Siena

The cellar was filled with more boxes than Siena remembered.

The apex was stacked four boxes high, the unorganized pile covering most of the cellar floor. She set down the camp lantern and began digging through boxes, rifling through papers that were no longer blank but crammed with handwritten research notes, diary entries, and taxonomy sketches. Some sketches were elegant, while others were nothing more than a rough outline of trees, ferns, and wildlife she'd never seen before.

She craved the time to spend poring over each page, wanting to understand every nook and cranny of Feyrer's research. Going through it all would take months.

And did he deserve her thoroughness? He'd lied to her. His omission of the truth had trapped her here. Maybe it would even kill her. And Feyrer couldn't answer for any of it. It was possible that the truth of why she was so important was buried in these documents somewhere, but that wasn't good enough.

Feyrer had been as controlling and manipulative as Emmett could be. He'd just hidden these weaknesses better. She kept trusting the men in her life until they unforgivably fucked up or abandoned her. Was this something else she couldn't control? Another prison trapping her forever? Feyrer had wanted her here, in a place with rules she didn't understand, picking up where he'd left off, without her consent.

And if she wanted to escape, she had no other choice but to learn what she was up against.

Siena snapped dozens of photos of important-looking documents and continued her search, finding the box with a 2001 topographical map of Deadswitch Wilderness. She took it, carried it over to her camp lantern, kicked away a beetle, and sat. Unfolding it, she spread the map across the cellar floor.

Marker lines scratched out the title Deadswitch Wilderness. brIARDARK was written in block letters beneath.Siena ran her fingers over mountains, rivers, and scribbled buildings drawn across the wilderness area. Haphazard circles marked parts of the forested valley, along with the word Avoid.

Was this map literal? Was the topography of this Briardark place identical to Deadswitch Wilderness with a few exceptions? Isaac's map and the map she'd found on the table looked a lot like Deadswitch, but a more fleshed-out version with additional mountains, bodies of water, and buildings.

Siena froze. Beneath her, the ground vibrated so slightly that she almost passed it off as her imagination, until footsteps tore across the cabin floor above her.

Emmett? No, not heavy enough.

Siena refolded the map and grabbed the lantern, hurrying up the steps of the cellar into a microverse much darker than the one she'd left. The ember light had all but died. When she turned off the lantern, she could hardly make out the outline of her hand.

She blinked until her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and then ventured carefully to the front of the cabin. Isaac stood on the porch, staring past the pine shadows into the nothingness beyond.

Siena didn't notice the wetness on his cheeks until she stopped next to him. Not a muscle in his body moved as tears trickled from the corners of his eyes.

Asking what he mourned felt wrong. She waited instead, setting the camp lantern near the door and flipping its switch.

Eventually, Isaac blinked and turned toward her.

"Wilder Feyrer made it to the Briardark," Siena said, tucking the map into her sweatshirt pocket.

"I know." Isaac hung his head. "I didn't tell you because I was worried you'd stay if you knew. I'm sorry."

She waved her limp wrist defeatedly. "You aren't the first man to keep things from me." Her shoulders sank, and she rubbed her head. "He wants me to find The Mother—I guess she's the antlered woman. Some cult goddess who requires mule sacrifices. Am I close?" She didn't wait for Isaac's confirmation. "I'm sure it would make more sense if I read through his research. I just wish he would have told me to my face what I was up against."

Isaac's expression crumpled. He wiped his cheeks with the back of his wizened hand and reached toward her, gently touching her shoulders.

"I'm..." He struggled with the next part of the sentence, pressing his lips together before trying again. "The choice of what you do next is yours, not Feyrer's, nor mine. I understand that now." His grip on her tightened. "But Feyrer lied to you. And he will keep lying to you from the grave. What was the last thing he said to you?"

Feyrer's dying words rang hollow in Siena's memory.

Don't go.

"How do you know that?" she whispered. She'd never told Isaac that story.

He ignored her question and continued. "The last thing he told you was to avoid all this. That is the Feyrer you need to listen to. Don't find The Mother, Siena. Once this passage collapses, you need to leave this place and never come back. Save yourself and refuse the pain I endured."

As Isaac held her at arm's length, Siena grabbed on to the crook of his elbow with her free hand. "I'm sorry for everything that happened to you. You were young, and I should have been looking out for you. I was responsible for you. I am responsible for what has happened to you."

She'd never seen so much agony in someone's eyes before. Even Feyrer's. Even her dying mother.

"Don't..." Isaac croaked, but he didn't finish.

When he dropped his arms, she stepped forward and hugged him. A small whimper escaped his throat before he hugged her back, and Siena wondered when the last time was that he'd been held like this. She knew the answer would only break the remaining threads of sanity still holding her together.

"Matthew, Chapter 4," he said. "The story of Jesus entering the wilderness for forty days and nights to be tempted by the devil. Jesus said to him, ‘Be gone, Satan. For it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.'" He pulled Siena back, holding her once again at arm's length. "Only forty days, can you believe it? The son of God has nothing on me."

She released a quiet laugh of surprise, and Isaac let go of her.

A buzzing permeated the air, and she finally realized how deathly quiet this place had been. It reminded her of a humming computer or a piece of lab equipment, a sound that would have gone unnoticed by her back at CalTech.

Isaac narrowed his eyes and cocked his head. He heard it, too.

Siena stepped off the porch and beyond the orb of light emanating from the camp lantern. She pinpointed the direction of the sound and looked up, squinting into the darkness. Her pulse thudded in her throat as she waited, the noise crescendoing along with the ringing in her ear.

She spotted the hazy shape of a flying object, far too small and quiet to be an aircraft. It dropped closer, hovering above where she stood.

A drone.

She reached an arm upward, her straining fingers just out of reach...

Her ear shrieked. Siena dropped her arm and stumbled to her knees, clapping her hands over her ears. Her efforts didn't help—the noise was coming from inside her head. She screamed alongside the shriek as her skull vibrated and a knife-sharp pain pierced her eardrum.

The pressure built until she couldn't take it anymore. Please put me out of my misery, she prayed, though she didn't know who exactly she was praying to.

It was over as quickly as it started.

Siena gasped for air, her lungs aching. She cautiously lowered her hands and opened her eyes to soil.

Not soil cast in a fiery glow. Not soil beneath a patina of darkness. She sank her fingers into dirt and scooped it up with her hands, the texture wet and dense with decay. An earthworm writhed in the center of her palm.

Siena lifted her head to a forest.

A woven tangle of branches from evergreen giants all but filtered out the sun. Mist settled on dense foliage the color of eucalyptus. A throaty bird squawked from its place in the trees as the brush to her left rustled.

Siena inhaled the sharp medley of herb and moss and mineral, the scent familiar, but also wholly different from anything she had smelled before.

Slowly, she stood. The ringing was gone. The pain was gone. Whatever had been hovering over her head was gone. And she was somewhere she'd never been before.

Siena turned back toward the cabin—toward Isaac—and screamed.