Chapter Fourteen
The kitchen felt smaller than usual with all three of us in it. Three days after the picnic. The plan we'd talked through on that blanket by the river was finally about to become real instead of hypothetical.
Orias paced. He'd been doing it on and off for the better part of an hour. Six feet of floor between the counter and the table, over and over, one hand dragging through his hair every third pass.
"I still think we go in with more than just the three of us," he said. Not for the first time. "I don't like the idea of you walking in there without backup that isn't me and Rowan."
"We are the backup."
"We're two demons and a witch who's had her powers for approximately four days." He stopped pacing. "Forgive me for wanting slightly better odds."
"You're allowed to be worried. You're not allowed to talk me out of it." I sighed.
He exhaled hard through his nose and dropped into the chair across from me.
Jaw tight. Eyes doing that restless thing they always did when he didn't have a clean answer for something.
Rowan stood at the counter behind him. Kettle going.
Saying nothing. He'd been saying nothing for most of the conversation, present, listening to every word, contributing exactly none of them.
"I'm not trying to talk you out of it," Orias said eventually. "I'm trying to make sure we're not walking in half-informed. We know pieces. We don't know the whole picture. I'd rather have the whole picture before I let either of you near those trees again."
"I don't think more research gets us the whole picture," I said. "I think actually going does."
Rowan set a mug down in front of me without a word. Then one in front of Orias. Then took the third for himself and leaned back against the counter, watching the two of us argue like a conversation he'd already had in his own head a dozen times and didn't need to repeat out loud.
"There's one thing we haven't tried," I said, wrapping both hands around the mug for something to do with them. "I want to call Aria."
Orias's brow furrowed. "The seer? Why?"
"Because she talks to the dead, Orias. I have exactly one dead parent whose opinion on all this might actually help.
" I kept my voice steadier than I felt. "If anyone knows what really happened to my dad, it's my mum.
If anyone can get her to tell us, it's Aria.
And I'm literally friends with a seer...
it feels kind of wasteful not to try using her first."
Something shifted across his face. Uncertainty, warring with how obviously sensible the idea was underneath it. Rowan's jaw ticked. He didn't argue either.
"Call her," he said. First full sentence he'd offered in twenty minutes.
I dialed before anyone could talk me out of it, and Aria picked up on the second ring, already half-guessing why I was calling before I'd even properly explained. She didn't ask many questions. Just told me to put the kettle back on and give her twenty minutes to grab her things.
She showed up in under fifteen, cardigan swallowing her whole frame, her skin pale in that particular way that never quite tanned no matter how much sun the Hollow got in summer.
Her hair sat in loose braids today, dyed the deep orange and warm brown of turning leaves, a fresh color job every couple of weeks depending on her mood and the season.
She'd worn some version of autumn in her hair for as long as I'd known her.
Since we'd met as kids in a school club.
She hugged me tight at the door, said a quick hello to the twins with the easy familiarity of someone who'd grown up in this town alongside the rest of us, and set a small bundle of candles and dried herbs down on the kitchen table without needing to be told what any of it was for.
"You're sure about this," she said, looking at me carefully once we were all seated. "Once I start, I can't exactly stop halfway through. It's not like changing the channel."
"I'm sure."
She nodded. Lit the candles. Closed her eyes.
The room changed almost immediately. Not dramatically.
No gust of wind, no flickering lights. Just a stillness that settled over everything, thick enough to feel against my skin.
Aria's breathing slowed. Her shoulders dropped in a way that didn't look like her at all, some other posture settling into her body.
When she opened her eyes again, they weren't quite her eyes anymore.
"Amber."
My throat closed instantly. It was her voice. Not exactly. Filtered through Aria, softer at the edges than I remembered. But unmistakably, achingly hers.
"Mum." My hands shook around the mug. "Is that you?"
"Oh, Amber, darling." She hummed and I burst into tears. "I miss you so much."
"I miss you too..." I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. "And I would love to sit down and speak for a while but Aria said we don't have long - and I need your help."
"Tell me." Her voice demanded.
"Do you know what's happening here? What's going on with me, with the woods, with all of it?" I asked. "The voices are back. In my head, and the twins. We keep getting called into the woods."
"Yes." Just that, steady and certain, before her voice softened. "I can tell you what I know. But I think I do have to be quick. It's hard, staying this long in someone else's body."
"Please." My voice cracked. "Tell me everything you can."
"Your father was Rose blood. The last of them, though he didn't know it himself until the year before he vanished.
When the whispers started calling you, when you were small, he panicked.
He couldn't bear the thought of the Hollow taking his little girl the way it had taken every other Rose before her.
