Free Lies in Blood by A. M. Hudson

keep an eye on things.”
    “ But, last we heard, Drake still hadn’t returned there,” Mike said. “So, if he’s planning an attack, it’ll be from somewhere unknown.”
    “ Perhaps. But we don’t have those kinds of resources elsewhere, Mike,” David said, meaning ‘we’ as the Set he used to belong to. “Drake needs the armoury at Elysium if he’s going to attack. And when he returns to set things in motion, my spies will alert us.”
    “ Fine but, in the meantime, we need to find those venom stores. Without those, all he can do is injure our troops.”
    “ Or kidnap one to extract venom,” Blade said, sending Mike and I stiff. If Drake came after anyone for their venom, it could only be either myself, Mike, or one of my private guards—all people I cared about immensely.
    “ Yes, so, with that in mind,” David said, pointing at Mike and my Guard. “I want you five to be extra vigilant.”
    “ What about me?” I asked.
    “ You don’t need vigilance. You have me.”
    I sat back, rolling my eyes. If he kept up this high-and-mighty behaviour, he’d be the one needing vigilance.
     
     
    I no longer feared the Enchanted Forest. All those tales I’d been told about the trees imprisoning anyone who dared walk below their bows at the hour of dawn must have been lies. Nothing like that had ever happened to me. But the rumour did afford me a kind of privacy at this hour I couldn’t get anywhere else, which gave me a chance to think about things I couldn’t dare think of at the manor.
    A bright orange orb glowed through the trunks up ahead at a distance, the dawn rising around the forest like a warm greeting. I reached out and touched the base of each tree I passed, a kind of unspoken good morning, and each one responded with a gentle tingle against my fingertips. The ground beneath my bare feet was covered in dry, summer leaves, cushioning my steps while the energy of the forest rose up from the platform of nature, electrifying every nerve within me. I felt alive out here. More alive than anywhere else I’d ever been. There was no loneliness in this forest—not like when I visited the Garden of Lilith. No, out here I had the company of something not found within the border of the manor. It was as if Nature had given up on that place—given up on the grounds, the people, even my garden. But ever since the day I swore in my own blood to protect the Stone and everything under its rule, the need to feel the buzz of life around me had become like my need for oxygen. If a day went by where I didn’t come here, didn’t strip down to nakedness, or at least leave my shoes behind out of respect for those things living under my feet, it almost felt like I was trapped in a coffin. And with all the pain I’d suffered these passing years, the last thing I needed was to feel buried as well.
    I walked on toward the openness up ahead, in search of the space and breath I knew I’d find above the valley. I could breathe out here, but I could not escape the emptiness I brought with me. Something was missing. Some vital part of my mind or maybe soul had disconnected somehow, and no matter how hard I searched, I couldn’t find the time or place in my memory that it first occurred. But I knew something wasn’t right, and I knew that the bad dreams, the memory loss and this hollowness inside me was connected and that, somehow, it had something to do with Jase. Maybe it was as simple as my denied heart wanting him as a friend, or maybe it went deeper. I wasn’t sure. But I had to figure it out, whatever it was, for David’s sake and mine.
    As I reached the clearing at the Stone of Truth, the energy in the forest surged and raced toward me along veins under the ground, gathering and collecting in this one place, rising up through my feet to wake my sleeping cells, then trickling away again and returning to the Stone.
    I closed my eyes and held my arms out, angling my face to the sky, while the whispers of Nature filled