Sylvara Nightweaver's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

The fairy costume lay folded on Sylvara's bed. It solved one problem and left another. She could hide her face. She still could not find Doran. He worked deep in the woods, where strangers never walked. A festival girl had no reason to wander there. So Sylvara went back to Lilith, because Lilith knew every path in the grove. She found the blonde witch in her cottage, mixing something that smelled of copper. Lilith did not turn around. "The woodcutter again," she said. "You can't seduce a man you can't reach." "Tell me where he is," Sylvara said. "He's not at a market. He's not at a tavern." Lilith stirred once, then set down her spoon. "He cuts alone. Deep in. No girl in leaves has any business there." "Then I need another reason to be there." Lilith smiled and crossed the room. She opened a second chest and lifted out a bundle of worn cloth. A faded dress, stained and patched. A heavy scarf. Dark gloves cracked at the knuckles. The clothes of a poor wanderer. "Doran trusts the helpless," Lilith said. "His pity is the one door he leaves open. A lost traveler, cold and hungry. He'll bring her to his fire himself." She pressed the bundle into Sylvara's hands. "Wear this first. The leaves come later, once he wants you near." Sylvara felt the rough wool against her fingers. It smelled of smoke and old roads. "And the path?" "West of the mill stream. Follow the cut stumps. He's there by midday." Lilith leaned close. "Go as a beggar who lost her way. Not as a woman who found him." Sylvara changed in the trees where the stumps began. She left her good boots behind and dirtied her hands with earth. When she walked into the deep wood, she walked slow, like someone worn down. The axe sounds grew louder. Then she saw him. Doran was tall, his shirt dark with sweat. He swung the axe clean and buried it in a log. He heard her stumble and turned fast, hand still on the handle. His eyes were hard. He looked at her face, then her ragged clothes, then her muddy hands. "You're lost," he said. Not a question. "Two days," Sylvara said. She let her voice shake. "No food. I smelled your smoke." He studied her a long moment. She held still under it. Then he pulled the axe free and nodded toward a low fire by his hut. "Sit," he said. "I've got bread." Sylvara sat. She had found him. She had reached him. But the pity that opened his door was a trap of its own. He would feed a lost woman. He would never want her. To make him want her, she would have to become someone else in front of him, piece by piece, without one wrong step. And in her hidden pocket, wrapped tight, the rose-colored vial pressed against her hip like a confession she could not afford.