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It was the exact same design he’d etched into that sheet of metal back in the cave.
Hope bloomed in my chest as I turned to face him again, but Damien was more closed off than ever.
“That’s enough,” he snapped, grabbing my hand and pulling me away from the bench as if it might burst into flames. “We’re leaving. Now.”
As we marched up the hill, it was as if Damien had disappeared into his own mind. He didn’t feel me thrashing in his grip. Didn’t hear me telling him to let go. He was on some kind of autopilot, and I couldn’t snap him out of it.
“Damien, slow down.”
Nothing.
“What is going on? Talk to me.”
Ignored.
“Damien, look. The cottage.”
That did it. Damien’s feet rooted themselves to the ground as I barreled into his back. The sun had nearly set, but there was enough ambient light left in the woods to make out the crumbling, vine-encrusted silhouette of a stone structure in a small clearing.
Damien’s body tensed as he stared at the ruin. The place that had once been Kellen’s sanctuary. His only safe space in a village that had been told to hate him.
Heat radiated off of his body as some unexpressed emotion boiled to the surface. Dread. Hatred. Sorrow. I couldn’t tell, but whatever it was, it slithered up my arm like a venomous snake, making me want to break free and run.
Without releasing my hand, Damien walked around to the entrance, and I don’t think I breathed once. A flood of memories filled my mind as I waited for him to react.
A tea set.
The taste of vanilla.
A black flight jacket left on the ground.
Black boots, pacing.
And pacing.
And pacing.
The roof was long gone, but the arched doorway remained, and in the shadows of the darkening wood, it felt more like the entrance of a tomb than a playhouse.
Walking backward, Damien pulled me away from the building as if it might sprout teeth and eat us alive.
“It’s too dark,” he said before turning and marching the rest of the way up the hill.
I didn’t know what that meant. Was it too dark inside the cottage? Too dark to find our way out of the woods? Or was it too dark inside his head, where his thoughts seemed to be spiraling and his temples pulsed with every surge of blood from his pounding heart?
Struggling to keep up, I glanced at the sky and noted the heavy gray clouds swirling overhead.
Even that felt familiar.
As soon as we crested the top of the hill, an arch of lightning streaked the sky, illuminating a wide expanse of farmland through the trees below.
An elated sigh burst from my lungs before we started our descent down the hill, both of us moving quickly now for two very different reasons. Sprinting straight through the tree line, I dragged Damien behind me as I raced toward a wooden fence that was broken in more places than it was intact.
The field beyond the fence looked like it hadn’t been mowed in decades, and there wasn’t a single light on in the house or barn on the far side of the meadow, but I could see every detail in my mind.
Standing beside me, Damien finally loosened his grip on my hand.
I hoped that he saw what I saw. That being here would help him remember, help solidify whatever epiphany he’d been having in the woods.
