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I began to wonder if terror was the only thing chasing me, nipping at my heels, threatening to take over. If anything, that only spurred me on.
I ran deeper and deeper into the dark forest. I couldn’t see anything anymore—the leaves above were so thick they blocked out the dim light of the moon.
My foot caught on something, and I fell again. When I tried to scramble back up, a hand wrapped around my ankle.
“No!” I screamed.
The hand pulled me backward, dragging me through the mulch. I clawed and thrashed and screamed, but the grip around my ankle was like a vise. I screamed again before the hand dragged me away.
ChapterTwo
Ash
Aweek earlier.
I rose from the ground, shaking off the leaves and mulch that clung to me. My branches reached for the sun, drinking in its light.
I closed my eyes, feeling the magic of the forest as it danced around me. The other dryads and druses were waking up, too.
The dryads, female spirits of the trees, and their male counterparts, the druses, were the keepers of the forest. We lived in the trees—became one with them—although we could take on human form if we wanted to. It was our duty to look after the forest, to preserve its life force, to let the trees live on. We lived as long as the trees lived—eternally unless our trees were destroyed. It was in our best interest, and that of the earth, to keep the trees alive.
“Ash?” a voice called through the forest. His voice was like a melody.
I shifted into human form and stepped from the bark of the large ash tree I slept in.
“Rowan,” I said when my friend stepped around the trunks in my vale, looking for me. He was in his human form, too, with pale skin and white hair, pointed ears, and the sharp features of the druses and dryads.
“There you are,” he said with a grin. “I thought you were going to sit this one out again.”
“I considered it,” I said. I stretched until my back popped, then ruffled my dark hair, scratching my scalp. Stepping into human form after so long was strange, like donning a new outfit that hadn’t quite been worn in. “Another fifty years wouldn’t have hurt anyone.”
“Yeah, but without you, this shit gets boring.”
I grinned. “What’s fifty years on eternity?”
“It’s fifty years’ worth of trick-or-treating you missed. All Hallows’ Eve is coming up—Halloween, they call it now. The humans are getting more and more creative every day. They don’t even know what it’s all about anymore.”
We walked through the trees toward the lake that lay in a clearing just beyond where I slept.
“You can’t keep doing this, you know,” Rowan said. He pushed his fingers into his white hair and combed it to the side.
“Sleep?”
“Avoid the world for the rest of eternity.”
I shrugged. “It’s worked for me so far.”
We reached the water. It was clear, sparkling in the light of the sun. We walked to the edge of the lake and sat down, plunging our feet into the cool blue liquid.
“Three hundred years is a hell of a long time to hold a grudge,” Rowan remarked.
“Would you have forgiven her?” I asked.
I’d fallen in love with a mortal once. I’d cared so much for her, I’d been willing to give up my immortality. Apparently, she’d been willing to run around my back with another. Immortality was a big thing to lose.
Rowan thought about it. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I know I wouldn’t have fallen for a mortal.”
“You can’t say that. You can’t help who you love.”
