aruba_sheikh

Julian Thorne arrives in the secluded town of Shadowmere, seeking to uncover its hidden history. He quickly encounters Sabrina, the enigmatic and powerful guardian of the town, who warns him against delving too deep. Despite the danger, Julian is drawn into a forbidden attraction with Sabrina as he investigates the town's secrets, including a tragic love story from the past, a dormant power, and a looming curse tied to a powerful family.

Echoes of the Shadowed Grove

The child's skin split like overripe fruit.

Sabrina still had her hands around its throat when the first seam appeared—a vertical fissure from chin to groin, peeling back to reveal not blood or bone, but hundreds of intertwined roots, each one threaded through with strands of familiar hair:

The child giggled as its face sloughed off entirely, plopping wetly onto the moss between them. What remained was no child at all, but a pulsing, root-bound mass shaped vaguely humanoid, its hollow chest cavity displaying:

A preserved heart (Sabrina's mother's)

A gold wedding band (Elias')

A tiny knitted bootie (stained with old blood)

"Meet your firstborn, Mother," the thing gurgled through root-twisted vocal cords. "The one you planted under the willow when you were twelve."

Sabrina recoiled, but the roots beneath her knees sprouted thorns, anchoring her in place. Memories flooded back—real ones, this time:

Herself as a child, heavy with something unnatural, sneaking into the grove at midnight. The way the earth had parted eagerly for her small hands. The coppery scent as she buried the tiny, mewling bundle of roots and stolen flesh. How the grandmother's voice had purred:

"Good girl. Now water it with your tears."

Julian made a wet, choking sound beside her. The willow flower blooming from his eye socket turned toward her, its pollen forming ghostly images in the air:

A younger Sabrina, barely seventeen, pressing a kiss to Julian's unconscious lips after lacing his drink with willow nectar.

The same girl, months later, cutting open her own thigh to plant a single thorn in the muscle, whispering: "Grow where he touches me most."

Last winter, standing over Julian's sleeping form with a vial of black sap, trickling it between his lips as he dreamed of her.

The child sighed happily, its root-fingers stroking Sabrina's swollen belly. "You've always been our best gardener."

Then it plunged its hand into Julian's chest—not to harm, but to caress the thorns now encasing his heart.

"Father's almost ready," it whispered. "Shall I show you what happens next?"

From the depths of the grove, a hundred voices answered—

CHAPTER END: The chorus wasn't human. It was the sound of every Thorne and Whitfield corpse buried in the grove singing their wedding vows.

CHAPTER 8: THE CHILD'S TRUE FACE