Chapter Three: A Girl Who Sees
656 Words
The next time she saw him, it was not in a dream.
It was in the woods—where no one was meant to go.
---
The forest behind Thornhart Manor had long been declared forbidden, not by law, but by fear. They called it the Crooked Grove, where trees grew twisted and wrong, where travelers swore they heard things with no mouths whisper their names. Children dared each other to step past the stone markers; none ever crossed more than five paces.
Evelyn crossed twenty.
The storm had passed, leaving the woods wet and breathing. Fog curled like fingers around roots and trunks. Ravens watched from above, silent and still. Her boots squelched in the soft earth as she stepped over a fallen log, her breath misting in front of her.
She didn’t know why she had come.
Only that something in her had pulled her here. Like a string tied to her ribs. Like a memory she couldn’t quite catch.
Then she heard the sound.
Not a branch snapping. Not wind. But something alive.
Breathing.
She turned—and there he was.
Nathaniel Vale stood in a clearing barely ten paces ahead, dressed not as a lord but as something older, darker. A long black coat swept the ground, his boots caked in mud. The light around him didn’t quite behave—it bent, softened, obeyed.
He was staring at her again.
“Are you following me?” she asked before she could stop herself.
His mouth twitched.
“You’re far from home,” he said.
“So are you.”
“I live in the woods.”
“I thought you lived in a manor.”
“I live where I’m left alone.”
Evelyn didn’t move. Neither did he. The space between them was filled with fog and birdsong. And something else. Recognition.
“You were staring at me in the square,” she said softly.
“I was.”
“Why?”
“Because you saw me,” he answered.
She frowned. “Everyone saw you.”
“No.” He took a step forward. “Everyone looked. But you—you saw.”
The hairs on her arms stood up. “Saw what?”
He tilted his head slightly. “That I am not a man to be trifled with. That I’ve bled more men than you’ve met. That I’m cursed, or cruel, or both. That I am... not what your people think I am. Not only that.”
“You speak in riddles.”
“I speak in truth. It’s the world that prefers lies.”
Another step forward. Close enough now that she could see the faint scar beneath his eye. The one shaped like a crescent moon. The one that didn’t look like it had been made by a blade, but by something with teeth.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he murmured.
“Neither should you,” she replied.
He smiled then. Barely. Like it hurt. “Tell me something, Evelyn Thornhart. Do you believe in fate?”
She hesitated. “No.”
“Pity.”
“Why?”
“Because fate believes in you.”
A cold wind rushed through the trees, bending branches with a low moan. Evelyn’s heart raced, and for a moment, she felt like she was standing on the edge of something deep—something that would not let her come back the same.
Nathaniel turned without another word and walked into the mist.
She stood still for what felt like minutes. Hours. A lifetime.
And then she whispered to the empty woods, “You saw me too.”
---
Back at the manor, Evelyn didn’t speak of the meeting.
Not to her brothers. Not to her parents. Not even in her journal.
Because the moment she said it out loud—it would become real.
And something deep inside her whispered that this wasn’t a story that could be unwritten.
- Writer
