Page 50 of Untethering Dark

“Open it.”

Inside was a leather-bound tome stuffed with thick, liquid-resistant pages, all empty and waiting to be filled. This would contain her words, her journey, her knowledge painstakingly culminated over time. And one day, it would be her history. What reminded her of days and times and people long gone.Johanna. Suri.It hurt so much knowing she couldn’t keep them forever. That there would come a day when they wouldn’t be there, waiting for her at the base of the mountain.

She thumbed through the blank pages, growing more and more teary-eyed with every turn. So much possibility lay ahead. So much to discover, learn, and master. So much to remember.

All she worked for, all she ever wanted, it began right here. With this book.

Would she ink Gudariks’s name here? Would he become a constant in these pages, across the centuries, in a way her dear, sweet friends couldn’t?

“Your first grimoire,” Mutter announced proudly, beaming even.

Astrid shot up from bed, ignoring any lingering aches in her limbs, and crushed Perchta in a hug.

Chapter Eighteen

“What’s with all the baking?” Johanna bit the leg off a gingerbread man. She stopped by for a late lunch after working in the field all morning.

Rolling out dough for Kaiser-Plätzchen across the table, Astrid replied, “I have a gentleman caller coming this evening, and I want to impress him.”

The forest ranger choked on her cookie. “This evening?” she sputtered, pounding her chest. “Before dark, I hope, or he’s going to be someone else’s snack.”

A wry smile stole across Astrid’s lips. “Maybe that ‘someone else’ is the visitor.”

Johanna furrowed her brow, not immediately understanding. Eagerly rendezvousing with the reigning forest monster was too absurd a notion to be anyone’s first thought. But as the dots began to connect, her eyes widened. Dropping the uneaten parts of the gingerbread man to her plate, she leaned forward, hands braced against the table. “You don’t mean that someone else is the... Astrid, are you seriously telling me that Wald Vater is coming by later for a ‘friendly’ visit?”

“Gudariks, actually. That’s his real name. And yes, I think he likes me.”

“Wow. You’re serious. How exactly does one get on a first-name basis with a forest monster?”

Thumbing off a clump of dough stuck to her rolling pin, Astrid tried to keep the anger from her voice when she recalled the circumstances that brought him to her. “He heard me yelling and came to chase off a group of hikers that were wrecking my property.”

Johanna sucked in a sharp breath, concern overtaking her features. “Are you okay? I noticed the damage to your garden, and the newly turned soil, but I’d thought maybe Fritz or Liesel had gotten out of their pens and had themselves a Yuletide feast.”

“Not on their own—the hikers let them out. We’re all right, but it’s going to take a few weeks for the garden to yield again.”

“Do you need anything? I can bring groceries on my next trip up.”

“Maybe some fresh herbs and produce? My pantry is otherwise stocked.”

“Of course.” She sipped on a cup of tea. “So, what exactly happened? They let out the goats, wrecked your garden...”

Astrid continued the story, explaining how her unwanted visitors harassed Fritz and Liesel, ruined her offering at sunset, and put her life in danger. No details were spared—except for the ones involving throwing an ax at tourists.

Some things you just don’t tell your human friends.

“And then he came. He watched me from the woods as the hikers ran off.”

Eyes wide as saucers, Johanna covered her mouth with one of her hands. “How’d you get out of being eaten?” Even with Astrid standing right there in the flesh, indisputably alive and well, the forest ranger leaned toward her, waiting to hear the rest of the story with bated breath.

“I thought I was going to die, I won’t deny that, so I laced some Springerle with death cap and offered him a snack.”

Johanna’s jaw dropped, but she rapped on the table approvingly.

“But then we got to talking.” Her cheeks warmed. So much had changed from their first conversation to their last. The way he sought her touch in the garden, never wanting to be too far away. Or how attentively he listened to her childhoodstories and asked for more. Not to mention when she was struck by vertigo, and they both held on to each other just a shade too long, she felt him, every wonderful bit of him, pressed up against her thigh...

Last night’s almost kiss.

“I didn’t end up poisoning him, and he didn’t end up trying to eat me. In fact, he went out of his way to rescue Fritz and Liesel. The hikers scared them off, and they got lost in the forest.”

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