Page 116 of Into the Heartless Wood
SEREN
THESOULEATER IS HAVING A PARTY. MUSIC DRIFTS DOWNfrom open balcony windows, swelling as the sun sets, not limited to only four minutes at a time. I wait for Owen to come, sweeping at nothing with my broom so I will look busy if Heledd peeks her head out.
I have been two months in the Soul Eater’s palace, two months in my human form. Still I have escaped the Eater’s notice. Still I fear to find him around every corner. I take what precautions I may, but I know it is not enough. If the Eater wants to find me, he will find me.
For now I wait, and watch, and listen. For now I pretend that nothing will ever go amiss, that I am truly just a girl, waiting for a boy to come and find her in the twilight.
It grows hard to remember that this form will fade. I begin to wonder if my brothers were wrong. But sometimes, if I put my hands to the earth, I can feel the distant heartbeat of the forest. I can sense every soul in the palace now, even the dim ones. My power seeps back, bit by bit. I wonder how long it will take for my monstrous skin to swallow this frail human form. To bury it forever.
“Bedwyn?”
I jump at his voice, turn to find him just coming through the gate, his lips tugging up.
“Hi,” he says.
I smile, his presence banishing the last of my dark thoughts. I lean the broom against the wall. “Good evening.”
He glances up at the looming palace and seems to recognize the music. His face falls a little. “My mother loved that piece.”
Guilt slices through me, as it does each time he mentions his mother. Every night I am on the brink of telling him who I am, and every night I remember that I as good as slaughtered her, as I slaughtered so many others. How can I wish, even for a moment, for Owen to look at me as anything but a monster? In this form, I can be his friend. But when it fades … When it fades, I will return to the wood and lose myself in the depths of it. I will build a life for myself there, as my brothers have. I will forget my mother and sisters. I will forget Owen. And when my body grows weary of living, I will go to the hill where we danced together. I will sink my roots deep into the earth, and reach my branches up to the stars, and I will die as I was born, and become once more a tree.
He paces up to me, takes both my hands in his. “Hey,” he says gently. “What’s wrong?”
I fight the press of tears, hot behind my eyes.
“Would you like to dance?” he asks.
Those words—uttered to me on the hill, said to me again, here, in this moment. I nod. I do not trust myself to speak without telling him everything.
He steps closer to me, slips one hand onto my waist. He’s a breath away from me, the barest of heartbeats. I could count his eyelashes. I could kiss him. I was taller than him, in my tree form. I am eye level with him now.
We dance in the courtyard to the music spilling out from above. We move easily together, as we did on the hill. I wonder if he remembers that night with anything other than revulsion.
The music comes to an end—the orchestra taking a break between pieces, perhaps—but we keep dancing over the stones, between the slop bin and the wall. The stars come out, dimmer here than on our hill in the wood.
He pulls me closer still, until his chest is pressed up against mine. His heart beats wild and quick. I look into his face and he looks into mine, and in the moment before he leans his head to kiss me, I break away from him.
If I ever see you again, I’ll kill you.
I stare at him in the dark of the courtyard.
“I’m sorry,” he stammers. “I thought—”
“Don’t be sorry.” There’s a lump in my throat. A pressure between my ribs. At my feet, a seedling grows up between a crack in the stone, and I know it’s because of me. This cannot be it. I cannot shed my human form in front of him when he was about to—
“Owen.” I go and take his hand again. “Please don’t be sorry.”
He quirks a smile at me, raises his free hand to smooth his fingers across my cheek. I lean into him.
We start dancing again, without really meaning to. And as we spin about the little courtyard, more seedlings spring up between the cracks in the stone. I hope he does not notice. I hope he does.
He makes no further attempt to kiss me.
It is very late when Owen goes down to his bed. Music lingers on in the palace as I leave our courtyard and come inside.
In the corridor, a hand closes around my arm and tugs me through a doorway.
Light flares around us, illuminating a small sitting room, though no one is here to strike a match. Electricity buzzes through my skin.
