I sit on my bedroom floor with my back to the wall and try to treat my own life like a telehealth call—like I'm a patient and not the one holding the phone with shaking hands.
Symptoms: adrenaline tremors, chest tightness, peripheral flicker, nausea that isn't food-related, and a very specific sense that the woods just looked at me and decided to remember my name.
Risk factors: unknown contact. Missing messages. A threat that didn't leave evidence. A clock in my head that keeps insisting it's still 11:02 even though I know time moved.
Protective factors: none. Unless a silver crescent moon pendant counts as an emergency contact.
I swallow hard and do the only thing that's ever worked when my brain spirals: I make a plan so stupid it feels like control.
Okay. If I'm going back out there, I'm going right this time.
I grab my hoodie off the chair—dark, oversized, the kind that makes me blend into shadows instead of standing out in them. I jam my feet into sneakers without tying them properly, then fix it because tripping and dying of lace negligence would be humiliating even in the Underworld. I shove my phone on silent, then hesitate and turn the volume back up because if I'm going to be reckless, I should at least be reachable when I regret it.
I hover over Cassie's thread.
My thumb trembles over the keyboard—tell me not to go sitting there like a prayer I'm too proud to type. If I ask, she'll say don't. If she says don't, I'll still go. And then I'll have dragged her into it with me, like sharing the fear makes it lighter.
So instead, I do what I always do when I don't want to be stopped.
I don't tell anyone.
I curl my fingers around my pendant once—just once—testing. It answers with a pulse of warmth against my sternum, not a warning so much as a direction. Like a compass that only points toward bad decisions.
The window waits.
The lattice creaks when I swing a leg out, ivy brushing my palms like cold fingers. The night air hits my face and I pause, listening—house quiet, Mom asleep, the neighborhood wrapped tight in dark. I climb down the wood, landing soft in the damp grass, knees bending automatically like my body remembers sneaking out long before my brain signs off.
The yard looks innocent. It always does.
I cross it anyway, fast and low, hugging the fence line where the shadows gather. The gate gives a tiny complaint when I lift the latch; I freeze, heart hammering, waiting for a bedroom light to snap on.
Nothing.
I slip into the trees and the world changes its posture immediately—branches knitting overhead, air thickening, sound dulling, like the forest is closing its mouth around me.
The path to the hollow isn't really a path. It's muscle memory and stubbornness. A bend around the cedar. A dip where the roots claw up like knuckles. A narrow slit between two birches where the moonlight always gets caught, even when the moon isn't there.
And the closer I get, the more the back of my neck prickles—less fear now, more…anticipation. Like I'm walking toward a room where someone has already been waiting too long.
I shouldn't be doing this.
As I duck toward the hollow, I send up a silent plea that I will not get a spider web to the face like last time.
One ambush was enough.
For a full week afterward, every stray hair that brushed my cheek had me flailing like I was under attack by invisible, eight-legged demons. Sticky, unseen horror that makes you question if life is actually worth living.
I crouch low, squinting into the dark, bracing myself for Webageddon: Round Two—
"Didn't your parents ever warn you not to meet strange people in the woods at night?"
I nearly launch out of my skin.
A strangled sound claws up my throat—half shriek, half gasp—but my hands slap over my mouth in time to muffle it. My heart slams against my ribs so hard it hurts.
Flashlight turns on inside the hollow, throwing gold over bark I know better than some people. I hadn't even registered the glow. I'd been too lost in my own private horror movie.
And now someone is inside my sanctuary.
My heel catches on one of the old cushions I shoved back here years ago. Gravity, the traitor, chooses violence. Instead of stumbling backward out of the tree like a normal person, I lurch forward—
—and crash into someone solid. Warm. Very, very real.
Of course.
It's him.
Will's arms come around me instantly, like muscle memory—like his body has been waiting for mine to fall into that exact space.
"Whoa," he murmurs, steady as bedrock. "I've got you."
His voice is low and calm, and somehow that makes everything worse. My fingers clutch his forearms, heat and muscle under my palms.
