Chapter 2
776 Words
She burst into a clearing so suddenly she almost fell. Moss-covered monoliths rose in a broken circle from the earth, taller than any man and carved with symbols that shimmered faintly in the dark. Silver mist curled low across the ground.
The air here felt different.. charged, watchful, alive..as Elara stumbled to the centre of the stones and whirled around, finding nothing, no movement, no red eyes, no snapping branches.. only silence.
Her chest heaved. Her pulse roared in her ears.
Then the mist shifted.
A figure stepped between the stones.
He moved with impossible grace, soundless and calm as if the forest itself had made way for him, and Elara backed up so quickly her heel caught on a root before he stopped several paces away.
Moonlight slipped through the canopy above and touched his face.
He was beautiful.
The thought came unwanted and immediate, and she hated it on sight.
Beautiful in the way winter was beautiful.. cold, severe, merciless. Dark hair brushed his collar. His features were all sharp lines and aristocratic angles, carved too perfectly to be human. He wore black from throat to boots, and the darkness seemed to settle around him like a second skin.
But it was his eyes that stole the breath from her.. not red, but silver, pale and clear and inhumanly bright.
Pale and clear and inhumanly bright and they fixed on her with the stillness of a predator.
Elara swallowed. “That’s close enough.”
His gaze flicked over her.. bare feet, torn hem, scraped arms, blood speckled at her sleeve that was not her own. When he spoke, his voice was low and smooth and far too controlled for the moment.
“You’re bleeding.”
She looked down at herself as if she might have missed something obvious. “Brilliant observation. Thank you.”
Something in his expression almost changed, not softness, certainly not amusement, but perhaps interest, as he took one slow step closer.
Elara threw up a hand. Instantly, the flowers around the stones burst open. Vines whipped across the ground. Thorned branches twisted up from the roots in a jagged barrier between them.
The silver-eyed stranger stopped as Elara stared at the thorns in shock, realizing she had never done that before.. not like this.
Her strange little accidents with plants were one thing, flowers blooming out of season, vines creeping over windowsills when she was angry, herbs thriving beneath her hands.
This was different.
This was power.
The man studied the wall of thorns, then looked back at her.
“What are you?” he asked quietly.
The question struck harder than it should have.
Elara lifted her chin. “Rude. I was about to ask you the same thing.”
For a heartbeat, neither of them moved.
Then, from somewhere behind him, the forest rustled, and it was neither natural nor harmless.
The silver-eyed man heard it too. His head turned slightly, his expression sharpening.
“Elara.”
She stiffened. “How do you know my name?”
He ignored the question. “If they find you first, you die.”
A laugh escaped her, breathless and edged with panic. “Fantastic. Love the honesty. Not loving the pronoun.”
More movement in the trees now. Faster. Closing in.
The stranger looked back at her. For the first time, something urgent cracked through his unnerving calm.
“You need to come with me.”
“Absolutely not.”
“If you stay here, they will tear you apart.”
“And if I go with you?”
His eyes held hers.
Something in her chest tightened, not fear this time, but something stranger. A pulse of recognition she could not explain, as though some buried piece of her had looked at him and gone still.
It frightened her more than the blood, more than the dark, more than the red-eyed creature in her cottage.
“Then,” he said softly, “you may live.”
The forest exploded with snarls.
Shapes moved beyond the stones. Fast, shadowed, circling.
Elara’s breath caught.
Red eyes opened in the dark.
One pair.
Then three.
Then six.
The silver-eyed man stepped forward, and though he had not yet crossed the thorn barrier, the night itself seemed to shift around him.
Predator met predator.
His face turned cold as carved marble. “Elara,” he said, and this time her name sounded less like a question and more like a command. “Choose.”
The thorns trembled.
The red-eyed creatures closed in.
And somewhere deep inside her, beneath fear and reason and the life she had known until tonight, something ancient began to wake.
- Writer
