Hear Me (5 page)

“I ask myself that every day.”
 

“That’s not an answer.”

“Is it not?”

A sob strangled in her throat. She would not relent. Not until she knew what she was dealing with.
 

“Where is your father?” he asked.

“What,” she tossed at him, mockingly, “you can’t smell him?”

Archer said nothing and after a moment where his gaze seemed to worm through her skull, she lowered her eyes.

“He’s dead. Two years ago this week.” What might her father be able to glean from Archer, or not-Archer?

“I’m sorry.” He bowed his head for a moment, then looked back up at her. “But someone continues his work. You know the way to withstand the barrier’s curse. I tasted redbell on you.”

“Really?” she snapped, almost angry that he assumed she had nothing to do with her tea. “Beneath the plastic?”
 

“Oh, I tasted all kinds of things beneath the plastic, Ivy Potter.” The smile played across his lips again, and this time, it wasn’t quite so scary. “There was also cocoa.”
 

She rolled her eyes and pointed at the table. “It’s right there.”

“You made hot cocoa for me? And you thought I was a—how do you townies put it?”
 

“Soulless monster,” she intoned. “And, like I said, not when I made it. Drink your chocolate and leave.” Did monsters like hot cocoa?
 

“Always a gracious host.” He strode over to the tray and lifted the mug. “You made two. Shall we share?”

The words sounded inviting, but Ivy knew better, even as her heart ached. He didn’t mean it, no matter how much he sounded like the boy she’d known.

“Have both,” Ivy said stiffly. “I’m a very gracious host.”

He put the mug to his lips, and as he began to drink, Ivy felt like she could taste it, too, the rich, creamy froth flowing over his tongue and down his throat, warming him up from the inside out. He was wearing pants now, but he might as well still be naked for all the difference it made to Ivy’s imagination. She couldn’t take her eyes off the line of his spine, at the way his muscles slid beneath his skin as he downed his cocoa.

But now was her chance. His back was to her, his attention diverted. She took a single step backwards.

“Ivy,” Archer warned. “Don’t. I have eyes in the back of my head.”

“Real ones?”

He swept his hand through his ruddy hair. “Come and see.”
 

Gross. “No, thank you.”

Archer chuckled and started in on the second cup, and this time, when Ivy caught the taste of cocoa on her tongue, she knew what it was. Magic. Archer—or whoever this was—didn’t even have to touch her now to make her feel what he wanted her to. What had he done to steep such strong enchantments? Was this what happened when a forest man’s magic went dark?

She should really call the council.

“And you can forget about using your… cellaphone?” He held up her phone.
 

Her hands flew to her pocket. When had he slipped it out? When they kissed? When he grabbed her? And how had he known what she’d been thinking? No, this was not the Archer she remembered.

Though he still couldn’t pronounce the words of the modern world.

“These things are bigger than I remember.”

Once, Ivy had laughed at such statements, but she didn’t feel like laughing now. “Smarter, too.”
 

He looked down at the bit of glass and plastic in his hand. “Not smart enough, it seems.” He put it back in his pocket, though he grimaced as he did. She imagined it must burn, as there wasn’t a scrap of redbell on him tonight. No protection from the bells, no protection from the town.

“What happened to you?” She didn’t like the tremble in her voice, but there it was. If she couldn’t run, she might as well slake her curiosity.

“In three years in the forest? What hasn’t happened?” He shrugged, still facing away from her. “Let us play like in the old stories, Ivy Potter. You can ask me three questions, and I’ll tell you whatever you wish. Starting now.”

Questions blossomed in her brain, so many they threatened to choke out every other thought. Was he the Archer she remembered, or had he been turned by dark magic into… something else? If he’d harnessed something evil to bring down the barrier, why? What had he been doing all this time? What had become of the forest? Who was the woman in his mind’s eye, the one with the dark hair and the overwhelming sadness and the small, sick children?

Now Archer turned around, his eyes as dark as onyx, and Ivy tensed again. Some deep, primal part of her cried out to run. This was a fox, and she was a rabbit. Not quick enough and, like her phone, not smart enough either.

“I hardly need to warn you, though,” he added, “that we forest folk are tricky.”

No, Archer.
He didn’t need to warn her. She’d already learned her lesson about that.

CHAPTER FIVE

“I don’t want to play games with you,” Ivy said.

“Lies.” His eyebrows quirked, a mix of humor and menace, and he blinked his eyes green. “You’re dying to know everything. I tasted that in your kiss as well.”

“Is that why you k—” she cut herself off, because she remembered the rules from the old stories. Three questions. She would not waste them.
 

Archer was facing her fully, now, and the look he was giving her was superior and cocky, Rumplestiltskin and Pan. Pan, especially, given his bare, muscled chest. He hadn’t had those abs at sixteen either.
 

Ivy clenched her jaw. But she could do this. She just had to be careful and clever and brave. She could be Puss in Boots; she could be Jack the Giant-Killer. She knew all the rules. Her father had taught her when she was just a girl, and her father knew everything about the forest.
 

The coals glowed merrily in the stove. It had started to snow again outside, fat flakes drifting past the window. And the silence—the glorious
nothing
in the air. Her ears and head and heart were full of it. For the first time in years, she could think without the ringing.
 

She could do this.

“You’re wilder than you were before,” she said at last.

“That is not a question.”

“It’s an observation.” Ivy circled the couch, watching him. He tracked her with lichen-green eyes, his muscles tensed like an animal ready to spring. “And it’s true. You never used to put so much stock in the old stories, the old ways of forest folk.”

