Page 45 of Mate Night Snack
He stepped closer. “What did you see?”
“Nothing I could hold on to. Just feelings. A pull. The stone was in it.” She gestured toward the slab. “It wanted me here.”
His hands flexed at his sides. “It doesn’twant.It pulls. It tests.”
Katniss frowned. “What is it, exactly?”
“No one knows,” he said. “The fae say it’s a memory. The shifters say it’s a gate. Varric says it’s the place where everything started and might end.”
“That’s comforting,” she muttered.
“I didn’t say it was safe.”
He looked at her and realized her hands were shaking.
She noticed his gaze and tucked them behind her back. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
“I’mmanaging,Emmett. That’s more than I can say for the rest of this town.”
He didn’t rise to the bait. Just stepped in and reached for her notebook. She let him take it. The last few pages were scribbled with half-words. Circles. Symbols. A shape he recognized.
A rune. Old. Twisted. Burned into wood years ago.
The same mark Ashwin used.
He closed the notebook. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Because you’d follow.”
“Damn right I would.” He stepped closer. “You think I can sleep with you beside me and not know the second you leave?”
Her voice softened. “I didn’t want you to worry.”
“Too late.”
The silence stretched again. Wind stirred through the trees like fingers brushing old stories back into motion.
She looked back at the Hollow Stone. “I don’t think it’s just visions. I think I’m remembering things that don’t belong to me. Or maybe things the town doesn’t want remembered.”
“That’s not impossible.”
She looked at him, lips parted. “You believe me?”
He nodded. “I believeyou.”
Her mouth trembled. “I don’t want to be one of them,” she whispered. “The girls in the journals. The ones who just… disappeared.”
“You won’t be.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Ido.” His voice dropped low, fierce. “Because I’ll tear the damn forest down before I let anything take you.”
She blinked at him, stunned. She stepped into his space like she was done pretending they weren’t already woven into something too deep to name and he caught her.
His arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her in tight, his cheek brushing against her hair. “Don’t scare me like that again,” he said into her crown.
