And A Heap Of Bones

"I didn't think about you. At the end," a woman whispered.

Blood covered her stomach and rolled down her thighs as she staggered closer. Her eyes were reaching for something she couldn’t see. The woman spun to look back at the house now far from her and sitting comfortably atop a small hill before the steep angles of the valley overtook it. Auburn hair fell midway down her back. Floating on a sudden breeze, it pulled away to reveal bloody claw marks.

The pale dress covering her slim body was torn to shreds. Hanging off her in spots, exposing blue bruises that would never have the chance to heal.

“I thought…I would.”

Sorrow flared in the hazel eyes as moonlight illuminated a thick fog cresting over the top of the northern peaks of the massive hills.

The woman stumbled into the shadows backward, falling to the base of a trembling aspen chattering its yellow leaves together in the cold chill of a dark autumn night. Her small hands floated to the wound on her belly. Warm blood pulsed between her fingers even as she sank into the support of the dirt.

It was over.

“I loved you,” she whispered. “Why didn’t I think of you?”

She gambled. She lost. Now, she was at the foot of the aspen, dying.

Hazel eyes skated through the creeping fog toward the sky. A blanket of black swept across the cold starlight, covering the moon from her searching gaze. The thin woman's hands opened, exposing a pale golden quartz in her left and a rabbit’s foot in her right.

“I tried to think of you. Luck. Luck. More luck, Rafe.”

A fierce trembling had overtaken her body. She pressed into the thin trunk of the aspen hoping to quell the shake in her bones but it failed. The rustling leaves only increased in their intensity.

"Thought we could make it, you and I. But I didn't think of you."

She whimpered quietly as pain swelled, sparkling in her vision and then making her fingers and toes horribly cold.

"And you didn't think of me," she said softly. "Did you?"

Long, skeletal hands reached around from behind the tree, dragged up along her neck and brushed against the bruised underside of her jaw as the wind picked up, screaming through the small forested valley.

"No," a low, velvety voice whispered. "I did not." The hands lifted long hair from her shoulders and skated along her collarbones. "Anastasie."

With a small, shocked little gasp, the woman jerked upright. The hands secured her at the base of the tree for a moment as a shadowed man in a dark tophat wore an expression of extreme distaste.

The woman whimpered once more and fell still.

Everything went silent. The wind. The animals. The lingering bugs waiting to die. For one moment, the world seemed to hold its breath.

Uneven, shuddering breaths broke the silence. He had lost another one. He had lost Anastasie. She was the most blinding heart he had ever had the misfortune of encountering.

And now she was gone.

Snuffed out.

The man rolled his eyes shut and rested his forehead against the pale bark of the aspen, grimacing as he continued to hold Anastasie by the shoulders. Silent tears dropped to the soil and his fingers curled into her warm flesh. A spot of control to cling to amidst the storm of grief twisting everything in his chest, sucking into the updraft of tornadic loss.

Fog crawled around his ankles and up black trousers to his knee. It was going to take her. The cool, wet air touched his cheeks, opening sad eyes.

“Please,” he whispered, his voice breaking. “Let me remember.” The fog crept up to his thighs. Soon it would engulf him completely and there would be nothing to do but watch her be taken. “ Let me remember her.” The wind began again, a gentle Halloween howl, and the man lifted his head away from the trunk.

Slowly, he stepped out of the shadows and stood at her feet. The fog settled slightly over her legs and torso but it didn’t hide enough.

The wolves had found her.

He shoved his hands in his pocket and curled his lips down as looked at her slouched against the tree. Cold wind slapped across his stiff back, pushing angrily against him. He should have known. He should have known she would be ripped away like this. The frown on his lips deepened. He closed his eyes, tears rolling down the sides of steep cheeks, and the wind began to wail.

The aspens quaked.

I never wanted you to die. You swore you would remember me. His eyes narrowed as anguish cinched around his middle. Anastasie… We could have grown old together.

“I believed you.” Tears welled and rolled down his reddened cheeks. “I thought you would remember me.”

*********************************************************************

This had all started five months ago.

