Chapter 11: “Confrontation”

The flowers were gone by morning.

The clearing looked untouched—undisturbed. No blood. No trampled moss. No signs of death or life.

Only Ivy remained, sitting on her knees in the center of it all, staring at her hands. Dirt under her nails. Blood on her boots. Not hers.

Her eyes were wide but dry. The tears had run out sometime in the night.

Above her, sunlight cut through the canopy in fractured beams, like prison bars made of gold. It was too quiet again.

She didn't speak right away.

Didn't need to.

She knew he was there.

Watching.

Waiting.

Always.

"Why?" she asked softly, not looking up.

The silence that answered was so complete it made the trees themselves seem to lean in, listening.

Then—

"You already know."

His voice emerged from the shadows at the edge of the clearing. Low. Gentle. Deceptive.

Ivy turned her head slowly.

He stood there—just far enough away to make her wonder if he was real or some half-woven dream. Tall, inhuman. His outline blurred where his limbs met shadow, as if the forest was still deciding what shape he should take.

But the eyes—those black pits—were fixed entirely on her.

"I don't know," she said, voice trembling. "That's why I'm asking."

He tilted his head.

A mockery of curiosity.

"You do," he said. "You've always known."

"I want to hear you say it."

For a moment, it seemed like he wouldn't. That he'd vanish again. Dissolve into the dark like he had so many times before.

But he didn't.

He stepped closer.

The forest darkened with every inch he took.

"I took the ones who wanted to harm you," he said simply.

Her breath hitched.

She didn't respond.

So he kept talking.

Like confessing something that needed no apology.

"The man who cursed your name behind your back. The one who stole your mother's tincture recipe and claimed it his own. The woman who spat in your garden while pretending to praise your herbs."

"You—" Her voice cracked. "You're saying you killed them? All of them?"

His head tilted the other way.

"I removed threats."

"You killed people."

"They would have taken from you."

"They didn't!"

"They would have." His voice sharpened—barely—but it chilled the clearing. "They feared you. Resented you. And fear turns into action, Ivy. Eventually. I prevented that."

She stood, fists clenched.

"And Jonas? His wife?"

"Jonas struck his daughter when she said she liked your bluebell tea."

Ivy's mouth fell open.

"He never laid a hand on her again," she whispered.

"Because he was dead."

She stepped back.

He didn't follow.

But the forest moved with her—branches stretching, vines curling behind her legs like hounds guarding a prize.

"You said you'd stop."

"I said I wouldn't hurt you."

"That's not the same!"

"I know."

The wind stirred. Leaves twisted above them like spinning coins.

"You lied to me," she said, more quietly now. "When I begged you to stop, and you said you would—you lied."

He moved again. One slow step closer.

"Would you have stayed if I told the truth?"

Her lip trembled. "No."

"Exactly."

And that—that—was what broke her.

Not the killings. Not the horror.

But the calm acceptance of it. The rationalization. The way he justified every corpse like it was no heavier than plucking a weed.

"You think this is love?" she snapped.

He didn't flinch.

"I know it is."

"You don't know what love is. You're not even—" She stopped herself. Bit her tongue.

Not human.

That was what she was going to say.

And somehow, that made her feel guiltier than he ever could.

He knelt.

It was slow. Fluid. Like a shadow folding itself in half.

And for a moment, just a moment, he looked almost… small.

"I don't know how to be what you want," he said, voice rough. "But I can give you peace. I can give you safety. I can give you children who will never know hunger or fear. You won't have to look over your shoulder ever again. Isn't that what you want?"

Ivy stared at him, stunned.

Children?

Her mouth went dry.

He looked at her, and though his face didn't move—though there were no lips to curve, no brows to furrow—she felt the longing radiating off him.

Like heat.

Like hunger.

Her stomach twisted.

"I didn't ask for any of this," she whispered.

He rose again—slow, deliberate.

"You didn't have to," he said.

That night, Ivy didn't go home.

She stayed in the forest, curled beneath a twisted tree with her back to the moss and her face to the stars.

She didn't cry.

She didn't speak.

And when she closed her eyes, she could still hear him whispering behind her spine.

"I would do it again."

"I will always do it again."

"For you."