually took in my face. "You look like you saw a ghost. Or worse. Did Old Man Carson finally corner you about the cake thing?"
"Worse."
"Worse than Carson's cake conspiracy? Bold claim." He ladled two mugs full anyway, clove and orange peel bobbing on the surface, and held one out to me. "Drink first. Traumatic reveals go down easier with wine in you."
I took it, more for something to do with my hands than any real desire to drink, and wrapped both palms around the warmth of the mug. "I went into the Pines."
His whole body went still, ladle suspended halfway back to the pot. "You did what."
"I know."
"Amber." My name came out low, edged with something between fury and fear, and for a second I saw exactly how much restraint it took him not to raise his voice properly.
"You lied to me about the delivery so you could go into the one place I've spent weeks specifically telling you to stay out of.
A place you have been told for years to stay away from. "
"I know," I said again, quieter. "I'm sorry. I hated lying to you. I just — I had to see."
He set the ladle down with more care than the moment called for, like he needed the extra second to get himself back under control. When he looked at me again, most of the anger had folded itself into something gentler, though it didn't fully disappear. "See what."
"There's a tree in there. The one from my dreams." I wrapped my hands tighter around the mug. "And Rowan."
The name landed harder than I meant it to. Orias's expression did something complicated and fast, gone before I could fully read it.
"Rowan's back," he said, flat.
"You knew?"
"I felt him cross back into town, so I met him at the border.
Didn't want to say anything until I knew what kind of mood he was in about it.
" He leaned against the counter, arms crossed, studying me with an intensity that made the mug in my hands feel suddenly very interesting.
"How was that? Running into your childhood best friend in a cursed forest at dawn. "
He said the word friend like it was a lie too.
Only he was smirking at me now and I couldn't work out why.
"Terrifying. Confusing." I took a sip of the wine, warm and spiced and doing absolutely nothing to steady the mess going on in my chest. "He told me to leave. Said it wasn't safe."
"For once, I agree with my brother." Orias's jaw tightened, but he reached out anyway, tucking a strand of hair back from my face with a gentleness that didn't match the tension still sitting in his shoulders.
His thumb dragged slow along my cheekbone before he pulled his hand back, like he'd caught himself doing something he shouldn't.
"You scared the hell out of me, you know.
I didn't know you were gone for a whole ten minutes. "
"I know. I'm sorry." I meant it, and it still didn't feel like enough. "I won't do it again."
"You will." He said it without malice, just tired certainty, and the ghost of a smile finally cracked through. "You're exactly as reckless as you've always been, little witch. I've just apparently decided I like you enough to keep forgiving you for it."
We stood there a moment, mugs warming our hands, the kitchen quiet except for the low simmer still going on the stove, and something about the closeness of him, the steady weight of his attention, unwound a knot in my chest I hadn't realized was there.
"I should sleep," he said eventually, voice rough with exhaustion he'd clearly been hiding under the teasing the whole time. "Been up most of the night. Long story."
"Go," I said. "I'll clean up down here."
He set his mug in the sink, pressed a kiss to the top of my head on his way past — the kind of thing he'd done a thousand times before it started meaning something different to me — and headed for the stairs, exhaustion dragging at every step.
I watched him go, watched the whole shape of him disappear up toward the second floor, and felt the words leave me before I'd properly decided to say them.
"Wait."
He stopped on the third step, turning his head back toward me, eyebrow raised.
My heart was going so hard I could feel it in my throat, in my fingertips, in the stupid, reckless place behind my ribs that had been getting me into trouble all morning already. But I didn't take it back.
I didn't take it back because I knew he could hear it anyway.
"Can I stay in your room?"
Something shifted across his face — surprise, and underneath it something hungrier he didn't quite manage to hide fast enough. He didn't ask why. Didn't make me explain the forest, or Rowan, or the thread of fear still sitting cold in my chest that wanted somewhere safe to unravel.
He just nodded.
I set my mug down on the counter with hands that weren't quite steady and followed him up the stairs.