At the end of spring when the gentlest touch of summer warmth had begun, his demise had already begun.

Soft footsteps pressed against wet earth barely cooled by the fierce thunderstorm that had just blown through. It woke him up. The July heat clung in the background, pressed out only by the insistent breath of the forest. It had been a long time since anyone had come out so far from the property. The slight feet danced around several long, flat rocks covered in slick moss and splashed into a puddle. A small leaf from a locust tree stuck to the slim ankle.

As the woman ran, shadows moved alongside her. Keeping pace. Every few steps, when a log or a rock arose, the shadow dropped or ducked or dodged. There was a man within the shadows. Running. He kept pace with the woman though stayed unseen.

A practiced skill.

The sun dipped strangely on the horizon, vanishing quickly behind the rolling mountains hunched with age.

The woman running through the damp forest stopped abruptly. Dusk happened in the blink of an eye in this place. Hazel eyes jumped from branch to branch, looking around to memorize the path. She seemed…flighty. Unfamiliar, the man watching thought. She was new. The shadow tucked back into the long shadows carved out by the looming mountains, watching.

She slipped one foot forward, rubbing her bale sole across something slick and wet. A stone but polished. She dropped to one knee. It was a headstone but it held no years. Simply a name.

"Rafe," she whispered to herself, almost in question. It was a wonderful name to say. Something about the sound filled her with butterflies. "Rafe." She narrowed her eyes. There was nothing else on the stone. Simply a name and several marks that seemed to be burned in. “Rafe.”

"Do you like it?" a low voice whispered.

She whipped her head around but only caught the smirk of the man as he ducked behind the aspen.

"I've always been partial to it. Rafe. Rolls right off the tongue doesn't it?" The voice slid on the side of her, rasping, "Perhaps...it just gets caught in the throat."

One bare foot crossed the threshold from the grassy path into the shadows of the forest and a fierce howling began to tremble through the leaves around her.

"An idea," he said lowly but there was a lilt to his voice that made it sound like he was playing. "You stay on your side of the tree and I on mine."

"This is my-"

"Ah. That is your property," he said as a tophat held in a thin, vascular hand pointed back toward her home. The long fingers flipped the hat, pointing it down. "This is the forest." The hand jerked it back. "Do not stare."

Her eyes slid away from his direction. He breathed a silent sigh of relief.

Rafe stuck his hat back on his head of long brown hair and shoved his hands in his pockets after tugging the sleeves of his black jacket down. No one had seen him in thirty years. Being seen... It always led to problems. He remembered the years before the last three decades well. They were full of hope and failed promises. Women that he wished he could remember better.

Already she was different.

She stuck to his teeth like candy. Rafe watched, half out of fear and half out of wonderment, as she cleaned the grass surrounding the stone. There was a reverence in her eyes that softened him and a compassion that made him yearn to be cared for again.

To believe that someone would remember.

Dark eyes caught the starlight, glittering, and watched as she pressed an open palm to the smooth black stone polished by water and sandpaper and years of howling wind. He shivered behind the aspen. It was as though she was placing a hand on his chest.

"Don't." Hazel eyes ringed by green searched the shadows. They could not find him. "That is not yours to touch."

She withdrew her hand.

"Are you R-"

He had made a mistake.

"If you do not head back now, the wolves will come. Go home."

Her shoulders lifted and fell several times beneath the dark cotton dress. Rafe thought for the second time that she was striking. Her eyes were wide set and siren-like, staring out over a strong bridge and straight nose that made her features look stoic, not soft. Her face was long and smooth with open lips in the middle.

“Leave.”

Without another word, she stood and left.

Rafe watched her go, longing tying ropes around his heart. She hadn't even said her name. There would be nothing to mark her existence in his mind with other than an ugly title. Stranger. Anguish lapped at the dark shores of his heart. It was better to part this way than it was to continue.

That was the way of things.

A punishment for a crime never committed.

Rafe turned and walked deep into the forest to the wolves who feasted along the outskirts of his fire. They had brought him a deer this time. A young buck. Rafe stared at it for several long moments, skin gone orange in the glow of the fire. The dark brown eyes reflected the fire. Rafe trudged past the deer and lay against the warm log facing the fire.

