Page 4

Chapter

Four

The forest is on fire, but it doesn’t burn. Teal and gold flames climb up the sides of trees cracked and jagged with age. Their trunks glow like lanterns, and leaves fall in slow spirals of light. The fire doesn’t give off any heat or smoke. Just the sound of crackling bark and a pulse of life.

I step forward. The moss underfoot is soft and oddly warm. Water runs somewhere in the distance, sounding beyond the crackling fire.

Then she appears before me.

My mother stands at the center of it all, her cloak fluttering in a wind I can’t feel, and her eyes shine with that same impossible fire—teal rimmed with gold. Her face is exactly how I remember it. Not softened by memory or faded by grief. But real.

I try to speak, but no sound comes. Try to reach for her.

She raises a hand to steady me. Then she says a single word, quiet and clear. “Loophole.”

Her voice echoes like a ripple through snow, and everything trembles. The trees lean toward her. The fire folds inward. She takes a step back, fading, dissolving into light.

“No!” I reach for her.

Then I wake. I bolt upright, heart thundering like I’ve run for hours.

Disappointment rushes through me like a harsh winter storm. It was all just a dream… yet somehow she seemed as real as my own hands in front of me now. Like she was back from the dead.

But no. It wasn’t real. Just wishful thinking. Me missing her, wanting her back.

The room is dark but alive with silver moonlight. The fire’s gone out, but I can still hear the crackle from the dream in my ears, though there isn’t any flame here. Just stone and silence and the ache in my chest that never seems to go away.

I miss her so much. The ache comes sudden and sharp, like it always does when I stop guarding against it. I miss everything about her, but most of all, the way she used to sit beside me, no words passing between us but somehow making it feel like she said everything I needed to hear.

Before the grief becomes too much to bear, I slide out of bed, wrap a thin blanket around my shoulders, then cross the room barefoot.

The shield leans in the corner where I left it, propped beneath the window where the light hits just right at night. I crouch beside it, tracing the edge of the carved wolf with the tips of my fingers.

My mother held this. She carried it. Bled on it. Fought for it.

Now it’s mine.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I whisper, my voice cracking. “But I’m trying. I want to follow our path, to learn everything I need to. There has to be a reason you didn’t tell me anything when you were alive. Is each Secret Keeper supposed to figure everything out on her own?”

Silence is my only answer, not that I actually expected anything more.

That doesn’t stop the gnawing disappointment which continues to pull at me in these quiet moments in the night.

I can keep myself busy all day and push aside my pain, but it will wake me in these wee hours and force me to face my thoughts.

Some things refuse to be ignored, and clearly grief is one of them.

I set my hand on the center of the metal, let it warm beneath my skin. Not glowing or humming. Just solid.

Something catches my attention. Teal, like the fire in my dream.

Petals.

Fragile, scattered across the floor like someone placed them where they are. But no one’s been here. Or have they? These have to be the ones from the chest. This color is so rare.

My stomach drops, my breath hitches. Swallowing, I scoot closer for a better look.

Its pattern steals my breath. The petals’ arrangement is purposeful, intentional. They form a single word.

Loophole .

I stare, my voice caught in my throat.

They weren’t there before.

I reach out, touch one. It crumbles into dust.

Horrified, I leap back. The blanket falls loosely around me. When it lands, a puff of air sends the petals dancing upward. They flutter down, land haphazardly. The word is gone.

But the image is burned into my memory.

I sink to the floor, wrapping my arms around my knees. Moonlight spills through the window, catching the dust where the petals were placed.

Loophole .

It’s not just a word. It’s a message. But from who? The obvious answer is my mother, but how? And why now? What does she expect me to do? She’s gone, and I’m still here, fumbling through mysteries of a life she never explained to me.

Does she know I’m looking for a loophole to the hunter’s curse? More than anything, I want to get around that so I don’t lose my only remaining parent.

We just found each other. I can’t kill him. Won’t. And I know he won’t kill me. Though the curse dictates one of us will die a slow and painful death if we don’t take care of it the ‘honorable’ way.

Honor. I laugh bitterly. Where’s the honor in a parent and child fighting to the death?

