I sat back, thinking of what to do next. He seemed so passionate. So honest, and most of all, so … unsure. Had he never fallen for someone before?
“So,” I asked, taking one thing and latching on to it. “
Am I an agent of evil?”
He snorted. “I’ve been convinced you weren’t since the first time we exchanged words in the forest. But that wasn’t enough. You know the secret I must protect now, the people I lead. I had to make totally sure. For them too, not just for me. If you have to hate me for that, so be it. But I won’t do them more harm. I already lied to them.”
I didn’t want to hate him. Just the opposite. But it was hard. I’d suffered a lot. The betrayal of my most recent romantic relationship, of course. Losing my grandmother. Nearly being killed several times. The revelation of this whole new world.
“Tell me more about the Chained,” I said. “And why do your elders believe my grandmother would be aligned with it? She was a good person.”
“The Chained,” he echoed, pausing to take a drink of water and emptying his glass this time.
“What is it?”
“We don’t know,” he admitted. “We know it’s an evil entity of some sort. Centuries and centuries ago, it came to this land, intent on ruling it and making it over to look like its home. Our ancestors fought back. They won, eventually, but they were not strong enough to kill it. Instead, they harnessed the power of the very forest itself and bound it together, creating a tomb at the heart of the forest that kept it contained.”
“They didn’t do a great job, it seems.”
He smiled tightly. “Some of its power leaks through. We don’t know why. But it gathers over time. Pooling, until it’s ready to act, to try to free itself. Like a hundred and fifty years ago. When it attacked the village. Your village.”
“Is that where my grandmother comes in? I mean, she wasn’t that old but her grandparents could have been, I suppose? Great-grandparents?”
Lincoln looked uneasy. “Take a drink of water.”
I frowned at him, but did so.
“Was there ever anything unusual about your grandmother? Anything maybe, special?”
I thought it over, but it didn’t take long to know what he meant. “Our intuition,” I said.
“Intuition?”
“We can sense danger. I didn’t know she could do it too, until I read a journal entry recently. But I have a sixth sense for danger. My body warns me if it’s coming.”
Lincoln nodded slowly. “That’s how you knew something was out there in the forest that night.”
“Yes.”
“I wondered how you could know before me. Now it makes sense. It also confirms my thoughts that it was after you, not me, if you were sensing danger.”
“What does that mean, though?”
“It means your grandmother wasn’t human. She was a witch. An extraordinarily powerful one, at that.”
I stared at him for a long time. Then I laughed. Hard and long until my stomach hurt and my cheeks were stained with tear tracks. “Yeah, right!”
But Lincoln wasn’t laughing.
“Wait.” I shook my head, staring at the table and trying to process everything he was telling me. “But if that’s the case. If she was a witch, wouldn’t I also be one?”
“Now you know why my people were worried about you and me. They thought that perhaps you had cast a spell on me. Twisted my mind. Made me fall for you. They thought your grandmother was in league with the Chained, and therefore you are too.”
“But I’m not a witch.” I looked up at him. “Am I?”
I looked at her. Waiting. Her face slowly opened wide.
“Holy shit, Lincoln. How muchelse have you been hiding from me, lying to me about? You knew all this time I was a witch and said nothing?”
“I-“
His response was interrupted by a heavy knocking at the door.
Lincoln
“Go,” she said, throwing a hand toward the door. “Go get it. I need to be alone for a bit. To think. Somehow.”
I had screwed up. Yet it wasn’t my fault? Why would I tell her she was a witch if I had thought she was out to cause harm to me and my kin? It was all too confusing, most of all for Sylvie. I couldn’t blame her for needing some time to process everything she’d discovered.
“Wait.”
I stopped short of the door as a fist thumped on it again. “Yes?”
“You said you wanted to go back to the heart of the forest. To find out why this Chained was afraid of me.”
“I did, yes.”
Her eyes narrowed to slits. “You meantwe were going. Didn’t you? You want to take me there?”
“It has to be stopped,” I said bluntly. “I think you’re the key. I don’t know how, but it wants you dead for a reason. I think, Ihope
, that reason is because you can finally kill it.”
“You suck,” she said, shaking her head. “You really suck. Lying, not being human, volunteering me to go somewhere your entire pack won’t go. Basically, you volunteered me for certain death.”
“I will keep you safe,” I growled.
She scoffed, dismissing my promise as inconsequential amid her anger. “And how can I believe that? You haven’t been telling me the truth about anything so far. How do I know you aren’t just using me for this?”
More heavy knocking. This time longer.
“Answer the door,” she said, dismissing me.
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