Page 60 of Curvy Alpha Bride
“I’ll make it,” Lyssa offers, stroking my hair as she gets up. “You stay off your feet.”
Finnah is giving me an intense look, and I turn my eyes back to the fire. Whatever questions she has, I’m not ready to answer them.
***
Over the next few days, the girls venture out of the cabin at noon to bring in more wood, tend the garden, and bring in supplies others have brought from the village. Even though it seems safe, I don’t dare venture outside, and instead of feeling more confident when the witch doesn’t show, I actually feel worse.
Does my condition make a difference to the witch? I can only assume it makes me more attractive. Even at noon, I wouldn’t dare tempt her.
“How is it in town, Finnah?” I ask as she helps bring in boxes of supplies from Hector’s truck.
“It’s interesting,” she replies. “Apparently, they are being stalked by the witch every night.”
“What do you mean?”
“She rattles the doors and locks, screams and laughs, destroys things in town. She’s tormenting them.”
“But we’ve heard nothing!”
“That’s exactly my point. Have you felt anything in the evenings, especially at midnight?”
“Not even a whisper of a bad dream,” I answer.
“This is disturbing,” Finnah muses. “I thought she was getting weaker, and that’s why she stopped looming over us. But if she’s going all the way into town to taunt them, that can’t be the case.”
“She knows all the young women are here, doesn’t she?” I ask.
“Yes,” Finnah says, nodding. “She will be able to sense them, especially you. I’d even go so far as to say she’s gone quiet up here to trick us into letting our guard down so she can get to you, but she must know we’re communicating with the town. I just don’t know why she’s doing this.”
A faint thrill runs through me as I realize that the witch’s absence in my dreams aligns perfectly with the change in my condition.
Could it be…?
I shut that thought down before I can even begin to entertain it. Speculation can’t help any of us, and we need to minimize risks, not invite them.
“She’s taunting us in her own sick way,” I consider. “I don’t think it has to make sense. We’ll never understand hermotive in these games. All we need to know is how to keep everyone safe.”
“Well, we know how to do that. I never forgot, even when I was living in Cyan Lock all those years. But I never had to deal with the isolation, and being in lockdown.”
“I never thought about that,” I say, following her to the kitchen to help her unload the boxes. “I’ve been sitting here wrapped up in my own issues, and I completely forgot you left town before things got really bad.”
“It was a terrible night,” she says softly. “The night Triss was taken. Xavier was only a couple of days old. None of us really knows what happened—maybe Allan did. The witch’s power increased so sharply that everyone felt it. As soon as we were able, Serra and I came out here to see what had happened to our brother. He was distraught, begging us to take Xavier.”
“It must have been horrible,” I say.
“Worse,” Finnah says, wiping her eyes as the memory brings fresh tears. “We wanted to argue with him, but we knew he was right, and there wasn’t time. Even though it was midday, we could feel the witch coming. Allan gave Xavier to us, then locked down the cabin and forbade us from returning. He said the witch was counting on being able to lure him out, and that would never happen. He told us to stock the bunkers and stay underground for at least a week, and after that, take it day by day. He made it clear no one should go near the woods.”
“And you took Xavier out of here that same day?”
“I did,” she answers, closing the cupboard doors and putting the box aside. “We had a small collection of magical trinkets—there had been other witches among our first settlers, not evil ones like Ivarra. I was terrified when I left the townlines to head for the Pass, but the spell did its work. We were invisible.”
“And the town was left in lockdown,” I say, returning to the fire. “How awful.”
“No worse than now, I’d say,” Finnah replies.
I stoke up the fire while Finnah calls to the others, telling them to come inside. Hector has packed up his truck and left already, and we all scramble to get our jobs done before the sun moves past its zenith.
Watching the flames brings on a slight trance, and I sink into it, letting my mind wander into a place somewhere between dreams and reality.