He eases me upright, slow and careful, until we're standing so close his breath grazes my cheek. The flashlight glows over his jaw, his mouth, those impossible ice-blue eyes.
There's nothing left but our uneven breathing, and the way the tree seems to close in around us like it's listening.
My brain tries to reboot.
"How are you—" I start, the words tumbling out on a shaky exhale. "How do you even know about this place?"
His mouth curves, but it's not the cocky smirk from the IceHouse. It's softer. Older. Like he's looking at something precious he never thought he'd see again.
"You texted me to come here," he says quietly. "I texted back."
"That doesn't explain—wait—I didn't text you."
"You asked me to meet you at the hollow tree behind your house," he says, like it's the simplest thing in the world. "And I came."
For half a second, irritation sparks through the adrenaline. "You're not the unknown number? You do realize this is how horror podcasts start, right? Girl meets mysterious guy in the woods, girl gets—"
"Aetheria."
That name in his voice unhooks something sharp and coiled in my chest.
I swallow. Hard.
"You shouldn't be here," I whisper, but the words sound thin even to me.
"I shouldn't be anywhere near you," he says. "And yet…"
His hand is still at my waist. He could let go. I could step back.
Neither of us moves.
He searches my face like he's trying to memorize it, eyes roaming from my eyes to my mouth and back again. I feel exposed, lit up from the inside, like he's reading a language written under my skin.
"This is insane," I mutter.
"Probably," he agrees softly. "Tell me to leave and I will."
The air tightens.
He means it. I can feel that. One word and he'll step back—out of the hollow, out of the dark, out of this…whatever this is.
Everything in me is a snarl of warning and want. Common sense screams run. Something older, deeper, curls its fingers into my bones and whispers stay.
I don't tell him to go.
Instead, I hear myself say, very quietly, "Don't."
His breath stutters.
"Aetheria," he says again, but this time it's almost a question, almost a prayer.
I lift my chin, closing the last inches between us. My fingers slide up his arms to his shoulders, gripping the solid line of them like I'm anchoring myself. Or him. Or both.
"If you're going to kiss me," I say, my voice barely more than breath, "don't make a speech about it."
For a heartbeat, he just looks at me. His eyes flare, stormy and bright. Then his hand curves more firmly at the small of my back and he leans in—
Slowly. No ambush. No surprise.
I meet him halfway.
Our mouths brush, light as a question.
The first touch is nothing and everything—so gentle it could almost be an accident, except every cell in my body snaps to attention like it's been waiting for this exact contact my entire life.
He pauses there, giving me an out.
I tilt my head and pull him closer.
The second kiss isn't gentle.
Heat slams through me, swift and blinding. His lips move against mine with a hunger that feels terrifyingly familiar, like trying on a coat you've never seen before but somehow know every tear and seam of.
He tastes like beer and salt on the wind. Like storms over a sea I've never sailed—and yet remember drowning in.
When I part my lips to breathe, he takes it as permission, not a theft. His tongue strokes against mine in a slow, deliberate slide, and I make a sound I don't recognize as mine until I feel it vibrate against his mouth.
The world tilts.
My fingers climb from his shoulders to the back of his neck, threading into his hair. It's softer than it looks, curling around my knuckles as I drag him closer—closer—until my chest is pressed to his and there's no space left between us at all.
He groans, low and rough, and the sound goes straight through me.
One of his hands drifts from my waist, tracing the curve of my hip, then down my thigh. He moves carefully, like he's asking another question without words. When his palm squeezes, slow and sure, I shiver.
I hook my leg around his waist before I can talk myself out of it.
His breath hitches. For a moment he goes utterly still, as if he's fighting something inside himself. Then his arm slides under my thigh, supporting me, pulling me snug against the hard line of his body.
Everything in me lights up.
This isn't like the clumsy make-outs in back seats or the careful kisses with James, all hands hovering and hearts afraid. This is a collision. A reclaiming. A fault line finally giving way after years of strain.
I nip at his bottom lip, and he answers with a sound that's half growl, half my name. His other hand spans my back, fingers splaying wide, holding me like I might vanish if he loosens his grip.
