32. Ash

Chapter Thirty-Two

Ash

T he creature who stood before me stared at me, her lips parted. She was a vision to behold, and she had a touch of magic to her that felt a lot like my own magic. When I realized that, I felt a tug deep at my core. Whatever she was, she wasn’t an enchanted being. I knew that. She looked human, but the touch of magic didn’t make sense. She was incredible to look at, though. Long blonde hair and eyes the color of the evergreen leaves all around us. She was a slight thing, but her body was delicious. I wanted to trace her curves with my fingers, to taste every inch of her skin. My cock twitched in my pants. I didn’t just want to taste her; I wanted to devour her. I shook off the thoughts. I could fuck her, sure, but I had no idea who she was, and she clearly knew who I was. Fuck Dolus and his taking my memories away despite leaving me right here. Now, I had nothing to go by, but everyone around me probably knew who I was. I growled at the back of my throat and balled my hands into fists, letting my anger toward Dolus take over for a moment. “Ash?” the creature asked. Her brows knitted together in a frown, and her confusion was clear. “I don’t know who you are,” I said. “Don’t be like this!” she cried out. “I know we fought, but please… Oscar is here. He’s after me.” She looked over her shoulder, and I could taste her terror. How did I know what she felt? I wasn’t going to unpack the why. I didn’t care. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I can help you,” I said. “Ash!” she cried out. “What the hell is going on with you? Are you that upset with me that you’re just going to stand by while he gets to me?” Her eyes welled with tears, and the fear turned into terror that was so powerful it tasted bitter on my tongue, and the smell was acrid in my nose. “You’re human,” I said. “So?”

What was she doing in the vale? Humans weren’t meant to be here. Something tugged at my memory, a thought of something that might have happened long ago, but just as with my other memories, it slipped away before I could reach for it and understand what clung to the edges of my mind. I shook my head. “It’s none of my business what you’re going through, then. I don’t know how you got here, but we don’t get involved with human business.”

“What? How can you say that?!” she cried out, clearly shocked. “You’re the reason I’m stuck here, and now he’s here and you won’t help me? What about those other guys, what about the way you helped me before?”

I only stared at her. Clearly, she was someone I’d had a hell of a history with, but I really couldn’t remember her at all. I knew something about her should be familiar… but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. At the end of the day, I was a drus, and it was my job to look after the forest. That was it. Nothing else mattered—I just had to do the job that I’d been born into, the job I’d been forced to keep doing thanks to Dolus’s deception. I turned my back on the woman, aiming to step back into my tree. That only made her more frantic.

“He’ll hurt me!” she cried out. That tugged on something inside of me, and I stopped before slipping into the tree and getting away from all this drama that wasn’t my problem. “Who?” I asked. “Oscar!”

I shook my head. “I don’t know who that is. I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t know why you’re bothering me with it.”

“Ash, don’t do this,” she cried, tears streaming down her cheeks now. “I don’t get it. I don’t know why you’re being like this. If you could just help me, I’ll disappear out of your life forever, and you’ll never have to think about me again. Just save me from Oscar. I can’t fight him myself.”

I shook my head again. It was all I seemed to be doing. I had no idea who she was or what she wanted from me. Deep at my core, I knew something wasn’t right—I should have known who she was, and she obviously needed me in some way or another. It didn’t matter, though. My job was to take care of the forest, and we had an unwritten rule around here that we didn’t get involved with humans. It caused too much trouble—centuries and centuries of history with the gods and the enchanted beings proved that. Humans and their mortality only hurt us in the long run, and thanks to our immortality, that long run lasted forever. “I’m sorry,” I said to her and slipped into my tree. She said something, begging, pleading, but I shut myself off from it. I couldn’t do this. It was against who I was supposed to be. I had no idea who she was. What I did know was that I really was sorry. I hadn’t said it just to get rid of her. I just didn’t know exactly what I was sorry for, and if I wasn’t supposed to care anymore, or do anything to get involved with the humans… why did turning my back on this stranger hurt so much?