The rain had eased, but the forest still clung to the weight of it.
Mist curling like spirits between the trees, leaves dripping quietly in the silence that followed.
Evelyn stood at the edge of the trail, boots soaked, her pulse still thrumming from the last hour.
He was ahead of her — tall, hat still shadowing his face, cloak damp and clinging to him like a second skin.
He hadn't looked back once, but she felt him, felt that magnetic pull like a thread wound tight around her ribs, tugging her forward even though every instinct screamed stop.
And the worst thing is that she didn't know his name yet.
"Why are we going this way?" she asked, voice quieter now, her breath clouded in the cooling air.
"Because the other way will get you killed," he said simply.
His voice had changed still low, but quieter, laced with something deeper, not fear, exactly but resignation.
She tried to catch up, boots slipping on the wet earth. "You didn't have to come back for me."
"Again, I was sent here to protect you," he said. "Didn't have a choice."
The word marked curled in her stomach like ice.
Evelyn halted. "Who sent you?"
He stopped too, slowly turned toward her.
He lifted his face from under the brim of his soaked hat, and for a heartbeat, Evelyn forgot how to breathe.
He wasn't just handsome, he was beautiful in a way that didn't seem real.
Skin lightened by the rain's soft touch, black curls dripping over high cheekbones, and eyes like polished silver — deep, distant, and devastating.
But it was the eyes that struck her the most: ancient, hollowed with grief, glowing faintly like an echo of something not entirely human.
"Someone saw what you did. The song."
Her throat closed up. "I didn't mean—"
"I know," he cut in. "That doesn't matter."
Her hands shook so she hid them behind her back.
That pull between them hadn't weakened, it had intensified, become almost painful.
"I thought Clara hid me well enough," she whispered.
A flicker passed through his expression, recognition and regret.
"Clara should've known this would happen eventually. You're not some mundane girl that can be locked away in a cottage with charm sigils and blackout curtains."
"You knew my aunt?"
He said nothing but that silence cracked something open inside her.
"You did," she breathed. "You also know my mother too?"
His jaw clenched. "That doesn't matter either."
But it did.
Her heart beat harder now, a million thoughts storming in her head.
Who was he? How long had he been watching?
He turned, walking again. "Keep moving, Evelyn."
"How do you know my name?" she asked.
He stopped again, but didn't turn. "Because she told me to protect you."
She stared at him into the shadow of that wide-brimmed hat, into the truth buried under his voice.
"My mother?"
He didn't answer.
A growl split the silence.
Low, guttural and not human.
Zayn was on her in a heartbeat, pressing her back against a moss-covered tree.
His hand splayed protectively across her stomach, and her breath caught not in fear, but in the staggering electricity of his touch.
"Stay quiet," he whispered, eyes scanning the trees.
She couldn't breathe.
The forest had gone still again, no wind, no birdsong just that oppressive, waiting quiet.
Then the fog moved.
No, something in the fog moved.
A shape slinking, low to the ground, then rising taller than a man.
Zayn's lips barely moved. "Shadow hounds."
Evelyn's blood turned to ice.
"I thought they were just in stories—"
"They are," he said. "Until they smell siren blood."
A howl tore through the air, and the trees shuddered with it.
Zayn pulled something from beneath his coat, a blade blacker than night, rimmed in faint violet light, it pulsed like it hungered.
Evelyn pressed back against the tree, heart pounding so hard it hurt.
She wasn't ready for this, she'd never trained, Clara never let her.
And yet... something inside her stirred.
The same part that sang in the mirror, the part she kept locked away.
Zayn shifted, muscles coiled, ready to fight.
"You'll run if I tell you?" he asked suddenly.
She met his eyes. "No."
His jaw flexed like that answer terrified him more than the hounds.
"You should."
"I won't."
Another howl coming closer.
He turned to her one last time. "Then remember what I say next: If I fall, you do not sing, no matter what happens."
She swallowed hard. "Why?"
His gaze softened not with warmth, but sorrow. "Because if you do... it won't be them who devour you."
And with that, he stepped into the mist, blade raised just as the shadows exploded out of the trees.
Sorry for the few words in this chapter, i promise i will make it longer in the next. But the chapter was intriguing right? Waiting for your honest reviews😃