When the Woods Go Silent (Haret Chronicles: Dark Fae #1)

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

T ORRENCE

The thud and splintering shriek of trees being torn apart, their sudden scream of pain renting the air around the forest.

That’s what finally surfaces me from my crazed bloodlust.

Ruby.

A bare memory flashes in my raging mind - her sprawled there on the deck, motionless and huge-eyed as I shredded Arlo’s chest and ripped open his stomach. She was here. She saw me do it. She saw me kill someone she thinks is my best friend. She probably saw all the bodies. All the blood. She’s going to be terrified, no matter what explanation I give her.

This whole day has been a fucking disaster, and everything I’ve worked so hard for is gone, just like that.

The restaurant. The gobbelins. Arlo.

How can I come back from this? She’ll never want to see me again.

Then the rage of battle clears a little more, and I remember what Arlo tried to do to her. He tried to kill her. He had his hands around her perfect throat, choking the life from her, and I acted on pure instinct. Against everything I was born into, my gut reaction was to save her, a human, over another gobbelin.

But she ran. She ran from me anyway.

Ruby .

My disoriented brain stutters back to her, and I wheel to where the trees are still wailing. Vaulting over the railing, I land hard on the ground below the deck, running as soon as my feet hit dirt.

I see Ruby’s car, enmeshed in a stand of trees just past the house, where the road bends sharply. It’s nothing more than a hunk of metal now, stabbed through with broken limbs and shredded bark.

Ruby.

Ruby... no.

Can a human survive a crash like this? Their bodies are so fragile. Too fragile. I’ve never cared before.

“Please,” I whisper, although the Goddess doesn’t answer prayers from creatures like me. “Please, let her be alive.”

The trees are a cage around her car, a mass of broken ribs trying to protect the heart I desperately hope is still beating. I have to free her. My hands form claws of ice as I rip at the branches and trunks, breaking the trees’ hold on the mangled car. Is she alive? Is she crushed?

The trees fight back, fighting against me. Protecting her?

They’ve never come alive here before, never wielded their own magic in Clearwater like they can in Haret.

Torn branches stab at my skin from all angles, splinters forcing under my fingernails and sap oozing around my wrists. Slender twigs and garlands of leaves braid together like rope, as the woods wakes up and tightens itself around the car, until I can barely see the glint of metal at all.

My efforts slow with the trees’ screams of pain and rage, as I understand they really are protecting Ruby. Protecting her from me now.

This realization drains my rage, and I step back instantly, dropping my claws to my sides and struggling to find words in the fae language I barely learned as a child.

Leaning into one of the trees, palms spread in surrender, I whisper a broken plea, again and again. I hope they’re the right words.

“Please...”

It takes a moment to realize the word isn’t mine, and I press my face to a narrow gap in the branches, ignoring the rough bark digging into my cheek like claws.

“Please, don’t hurt him.” The voice is weak, worn down, and frightened.

A single branch trembles, its leaves parting, and through them I see Ruby. A thin line of blood snakes down her temple, and she’s dazed, but alert. Alive. Begging the trees to leave me alone. I stagger backward as the branches release their splintery hold on me. They listen to her. They understand her, even though she isn’t speaking fae.

How is this possible? The sheer impossibility of it freezes my blood.

Ruby is human, completely and totally. I’ve tasted her blood. I’ve been inside her dreams. She doesn’t have magic.

Yet the woods are no longer silent for her. They speak to her - for her.

My chest heaving, I watch in amazement as the ragged trunks begin to lean, lifting their roots from the loamy soil and parting slowly to make a gap for her to crawl from the busted window. It’s only then that I realize they moved in the first place, leaving the edges of the road to form a complete, protective circle around her.

A fairy ring of trees.

They broke her fall, bending their branches and cocooning her in leaves even as the car crumpled around her. Ruby is alive because of the trees, and they haven’t just broken their silence for her - they’ve broken their centuries-old slumber.

I start toward Ruby when she stumbles from the car, but a branch whacks against my chest, the message clear. I grit my teeth against impatience as she weaves unsteadily through the trees toward me, grasping their offered branches for balance.

I wait, forcing myself not to wrap my arms around her. Letting her make the decisions. If she shrinks away now...

