Page 48 of Whisper Woods

It’s a fantasy I’ve never allowed myself, maintaining the mental wall even when it felt physically painful to do so. But with the future of Tathys changing, maybe… maybe the impossible is no longer out of reach?

Still focused on the fantasies of whisking Seff away into the sunset, I groan involuntarily as I sit up in the bed, the sheets a tangled mess around me. He doesn’t notice me, as I watch him sitting by the table, bathed in the morning light shining through the opened blinds. Just like I don’t notice at first, what exactly he’s reading.

My journals.

Falyuk.

The warmth that usually radiates from Seff is gone. There is just… cold. Still naked, muscles taught with emotion, he stares down at the notebook in his hand, the messages from Brydon. It’s all there, laid out before him.

I swallow hard against the lump lodged in my throat, my chest constricting painfully. Should I be angry that he’s reading my private things? Probably. But right now all I can feel is fear.

“You’ve been spying on us? Making notes? What… What is all this?”Anguish. There is no other word for the pain in Seff’s voice. He won’t even look at me, his head hanging low, his whole body sagging in confusion. “I just wanted to turn your phone off flight mode…”

Slowly I slide from the bed. I keep my movements controlled. So as not to spook him. To give myself time to reason.

“I—” I stop. There is no explanation I can give. The magic of Tathys is weak, but it still binds me, keeping the truth from passing my lips, even as it forms on my tongue. My mouth flaps uselessly, my brain sleep-fogged, still half in bed caught in happy day dreams confused withthis. He shouldn’t have been able to touch the journals, protected as they are by the same magic that binds me.

“I mean your friends no harm, Seff. That I can swear.” I finally managed to wheeze out.

His face turns to me, his dimple—mydimple—hidden by his sorrow. “That’s all you have to say? Seriously? What the fuck is this prophecy thing? Why do you have Darius’s book? What is the Woods ‘orchestrating’? Why do you have notes on Theo? There arepagesof this stuff. And the wreck at Marieth’s cottage? What the fuck, Rafe? Whoareyou?”

I would prefer anger. Anything other than the pained way his voice fractures. The desperate way his eyes search mine for me to explain this all away. Reassure him it’s all a simple misunderstanding.

I drop to my knees before him, and he turns frigid, shrinking from my touch. “Seff, I cannot explain. Not now. But, please, please believe me. I would never,neverharm you. Or your friends. I swear on my life.” His big leg bounces and he expels a breath. Big hands run through his hair, pulling at the strands.

“But you can’t tell me. You can’t tell me anything, Rafe. You never have, not really.” Amber eyes, glistening with pools of tears rake over me. I can feel his withdrawal. It aches in the very pit of my spirit. I grasp his hands between mine, and he lets me. But the touch is as detached as his words.

“I have opened myself up to you time and time again and you’ve given me… nothing. I don’t know you. I knownothingabout you, not really.What was I thinking?” He says the last bit to himself and I know the tone. It’s the same self-deriding tone he’s used over the years when his pack has gotten in his ear.

After a moment of silence he hardens, pulling himself back together. Cold and hard. It looks so viscerally wrong on him. He looks down at me, shaking his head. “I can’t do this. After everything… after everything that we’ve been through, I can’t risk them. You mean…” His throat works roughly to get the words out. For a moment he squeezes his eyes tightly shut and drops his head back before staring me down with a coldness that cuts away at something in my heart I didn’t even know was there. “Stay away from them, Rafe. Stay away from me, my friends. The Black Stump. All of it. Go back to wherever in the world it is you’ve come from.”

The chair scrapes hard against the wooden floor when he stands suddenly. Icould stop him. Restrain him. Beg.

But I cannot reassure him without the truth. A truth I cannot give.

And so I watch him scoop his clothes from the floor and leave. My entire existence fracturing to pieces with the shutting of the door.

***

In record time, I have my belongings packed and ready to leave, skipping my shower because I cannot bear to wash his smell from me. I debate losing the last scraps of my dignity and taking his pillow from the room.

I settle for the cover, folding it carefully and tucking it into the bag like the sacred object it is.

On my way out of the tavern, I catch sight of him laughing with his friends as if there is nothing in the world amiss. Mauvy is confused at my sudden departure, but is either too professional or too distracted to make a comment. She does insist I leave with a freshly baked loaf of pumpkin bread. I need it; she said. And I wasn’t in the mood to argue. Not kindly anyway.

There is a hive of activity at the tavern this morning, the energy buzzing with fresh optimism. The happy energy pierces my skin like a thousand tiny pinpricks. I’m more than grateful to leave it behind.

But my journey through the Woods is peaceful, serene even. Leaving me with nothing but myself, my thoughts and the growing feeling of wretchedness with each step away from Seff. Regret and self-recrimination snap at my heels.

I have failed on every front.

It eats away at me that I have left without the information about what has occurred at the cottage. That I let my own obsession with Seff get in the way of my vow to Tathys.

But if Ihadsought that information? Maybe it was a blessing I’d been too caught up in my emotions to ask him last night. If I had, andthenhe found the journals...

I hurt him enough.

Every instinct in me demands I go back to him, to fix this. Be near him, whereI belong.

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