Page 35 of Sweet Silver Bells

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT.

T here was music again—ethereal and faerie-like, a call, a promise, a broken heart. The band was there, setting back up as they prepared for their next set, but they were not playing.

“You’ll hear it always, the song,” Olivia promised. “The Earth, it’s all around us. Calling me, calling us.”

A man stopped in his tracks, staring at Olivia in disbelief. “Will you save a dance for me?”

“I’m spoken for,” she said. He shrugged and walked away.

Olivia held out her hand for Hunter to grab, and he obliged. It was unbelievable that anyone here wouldn’t already know that he was hers. He felt his chest puff out, his posture straighten, like a peacock presenting to keep other suitors away.

Her hand in his was soft, and she gripped him hard.

Her touch always felt good, but now it was a new type of euphoria, a glittery new drug running through his bloodstream.

The snowglobe effect around him made the lights glow a little brighter, and the greens especially were more pigmented.

Everything else, though, had become extremely displeasing, nearly hurting his eyes.

Electricity seemed to hum, a loud buzzing in his ear like a fly that wouldn’t leave him alone. Furniture that would be considered handsome—sofas, tables, and chairs, seemed victimized—like dead bodies fallen where no one could hear them scream.

The marble floor, which moments ago was shiny and gleaming, was now a portal threatening to open up and swallow him whole.

But Olivia stroked his cheek, bringing his focus back to her, and it felt so good, too good, like he was now in a dream, and her touch would convince him to never wake up.

“What did you do?” Hunter asked.

“You said yes,” she said, before pulling him forward, walking him out of the ballroom and back through the foyer where the Christmas tree had so much life, so much passion—so much beauty that felt like he was in the presence of God. Tears pooled in his eyes.

“Yes to what?”

“To being free.”

The humming, the electricity, the music that no one else heard—it was all still moving around him, caressing him, whispering to him, seducing him.

Olivia kept her eyes forward, guiding him away, not stopping as eyes in the room darted to her, the maiden who was practically running for the door.

The loud crashing sound of the grandfather clock flowed through Hunter’s body, the vibrations in the floor moving up through his feet, his knees, as others around them toasted to the stroke of midnight.

Merry Christmas.

“Whoa, whoa there!” The door attendant laughed. ”We don’t give refunds for lost glass slippers. Where are you off to so quickly?”

It was hard to tell with the music around him, with every heartbeat adding to the beat and rhythm that serenaded his soul, but Hunter heard discordant voices and screams behind him.

His head was light, and it was hard to look back, like looking to the past was no longer something he would ever be capable of—as if he really had been set free.

Olivia ignored the man, pulling Hunter down the walkway. Instead of going to the parking lot, her heels hit sleet and snow over grass as they turned the corner, marching over the picnic area and straight toward the forest.

Hunter’s vision was still affected, and now that he saw only nature in his view, he wondered if anyone had ever seen a beauty like this before.

The white on the ground, the frost and the ice that dripped off of bushes that marked their path—all of it was a ghostly transparent diamond light, filling what should be darkness, a disco ball of sparkles and joy, a shaken snow globe where he was the nutcracker inside watching a world of wonder.

“The world is new.” Hunter stopped moving, taking it all in.

His heightened sense of touch was overwhelming. He responded to Olivia’s pull against him in the way a wolf would react to a bunny—carnal, wanting, needing.

Everything in his world was a sensation; everything in the world rang true with life.

The music swept him off his feet, begging him to waltz.

The trees in the distance called out to him. They sang, begging him to submit to a dance before he walked out into the night with his haunting love.

“Forever,” he said. “My body is saying forever.”

“It will always be like this,” Olivia said. “I’m happy you like it. I’m happy that you can be a part of me now.”

“Now?” Hunter asked. “Olivia, what did you do?”

“I made it so you can be with me forever,” she said, tugging on his arm again, pulling him further until he stepped under trees, until he was in her home.

Our home.

With his back foot still on the covered grass, the last part of him not to be engulfed by thick trees, he paused. “Why do I feel like if I come with you, I’ll never come out?”

