Chapter Twenty-Nine
The Unmarked: Book One
Table of Contents:
[Prologue] [Ch.1] [Ch.2] [Ch.3] [Ch.4] [Ch.5] [Ch.6] [Ch.7] [Ch.8] [Ch.9] [Ch.10] [Ch.11] [Ch.12] [Ch.13] [Ch.14] [Ch.15] [Ch.16] [Ch.17] [Ch.18] [Ch.19] [Ch.20] [Ch. 21] [Ch.22] [Ch.23] [Ch.24] [Ch.25] [Ch.26] [Ch.27] [Ch.28]
š¬ If youād like to receive two new chapters, sent right to your inbox, every Thursday and Friday, become a Subscriber today!
Dawn.
A midsummer nightās waltz.
Before tonight, those words had been meaningless and insignificant. Now, as she lay alone in her bed, she was overwhelmed by the sentiment they carried. The words brought her back to the Festival of the Marked. They were the title to a song. The song that she and Wolfe had shared their first dance to seven weeks ago. Dawn let out a shaky breath. They were the words that had been carved into the table by the āstrangerā. The stranger who could have been no one other than Wolfe Bloodwood.
She sat up in her bed, lit her candle, and pulled out the poster of him that she kept neatly folded in the secret sewn compartment of her satchel, along with all her maps and fake passports. Dawn stared at him. She brushed her fingers across the rough paper, across his hollow expression. Fear and excitement and disappointment raged inside her chest and gripped at her stomach. Wolfe had been here only a day ago, and she had missed him. Wolfe had been here a day ago, and he had killed someone. Or had he? Sproutās story had been difficult to believe but she had also experienced unbelievable things with Wolfe. Things that proved that there was more to him than he let on.
Immortal.
That had been the word used to describe Wolfe. Was he really immortal? Dawn ran her hands across her face. It would explain why he was never afraid. Why he always took risks. Why he was so confident in telling her that heād rescue her. Why he never slept, nor ate, nor drank. But thinking such things made her feel foolish. No one was immortal except for Tariahā¦
Or was there?
She observed the Wanted poster.
Wolfe had been here a day ago, and he had carved the title of the song they had danced to into a table. But why? Was it a coincidence, or had he tried to leave her a message? She thought back to a few nights ago when she had called out to him by the creek, convinced that he had been there, watching her.
Donāt worry sweetheart, Iāll be there to get you out of trouble.
She hated the endless stream of questions that ran through her mind every time she thought of Wolfe. She hated the mystery that surrounded him. She hated that heād left her. She hated that she couldnāt know for sure whether the words on the table had been a coincidence, or a message. āJust get out of my headā she whispered into the night.
Dawn wanted to believe that she would have been better off without him. But she wouldnāt have been. She would have been dead. Wolfe had saved her. He had been by her side when her entire world had come crashing down. He had shown her parts of the world she had never known to exist. He had known and travelled with Lilly. He had known Dawn before they had even met. He was somehow interwoven into the fabric of her life. Dawn couldnāt just forget someone like that.
š The Purelight Stone Trilogy is a free Substack publication. If you feel inclined to give a contribution, your generosity will go toward amplifying the quality of the Purelight Stone Trilogy.
Emotions thundered inside of her. She didnāt know whether she should feel pleased, or paranoid, or broken at the thought of Wolfe and what the words carved into the table meant.
Maybe Wolfe was watching over her and was keeping true to his promise. Maybe he had just left her behind because he needed to stay on the low. Otherwise, he would have been hunted by people like the Farmerās son. The carving in the table could had been a message left behind for her, to let her know that he was thinking of her.
Or maybe he didnāt care about her and helping her had just been āa slight detourā in his journey, as heād put it. Maybe he was long gone, and the carving in the table had been nothing but a product of boredomā¦
Or maybe Wolfe was following her. Rather than watching over her, he was simply watching her: to stop her from going to Tariah. It was possible that Wolfe was affiliated with the Rebels. It would explain why he had been with Lilly, and why he had rescued Dawn, and why he was wanted for heresy by the Queen. What if heād thought he could get Dawn to the Rebels, and when he discovered her plan to bring the information to Tariah, he let her go? Made her to believe that he wasnāt involved. And now, when her guard would be down, he would steal Lillyās documents from her, and potentially even kill her. But why make his presence known? Why leave her a message? Could the carving in the table had been a ploy to gain her trust, so that she would let her guard down?
If Dawn were to set her emotions aside, her last hypothesis was the most valuable to her survival. She needed to assume that he was ill-intentioned. Every Guardian was taught to expect any and every possibility. And Wolfeās betrayal was one of those possibilities. And the more she thought about it, the more it seemed like the most realistic possibility. Disappointment seized her to the core. Either Wolfe was gone, or he was out to get her. Either way, he wasnāt for her, and that meant Dawn had to tuck away her girly, wishful thinking, stay vigilant and survive on her own.
The subtle breathing of sleeping souls filled the bedroom. Scarlet slept in the second bed, and River slept on the floor. Dawn rolled out of her own bed, tiptoed across the room, and gently shut the door behind her. She hadnāt bothered to put on any shoes. She walked barefoot across the wooden floorboards, their rough texture gripping at her feet, her weight causing them to creak. The sound seemed deafening in the stillness of the night. Gripping the poster of Wolfe in a tight fist that crumpled the paper, Dawn went into the dining hall. There was no one there, except for the innkeeper, who was sleeping at a table, his arms being used as a pillow for his head, a rag sprawled out in front of him. He was oblivious to her presence.
The four men from before were now gone. She walked over to the fireplace and stared at the dancing flames. Their heat did nothing to warm the chill within her body. The chill did everything to reveal the emptiness within her soul. She took one last look at the poster of Wolfe and the hollow expression in his eyes which mirrored the void inside herself. She stared at the image for a long time. Each passing second causing her to feel emptier and more alone. She stared until she felt like she wasnāt even alive. As if she were no more vibrant than the paper between her fists. Then she threw the poster into the fire. She watched the flames eat away at the paper. The image of Wolfe blackened and curled, and slowly faded into ash and smoke, until eventually there was nothing there, and she was left to experience the absence of all feeling.
š¤š¬ Let me know your thoughts on this chapter by leaving a comment. Iād love to read your impressions!