Free Hear Me by Viv Daniels

I’d convinced myself that I didn’t care, that you were just some townie who’d abandoned me.”
    “Abandoned you ?” she whispered, as angrily as she could whisper. He’d never know what she went through the night the barrier went up.  
    “You were my first great curse, you see. Trapped away in the forest, my love for you was a flower caught in amber, ever safe.”
    She sealed her lips over the choking, little cry that erupted from her throat. That couldn’t be true. What about the woman? The children?
    “Until last year, when I knew it would have to be me to take on the bells this solstice. I killed animals, burnt living trees. I cast curses on myself, spells of sorrow and rage. I left the village, was shunned by the others…”
    Unbidden, the image of Archer wreathed in firelight loomed up in her mind’s eye. Laughing, lighthearted Archer, who loved chocolate and tree-climbing and being kissed in the hollow of his throat. The forest folk must have been desperate indeed, to turn to him to save them.  
    “By the equinox, I was ready, and I knew which curse to choose.” He reached for her, his fingers hooking round a curl of her blonde hair. “You were a golden gem, hidden away in my heart, but I had the tools to smash you into shards. It gave me power; to hate you, Ivy Potter, it made me strong.” He released the strand of her hair and stared down at his ashen hands. “But it made me hideous, too. It’s a wonder you can’t see it. There has been none but forest folk to lay eyes on me until tonight, and they never did it unless they had to. I came to think I was as ugly as I appeared, until…”
    Until she looked at him. Ivy and her unmagical eyes. How silly, to think that it was the Archer free of glamour who was the more beautiful. But she supposed it made sense. After all, the enchantments he wore were reflections of the darkness in his soul. To forest folk, the fact that she couldn’t see how horrible he’d become within was the fault, his skin-deep beauty the disguise.  
    The darkness buzzed around him like angry gnats, and she was sure that if she were magic, he’d look terrifying indeed. “You did look scary to me,” she admitted. “When you first woke up. Your eyes were black, all black, like a frog or a spider’s eyes.”
    He blinked at her, his eyebrows arching over green eyes wide with surprise. “And they aren’t now?”
    She shook her head. “No. For a while, in the shop, they changed back and forth, but—” She shrugged. “It’s just traces of my forest blood. Don’t mind me.”
    “I always mind you.”
    Now, she shut her eyes, squeezed them tight, because it was her only choice. Her ears, sensitized to silence after years of the barrier din, thrilled at every syllable. She couldn’t shut him out, his soft, whispered words. No matter how much she wanted to, needed to, in order to keep to the path she’d started down all those years ago.
    She replayed the night in her mind, trying to make sense of it all. “When you first woke up,” she said, eyes still closed, “you looked wrong. But then, after you…” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “After you kissed me, I thought it must have been a mistake, because your eyes were green again.”
    “And they stayed green.”
    She opened her eyes to find him staring at her intently. “No. They… they flickered for a while.” She tried to back away, to find the curve of the glass against her back. “What does it matter, Archer? Must you know exactly how blind I am to your forest enchantments?”
    He contemplated her. “You are not blind—not exactly. To someone like me, you are nearsighted. You only see the greatest, most blatant of magics. Perhaps the curse that enveloped me when I attacked the bells is already fading.”
    She glanced out the window at the silent forest. “Does that mean they will start to ring again?” There was a catch in her voice that betrayed her, though she wasn’t sure of its cause. Did she