Skaydal - Demon's Forever

Hands in Dirt

✦Dolly✦

Riven Crowe started working twenty minutes after my mother hired him.

Twenty minutes.

That was all the time I had to adjust to the fact that the stranger from the festival was no longer a stranger lurking near lantern posts. He was here. At Project Future. Carrying bags of compost like he belonged near the crops, the greenhouses, and my mother’s carefully labeled storage system. Mila stood beside me with her clipboard hugged against her chest.

“I hate this,” she muttered.

“You hate everything before lunch,”

“No. This is special hate,” I should have laughed. Usually, I would have. But my gaze kept drifting toward Riven as he carried a bag of fertilizer from the truck to the storage barn. He moved easily, without wasting effort. He was quiet, clearly strong, and strangely calm. Too calm. It bothered me, and I wasn’t even sure why.

“He is human,” I reminded her, though I wasn’t sure whether I was trying to comfort her or myself. Mila scoffed as she rolled her eyes.

“That doesn’t mean anything. Humans can still be creepy,”

“That is true,” I remarked.

“And weird,” Mila added.

“Also true,”

“And dangerous,” I looked at her then, and she shrugged. “What? Zack raised me,” and oddly enough, that, unfortunately, explained a lot. My mother stepped out of the barn and glanced at us.

“Girls, if you are done glaring at my new worker, the tomato seedlings still need water,” Mila straightened defensively.

“I wasn’t glaring,”

“You were glaring,” my mother remarked, and I hid my smile as I ducked my head.

“I was supervising,”

“Supervise with a hose in your hand,” my mother said as she went back inside. Mila sighed dramatically and grabbed the hose. I followed her into the greenhouse, but my attention remained fixed on Riven through the plastic panels. Every time he passed by, the shadows inside me shifted. That made me feel strange. And it scared me. Ever since I was little, I had been aware of the darkness in my blood. It had never fully left me alone. It lingered under my skin, behind my thoughts, in the quiet places where no one else could reach me. But I couldn’t help but notice that whenever Riven was close, it changed. It didn’t disappear. Not exactly. It listened. I wasn’t even sure how or why, but that made it feel worse than fear. Mila sprayed water over the first row of seedlings with more aggression than necessary.

“Stop staring,” she hissed, and I sighed.

“I’m not,”

“You are. And I don’t like it,”

“I’m trying to understand him,” I admitted. Mila glanced over at me and stared.

“No, you are trying to understand why you feel weird around him,” she corrected.

“That is annoyingly accurate,”

“I’m a Beta in training. Being annoyingly accurate is part of the job,” she stated. I took the hose from her before she drowned the tomatoes.

“He wears a ring,” Mila frowned as she continued to stare at me.

“What?”

“Just something I noticed…he wears a ring on his right hand. I saw it when he was carrying the compost. It looks like black metal with some strange markings,”

“Wedding ring?” Mila guessed, but I slowly shook my head.

“No. No, I don’t think so,”

“Some sort of creepy human cult ring?” she took another guess, and I let out a hollow laugh.

“Mila,”

“What? We live in Skaydal. It’s a fair question,” I hated that she wasn’t entirely wrong. The greenhouse door opened then, and Riven stepped inside with a crate of seed trays. Mila immediately went still beside me. My fingers tightened around the hose just as my mother came in just behind him. She pointed to the far table.

“Those go over there, please,” she told him. Riven nodded as he walked past us. For one second, he was close enough that I could smell rain, dust, and something sharper I couldn’t name. The darkness inside me went silent. Completely silent. I hated how peaceful it felt. His eyes flicked to mine as he passed.

“Dolly,” he greeted. The sound of my name in his voice felt wrong. Not because it was ugly. But because it wasn’t. It was the strangest thing. Especially when I felt like the sound of his voice had wrapped around me. I lifted my chin.

“Riven,” I said just as Mila’s elbow hit my arm. Hard. I ignored her. Riven placed the trays on the table and turned back to my mother.

“Anything else?” he asked her.

“Yes,” my mother answered. “After this, the feed bags need to be stacked in the second storage shed. Then Gavin’s irrigation parts need to be moved under cover before he complains to me for the next three days,” Riven gave my mother a faint smile.

“Understood,” we all watched him leave, and as soon as he was gone, my mother turned to face us.

“You two can breathe now,” she said. Mila gave her an innocent look.

“I was breathing,”

“Barely,” she murmured before she left. I looked down at the seedlings because facing my mother felt dangerous. She knew too much. She always had. The rest of the morning dragged and rushed at the same time. Riven moved between the truck, barn, and sheds. Mila and I worked in the greenhouse, but she kept finding reasons to check on him. I kept pretending not to. By lunch, my head hurt. Not from fear. From fighting curiosity. Riven didn’t try to speak to me again. That should have helped, but it didn’t. The silence only made the moments worse when I caught him looking. Never for long. Never obviously. But enough. Mila noticed too, because of course she did.

“If he stares at you one more time, I’m calling my dad,”

“No, you are not,”

“You know what, correction. I will call both my dads. Mato is the calmer one, but he is emotionally devastating,”

“That is oddly specific,”

“It’s true,” I smiled despite myself and reached for a tray of basil seedlings.

“Help me move these before my Mom adds more to the list,” I said. Mila grabbed one side of the tray. I grabbed the other. The second my fingers touched the damp soil, something cold moved through my hand. I froze, and Mila frowned.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” suddenly, without warning, the nearest seedling trembled. Not from wind. Not from the movement of the tray. From me. I pulled my hand back, but it was too late. The little green stem bent beneath my fingers. Then the leaves curled inward. Mila and I stared. My heart stopped. The stem blackened slowly, from root to tip, until the entire seedling sagged against the soil. Right there in front of us. Right there in my hand.

“What the hell?” Mila whispered. It was a good question, but I didn’t have an answer.

✦✦✦