But she tumbles into my chest, a sob wracking her body as she buries her face in my shirt for the second time today. I wrap my arms around her weak, delicate human body, sweeping behind her knees and gathering her tightly to my chest.

A feathery touch across my forehead has me looking up, where a branch sweeps its new leaves across my face, tasting me. A slim twig taps at my temple, perhaps a warning at how easily I could be run through.

Warning that the trees are still determining if I’m worthy, no matter what Ruby thinks. They have good reason. I have no business holding on to her. No right to ask her to hold on to me.

The leaves flutter down to wipe away the trickle of blood from Ruby’s temple, and she sucks in a breath, trembling as she watches the tree move.

“I’m listening,” she whispers to the canopy above us, her head tipped back and her arms limp around my neck. “I’ve always been listening.”

“ Glidden da ,” I add. When she darts her eyes to me, I translate. “It’s ‘thank you’ in the fae language.”

“ Glidden da ,” she repeats, nodding to the branches around us, and her arms tighten around my neck in a show of strength that surprises the hell out of me. My little killer kitten isn’t as fragile as I feared, and she has more connections to my world than I realized.

Hopefully, Julianna doesn’t know any of this, although I have no idea how much information Arlo actually fed her about me. Anger simmers higher in my chest at the thought of what he did, and I know I’d kill him all over again if I could.

“I need to get to Rose,” Ruby says, interrupting my thoughts and glancing back at her mangled car. “I need to tell her I’m sorry.”

“I’ll drive you. Can you wait here while I get keys? Will you wait?” I ask, still uncertain if she’s truly willing to cast her lot with me.

“I’ll wait,” Ruby murmurs, her lashes brushing her cheeks. She’s in shock, I’m sure of it. Will she still be here when I come back out? Or will she have remembered everything and run.

I set her gently on the grass and hurry into the house, knowing how tenuous human resolve can be. Inside, the horror of what happened before Ruby arrived washes over me, fresh and so needless. Everyone is dead - gobbelins, blood slaves. Everyone.

Arlo killed them all before I even got home.

I trusted him, and he betrayed me. His final words before I knocked him to his knees taunt my mind like the swipe of a blade to the back: Julianna is watching your pretty pet, Ruby. And I’m watching hers. Torrence, false prince of gobbelins. Why do you think she keeps you busy here on Earth, instead of letting you lead her army? She hasn’t trusted you in years, you clueless half-blood. She hates you...

All this time I’ve tolerated Arlo, hiding my own agenda and my plans with Idris, allowing him a life of true luxury here, and he was a fucking spy for Julianna. I don’t even know what he shared with her. I would have killed him anyway for his treason to me, and I’ll never regret gutting him like an animal.

But fucking hell, I wish Ruby hadn’t seen it. Hadn’t been caught in the middle of it. Why was she here? How did she even know where to find me?

I should stay here and sort out this mess. I should find Idris and warn her. Find Julianna and figure out what the hell is going on.

I could lose everything by leaving with Ruby right now.

And I don’t care - she matters more.

THE WOODS

Human emotions have leaked down into our roots over the centuries, and now, the one we feel most is worry.

The ice-cold blood drips blackly from the building, through its cracks, down and down into the soil where our roots taste its foul ichor. So many are dead here, lives much more fragile than they thought. Even the weak one is dead, his dripping blood a reminder of how things are changing.

And toward our center, another man waits, biding his time. For what, we don’t know. But his magic is strong. He can’t call our vines and branches, but we feel him playing with the breeze, tugging at our leaves and testing our trunks. He could rip us from the ground we live in, snap our roots like dry twigs. Toss us aside like we are nothing.

Will he?

We worry.

We worry about ourselves, about the humans we’ve watched for ring after ring. And we worry about the girls who live now with the remaining records of rings. So much knowledge, sliced and stacked in their building. Yet they seem to know nothing. Not so different from us, or from any of the other magical beings suddenly walking our trails.

Why does the knowledge hide itself?

What will these human girls do, once they find it?

We worry, and we watch. Following the man and the girl along the curves of the road until they stop at the building of rings. Watch as the midnight-haired girl looks at the building with more emotions than we have collected, yet.

Watch as the fire-haired girl steps out of the building, the two staring at each other. They worry, too. They wait, each for the other. They watch, and the man watches, none of them moving. They stand still, while we flex our branches and wriggle our roots.

Everything is changing.