Eyes of the Woods by Eden Fierce Page B

father was right about that,” I said. “What else was he right about?”
    Daniel stared at me a moment. “He was right about you.”
    I made a face. “What do you mean?”
    “He believes you are exceptional. Strong. Smart. You’re all of those things.”
    I looked away from him, glad I couldn’t blush. “He never said those things.”
    “He did. In his own way.”
    My lips formed a hard line.
    “You miss him.”
    I nodded. “I don’t mind this way of life. I kind of…like it. But if I had to choose between being a nightwalker and being with my family…” I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. “I miss them.”
    “Maybe you can have both.”
    “What?”
    “There are those of us who want peace, Eris. But there are just as many who want justice. The Priory has many enemies among our kind.”
    “I imagine so.”
    He used his sleeve to wipe the blood from my lips. “You can trust me, but until we come up with a plan, you should be very careful.”
    Nightwalkers. Their names weren’t accurate. The uncontrollable thirst wasn’t true. The young ones being kept to feed upon weren’t true. Ireck Sumner believing in the laws wasn’t true, and Daniel Sumner dying as a young man wasn’t true.
    I nodded, but I wasn’t sure whose truth I could trust anymore. Not even my own.

WE STOOD AT THE TREE LINE, DANIEL AND I. Father and the boys had just returned home, and my heart sank when Mother stepped out onto the porch to greet them when they passed through the gate. She smiled, but her eyes were sad.
    She had often said that a matriarch of the Priory made many sacrifices, and she would tell me about them all the night before I married. The risk of losing a child to the forest was one of them. Where other mothers forbid their children to walk behind the natural fence that the tree line provided to the dark shadows of the woods, a Priory matriarch willingly bore her children, knowing they would one day spend much of their time there.
    It wasn’t until that moment that I recognized the almost negligible hint of worry in my mother’s eyes. The extra moment she held on as we said good-bye every night before a hunt. Those were the precursors to the anguish in her eyes now.
    Daniel put his hands on my shoulders. “It will get better.”
    “No, it won’t.”
    We walked away once the porch of my former home was empty. It was too hard to stand there and imagine my family eating stew and discussing their night without me.
    Daniel and I fed and then sat at the base of what looked like an ancient rock building. Impossibly hard sticks my Father called rebar reached out from the edges of huge broken-off pieces.
    “Do you know what this was?” I asked.
    Daniel looked up. “My father once said they were ruins from thousands of years ago, before the Fall. He said nightwalkers existed even then, but we were but whispers—the monsters in a dark tale. We kept our existence a secret for generations. The knowledge of our kind set the Fall in motion. Then it was the end, and both sides suffered.”
    “That’s quite a story,” I said.
    “You don’t believe me?” he asked, amused.
    “My father told me stories as well.”
    “I know,” Daniel said, holding his knee against his chest. “About the demons in the woods.”
    “No, we talked about other things besides nightwalkers.”
    He looked into my eyes, intrigued. “Like what?”
    “He talked about princesses a lot. They always needed to be saved, and the prince was always the hero. I didn’t like that.”
    “I wouldn’t think so.”
    “I think that’s why the thought of betrothal was so repulsive to me. I hated the thought of needing someone, needing to be saved. Being helpless.” I picked at the stick poking out from the moss next to me. “Turns out I needed saving anyway.”
    Daniel pulled his mouth to the side. “I’m sorry.” I glared at him, thinking he was teasing, but there was genuine sympathy in his eyes.
    “It was a stupid way to die,” I said,