Page 19 of Little Witch

My breath caught hard in my throat. He'd heard them too. The same whispers that had been carving grooves into my skull for weeks.

Further still.

I think something's coming. Darkness that could hurt all of us. I need help stopping it. Help from someone tied to the Hollow the same way we are.

I gripped the journal tighter, the weight of every word settling over me like something with hands. Cian had been fighting something in the dark, alone, and hadn't wanted me anywhere near it. Years of searching for a reason he'd vanished, and here it sat, finally, in my hands.

I couldn't stop reading. Page after page, until one name stopped me cold entirely.

Yakob says Amber hears the woods too. She keeps telling him about the dreams, the voices. He's terrified the darkness is coming for her the same way, though for now he's convinced her it's just nightmares. Neither of us know how much longer that lie holds. He says he won't let her near the treeline. Neither of us know how to actually stop her once it starts calling louder.

The wind howled again outside, and for one wild, dangerous second I wondered if Cian was still out there somewhere. If he hadn't left me at all. If this had been him trying to warn me the whole time, or trying to help, and I'd simply never found the message until now. I flipped to the final entry, dated the morning he disappeared.

Yakob's plan is set. The Hollow accepted him instead — turns out he wasn't born human at all, just raised believing he was, before he found out he'd been adopted into it. Makes more sense now, why the woods always wanted him too.

One page more. The very last.

The Hollow's magic needs its protectors. A Thorne and a Halloway. If we don't offer ourselves, the darkness wins — keeps feeding on this town until there's nothing left of it, or of anyone in it. If I don't do it, one of the twins will. Amber will. The woods will call for them eventually, and I won't let that happen. Neither will Yakob.

We're going to fix it ourselves.

We're going to fix everything.

I closed the journal with eyes burning, tucking it hard under my arm like it might try to disappear again if I let it out of my grip. I couldn't stay in this house a second longer. Whatever darkness Cian and Yakob had tried to fight off years ago, it hadn't gone anywhere. It had just been waiting, patient, for a new generation of Thornes and Halloways to grow old enough to answer it.

I needed to see Amber.

But not to tell her about the bond. I'd already decided that much, standing there in the wreckage of my own childhood home. If she didn't feel it — if three years and one clearing hadn't been enough to wake whatever thread was supposed to exist between us — then I'd let it go. Bury it the way I'd buried everything else that hurt too much to look at directly. I wouldn't make her carry the weight of something she hadn't chosen, not on top of everything else this town was about to hand her.

I could pretend. I was good at that, after all this practice.

What I couldn't pretend about was the danger. That part she needed, whether either of us wanted to be the one delivering it.

I pulled my phone out before I'd even made it to the stairs, thumb hovering over Orias's name.

Rowan

Talk to her before we meet up? Tell her what you know about her dad.

The reply came back fast enough that he'd clearly been sitting there waiting for it.

Orias

Fine.

I shoved the phone back in my pocket and headed for the staircase anyway, the journal still clamped hard under my arm, the house's old halls echoing with every step. I still needed to see her myself. Still needed to look her in the eye and tell her the rest of it, whatever that ended up costing either of us.

I just needed Orias to soften the ground first, so she wasn't hearing all of it — the bond, the danger, her father, the sacrifice waiting somewhere at the end of all this — from a man she hadn't fully forgiven yet for leaving in the first place.

Chapter Eleven

Morning light crept through the curtains of Orias's room, thin gold bars stretching across the floorboards. They were pretty as pie. But It did nothing for the weight sitting on my chest that I'd been carrying since before dawn.

No amount of sleep had managed to scrub out the image of Rowan standing in that clearing, eyes glowing with light that had no business existing.

Hmm. I still wanted to punch him. Just a little. But that was a cruel thing to do to someone you cared about...

I lay there a while longer than I needed to, replaying it. The way the air had thickened and twisted the second he'd stepped out from behind the oak. The way he'd looked at me right before ordering me home.