Ivy woke to the sound of birdsong, but it no longer comforted her.
Not since the night before.
Not since he spoke.
Her skin still buzzed with the memory of his voice—velvet and decay, soft and terrifying. She had lain awake until the first hints of dawn, staring at the ceiling, her hand pressed to her chest to calm the heartbeat that never settled.
Every word he'd spoken clung to her like a second skin.
"I wonder how easily I could peel you apart…"
She shivered, brushing cold water over her face at the washbasin. Her reflection in the cracked mirror looked pale. Wan. Bruised beneath the eyes. And yet—there was something wild lurking there too. Something quietly blooming.
He hadn't touched her. He hadn't needed to.
His words had crawled beneath her skin like worms.
And what terrified her more than anything else was that she didn't hate it.
By noon, Ivy was gathering herbs by the stream—the shallow one, not the deep dark places where the trees hunched over like gossiping witches. She told herself she wasn't going back there. Not yet. Not today.
Still… the forest's deeper trails whispered to her, a song just barely out of reach.
Her fingers moved without thinking, snipping feverfew and white willow bark. She murmured to herself, half-hoping he could hear.
"I shouldn't come back so soon," she whispered. "But I want to."
She waited for an answer.
None came.
And she both cursed and missed it.
She didn't notice the child watching her from the hill.
Little Bran, the butcher's son, no more than nine winters old, crouched behind the thick tangle of foxbrush, chewing on a piece of bark. His eyes were wide, watching Ivy talk to herself, watching her slip back into the forbidden tree line with a strange look on her face.
He knew the rules.
No one goes into the woods.
The elders had made it clear after the last disappearance. The Blacksmith's cousin—gone. The old baker—gone. Screams in the night and trails of blood that stopped mid-print. No bodies. No closure.
But Ivy didn't care.
She went in anyway.
Bran didn't understand why, but he did know something else: grown-ups didn't believe kids unless it was something scary enough to spread.
So he ran home fast, the stick in his mouth snapping with every breathless footstep.
The next day, the whispers began.
"Ivy was seen past the stream," hissed one of the seamstresses at the market.
"The butcher's boy says she talks to shadows," said the man who sold pickled radishes.
"She's always been strange," murmured the apothecary's apprentice. "Too much time in the woods. Not right in the head."
By evening, two of the elders came to her cottage with forced smiles and eyes too sharp.
Elder Myra tapped on the door like she was knocking on a coffin. Ivy opened it, apron dusted with flour from bread she'd never finish baking.
"My child," the older woman said. "May we come in?"
"Of course," Ivy replied. She was calm, too calm. Her hands trembled behind her back.
Elder Hal stepped inside and made a face like the herbs hanging from her rafters offended him.
"We've heard troubling things," he said without ceremony. "That you've been… venturing into forbidden parts."
Ivy tilted her head. "I go where the medicine grows."
"You go where people disappear," Myra snapped.
"I haven't disappeared," Ivy replied, voice soft. "Not yet."
That earned her a long stare.
"Then you admit it?"
She met Myra's eyes. "The forest isn't what you think."
"You think you know better than us, child?" Hal barked. "You think whatever magic lives in that cursed place will spare you because you're kind?"
She didn't answer. She didn't have to.
She remembered his eyes. The way he said her name like it was the only word he'd ever liked.
Hal's mouth twisted. "Do not mistake mercy for approval. The forest took my sister. It can have your soul next—but it won't have this village."
They left her with a warning—and a rumor already spreading like oil in dry grass.
She returned that night. Of course she did.
But this time, she brought a knife.
Not to hurt. Just to feel safe. Maybe. Probably.
She crossed the stream and walked deeper than ever before, past the marker trees with red cloth faded to pink, past the thickest fog where the light didn't reach. And still she spoke.
"I think they're scared of what they don't understand," she said aloud.
Silence.
"I think I'm scared too. But I'm still here."
She stopped walking.
"I need you to say something."
Nothing.
Then, from behind her, so close she could feel it on her neck:
"Would you keep coming if I didn't?"
She spun, knife raised. The blade trembled in her hand like a silver leaf.
"Don't sneak up on me like that!" she gasped.
His form hovered just at the edge of her vision. Not quite real. Not quite smoke. Not human.
"I can't help what I am," he said.
Her heartbeat slowed. Not because she wasn't afraid. But because her fear was becoming familiar.
"I almost got exiled today," she whispered. "Because of you."
"I didn't ask you to come."
"But you left things. You spoke. You watched me."
"I never said I was kind, Ivy."
"No," she said, stepping closer. "You said you liked hearing me break."
He was silent.
"I'm not broken," she added. "Not yet."
"You will be," he said. And something in his voice was both a threat and a promise. "And I'll love you for it."
She blinked hard. "That's not love."
"It's the closest thing I know."
She stared at the spot where his face might be.
"I should hate you," she said. "But I don't."
He didn't answer.
"But if you hurt me," she continued, stepping even closer, "I'll forgive you. That's the difference between us."
She reached out. And though her hand passed through nothing, the air was hot. Humming. Alive.
"You make me feel like I matter," she said, her voice cracking. "Even if I'm just a puzzle to you."
"You are more than that."
"Then tell me what I am."
He leaned close enough that the fog trembled.
"You're mine."
And Ivy, trembling, smiling through her tears, whispered, "Then stop hiding."
He did not step forward.
But the forest around her bloomed in color, the moss glowing faintly, the bark humming with life. And his voice, when it came again, was everywhere at once.
"Come back tomorrow," he said. "I'll show you what I am."
And Ivy, stupid with awe, still aching with fear, whispered, "I will."