Today will fade too, he thought. Fall asleep and let it go. You’ll forget her. Just let it go. His heart flopped around in his chest. You can forget her. Without a name, you can forget.

The woman did not want to be forgotten.

Rafe jerked awake to a dull fire smothered by a morning storm to the feel of her footsteps against the dirt again. He returned to the aspen, almost as though compulsed. Every ache in him screamed not to but it had been so long since he had hoped and the feeling was fresh in his chest.

She came back, this time with a lamp and enough oil to last several nights and her name.

Anastasie.

She came every night at dusk like clockwork.

The days stretched into weeks and then months, each night bringing Anastasie to the forest where she spoke, laughed, and ate with Rafe. After her initial attempt to learn more about the stone, she hadn’t asked again. It unnerved him. Hung in the air like the smell of spoiled stew.

But he didn’t push her away. Rafe leaned into the conversation, often sitting on the other side of a large oak with his eyes closed and his arms crossed. It was easy to pretend she was right in front of him then. Easy to think she could see him.

She was everything bright in his life. Her laughter rang through the forest and played high up in the green canopy. Anastasie was a dream. Gone with morning and back with sunset. Always back with sunset.

Anastasie became his pattern. His heartbeat. The horrible nightmare of time passing no longer plagued him but excited him. Her absence was only an indication of her presence. Missing her meant he would speak to her again. Rafe relaxed into her presence, content that she wasn’t pressing him to show his face or hold her hand. He could feel the stringy love stretch between them but it was enough.

Rafe couldn’t help grinning even when he was alone.

It split his often sullen face and gave color to permanently pale cheeks. He found himself picking flowers during the day and leaving bouquets on his stone for her. Sometimes he waded into the creek, gathering the smoothest, prettiest rocks he could find and arranging them in shapes beneath his stone.

Anastasie for her part brought meals to the aspen, turning her back and allowing Rafe to pick up the home-cooked food and retreat into the forest. It could have been poison for all he cared. The way it lit him up inside was inimitable. Great meteor showers streaked across his soul as he ate her stew and lightning shows illuminated the black of his eyes when he tasted her cottage pie.

It was another way to love that didn’t involve his face.

Rafe fell into the habit and fell into love thinking she would be content with this.

"Planning on a new bedroom?" he drawled as she dropped down with blankets and extra lamps.

"This one seems occupied," she said, tapping a finger on the stone. Rafe shuddered. Anastasie had taken to doing more of that lately. She must have known or perhaps he just stopped complaining but it was nice to feel something physical that wasn’t a fixture of nature. "Just planning on keeping away from the wolves."

"And a lamp will do that."

There was something in her gaze that he did not like. He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, pressing down the feeling of unease.

“You will.”

He was silent. Anastasie never spoke this way and he could hear the next sentence coming a mile away.

"I know about you, Rafe. I know this is your stone."

There it was.

Rafe twisted his lips in a deeply pained pout.

"When I first moved in, after meeting you, I asked if there were any murders on the property. There weren’t any.”

Rafe looked back toward the house. Through the dark foliage he could only make out the glint of the windows in the moonlight. He missed it. Missed the way the hardwood floors creaked. Light used to trail in from the east down the hallway outside his bedroom, trickle under the door, and say hello. He closed his eyes and remembered the warm smell of the radiators tapping as they fought off the bitter cold creeping through the bones of the house.

It had been a long time since he had been inside.

"Did I not already tell you? That is your property. This is the forest."

“I know,” she said. “So I went to the village and asked around. Got some answers. Would you like to hear them?”

Rafe looked away from the house toward the river cutting through the forest.

“Not particularly. I am not overly fond of…stories.”

“You seem to like mine fine.”

Rafe was silent.

This whole time she had known. His heart burned in his chest. She had played him like a fool. Made him seem stupid and young. He swallowed thickly, the sharp apple of his throat bobbing between curtains of dark hair. She had known and she had let him yammer on like a lovesick fool as though there wasn’t an impossible wall between them.