Is there another loophole my mother is trying to tell me about? Something to do with the Secret Keeper’s chest and its contents?

I should have asked her why she didn’t tell me about any of this. Next time I will.

The shield rests against the wall, quiet now. It doesn’t glow, doesn’t hum. Simply sits there, mysterious and heavy.

Everything about my mother feels like that. Legacy, secrets, and pressure she never had time to pass down all settle on me like a stone cloak I never had time to prepare for.

Yet she chose to leave it all for me.

And now this dream. Is the word a warning? Or is she pushing me forward in the direction I’m already headed?

I press my forehead to my knees and close my eyes. Draw in a deep breath. What am I supposed to do with a loophole if I don’t even know what it’s about?

There’s only one way to get the answers I need. I climb back into bed, shut my eyes. Squeeze them tight, roll over, then again. But sleep won’t come.

I pull a blanket over my eyes and try to will the dream back. Picturing the forest and fire, I focus on my mother’s voice. I hold onto the way she looked, standing in that burning grove like she was part of the scenery. Like they were one.

I whisper her name. Then again.

Nothing.

The moon slips across the sky while I toss and turn, the word “loophole” echoing in my head like a riddle I can’t solve. My hand finds the shield beside the bed. Cool to the touch and still just a shield.

Eventually, I stop trying to sleep.

I swing my feet to the floor, pull on a cloak and shoes, then go into the hallway, quiet save for the faint sound of wind slipping through the cracks in the walls. Dragons shift somewhere above, evident by a low growl and the heavy creak of talons against roof tiles.

Einar’s in the study, where he often is when I can’t sleep. Sometimes I wonder if he ever rests.

He doesn’t look up right away, just turns a page in the book he’s reading, his silver-streaked dreadlocks falling around his face. “You’re not the first to go looking for her in dreams.”

I jolt at his words. “Excuse me?”

His silence is unnerving, and I struggle to wait for his reply. I’ve learned he’s a deep thinker and rarely answers quickly, unless he’s already put a lot of thought into something.

To keep from losing my mind, I focus on the fire in the hearth which casts flickering light across the walls. Books are stacked on the table, a half dozen open to pages marked with glyphs and diagrams.

My father doesn’t look up. He just turns another page, his voice low and steady. “She used to wake the same way. Eyes wide, hair a little wild. It was like she was still trying to carry her dream into the waking world.”

I step inside. “What do you mean by ‘not the first’?”

He glances at me then, eyes dark and unreadable. “I mean your mother dreamed in ways most don’t. She said her visions came wrapped in fire and silence. Symbols instead of answers. I didn’t know what to make of them. And I knew never to push.”

“She said a word.” I step closer. “In my dream, I mean. Just one word.”

He sets the book down and looks directly into my eyes. “What was it?”

“Loophole.”

That gets his attention. His expression shifts—his brows tightening, jaw flexing as if the word stings more than it should. “She said that to me once,” he murmurs. “But not like that. It was an argument.”

I wait for him to continue.

“She was angry. It wasn’t long after we met, while she was still healing.

I asked her about the hunter’s curse because I wanted to know if she believed there was a way out of it.

She seemed to know a lot about that type of thing, and I thought the only way we could have a future together was if I broke the blasted curse. ”

“What did she say?” I realize my fists are clenched and relax them.

His voice lowers. “She said there’s always a loophole. But someone always pays for it.”

My mind reels. Sitting across from him, I swallow a thousand unasked questions teasing the tip of my tongue.

He shakes his head slowly, looking lost in an old memory. “I thought it was just deflection. But now…”

Now he’s wondering if it wasn’t.

The fire snaps between us.

Finally, I speak. “Do you think she found one?”

He meets my gaze, and this time, there’s no distance in his eyes. Just quiet grief.

Something we share, but for a different past. Different experiences with my mother.

Einar clears his throat. “I think she spent much of her life looking. She wouldn’t have kept you and me apart if she hadn’t been. Tyra wanted us to know each other, I’m sure of it. But she didn’t want us to face the curse.”

“Yet here we are.”

He nods. “Yes, we certainly are.”