That's what happened to that family - they didn't die in a spell.
The woods claimed them one by one..." A pause, her borrowed breath unsteady.
"Yakob put a piece of his own magic into that locket you're wearing right now.
Bound it to shield you from the call. As long as you wore it and believed in it enough to let it work, the whispers couldn't find you. "
My hand went to the locket instantly, fingers closing tight around the metal. "So it really was protecting me. This whole time."
"It was. But magic like that has a cost, Amber.
The Hollow still wanted a Rose. If it couldn't have you, it needed someone else to answer instead.
" Her voice thinned, strained by whatever it cost her to hold this shape.
"Your father offered himself. Walked into the Pines with Cian Thorne, because Cian's family carried the other half of what the town needed — a Thorne, and a Rose, together, the way it's always required both.
They thought if they went in together, willingly, it might fix the balance for good and leave you out of it entirely. "
"But they never came back."
"No." The word came out fractured, grief bleeding through even secondhand, even filtered through someone else's throat.
"I don't know exactly what happened once they crossed in.
Only that whatever the Hollow wanted from them, it wasn't finished getting it.
And now the pull has found you anyway. The locket's magic was never meant to last forever.
It was only ever meant to buy you time."
"Time for what?"
"To grow strong enough to face it properly, when it finally came for you.
" Her presence wavered, the edges of her going thin.
"You're not walking into those woods unprepared, my love, whatever it feels like right now.
You're a Rose. You're stronger than either of us ever gave you credit for, and you have two Thornes standing beside you who'd tear the whole forest apart before they let it take you the way it took your father. "
Tears blurred my vision before I could stop them. "I really do miss you. Every day. I don't know how to do this without you."
"You don't need me the way you think you do." Her voice softened, the warning fading back into something gentler. "You have people around you now who love you the way you deserve to be loved. Let them help you carry this."
I glanced at Rowan and Orias without meaning to. Neither of them said anything, but I caught Orias's throat working, and I caught Rowan's hand curling tight against the edge of the counter.
"I have to go soon," she said. "But before I do—"
She turned. Aria's borrowed eyes found the twins across the table.
"Your mother sends her love. She wants you both to know she's proud of the men you've become, and she wants you to take care of each other. And take care of my girl."
Orias made a small, wrecked sound and looked down at his hands. Rowan's jaw tightened hard enough that a muscle jumped along it, his eyes gone glassy in a way I'd never once seen from him before.
"I love you, Amber," she said, fading further with every word. "I'll always—"
The candles guttered out at once. Aria's whole body sagged forward, catching herself against the table with both palms, gasping like she'd been underwater too long.
"Aria." I was up out of my chair immediately, hand on her back. "Hey. You okay?"
"Mm." She waved a hand weakly, not lifting her head yet. "Give me a second. Always feels like getting hit by a bus, doing that."
"Thank you," I said, throat still tight. "Really. Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet. Thank me once I can feel my legs properly.
" She managed a small, tired laugh and finally sat up, blinking hard, color slowly coming back into her pale face.
"That was a strong one, though. She really loves you.
It practically bled through the whole thing. I'm absolutely shattered."
I helped her up from the chair. My own legs weren't much steadier. "Go sleep upstairs. Second door on the left. Help yourself to whatever's in the kitchen when you wake up, we won't be back for hours."
"You sure?"
"Positive."
She squeezed my hand, glancing between me and the twins with something soft and knowing in her expression.
"Good luck, Amber." She pulled me into a quick, tight hug, the kind that said more than the words had room for, then headed for the stairs, one hand trailing along the banister like she still wasn't fully steady on her feet.
The kitchen sat quiet once she'd gone. All three of us processing in our own directions. Orias reached over and squeezed my hand on the table without a word. Rowan stood at the counter still, staring at nothing, something working behind his eyes he clearly wasn't ready to say out loud yet.
"We should get moving," I said eventually, wiping the last of the tears off my cheeks. "If we're doing this tonight."
"We are." Orias stood, came around the table, and kissed me. Soft. Unhurried. His hand cupped my jaw like he needed the contact as much as I did after everything the last hour had cost all of us. "For luck," he murmured against my mouth when he pulled back.
I looked past him to Rowan. He was watching the two of us with an expression I couldn't fully read. Something caught between want and restraint. His mouth opened like there was something he needed to say before we walked out that door.
He didn't say it. Just shook his head slightly, like he was talking himself out of it in real time, and pushed off the counter instead.
"Let's go," he said. Voice rougher than usual.
Neither of us asked what he'd almost said. But I noticed it anyway. And I had a feeling I wasn't the only one who would keep noticing it, right up until he finally decided to say it out loud.