I've never been touched like this—like I'm both fragile and the only thing keeping someone from falling apart.
The kiss deepens until time frays at the edges.
And then—
The hollow is gone.
For one dizzy, impossible heartbeat, I'm standing somewhere else.
A stone temple open to a sky split by lightning. Marble fractured and blackened by fire. Smoke thick in the air, tasting of blood and iron and grief. I'm wearing a gown of white turned gray, torn and soot-streaked, my hands wrapped in glowing threads that dig into my skin.
Chains bite into my wrists.
Across from me stands a man in armor the color of midnight and battlefields, helm tucked under his arm. His eyes are the same impossible blue as the boy kissing me now, but older. Harder. Ruined.
He reaches for me—and the world fractures again.
Sand under my knees. The roar of a stadium of gods. Ropes of light binding our hands together as a voice like thunder pronounces something in a language that isn't any language I know and yet is. A promise carved into bone and fate. I feel the words burn under my skin like brands:
Forever and always.
The visions flash through me like someone flipping through channels on an old television, too fast to fully grasp and yet sharp enough to leave cuts. Each one laced with the same feeling: him and me and too late.
I tear my mouth away, gasping.
The hollow tree slams back into existence around us. Bark. Moss. Lantern-light.
Will's forehead is pressed to mine, his chest heaving. His hand is still under my thigh, his other hand at my waist, holding me like I'm both anchor and precipice.
"Did you—" My voice shreds on the word. "Did you see that?"
His eyes open.
For a heartbeat, they're not just blue. Something else glints there, faint but unmistakable—starlight caught in a storm, spun into his irises.
"I always see it," he whispers. "Every time."
The tiny space fills with the sound of my pulse pounding in my ears. I'm shaking, but I can't tell if it's from the kiss or the memories that aren't memories.
I slide my leg down, gently, until my foot finds the floor. He lets me go, slowly, like it costs him something. Our bodies separate by inches, but the air between us crackles like we're still pressed together.
"That wasn't…" I struggle to assemble words. "That wasn't just in my head."
"No. But also yes." His jaw works, the muscle ticking. "It was in your soul."
I should laugh. I should tell him he sounds like a bad poetry account on Instagram. I should call Shelby and put this whole moment in the group chat as Exhibit A: Why We Don't Kiss Strangers In Trees.
Outside the hollow, the wind changes.
The moss above us rustles in a sudden, sharp gust, though there's no opening big enough to let air through like that. From deep beneath my feet, something hums—low and resonant, like the earth itself is clearing its throat after a very long silence.
I feel it in my chest. In my teeth. In the hollow space behind my ribs that has ached for as long as I can remember.
Will's head tilts, listening to something I can't hear. The color drains from his face. Whatever warmth and teasing lingered there is gone, replaced by something raw and dangerous.
I should move. I know that on a primal level–but I don't. Whatever is coming, I stay rooted, as if leaving would mean losing something I'm not ready to give up.
"Something's changing," he murmurs, almost to himself. "Too soon."
Ice slides down my spine.
"What's going on?" I ask, my voice steadier than I feel. "Will—what did we just do?"
His gaze snaps back to mine. For the first time since I met him, there's no smirk, no flirtation, no mask.
Just fear.
Not for himself.
For me.
"You crossed a line that was never supposed to open again," he says quietly. "You woke it up."
"The tree?" I ask, because that's easier than saying the visions—or whatever is wrong with me.
He shakes his head once.
"The bond."
My heart stutters. "What bond?"
His throat works as he swallows the answer he doesn't want to say. Outside, the woods have gone utterly still—no crickets, no leaves, no distant traffic. Like everything is holding its breath.
Somewhere far above us, a crow shrieks once and then falls silent.
"They'll come for you now, Aetheria," Will says, and the way he says my name feels like a vow and an apology tangled together. "You've brought it back to life."
The hollow holds its breath. And the silence is pressure on my ears.
And for the first time, I understand—this night in the tree isn't a detour.