Page 102 of Hush

The forest says nothing.

Tears burn hot before I can stop them. I swipe at them, angry with my own face, angry with the moon, angry with every story that ever said the woods keep what they take.

“You said you’d come back,” I say, and the twang slips stronger through the crack in my voice. “You promised me, Onyx. You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to make me need you and then disappear like I’m supposed to be fine with a note and a rock!”

Still nothing.

No Labrador tea.

No warmth.

No Wildheart.

I laugh once, sharp and ugly, because the alternative is sobbing so hard I’ll throw up. “Great. Perfect. I’m out here fightin’ with trees again. That’s healthy.”

Then I see the light.

Blue-white, steady, hanging between two trunks farther down the slope.

For one second, hope hits so hard it wipes everything else clean. I stand before I decide to, but the light doesn’t move closer. It hangs too high for a flashlight and too still for someone walking, exactly the way the stories always said. My heart starts pounding, but not from fear.

“Onyx?” I call, and the name tears out of me before pride can stop it.

The lantern sways once.

That’s it.

I take two steps toward it, then stop because something feels wrong. Not explicitly dangerous, but not the old sweet pull from the first nights. Just wrong enough to make my skin tighten.

“If that’s you,” I say, breath shaking, “come here.”

The lantern remains where it is, and the hope curdles.

I stare at it, tears hot on my face, chest rising and falling too fast. “No. You don’t get to stand there all mysterious and silent after weeks of bein’ gone. You don’t get to lure me deeper and make me chase you like I’m some idiot campfire story.”

The bond gives me the faintest flicker then. Not warmth or an apology. More like attention sharpening briefly and then flattening again. It makes me furious.

“Fine,” I snap, voice cracking around the word. “You wanna stay out there? Stay out there. I’m done beggin’.”

I turn and storm out of the clearing before whatever tiny, wounded piece of me that still wants him to come after me can embarrass us both.

I don’t run. I won’t give him that. I stalk the trail back to my cabin, jaw locked and hands shaking at my sides, and if the bond flickers behind me at all, I don’t acknowledge it. Every step makes me feel more humiliated.

I came into the woods under a full moon, heart half in my throat, ready to forgive everything the second he showed his face. And what do I get? A lantern in the distance. A fucking symbol. A gesture. Like I’m supposed to be grateful he deigned to watch me unravel.

By the time I reach the clearing around my cabin, the anger is hot enough to make me feel almost steady.

The porch light is on because I left it that way like a sad little beacon, and the sight of it makes the whole thing worse. There’s the door he refused to cross until I invited him. There’s the porch where Hannah stood and where Onyx kissed me like the word mine had replaced every language he knew. There’s the top step where I left a black stone once, back when I was scared and sorry and stupid enough to think offerings meant something.

The onyx stone sits on the rail beside the door, where I’ve kept it since the morning I found his note. I bend, snatch it up so fast my fingers scrape the wood, and turn toward the tree line.

The forest stands there in perfect moonlit silence, tall and black and indifferent, and for one ugly, furious moment I hate it. I hate the tricks and the half answers, and the way it can feel so alive when I need it least and so dead when I’m begging it for one honest thing.

Something inside me breaks clean through.

“If you’re gonna disappear,” I say into the dark, my voice shaking harder than I want it to, “then take your damn stone.”

Then I throw it into the forest as hard as I can.