“Is there?”
His eyes fell. I’d hurt him, and I knew I needed to act fast, act now, while guilt twisted at him, curling and coiling like a poisonous snake.
“I need your help.”
“I can get you out of the Falls,” he promised, spots of color burning his cheeks earnestly. “Your sisters too. Before…before everything falls apart.”
“Everything has fallen apart. But I think I know how to stop it.” I touched his cheek. “Tell me her name.”
His face fell into studied confusion. “Whose?”
“You know who I’m talking about. The woman. Your leader, your Queen. Whatever you call her…I need her name.”
“I can’t give that to you, Ellerie.”
“You can.”
He shook his head. “I want to help you—you’ve no idea how much I want to, especially…” He swallowed. “It’s my fault we’re here in the first place. If I hadn’t…If I hadn’t seen you…none of this would have happened.”
“What do you mean?”
He stepped away, wandering deeper into the glade, shame weighing down his every footstep. “We don’t always stay together, the Kindred. If there’s not a game afoot, we wander the land on our own, looking for diversions, looking for the next hunt.” He twisted his fingers, balling them into fists. “Two years ago, maybe three, I came across this range. At first I didn’t think much of it….It’s so isolated, so wild. But then I heard the Bells. Everywhere I went, there were more and more of them, their chimes pulling me in, drawing me out of the mountains, down to this valley. I saw the lake and I saw the village. And then I saw you….”
His eyes shifted, meeting mine with pained remorse.
“I saw a girl—this beautiful, radiant girl, with honey-colored hair—standing at the edge of the forest. It was almost as if she was making up her mind about something. Indecision was written all over her face; her eyes were raw with yearning. One foot was in the fields, solidly planted in her world, but the other foot trembled over the tree line, wanting to take to the woods, to learn its mysteries, to come find me—even if she didn’t know it at the time.” He flicked his fingers as if picking something from his nail. “I couldn’t get her out of my mind, no matter how I tried. She was always there, just on the edge of everything, waiting. Wanting. I wanted to be there when she was brave enough to take that next step.”
“I don’t remember.”
It wasn’t quite a lie.
Though I wasn’t sure of the exact day in question, I’d always felt a certain watchfulness standing before the pines. I’d thought it was the trees themselves, holding their breaths, waiting for something to happen.
Had they been waiting on Whitaker all along? Waiting and watching him watch me?
Goose bumps rose along my arms, pebbled against the stifling humidity.
“I kept watch from the woods, kept returning season after season to watch her. Her honey-colored hair became the loveliest strands of gold,” he whispered, gesturing with spindle-thin fingers. Breath caught in the hollow of my throat as though he’d actually touched me. The thought of him stroking my hair set my teeth on edge with a strange, aching pleasure.
Though he remained motionless, I could feel him reaching toward me, beckoning, begging for me to come forward. I wanted to, wanted to move, to step toward him until there was no longer any space between us, but my feet stayed resolutely in place, anchored to the forest floor, unmoving and still.
“What happened then?”
“The others found their way back to me. We never can stay apart for long. They came and they watched. And then she decided it was time to be seen.”
“Levi Barton,” I guessed. “The farmer who…” I couldn’t bear to finish the thought.
He nodded, weary. “He wasn’t well. Such a broken soul, longing for so much more than he already had. She gave him fistfuls of gold, just as he’d wanted. He was supposed to—I don’t even remember now—but he grew paranoid, fearful his newfound wealth would be stolen. He didn’t trust his neighbors, his own wife.”
I remembered the burning, desperate suspicion that had come over me once I’d been given the sugar. I understood with perfect, horrible clarity how such a gift could be corrupted by fear. Tainted and twisted. Taken over by the darkness. We truly were no different from the animals in the forest, our very nature grown distorted and perverse in the presence of the Dark Watchers.
“Then…she decided to stay. Amity Falls seemed like the perfect place for a new game.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry I ever stumbled across this place. If I could take it back…” He sighed. “I want to say I would, but…” He paced, drawing closer. “You’re the only person who’s ever known I lied about my name.”
His voice echoed strangely in the glade, a trick that made it seem as if he was directly behind me, heating the air around my ear with his breath, his lips brushing the hairs of my skin.
“You look at me in a way I’ve never seen before.” He brushed his fingertips across the softness of my cheek, looking at me as if I was the wonder. “Others see me as a means to an end…but to you, I was only ever a man.”
He cupped my face, tilting it toward his. His eyes shone, dark and haunted.
“I would give everything I have to be that man for you,” he whispered. “But I never will be. I…I can’t. I don’t remember how and…I can’t change who I’ve been, what I’ve done.” He let out a short bark of a laugh. “You’ve no idea of the things I’ve done.”
“Why don’t you just leave? You could walk away, leave them all, and never look back. You could…” I ran fingers over his shoulders, recalling every silly, sentimental thought I’d ever dared to dream about him. “You could stay with me. I don’t care about your past. We’re here, right now, in this moment. Your past can’t touch this. It can’t define your future. Our future,” I added firmly.
“These,” he said, holding up his wrists, displaying the encircling green tattoos. Some of the bands were thick, with circles of un-inked skin perforating them like moon phases. Others were impossibly thin, stacked on one another like layers of Mama’s honey cakes. “Every new place, new village, new town…every time I watch…another band is added. I don’t know how; they just appear when the job is done.”
I stared at the emerald ink with a sick fascination. There were so many lines. Dozens of them. How many lives had he watched fall apart? How many towns had been destroyed? Families devastated?