The Archer she’d known had been gentle, kind, and understanding of the thing that made Ivy a girl from town. When other forest men were roughly taking their lovers before midsummer fires, Archer had made her a canopy of flowers, a bed of petals, and a night of kisses. It was his first time, too, but he still took care, and created a night that worked for her as well as him. And in the magical year that followed, he may have been as wild as the forest night, but was still as sweet as summer sun.

But this Archer? This one was a mystery. She didn’t know what to ask that would get her the answers she wanted. She didn’t even know if she wanted them. For years she’d told herself that Archer was well, in the forest, even if she’d never see him again. But what if this was the truth? Archer, turning to another woman. Archer, cursed, devoured by the darkness.
 

If Ivy were the one he’d been with all those years, she never would have let this happen to him. Whoever this forest woman was, Ivy hated her.
 

“Are you asking me if it’s a product of living only in the forest for all these years or if it’s dark magic what stole my soul?” His eyebrows lifted in amusement, but Ivy didn’t feel amused.
 

“I haven’t asked a thing.” She’d
wondered
, yes, but she wouldn’t waste a precious question on a simple either-or.
 

If Archer were playing by fairy story rules, she’d have to be very clever. If he’d fallen to darkness and left a monster to wear his skin, she’d have to be cleverer still.

Ivy took a deep breath.
Think, think.
“What is the full story of the most significant event to transpire in your life since the barrier was erected?”

His eyes never left her face, but she saw the fear behind his gaze. It flashed for only a second, but it was there. Which meant Archer might be, too. Ivy hardly dared to hope.

After a long silence, he spoke. “It was the first morning in your cage. High summer. Glorious sun, trees in full leaf. I left my village to come to our tree…”

She looked away. She’d been locked in her room, safe in her bed, and he’d been at the barrier. Had he been coming for her? Too late, but coming all the same.

“As I walked closer, I heard them. Your silver bells.”
 

She wished he’d stop calling them hers. She hadn’t wanted the barrier. She’d hated it every day. The bells had killed her father, made her skin crawl, kept her from Archer… they weren’t
hers
.

“They filled the air,” Archer said, “setting everything on fire. The trees, the soil. But I kept walking. My blood boiled beneath my skin. My face blistered, my bones crumbled.”

Stop.
Heat traveled along her own skin, sizzling like fire ants and ashfall. Was this magic, like with the hot chocolate? Was he doing this to her? He didn’t even need to chase her, if he could hurt her from afar.
 

“With every clang, my flesh shuddered so hard I thought it would collapse, that I’d dissolve entirely and turn into mush where I stood.” She looked back and he was still staring at her, his expression accusing, and swirling back to black. “And still I walked.”

“Stop!” She couldn’t take it anymore. Not the magic and definitely not the story. Not the memory of Archer,
her
Archer, coming for her.
 

He merely shrugged as his eyes were swallowed up by darkness again. “You asked.”

She had. And this was his response, to burn her with dark magic. After this, she’d need no more reminders of who her Archer had become. She stared at him, his blackened eyes, as if to force herself to believe it. “Fine.”

“It’s the end of the story, anyway. I don’t remember reaching the barrier, but I’m told that’s where they found me. I don’t remember anything for weeks. When I woke, I was lying in a bed of redbells, and summer had passed. We were alone in the forest, and it wasn’t just the year that was dying.”

“And so you decided to turn to dark magic?” She clapped a hand over her mouth.
Dammit.
She’d been so careful, too.

“No,” he replied, and a secretive, scary smile curled his lips. “That decision, alas, was made for me.” He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t need to, by rule. She could have cut out her foolish tongue.
 

“One more, townie.”

“Stop calling me that.”

“Is it not true?” He cocked his head. “Where have you been these three years if not this town?”

Ivy’s head snapped up.
Well, well, well.
That was unexpected. “Those are your first two questions to me.”

For a moment, he looked shocked, but it gave way to a grin far kinder than the enigmatic smiles that had come before. “Well done, Ivy.”

Ivy,
now? Not the sneering
townie
or even her full name, hurled like an epithet? That was unexpected, too. She swallowed, once again unsure. Was he playing with her? A forest man wouldn’t so easily give up those questions. A creature of darkness, even less likely.
 

So then why would he let questions slip from his lips? Was there a trick in them that she didn’t know? Or was she, as he said, playing well?

“Perhaps I’m not so very townie after all.”

He conceded with a nod. “So give me your answers.”

She thought carefully, trying to figure out his trick and learn what info he was trying to glean. “It’s not true. I have lived in this town, in this building, across from these bells, but it does not define who I am. It doesn’t define any of us, unlike the forest folk, who would rather risk death than live anywhere else but the dark forest.”

“What makes you think that?”

It was Ivy’s turn to smile. “Question three.”

He scowled now, and Ivy couldn’t help but thrill at it. She breathed true for the first time since she’d first caught a glimpse of his cursed eyes. She
was
the hero of an old story. She knew what she needed to know and she hadn’t even used her third question. Dangerous he might be, and even dark with magic, but—thank heaven, if heaven there was—he was still Archer.
 

His sly, tricky forest folk demeanor was a mask he wore, and everything else—well, he was just trying to scare her. A monster wouldn’t ask questions about her past. A monster wouldn’t care so much what she thought. A monster wouldn’t have gulped down her cocoa like it was going out of style. He was a man, not a monster.
 

But that didn’t mean she could trust him.

“I think it,” she exclaimed, “because you forest folk didn’t leave the woods when you had the chance. You knew there were dangers. We warned you, and you chose to stay — your lifestyle was far more important to you than your safety.” She gestured at him. “Look how well that’s turned out.”