Page 100 of Sweet Silver Bells
With his back foot still on the covered grass, the last part of him not to be engulfed by thick trees, he paused. “Why do I feel like if I come with you, I’ll never come out?”
Olivia turned to face him, her eyes so loving and light despite their dark pigment, like a disco of lights illuminating what he should not be able to see.
“We are never going back,” she whispered. “You’ll be with me forever. Even if you change your mind.”
They moved through the trees as if the forest had been waiting for them—branches arching overhead like cathedral ceilings. Snowflakes drifted in soft spirals, catching in Olivia’s dark curls like diamonds.
She led him with quiet certainty, barefoot now, her shoes forgotten against tree trunks behind them. Her dress tore, caught on branches, leaving behind a trail of their final decisions together.
The deeper they went, the quieter the world became. Even the sound of wind disappeared, the music faded, and the trees no longer spoke or sang.
“Where are we going?” Hunter asked. His voice sounded fainter than before. His breath barely clouded the air.
She didn’t answer—not with words.
Olivia turned and looked at him with a kind of sorrowful tenderness he’d never seen before. Her hand found his cheek. She stroked it gently, as if memorizing the curve of his face.
And that was when he knew.
The chill in his bones. The too-still air. The snow that didn’t melt on his skin.
Hunter wasn’t alive anymore.
He staggered back a step. “Olivia.”
“They discovered your body, fallen on the marble floor. Your parents, your friends, will have closure.” Her voice cracked like a dried leaf. “I couldn’t bear another Christmas alone.”
He tried to speak—he should’ve been angry, should’ve shouted, should’ve run—but all that came was a broken breath.
And then she was in his arms again, curling into him like a ribbon folding in on itself.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered into his coat. “I did it softly. You didn’t feel a thing. I waited until you were happy.”
He closed his eyes.
It was the kiss. Her taste had been different—her lips, poisonous like holly.
And when he opened them again, he understood: hewashappy. The pain was gone. The fear. The weight of everything he’d ever lost. It was all gone.
What remained washer.
She led him to the oldest tree in the glade—tall as a bell tower, its bark glistening silver in the moonlight. Hollowed at the center, like a cradle for something precious and sacred.
Inside, soft moss grew in blankets. The tree hummed quietly, alive and ancient.
“It was the only option. I wouldn’t have been able to stop you from aging, even if wrapped in the tree with me. Now your ghost belongs to a witch.”
“To a siren. My moon, my tree siren,” he corrected her.
Olivia looked up at him, her eyes bright and unrepentant. “Lie with me. Let this be our cathedral. Let the forest keep us.”
Hunter hesitated for only a moment.
Then he wrapped his arms around her and let her pull him down into the tree’s hollow. Her body curled against his like a final stanza. The moss rose around them like a blanket. Their hands twined together. His lips touched her hair.
“I forgive you,” he murmured.
And her reply came soft and sharp as the falling snow. “I’d do it again.”
