Hear Me by Viv Daniels Read Free Book Online Page B

into his heart.
    But tonight, the bells had stopped, and in the muffled, snowy stillness, she could hear him breathe, in and out as he watched her, not even blinking. She could hear the tiny voice she’d been ignoring for years as she repeated her father’s mantra of safety and security and a small, lonely life. The one that cried out for Archer and adventure and hope and love. It rose within her like a plant in spring sun, a frail shoot with the soul of a forest tree.
    She squeezed her eyes shut, willing it to go away. Her father’s words echoed in her mind. You cannot trust forest folk. They don’t think as normal people do. They don’t want what normal people want. Look at your mother. She loved us and still she left us. Look at every half-blood in this town. The forest lives in their hearts, and their magic will ensnare you, as harmless as it seems.
    Hadn’t she seen enough to prove that when the forest folk claimed they’d rather die than leave their villages when the barrier went up? Now here they were — dying, breaking the barrier after all. Here was Archer, filled with dark magic and finally remembering she existed.  
    You cannot trust forest folk. No matter what he’d once been to her, he could not show up in the middle of the night, suffused with dark magic and dripping with blood, and expect her to trust him. Ivy stepped back.  
    “Don’t run, Ivy.” It was almost a sigh. So soft, so final.
    “I can’t. You’ve already proven that.”
    He blinked. He’d not been expecting this response. Not after their little game.
    She had to find out the details of his plan. She may not be able to run, but she wasn’t going to walk into the forest a willing captive. “Three questions won’t do it for me, Archer. Not with what you’re proposing.”  
    “I’m not… proposing.” Was that a blush stealing across his cheekbones? Whatever it was, it was gone in a flash, replaced by something unreadable and intense. “I’m telling. We need your help in the forest.”
    “Then you can afford to explain yourself fully. What exactly you want.” Her botanical knowledge? Or her, body and soul?
    Not that she’d consider that one. It would just be interesting to know, a balm to soothe the devilish parts of her mind.
    He hesitated, and there was a world inside his silence. “If I tell you everything, you will use it against me.”
    Archer always had been able to read her like the tracks in the snow. Once, she’d thought it had been due to that “shared soul” he told her they had. But it was a trick. All just a forest trick. It would be madness to walk into the forest with him now, a repudiation of everything her father had helped her to see when the barrier went up. The forest was dangerous, and Archer was a forest man. Helping him was one thing, but trusting him another.
    “Your plan is foolish,” she tried. “You don’t need my help with the redbells in your cursed woods. You brought the barrier down. Why don’t you take your people and escape?”
    He looked at her as if she spoke gibberish. “Escape? You have lived across from these bells for years, though I know it must make you as sick as it makes me. Why do you not escape ?”
    She folded her arms. “That’s different.” But when she went to explain why, her arguments seemed hollow as straw. This was her home—but the forest was home to the folk who dwelt there, too.  
    Still, her home was real. Safe. Brick and plumbing and roof tar and wires. Not some backward forest hovel. “No one here is dying,” she said at last.
    “We are only dying because you’re killing us,” he replied. “We will not abandon our home just because your kind seeks to destroy it.”
    “We’re not destroying anything,” she replied. “Just trying to protect ourselves.”
    “Oh?” he asked wryly. “How safe are you tonight?”
    Ivy’s breath caught in her throat again, but Archer’s expression smoothed and he ran his hand through his hair in