"There’s a fog. It doesn’t come with any predictable pattern but it fills the valley to the brim. The old barkeep called them cryin’ times.” Rafe winced. Did his screams really carry so far? They must have for that name to surface. “Every so often the fog just rolls in and kills somebody. Normally the owner of my house. Old story, they said. Hundred years some of them think now.”

Had it been so long? The world around the house and the glimpses of advancement he could see from the edges of the forest didn’t seem drastic enough to cover one hundred years. Fifty, yes. But one hundred…

Rafe suddenly wanted to end the conversation.

“The barkeep told me that there’s a reason, er, a time it started. A man moved out to the country to heal his wife who had been sick since she birthed their son. Never got better but she hung on. All the way up until his eighteenth birthday.”

Rafe reached out and grabbed a nearby oak, blinking through watery eyes as his world spun. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. His heart was a flightless bird in his chest flapping its wings and screeching as a predator approached.

“Why are you doing this?” he whispered.

“On the morning of his eighteenth birthday, she apparently wished him well and…”

“Rafe! Oh baby, come here.”

Long, gentle arms that smelled of perfume and comfort wrapped around him. She had gotten so small it amazed Rafe how she hadn’t simply evaporated into flowers and bones yet. He leaned into the familiar scratch of the red sweater, nuzzling against his mother.

“Eighteen,” she cooed, running a hand through his shaggy, cheekbone-length hair. “The whole world’s ahead of you now, Rafe. Do well in it. Love. That’s the best thing a person can do, I think. Do you hear me? The best thing a person can do is let themselves love no matter how much it may hurt.”

She pressed a tender kiss to his forehead. The hand moving through his hair sped up, nearly frantic.

“Such beautiful hair, my boy. I would have liked to see it longer.”

Rafe knocked into the oak with his shoulder and slid to the ground. His teeth clattered together and his legs shook. He was cold. Freezing. He pulled on his sweater beneath his jacket.

“...died. She dropped right over on the floor. The father blamed it on the son. Of course. But it made him go mad. Spent seven years practicing magic, at least that's what the old man said. The father wanted to punish his son for what he had done which was, apparently, the crime of being born."

“You dumb, snivelling, useless boy!” Rafe screamed intermittently when his lungs would allow. Every so often a boot lodged itself in his stomach but the belt was wounding him far worse. “You killed her, you bastard, you killed her!”

“I’m sorry, Pa!” Rafe cried, face split on one side and blood sticking his shirt to his back. “I’m sorry!”

“You will be, you heathen. She was a good woman. She didn’t deserve the hurt you caused her.”

The belt came down hard on Rafe’s brow bone, turning the world into an explosion of stars. He rolled limply onto his back, trying and failing to touch his forehead. Two massive hands gripped his collar and hauled him to his useless legs while the image of his red-in-the-face father blurred and doubled in front of him.

“It’s my job to punish you for what you did to her. You killed somebody I loved, somebody good. I’m gonna make sure you’re stuck doing the same, Rafe, for the rest of your long, long life. You’re gonna lose everyone you ever love, understand? Everyone.”

Rafe touched the scar cutting across the outside of his left eyebrow. His knee flopped to one side, landing against the warm root of the tree.

It still ached when it rained. He could tell a storm was coming by the headache kissing his scar.

"The father managed to magically chain his son to the forest. Bled him out at the base of the aspen then sealed him into the stone. Real magic. Dark.”

“Stop,” he rasped, wrapping thin arms around his belly.

He could feel the blood trickling out of his body as the wolves ripped and tore at his flesh. His father had chained him to the aspen well. Rafe couldn’t escape. He could only open his mouth and scream.

Eventually the wolves left. He had begged long enough and hard enough that one seemed to hear and left, head hung low and snoot bloody but there was a sorrow in its gold eyes Rafe never forgot.

Rafe vividly recalled watching the stars as strings of latin washed over him. Every piece of his body felt far away as though his heartbeats were oozing into the soil.

“The father left him there. Permanently twenty-five, unable to come home.”

