CHAPTER 24
IN AN INSTANT, Edmund snatched the floating light and squeezed his fist tight. Thin beams of light spilled through the cracks of his hold before being extinguished, leaving them in darkness.
Lenore gasped as Edmund yanked her forward. One hand tightly clutched his cloak from falling off her shoulders. Her legs scrambled to keep up with his pace, only to be yanked to an abrupt stop as he dragged her into a cluster of shrubs.
“Why’re we hiding?!” Lenore whispered between heavy breaths as she tried to recover from the sprint.
“Why do you think?” Edmund hissed. “We’ll only be bothered with prying questions if anyone sees us together.”
Lenore sighed. “Right,” she said. “Is that why you brought us so far out in the first place?” Annoyance trickled in when he didn’t respond, and she turned her attention back to the noise.
She nibbled at her bottom lip, eyes searching the span of darkness to catch sight of the figure.
Her eyes moved slowly, separating the dark shapes that blended together.
A few starflies hovered above the ground, twinkling amid the night.
Something fluttered past, catching Lenore’s eye. A dark cloak rippled in the distance.
She squinted at the faint figure. Her breath hitched. “Isn’t that... Charie?” The long, loose braid was unmistakable.
“It is,” Edmund confirmed. He frowned. “What is she doing here?”
“I don’t know,” she murmured. But it might have something to do with that thing in the vial.
Lenore kept her eyes glued on Charie. The ends of Charie’s dress and cloak fluttered with every hurried step. It wouldn’t be long before she’d disappear out of sight.
“Can’t she smell us?” she asked.
“It took you a while to untangle all the smells in the air, right? The forest can hide us easily if you know what you’re doing, especially with all the herbs you collected sitting right next to us.
A scent can be camouflaged if someone isn’t focusing on it.
” He sniffed the air. “And I made sure we’re not in the wind’s direction. ”
Lenore wordlessly nodded. An unnatural breeze brushed her neck. She turned around, momentarily surprised to see a wolf in place of Edmund. “What’re you doing?”
“Observing.” Edmund effortlessly moved in silence, despite his large stature. “We’re not within our territory borders. A Nyven wouldn’t venture this far alone.”
“What?” Lenore was quick to follow, turning into a wolf alongside Edmund. “We’re not?” The ends of her fur stood up as her head darted back and forth.
He stopped in his tracks, tail flicking as he looked back. “Stay here. I don’t smell anything dangerous.”
“I’m going with you!” Lenore insisted. “It’s safer that way.” A muscle in her jaw twitched. And I need to know what Charie is up to.
“It’s safer if you stay put,” he said. “You’re not used to any stealth tracking yet.”
“Please, Edmund?”
Edmund’s hard stare did little to deter her, and she kept her own pleading eyes fixated on him.
After a short pause, an exasperated sigh left him.
“Fine. But stick close to me. And try your hardest to be as quiet as possible.” Like a thief in the night, he traversed the rough terrain without a sound, keeping Charie in sight.
Lenore did her best to keep up, at the expense of the occasional leaf crunch beneath her paw and a stray twig kicked behind her. She cringed and bared her teeth with each sound. When Edmund glared at her, she turned her muzzle away, pretending she was none the wiser.
The pair headed further and further out, where only a sliver of moonlight flickered between dark clusters of leaves above.
The ground grew rougher, with thick knobs of tree roots sprawled across, and dense vegetation threatening to trip Lenore’s step.
She kept her eyes steady on Edmund’s dark figure, attempting to mimic his movement as best she could.
A hushed yelp left Lenore. Her hind leg jerked up instinctively. A disturbingly familiar icy chill followed after the pain, seizing her ankle with a frosty grip before fading away. In an instant, Edmund was by her side.
“What? What is it?” he urgently asked, his voice laced with concern.
“Something scratched me. It’s nothing major,” Lenore whispered. She glanced downward, barely making out a small, dark shape behind her that rose into a hump over the ground. “But it felt like ice being jabbed into me.” A shiver ran through her fur.
“An umbral thistle,” Edmund growled. “It’s not poisonous.
” One of his ears twitched as he added, “They say these things were abundant during the reign of the Lucyn’s deity.
” His eyes narrowed. “It’s supposedly a bad omen to see one, but it’s all superstitious junk to me.
” Taking a step closer, he leaned downward to sniff at Lenore’s leg.
“There’s a cold bite to your blood when I smell it. Is the pain bothering you?”
Lenore took a step back, self-conscious of the gesture. “It’s fine.” She craned her neck, peering out into the darkness ahead. “Don’t worry about me, we’ll lose Charie if we stay here, right?”
“She’s not too far from us. I can sense her slowing down,” Edmund answered. “And besides, it’s better to check on you now before you get more than a patched-up ear and a nicked ankle.”
Ears lowered, Lenore stuck out her bottom lip in a wolfish pout. “It’s moments like these where it would’ve been nice to be a fairy instead of being beaten up by the thorns and thistles out here.” Her claws scratched at the clumps of moss beneath her.
Edmund quietly scoffed and rolled his eyes.
“Right. And then you’d have to deal with their petty politics and pompous attitudes.
” He gently batted the top of Lenore’s muzzle.
With a subtle teasing note in his voice, he said, “Seeing as you’re able to whine freely, we’ll keep going.
” He turned around and sniffed the air, regaining a serious posture once more.
“Whatever she’s doing, she’s too busy hurrying to disguise her scent.
” Without looking back, he uttered a single command. “Follow.”
He advanced swiftly, making up for lost time. Set on Charie’s scent trail, he adjusted their course and moved as if he was following bright markers painted along the shadowy bark of the trees.
A distant caw eerily echoed above the treetops. The ends of her fur stood up, but she forced herself to follow the indifferent wolf ahead.
