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“Everyone calls me Freckles,” the boy called out and pointed off to the side.

Camden followed the gesture.

Nestled among twisted trunks stood a shack barely worthy of the name. It leaned sideways, boards warped and split, roof sagging like a tired back. No smoke rose from its chimney. No light glowed through its cracks. The place felt abandoned, yet the earth nearby was disturbed by visible footprints.

A warning stirred low in Camden’s gut.

“Me sista is in there.”

Before Camden could answer, Freckles bolted toward the door and flung it open.

“He’s here!” The words echoed with an unsettling brightness.

Camden approached more slowly now. Each step felt louder than it should, leaves crunching beneath his boots. The forest seemed to hold its breath. Even the insects had gone silent.

A faint movement flickered in the corner of his eye, a shadow shifting behind a tree. When he turned to look, there was nothing. He was letting his imagination go wild.

Still vigilant, he tightened his grip on his satchel strap, pulse beginning to pound.

“I am Camden Lewis, the village healer,” he called, voice calm though tension coiled beneath it. He reached the doorway, senses straining.

The air carried the metallic tang of something unfamiliar. Oil? Rust? He had just begun to turn, instinct screaming too late when something heavy slammed into the back of his skull.

Light burst across his vision. The world lurched violently sideways. He staggered, trying to right himself, but his limbs no longer answered properly. Sound stretched into distant echoes, warped and hollow.

He realized then this was not a lass in need of his help. No, this was a trap. The ground struck him cold and hard. Darkness surged inward, swallowing thought, swallowing sight. And the last thing he heard before everything vanished…was the boy laughing.

Consciousness returned in fragments. First came the pain.

It throbbed through Camden’s skull in heavy pulses, each beat of his heart sending a sharp echo behind his eyes. He groaned faintly, the sound rough and unfamiliar to his own ears, and tried to shift. The effort sent the world tilting. Darkness pressed at the edges of his vision again.

He stilled taking in slow, deep breaths.

Gradually, he felt well enough to take inventory of his surroundings. Beneath him was not cold earth but something softer. Rough linens. The faint scratch of wool against his skin. Several smells lingered in the air: Herbs he did not recognize, mingled with something sweeter and cloying. Oil lamp smoke. Perfume.

His eyes opened at last and the room swam into focus slowly. Dim light flickered across wooden walls and a low ceiling. He was inside the shack, and it was morning by the light that managed to make it past the tangles of branches of the surrounding trees. Shadows stretched across the cot he lay in. He tried to move his arms and found they obeyed only sluggishly, heavy as though weighed down by stone. Then awareness struck him colder than the forest air ever could.

He had no clothes on. His chest tightened, instinctive alarm cutting through the haze. He attempted to push himself upright, but the motion sent a violent wave of dizziness through him, and he sank back with a strained breath. His head pounded mercilessly.

A quiet sound reached him. Fabric shifting. Camden forced his gaze to the side.

There, seated in a chair beside the bed, watching him with unwavering patience was Moyra. She sat comfortably, hands folded in her lap, eyes fixed on him as though she had been waiting for this exact moment. The dim sunlight danced across her features, leaving half her face in shadow and half illuminated, making her expression difficult to read, calm, composed and something else. Something beneath it.

They were alone.

Camden swallowed, his throat so dry that his voice was hoarse when he finally managed to speak.

“Moyra.”

Even that single word cost him effort. His body refused to cooperate, strength draining away before he could gather it. He tried again to shift and failed, frustration and unease twisting inside him. His mind struggled to assemble the pieces. The forest, the boy, the blow. What did it all mean?

His pulse began to quicken.

“What… What happened?” he rasped, forcing the question past aching lips.

Moyra didnae answer immediately. She simply continued watching him, her gaze intent, as though studying something fragile and newly captured.

And as the silence stretched between them, Camden felt something he had not allowed himself to feel in many years. Helplessness. Not from injury alone. But from the creeping certainty that whatever happened, he would not leave that place unscathed.