AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Let’s just get this over with,” I mutter more to myself than to Luke, as the canopy of trees darkens and thickens above us, blocking out the stars. It’s familiar —toofamiliar. I grit my teeth and steel my nerves as Luke and I walk hand in hand into the depths of the Lochkelvin forest.
Luke casts me a sidelong glance. “You seem composed,” he remarks lightly, and it isn’t sarcasm. His gaze flicks to the trees overhead. “Between you and me, I’m glad not to be alone.”
“What, you’re afraid of the dark?” I raise an eyebrow. For such a placid character, Luke has never struck me as someone who’d give into low primal fears.
“Afraid of threats hiddeninthe dark,” he clarifies, stepping diligently over a thick tree root with aplomb. “And this woodland, of course, extends for miles. It’s a marvel that you ended up doing this by yourself. I’m not sure I’d wish such an endeavor on my worst enemy.” He pauses to reconsider this statement, and then smirks. “Well…”
“According to Rory,” I say grimly, his earlier words about my failure still weighing on me far too heavily, “I didn’t do anything at all.”
Luke makes a small tutting noise. “He expects miracles of people sometimes. His standards are much higher than anyone else I know. For you to even enter the forest, only two months after your arrival, when you knew nothing of our world, is courageous enough.”
His kind words gratify me. No one has ever called mecourageousafter what occurred in the forest — a failure, a loser, sure — but yes… I feel like Idodeserve that title after everything it put me through. I smile up at Luke, thankful.
We continue through the forest with relative ease, listening to the snap of twigs and the rustle of leaves overhead. With Luke as my partner on this quest, it’s easy to maintain an even breath. It’s easy not to freak out and give into invisible, private demons. He helps me navigate, his eyesight sharper than mine as he guides me over fallen trunks and ducks beneath drooping branches. He doesn’t seem scared at all, just wary, his head pausing to take in every new sound.
It’s easy, then, to rely upon him.
And that’s stupid, I later realize, because this is a forest filled with tricks. This is a forest, I’d once deemed, of my nightmares.
This forest does not play nice.
“And anyway,” I continue, trying to psych myself up, “we just have to put a stupid stone in the stupid water. How hard can that be?”
“Stupid Lochkelvin stone in stupid Lochkelvin water,” Luke adds, peeling a branch back for me. “On Samhain.”
I give him a searching look. “And?”
“You never reached that point last year, did you?” he asks, and at my silence he explains, “I’ve heard tales from the other boys. I don’t know how much is fantasy — to act like the big hero, of course — but… supposedly, the loch doesn’t make it easy.”
I think then of the neat red slices running up Rory’s pale wrist. “Are we expected to perform blood sacrifices?” I ask in a fretful whisper.
“Well, I once heard rumors of a sea monster,” Luke says thoughtfully, “but since that coincided with one of Callum Wells’ crew, I’m less inclined to believe it.”
“Okay, there are definitely no sea monsters,” I say with more conviction than anyone who hasn’t completed the ritual can feasibly know. Because, heck, maybe therearesea monsters in the loch. This place is batty enough that it could be an option.
Just then, Luke pauses in the middle of the narrow dirt path. He cocks his head to the side, for the first time all evening looking off-balance. “What’s that?” he asks softly, glancing across to the trees.
I see nothing. But I know the feeling well. The horrors of the forest didn’t start immediately, after all. Only until I’d been trapped on all sides did it show its true colors. I look over my shoulder at the great number of trees we’ve passed, and then turn to see the vast expanse of woodland that still lies ahead of us. It must have been around here, I calculate, when things for me had become… trippy.
Luke is fixated on a particular spot up high. He doesn’t look scared as such, more… pained.
“What do you see?” I ask, stroking his arm gently. “Whatever it is, it isn’t real.”
“It’s Becca,” Luke whispers in awe, barely moving his lips, and my stomach tightens. His mouth widens into a small half-smile, the kind I know he uses for private jokes. “She’s… she’s here.”
“She’s not here,” I tell him, adamant that he should know the truth. I tug at his arm. “It’s not Becca. It’s not your Becca. It’s notanything.”
“I know,” Luke murmurs, but his gaze hasn’t deviated once from the same spot in the trees. “I miss her. By God, do I miss her.”
I’m torn. The sense of peace that’s fallen over Luke is almost tangible as he’s reunited with his twin. His delusions at least seem kinder than mine had been, and so for a moment I allow him to indulge. I let him smile and laugh at whatever dream-Becca is doing or saying in the trees, because in this rotten world, his happiness has been splintered ever since her departure.
I remember her with more fondness than I do for most of the girls here. Dressed in dungarees with her long braids cascading across her shoulder. How down-to-earth and friendly she’d been toward me at first — how remarkable that a princess could have been so kind. Never as cold and distant as the others, she’d always treated me with a semblance of respect even at the end. But maybe that’s the rose-tinted glasses talking. Maybe that’s me looking back on my bullied times from a greater vantage of status and privilege. As Luke’s sister, perhaps I’d thought she’d deserved it, my respect her consolation prize.
And then Luke’s face…changes. When Luke suddenly frowns, I do everything I can to tear him from whatever nightmare is unfolding in front of him. When his chest begins to heave and his eyes start to water, when he yells incoherently and howls into the night air, I stand on my tiptoes and frantically cover his eyes with my palms. He jerks away from me, staring up at Becca, and in sheer desperation I crush my mouth against his.
He’s tense beneath me, as rigid as stone. For a long, painful moment, Luke doesn’t kiss me back. I pin my hands to his face, shielding his eyes from the trees like blinkers, until his focus is forced on me. I taste his tears on my tongue as they trace the hollows of his cheeks. And slowly, ever so slowly, he starts to kiss me back.