Rafe tucked his knees to his chest, dropping his forehead to his knees.

“He had to stay in the forest, stuck between alive and dead.”

The shivering turned violent. Painful.

“The father wasn’t satisfied with that. Imprisoning his son like that wasn’t enough. The old man said that anyone who sees the son is cursed to die. This fog rolls in and they die so that he’s forced to lose those closest to him over and over just like the father. But there's a catch. If the person thinks of the man in their final moments and is truly unselfish, that trapped man leaves and they live.”

A long silence stretched its arms between them until Rafe said, "That is quite a story." The softness of his voice betrayed his anguish. “Very…elaborate. As lies often are.”

He was suddenly glad he wasn't looking at her. Rafe didn't want to see the pity in her face as she said, “I’m sorry, Rafe."

Her palm dropped to the smooth black surface and his violent shaking stopped. Rafe turned his attention to her, eyebrows arching upward at the feeling of comfort. He could feel the warmth seeping through him. The tears silently trailing down his cheeks stopped and the uneven breaths of fear settled. Rafe let out a shaky sigh and dropped his head back against the oak. After all this time, these potential hundred years, he had never been touched like this.

In his dark eyes, the lamplight flickered across her face.

She was beautiful.

Rafe hadn’t looked much at her in the time they had spoken. He kept his eyes to the shadows.

But in the warm glow, as the rain drizzled around and made the leaves heavy, Anastasie reminded him in a very distant way of his mother. She was determined, he could tell as much by the hard set of her lips and the gleam in her eyes. He didn’t scold her this time for touching his stone. Rafe liked the far-off feeling of her delicate touch against his chest. It had been so long since he had seen another like this. The interaction ached in his bones and he wanted to drown in it. Wanted to rest his head on her thighs and sleep. Laugh under the moon. Kiss at sunset. He wanted to be remembered.

The way she spoke and what she spoke about captivated him. The nights before this one were endless fun. She brought him a comfort he couldn’t deny. It was coming home after a long day. It was his memory of a mattress firm and soft beneath him at the same time, juxtaposing strength with gentleness. Anastasie was the same.

"Has anyone seen you?"

"You have not. Isn't that what matters?" he snapped from the base of the tree. "Stop while you're ahead with that ridiculous story."

Rafe intended it to be light and joking like normal but it was bitter. Angry. He didn’t want this conversation to continue.

"The barkeep said..."

"No one cares what he said, you witch. I am done entertaining you."

"He said that if the cursed person thought of the man they saw during their death as the last thing in their mind, he would be free and the person would likely live. How's that for entertainment?"

“Human lives are not entertainment,” he growled, rushing to the edge of the forest and nearly bursting into the ring of light.

They all heard that story or they came up with it themselves. Every idiot who met Rafe thought that they could be the one to save him. His hero. They all thought they could and they all had died.

His suffering was not something interesting or some footnote in lore. People had died trying to love him. He had let them. Rafe glared through the dark shadows at Anastasie. They weren’t even remembered by anyone else. A complete wash in history, turned to flowers and bones at the foot of the aspen his father had bled him nearly dry on.

Anastasie would never understand. No one would.

They would keep dying, one after another, for decades to come. It had been a mistake to speak to her in the first place.

"Get out," he snarled, retreating further into the forest. Wolves howled behind him, responding to his sudden fear. They were coming for her. He could feel it in his blood and no amount of begging the forest was going to stop those wolves from shredding her apart just like the others. "Leave the forest and do not come back."

He could feel the smack of paws against his chest as the wolves pounded down the mountainside.

"The wolves are coming."

Rafe turned his back on Anastasie, whispering more to himself than her, "And I am tired of your company."

**********************************************************************

Rafe ate. Rafe slept. Rafe did everything most men did during their day to day lives but he was chained to the forest. Waiting. Nothing could kill him. Not hunger though he felt its pains gnawing a hole in him plenty. Thirst left him dry in the mouth some days and senseless dizzy others but the river was often good enough. Most things were good enough.

