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He doesn’t respond and instead starts walking, picking herbs and plants and adding them to my basket. I follow him slowly, my chest aching as I see the care he takes with each and every plant, the way he gently removes them from the earth and sets them in my basket as if they’re glass that might shatter at any moment.
It’s difficult to see, but something stains his fingers. I stop and take his hand, pulling it close to my face. “You’re bleeding.”
“It isn’t blood,” he says, watching me. “I was painting.”
“You paint?”
“Yes.” The word is tense, as if he has admitted to something he meant to keep hidden.
“What do you paint?”
Wolfe starts walking again, and I follow behind him. “People, mostly.”
“Your coven?”
“Yes, my coven.”
“Why?” I ask, wanting him to keep talking, to keep sharing this part of himself with me.
“Because if I don’t, how will we be remembered?”
The words take my breath away, the raw honesty of them. I want to say something to ease the anger in his voice, the pain, but there is nothing. My coven doesn’t know his exists, a hidden life concealed in magic and the shadows of the trees.
“I will remember.”
Wolfe turns to me, putting some cedar in my basket. “Andwill you tell your mother? Your future husband? Or am I a secret you will carry to your grave?”
“I—” I stop myself because the answer hurts too much to say out loud. I stare at him, more shadow than person in the dense forest. He knows I can’t tell anyone, that our protection and his depends upon the mainland believing that dark magic is gone. But it’s a painful truth, one that will claw at my chest for the rest of my life.
I’m stunned when his fingers find my face, gently trailing over my cheek and tucking a piece of hair behind my ear. “That’s what I thought.”
He turns without another word, but I’m stuck in place, my hand coming to rest where his fingers were just moments ago.
“I need to get home,” I finally say, forcing myself to move.
Wolfe slows, putting a narcissus stem in my basket. “What are you really doing out here?” he asks, ignoring my comment entirely.
I turn and follow the sound of the waves, wanting to get to the shoreline, where the moonlight will illuminate my way home. Wolfe falls into step beside me. I don’t respond until I’ve reached the beach and breathed in the salt air, letting it calm me from the inside out.
Finally, I turn to Wolfe.
“I came out to harvest and started thinking about our conversation, and I don’t know. I think I subconsciously went searching for proof that what you’ve told me is true.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then why would you be looking for proof?”
I take a deep breath. “Because I don’t want to believe you.” I walk closer to the water and sit on the sand, tired and embarrassed and confused.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s easier than the alternative.”
“And did you find any proof?” he asks, sitting on the ground next to me. His tone gives nothing away, but there’s a softness to him that I haven’t felt before, and I don’t understand why. Maybe he can see all the threads he’s torn loose from me.
“Well, I found you. Either you’re following me, or you have a magical house on this island that I got a little too close to.”