Lenore’s thoughts raced with every passing minute. Is she really up to something strange? And if she is, how do we face her? What’s Edmund going to do? The questions swirled in her head.
“Stop.”
The hushed but stern order from Edmund had her and her thoughts come to a halt. She looked up, noticing how his gaze was fixed directly ahead through the thick crowds of leaves. She found a spot next to him and peeked through the slivers of foliage.
The cover of darkness did little to help her see, and it took time for her eyes to adjust to catch sight of the movement ahead.
Details slowly came into focus with each passing moment until a vague outline of Charie formed.
Her telltale braid nearly blended into the black scape, its shape only seen with every slight swivel of her head.
Lenore watched Charie reach out, soft rustling following as her hands disappeared into the shadowy foliage. As soon as her hands came back into view, a freshly plucked white bud was cradled closely in her grasp. She lifted it up, pressing it close to her lips for a brief moment as she stepped back.
It was almost intimate—the way Charie clutched the bud tightly against her.
A soft sniffle rippled through the quiet.
Ebony bangs veiled Charie’s face, the bud still close to her lips as her head tilted downward.
Lenore looked away, not wishing to intrude upon the weighted scene with her watchful eyes.
When she looked back, Charie was already gone.
The two of them remained there in silence, the air still heavy with unspoken fragility and a touch of yearning left behind.
“An etheria bloom,” Edmund finally commented. He shifted uncomfortably on his paws, unsure of what to say further.
“I thought so,” Lenore murmured. “I could tell it seemed more special than a regular flower bush.” She didn’t know what else to say either.
“... I know I mentioned the etheria in the clinic but seeing as you asked about Auden and Arisa’s fated mate connection, I’m guessing someone already explained this all to you?”
“Y-yeah… Charie did actually.”
“Good,” he replied stiffly, after a brief pause. “Then I don’t have to explain it.” His tail flicked back and forth erratically.
“No, it’s fine,” Lenore said quickly. “Um…” she desperately searched her mind to find another way out of the growing tension between them. “Is this the only spot to get an etheria bloom?”
“No,” Edmund said. “There’s other spots to get one, but this is the farthest. I didn’t even know this one grew here.” A crease formed between his brows as he reflected on the new information.
“Maybe she wanted privacy?” Lenore tried to stay positive, but she couldn’t ignore how far away they were from Lunavie. “Charie must’ve met her mate. Isn’t that wonderful?”
“It should be,” he said. “But I smell blood.”
Unease coursed through Lenore’s veins. “Blood?” She asked. She tried to sniff the air, but was met with only a prickle of ice that made her wrinkle her snout.
“The same bite of cold that affected your blood is in hers,” Edmund noted. He growled quietly. “Another umbral thistle.”
“A bad omen,” Lenore murmured. The unsettled feeling grew thicker in her chest.
“Hm.” One of Edmund’s ears twitched. “My question is, how did she find this location to begin with? She moved as if she knew.” His brow ridges drew tight. “And if she’s been here already, then she should’ve given an etheria to her mate by now. Why is she coming back here in secret?”
“Risking her life more than once for this too…” Lenore looked around, finding none of the comfort that Lunavie’s territory provided. She remembered Charie’s complaint about training sessions. Her ears lowered.
Edmund looked down to the side in thought. “She also did look kind of…” he paused, unable to find the right word to vocalize his thinking.
“Melancholic?” Lenore softly suggested. Her eyes softened as she recalled how dear the bud was to Charie, how tightly she clung to the stem, as if it were a tiny shred of hope, or perhaps even hopelessness lost in the petals.
It made everything all the more complicated in trying to discern Charie’s intentions.
“More poetic than I’d put it,” Edmund muttered.
“But something like that.” A soft blow of air escaped his nostrils, his expression unreadable as he too thought back on the brief sighting.
He didn’t linger on the subject any longer, his eyes sharpening back to focus.
“We might’ve missed something before we got here.
” He ventured forward. Half his body disappeared into the thicket that once hid them.
Lenore followed, almost by habit. “Well, two pairs of eyes are better than one—”
Edmund stopped abruptly, his body tensing as though she had struck a nerve. The sudden jerk of his body shook the surrounding shrubbery—startling Lenore, her paws skittering against the ground in response.
“No—Lenore—I—” Edmund scooted back and quickly shook the leaves off his coat with exaggerated force. “I’ll... deal with this tomorrow. Alone.” There was a firm finality to his tone, but agitation rolled off him in waves. His tail, after a few flicks back and forth, went still.
Confusion crossed Lenore’s features at the sudden change of plans. She tilted her head at him. “But…” Her words trailed off as she realized where exactly they’d be searching. The etheria blooms nearby swayed back and forth, eagerly waiting to be plucked.
Frustration sparked within her, turning the etheria’s gentle sway into a taunt in her eyes.
“I see,” she said, as calmly as she could.
He sighed, an irritated sound that Lenore wasn’t sure was directed toward her. “It might be better this way,” he added, almost as if to convince himself. “We don’t know if she’ll come back. And with the dinner tomorrow, everyone else will be distracted. I’ll go after then.”
“... You’re right,” she said. The timing wasn’t right, and she knew it. But it frustrated her even more with the reasons he gave. “We better go then.” The words came out more clipped than she expected, and she silently scolded herself for being so affected.
If Edmund noticed, he didn’t show it. But his eyes were soft as he stood next to her, staying close. “Come on, whelp. Don’t need me to rescue you from another amphroga, do you?”
A huff escaped her. “I’ve endured this long. I might be able to surprise you,” she answered, deciding to move forward. She straightened up, mimicking Edmund’s regal stance. “You never know.”
A flicker of amusement ran across Edmund’s gaze. “We’ll see.”