It was at least the lie he told himself to keep going. There was no way out. He had tried a handful of times to end his own life but nothing worked and nothing stuck. It just left him feeling worse off with one more memory to add to his long catalog of nightmares.

They terrorized him.

Rafe tossed and turned by the dim embers of the fire.

He could see a young woman in his head, the first who had come across him, with her big doe eyes such a deep brown he once thought they were as expansive as the night sky. The slender fingers of her hands flashed through his dreams. He had been fascinated by them. She used to sit and hum melodies as though she was playing the piano, fingers dancing in the moonlight for him.

Rafe scowled, dark brows pinching together.

The woman with her short black curls lay spread at the base of the aspen where he had once bled and screamed and sobbed. Dead. The dark eyes were vacant.

Rafe whimpered as he watched the fog dissolve her body into flowers and drop her bones like a souvenir atop Rafe’s stone. He walked toward the neat pile of bones just as he had that day but the nightmare shifted into something else. Strings of white lifted from the bones and brushed delicately against his face. Rafe recoiled. This wasn’t right. This had never happened. The strings followed, forming the shape of a face with holes for eyes and plump lips.

He tried to scream but no sound escaped.

The lips closed the gap and kissed.

He cried out, snapping in half as he sat upright and smacked Anastasie directly in the head. Rafe didn’t need his wits about him to understand what had happened.

She had found him.

Anastasie had hunted him down and seen him.

“What have you done?” he whispered. Waking up fully, he gripped Anastasie by the collar and shook her softly while growling, “What is wrong with you?! You have signed your death and worse than that, thrown blood on my hands.”

“I’ll remember you, Rafe. I know I can. It won't matter anyway. I'll live and we can grow old together!”

“I didn’t want you to try! It's only rumors, Anastasie. Rumors!”

“You don’t get to control everything,” she snapped but tears welled in her eyes. “Don’t you want to try? I know you felt what I felt. I know it.”

He pushed her to the ground and sank back to his rear, leaning against the stump and looking away from her.

“Do you have any idea how many times I have heard that?” The dark eyes slid up to the sky, tracking the positions of the sky. “Why did I have to hear it from you?”

"I love you." Rafe inhaled sharply. "How many times have you heard that?"

He swallowed thickly.

"Not nearly enough," he said, looking down at her lips. "And I find it sounds best in your mouth."

“Rafe…”

“Oh Christ,” he said, closing his eyes. “Don’t say my name like that.”

“Like I care?”

Rafe looked over to her, anguish making his eyes hollow. The starlight couldn’t reach the abyss in his eyes.

“Like you’ll remember.”

Anastasie crawled over to him and Rafe distantly thought it was a shame to muddy her knees like that. Warm hands landed on his chest as she straddled his legs. The anguish in his expression only worsened as she ran her fingers underneath the bottom of his sweater, skirting the sensitive skin of his lower belly.

“I will,” she whispered, leaning low and pressing another kiss to his lips.

“Thirty days, Anastasie,” he whispered. “Why did you start the clock? We could have spoken forever. For the rest of your life.”

“And a fraction of yours.” She brushed her thumb across the scar on his brow. “You don’t deserve to suffer like this, Rafe. No one does.” She dragged her fingers through his hair and returned to teasing his lower belly. “You deserve to feel good.” Her thumbs dipped below his waistband. “And I want to love you, Rafe.” It was bittersweet. Painful and tight in his chest but hungry and needy in his stomach. “Let me love you. Let me memorize you.”

He hissed half in pleasure and half in cynical disbelief.

Everything in him creaked and groaned and ached with the thought of being loved. Of touching another person and having them touch him back. Of laughing through the night. Of having sex beneath the stars and remembering it, both of them, for years to come.

“Please, Rafe.” She kissed along his throat, her hand moving dangerously lower. “I promise I won’t forget you.”

After thirty years of agonizing loneliness, Rafe succumbed. He let himself fall beneath her touch.

**********************************************************************

She had forgotten.

Like all the rest, she had forgotten.

Rafe lifted his hat and dropped it between the gap Anastasie's heels made in the browning grass. It landed rim up, asking for pennies.

