Dante Blackwood's Arc

Chapter 1 of 6

Dante Blackwood wanted one thing from the grove: a woman brave enough to hold his gaze and not look away. So far, every person managed the opposite. He was too tall, too still, too marked with ink and iron. Mothers steered children wide of him. Vendors handed him goods and stared at the ground. He walked among the mossy paths each morning, and each morning he left as a stranger. The problem was simple. He had no reason to stay where people gathered. He bought his bread, then went home to the ivy-covered manor behind the flowering gate. A man who never lingered never became known. He knew it, and he hated it. So he made a plan. If people would not come to him, he would build a reason for them to. He owned the old fountain square near the grove's edge. For three days he worked there. He cleared fallen branches. He set out benches from the manor. He hauled a water trough for travelers' horses and hung a lantern from the ivy. The wolf came on the second day. A black timber wolf with a white heart on her brow and eyes as blue as his own. She watched him lift stone. She did not run. When he set down water, she drank, then lay in the sun near his boots. By evening she followed him home. By morning she followed him back. People noticed the wolf before they noticed him, and the wolf made him look less like a threat and more like a man. On the fourth day, the square filled. A child chased the wolf around a bench. An old man rested his legs and thanked Dante by name. Three women set up a fruit stall without asking. The space he built pulled people in, and for the first time the grove had a place that belonged to him and welcomed them both. He was moving a bench when a voice cut through the noise. "You're the one who did all this?" He turned. A short woman stood with her arms crossed. Ripped jeans, fishnets, a black tank top with a butterfly. Black hair fell in waves past her waist. A small ring caught the light on her nose. Her eyes were teal, and they did not drop from his. She held his gaze the way no one in the grove ever had. Around them, the crowd had gone quiet, watching the tall stranger and the emo girl who refused to flinch. "I did," Dante said. Scarlet Rosemary tilted her head and studied his tattoos, his scarred brow, the wolf at his heel. She did not step back. "Huh," she said. "Everyone else acts like you'll eat them. You built them all a park." She sat on his fresh bench like she owned it. "I'm staying. Talk." The square was his now. And the one person who looked past his face had just sat down and asked him to stay.