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Flora wasn’t technically alone,but she might as well have been.
Draven had been asleep for two days, his body slowly healing from the fight, and Bonesy, as she so lovingly named the skeleton sitting across from him, wasn’t much for company. She was pretty sure it had been two days. It was hard to tell when the sun didn’t rise, and they were stuck in perpetual darkness with only the circular path of the full moon in the sky to note the passing of time.
Flora curled up under the furs she’d found in the corner of the room by the wood stove. The fire kept the little cabin warm and put off just enough light that Flora could see in the darkness, but not so much that the shadow wolves came looking for her. They had to know she was in there, but for whatever reason they stayed away. And she was grateful for it.
That didn’t mean she trusted them. She’d spent the better part of an hour that first night cramming chairs under the doors and blocking the windows with the heaviest items she could find. Well, more like the heaviest items she could move. Which weren’t many. None of it would keep the wolves out if they really wanted to get to them, but it made her feel better.
After a night's worth of sleep, she’d explored the cabin. There wasn’t much left from whoever had previously occupied it. The one-room cabin had a small cot made of woven purple pine needles and sewn furs that she knew could only belong to this realm, considering they were green with a silver shimmer. There was a small work station against one of the walls that housed many simple tools in various satchels. Next to it was a basin that had a release to let water spill out of a spigot. The used water drained out through a bamboo-looking pipe in the bottom of the basin, passing through the exterior wall to the outside. A small bathroom was located off the main room.
But what really captivated Flora’s attention was the pile of journals identical to the one spread across Bonesy’s lap. She’d pried the worn pages from the skeleton’s hands and found that while his last message may have been an ominous warning, his first was quite the opposite.
Through his journals, Flora learned that her skeleton friend’s given name was Jackson, but Flora preferred to think of him as Bonesy. It helped her to separate the dead man from the story she read of a treasure hunter seeking his greatest bounty: the treasure of the Moon Thieves. He wasn’t the first, but she hoped he’d be the last, or rather that Draven and her would break the tragic cycle and escape the realm they’d stumbled into.
The treasure hunters never stood a chance, not when magic and lore were at the heart of the treasure they sought. As most humans did, they believed what they’d been told, but instead finding their bounty, they were trapped in a place of nightmares that would steal their souls when they died.
The journals detailed the lives of hunter after hunter: Robert, Laney, Oliver, Willa and Dominic, Peter, Opal and Angel, Nolan and finally Jackson. All lost to the realm, and if what Jackson wrote was to be believed, their souls transformed into the shadow wolves upon their death.
Flora vomited when she realized who the shadow wolves had once been. These people she’d come to love through their autobiographical tales were dead at her hands. Well, at least one of them was.
Guilt plagued her. She hadn’t expected her next kill to be so soon, and she most definitely didn’t expect to still be human when it happened. Just like with her father, it had been her life or theirs, but with the wolves she’d never know if there had been a chance to reach them. To bring them back to who they once were. These people weren’t monsters like her father. They were trapped just like her and Draven.
Still she found comfort in their stories. They kept her company as she waited for Draven to wake up. Flora cheered at the triumphs of Oliver, the carpenter who built the cabin with his two hands, and cried through the heartache of Willa and Dominic who suffered the loss of the child they hadn’t known Willa carried. She marveled at Nolan’s ingenuity—he installed a drip system that allowed rain to flow into a barrel beneath the workstation, and installed a toilet that eliminated the need to pop a squat (for which she was very thankful). She laughed at Peter’s first attempts at hunting for weedles, as he called them. At first, he tried to hunt them with a stick carved to a point, only to realize they were something like rabbits and needed to be snared.
Each of the cabin's occupants told a story and painted a picture of the world they’d stumbled into as they searched for their treasure. The journals were a beautiful testament to their ability to overcome the magic of the world around them and embrace the simplest parts of their humanity.
Her stomach squealed and grumbled, and Flora looked down at the offending organ. While Nolan’s engineering quenched her thirst, going two days without eating was not sitting well with her. She’d found something she was pretty sure was jerky in one of the packs against the far wall, but she had no idea when it was cured, and given the state of Bonesy, it was safe to say it wasn’t recently.
She looked up at Bonesy as if he would have the answer. “Why couldn’t you have written down an expiration date?” If Draven stayed asleep much longer she’d be forced to try the leathery meat, unless she wanted to eventually end up like Bonesy.
Draven shifted beside her, and hope reared in her chest. He turned over, his eyes widening when he saw her curled up next to him. His lips parted, and his tongue darted out to wet them. “Was that your stomach?”
Flora scrambled for the glass of water on the floor beside her and offered it to him. “Of all the things, that’s what woke you up?”
Draven took a small sip and sat up beside her. He stretched his arms up and the blanket that had been covering his naked form fell to his waist. “How long have I been asleep?”
Her eyes immediately followed the path of the blanket, but she snapped them back up as soon as she felt herself licking her lips. “I think two days, but it’s hard to say.”
Damn, she needed to get it together. Being alone for two days was starting to get to her.
He tilted his head in question, and she hated the fact she found it so damn adorable. She wasn’t supposed to care about him or his stupidly good looks or the fact that he’d saved her ass yet again. She wasn’t supposed to want to check him over to make sure all his injuries had healed. They were a team on a mission to find the moonstone and nothing more.
“The sun doesn’t rise here,” she explained, fingering the furs in her lap to keep from checking to make sure he was okay. “The moon is always full and circles the sky. Occasionally it’s blocked by the pinkish clouds that sometimes form, but mostly it’s visible across the sky no matter the time of day.”
Draven reached out his hand as if he were going to take hers in his, but stopped before he touched her. He pressed his lips together and returned his hands to his lap. “Are you okay? Did the wolves come back?”
His hesitation to touch her shouldn’t sting, but it did. “They're still out there, but they haven’t tried to attack the cabin.”
Draven’s eyes darted away from her, and he studied the cabin around them. His eyes lingered on the moon through the window, and she wondered what he was thinking. His expression was blank except for the small tick in his jaw. Was he angry? She’d had days to come to terms with the fight and where they were, but surprisingly, she had never considered being angry about their predicament. Especially now that Draven was awake and she wasn’t alone.
“Who’s that?” He gestured to where Bonesy sat.
“Oh, that’s Bonesy.”
Draven cocked a brow, not bothering to hide his amusement. “You named the skeleton Bonesy?”
“Listen, I needed something to keep me entertained and stop me from freaking out while you healed.”
He dropped his gaze to his lap. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened.”