"Every day," he growled at the dark night. "I thought of you every day. And you couldn’t remember me once.”

One long leg stepped beside her and brought him into a low lunge. He reached out, hesitant, and then closed the gap between his left hand and her face. Rafe cupped her thin jaw in his hand. Even in death, there was something whimsical about her. Something alluring to the soul.

The wolves had left her face be. There was a quiet apology in there. Rafe blinked several more tears free from his eyes, paying them no mind as they dropped onto the back of her hands. The golden-eyed wolf had been caught in the crossfires of that spell that day. Forced to kill any woman Rafe fell for and forced to live as long as Rafe.

Rafe had long since stopped hating him. He was as pitiable as Rafe himself. Nothing more than a magical trap.

Brown leaves crunched and crackled as they tumbled by. Rafe glanced to the side. A grey opossum stood with one paw lifted, pink fingers curled and black eyes staring widely over at him.

"This is a funeral, white dog."

The black eyes blinked and the opossum shuffled away.

Rafe turned sad brown eyes as dark as the cloud-covered sky above back to the cold face leaning into his palm. Her eyes were vacant. Fixed and far away. His eyes skated down her body, falling to the stone and rabbit’s foot in her hand.

“Anastasie,” he whimpered, his voice cracking as he pulled the good luck tokens from her hands. They were heavy in his palm with her promise to remember him. Sorrow clogged his throat and roared in the rivers rolling down his cheeks.

"I thought of you every day," he whispered, idly running his thumb against her soft cheek. "I waited for you each night." The dark eyes watered, softening at the thought of her quiet footsteps approaching. "At the end..."

He swallowed with a grimace, tasting the ancient flavor of a long-extinguished cigarette on his tongue.

"You thought of life." The thin, dark brows pinched upward in a pained expression. "How could I fault you for that?" Rain tapped lightly against his back. "You wanted to live. You didn't want me. Didn't want...didn't want this."

Rafe dropped his forehead to hers.

"But I thought of you at the end."

He pulled her away from the trunk and into his arms, holding her against his empty chest as he recalled the moment he heard the wolves.

"I thought of you at sunset. And in the morning with the dew wetting the hems of your skirts. It happened so quickly. I saw ten thousand beautiful versions of you and all of them...dead." A rough sob broke through the storm growing. "Your eyes, Anastasie. Oh Christ, your eyes dripped honey when they looked at me."

He nuzzled into the soft mane of auburn hair, crying loudly and freely.

“Wasn’t loving you from afar enough? Couldn’t we have just done that forever?” Broken sobs rattled the bones in his chest and sharp pains exploded in his sides. “You tricked me. You tricked me into loving you.”

He screwed his eyes shut more tightly and dug his fingers into her back.

Softly he said, “I believed every word you said that night. Every last one. You told me you would love me until I was old and ugly and I…I believed you.”

Tears rolled down his neck, soaking into the collar of his sweater.

“The moon and the stars were in your eyes. I believed you because they did but the stars are gone and you are dead and I am…I’m alone.” The arms squeezed around her more tightly as the fog rolled over her body. “No. No,” he growled. “Don’t you take her from me!”

But it was too late.

Heaps and heaps of flowers filled his arms and a neat little pile of bones sat atop his black stone.

Rafe’s dark eyes jumped from petal to petal and then slammed shut as his fingers curled around the flowers and crushed them. He opened his mouth and screamed. Rafe screamed until he tasted blood. Until stars burst in his vision and little spots of blood decorate his cheeks. The veins in his neck bulged. His heart stuttered in his chest. The grief was enough to kill him two times over but the forest wouldn’t let him go.

The fists of flowers knocked against his temples and soon the horrible, gut-wrenching cries turned to bottomless wails. Rafe buried his face in the flowers and howled for what he had lost. He cursed his father. Damned the forest. Rafe begged the petals to give her back. Nothing eased the chasm of loss in his chest. Rafe curled up amidst the flowers and cried out to anything that was listening.

In the distance, the gold-eyed wolf tilted its jaw toward the black sky and began to howl.

Anastasie was dead.

And Rafe was alone again.