Olivia turned to face him, her eyes so loving and light despite their dark pigment, like a disco of lights illuminating what he should not be able to see.

“We are never going back,” she whispered. “You’ll be with me forever. Even if you change your mind.”

They moved through the trees as if the forest had been waiting for them—branches arching overhead like cathedral ceilings. Snowflakes drifted in soft spirals, catching in Olivia’s dark curls like diamonds.

She led him with quiet certainty, barefoot now, her shoes forgotten against tree trunks behind them. Her dress tore, caught on branches, leaving behind a trail of their final decisions together.

The deeper they went, the quieter the world became. Even the sound of wind disappeared, the music faded, and the trees no longer spoke or sang.

“Where are we going?” Hunter asked. His voice sounded fainter than before. His breath barely clouded the air.

She didn’t answer—not with words.

Olivia turned and looked at him with a kind of sorrowful tenderness he’d never seen before. Her hand found his cheek. She stroked it gently, as if memorizing the curve of his face.

And that was when he knew.

The chill in his bones. The too-still air. The snow that didn’t melt on his skin.

Hunter wasn’t alive anymore.

He staggered back a step. “Olivia.”

“They discovered your body, fallen on the marble floor. Your parents, your friends, will have closure.” Her voice cracked like a dried leaf. “I couldn’t bear another Christmas alone.”

He tried to speak—he should’ve been angry, should’ve shouted, should’ve run—but all that came was a broken breath.

And then she was in his arms again, curling into him like a ribbon folding in on itself.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered into his coat. “I did it softly. You didn’t feel a thing. I waited until you were happy.”

He closed his eyes.

It was the kiss. Her taste had been different—her lips, poisonous like holly.

And when he opened them again, he understood: he was happy. The pain was gone. The fear. The weight of everything he’d ever lost. It was all gone.

What remained was her.

She led him to the oldest tree in the glade—tall as a bell tower, its bark glistening silver in the moonlight. Hollowed at the center, like a cradle for something precious and sacred.

Inside, soft moss grew in blankets. The tree hummed quietly, alive and ancient.

“It was the only option. I wouldn’t have been able to stop you from aging, even if wrapped in the tree with me. Now your ghost belongs to a witch.”

“To a siren. My moon, my tree siren,” he corrected her.

Olivia looked up at him, her eyes bright and unrepentant. “Lie with me. Let this be our cathedral. Let the forest keep us.”

Hunter hesitated for only a moment.

Then he wrapped his arms around her and let her pull him down into the tree’s hollow. Her body curled against his like a final stanza. The moss rose around them like a blanket. Their hands twined together. His lips touched her hair.

“I forgive you,” he murmured.

And her reply came soft and sharp as the falling snow. “I’d do it again.”

The tree closed around them like the world was exhaling. Above them, the wind stirred through the branches, carrying the distant echo of ballroom music and the faint, dreamlike call of sirens.

“I’ll be haunting you for the rest of eternity,” Hunter promised.

“The tree siren and her phantom,” Olivia mused.

“That has a certain ring.”

“Good,” Olivia said. “Because you’d better.’

Olivia started their forever with a song, her song.

Our song.

" Hark how the bells

Sweet silver bells

All seem to say

Throw cares away

Christmas is here, bringing good cheer."

“Goodbye,” Hunter said out loud, as he shut out the memories of the world that had hurt him and buried himself in her arms for eternity.

He could hear the children play as the years passed, as the school visited the grounds for field trips.

Rumors of the spirits that lived in the forest were alive and well, helped by Sadie spreading stories that someone she knew had been murdered, and the witch had run into the night, the forest keeping her still, wrapped in evergreen and snowfall, tucked beneath the boughs like ornaments long forgotten.

And every Christmas Eve, the wind carried music through the trees when the snow fell just right.

A waltz.

A laugh.

A kiss.

A song.

And the world, if only for a breath, remembered what it meant to be truly, hopelessly, joyfully in love. Hunter stayed forever wrapped in her safety, in her comfort—singing the songs for the trees, for the moon, for Olivia.