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“Like Cinderella?” She scowled. “Instead of a magical carriage turning back into a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight, my magical bloody palace appears underground?”
“Precisely.” He stood from the edge of the tub, his hungry gaze meeting hers as he brushed his finger across her lips. “It took you a few real dreams entwined with the veil to get to me.”
She remembered her first clear dream. The cupcakes. The blade to her throat that now had to have been held by him, only not really him. Her conscience conjuring it up while linked to some sort of veil.
“I shouldn’t have come to you during the day,” he continued. “I should’ve left you alone. I should leave you alone now. But I don’t want to.”
“During the day, you’re a shadow like the fiends. When you’re close to me, I can smell your scent...”
He moistened his lips, his finger trailing across her collarbone. “You’re getting warmer.”
“And when night rolls in, you’re still a shadow, but you can choose for your form to get more prominent, like the others. How the animals are asleep during the day, then rouse at the same time.”
“Even warmer.” His nose brushed hers, his fingers wrapping around the back of her neck. A warmth spread through her, and her breath caught.
“Then at midnight, when this veil drops, the fiends’ true forms slip out, just as yours does, only you’re trapped down here until I wake you. And none of you can leave the woods, no matter the time of day.”
“Mmm, so warm.” River’s arms drew her closer to him, his lips featherlight against hers, making her eyes flutter. “Perhaps hotter, I should say.”
He lifted his head from hers, his gaze looking past her. Even though his expression didn’t change, she knew something was there—behind her.
Sadie whirled around, only to find the oval mirror staring back at her, yet she wasn’t wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Reflecting inside the glass was an image of her upper body in a much older style lacy black dress with a high collar, while River’s outfit was different too. A long sweeping black jacket, the white collar of his shirt folded atop the other. Neither of the faces belonged to them. They were maybe around the same age, the woman’s jet-black hair curled to her waist. The man’s red hair swept back in a low ponytail just past his shoulders.
Eyes wide, Sadie peered down at herself, finding she was still dressed in her regular clothes, and so was River. “Who are they?” she asked, her voice rising.
“I don’t think you want to keep digging.” River’s fingers softly brushed her throat, and he leaned closer, whispering in her ear, “Now, listen to me. If you keep coming back, things will only become more wicked, my sweet nightmare.”
“How so?” Sadie’s body shivered beneath his touch as he gripped her waist, his fingers digging in.
He pressed his mouth to hers, his delicious tongue sweeping across the seam of her lips. “No matter how hard I try to resist, my blade will eventually pierce your heart.”
“What’s doing this to you?” Sadie asked, grasping the front of his shirt. When he didn’t answer, she shoved him away and stormed out to the room where she’d woken him to gather herself for a moment. His footsteps sounded, and just as she turned, her body jolted forward, her eyes flying open. The woods surrounded her, the morning sun shining across the foliage.
River’s words rang in her ears as she remembered his kiss. My blade will eventually pierce your heart.
“River!” Sadie shouted. “Confide in me the rest, and I’ll save you from this.”
A shadow broke from the trees where the other silhouettes of the fiends lingered. It slinked, along the ground, the scent of honey and sandalwood carried with it. One of River’s shadowy fingers moved across the dirt, spelling out words. If she’d been unsure if this was him before, she now had her answer. His handwriting was just the same.
Leave the woods.
Chapter Fourteen
“They should have listened.”
“River!” Sadie shouted as his shadow slinked away past the other silhouettes. But he didn’t stop, didn’t turn around, didn’t write anything else in the dirt. “You can’t just write that and leave! Do you think I really care if things get more wicked? You can’t say you want to pierce my heart with a blade and act like that’s the end of it.” She paused, tightening her fists. “Well, you know what? Tonight, I’ll see you again. And I’ll keep coming back because that’s what we do. Why is it that you skulk around me during the day here? I might not catch you every time, but I know you are. We can’t leave each other. Even in death.”
River had hung himself to protect her, just as he was pushing her away now—something inside him had the desire to kill her. He knew exactly what it was yet refused to tell her … another way of protecting her. But from what? She didn’t want to be protected—she didn’t want to leave the woods and be safe—she wanted to know what was going on with her husband and how she could save him.
But sometimes, I felt a touch of darkness inside him. Yet his was different than the piece that most of us have. It’s the same thing I feel in you right now. Kalina’s words rang inside Sadie’s skull. She’d believed the shop owner had said them to lure her back in for a tarot card reading, but now, maybe there was something more to that. Coral had also mentioned that Sadie might want to try a reading. What did she have to lose?
Sadie took a quick rinse in the shower and grabbed an apple before heading to Crow Moon. She blared her grandfather’s cassette as she left the woods. Precisely what River wanted her to do, but she was only staying gone temporarily.
As she bit into the apple, Sadie thought about everything River had said. How at the stroke of midnight, something in the woods forces her to sleep and opens a veil. How he could move around as a shadow during the day and become a different silhouette form at night. He’d touched her that night in the cabin—she’d felt his hand. But then when the veil dropped, he wasn’t like the other creatures—the fiends—he was sent below ground until Sadie’s essence woke him with her touch.
There was still so much she hadn’t uncovered, like the reflections lingering in the mirror, the images that weren’t of her or River. Who were they? What did it even mean? River was a spirit of sorts with fiends that were trapped in the woods. He’d hung himself to protect her, but he hadn’t shown any signs of a war going on within him. Unless he’d hidden it well or it had come about when she’d been gone that day.
As Sadie mulled it over, she took another bite of her juicy apple, chewing the fruit as though she were murdering it. A part of her thought that maybe she should give him space, let him come to her, but if she chose that path, she might be too late. She was already far too deep into whatever this mystery was. And then her mind turned back to the mirror reflection that wasn’t them. Maybe they were the spirits doing this. But why?
