“Accacia, what are you doing here? You must leave, it isn’t safe.”

My eyes flutter open to find Clover standing above me. She looks different, her pale skin sparkling in the light of two fireflies that are hovering about her head. She is barely dressed, wearing just a thin wisp of material that is draped over her body, slightly thicker in parts to cover her modesty. Yet the most noticeable thing of all is her eyes. Where once they were the pale green of a tropical sea, now they are a striking emerald and as illuminous as the ivy entwined in her hair and the stone vibrating in my pocket. She was always beautiful, now she is beyond stunning. She doesn’t seem real. I am scared to touch her in case she disappears.

“Is that really you?” I ask, standing. I pull the stone out of my pocket. It is pulsing with a strange, green glow.

“Yes, it is me, Accacia.” She begins to walk away, stepping barefoot through the forest. Where I seem to catch myself on every shrub and fallen branch, she has no problems traversing the forest floor. I can see the bracken fold back as she moves. The fallen leaves and dropped twigs roll out of the way of her step as the very forest itself parts for her. It reminds me of the story of Moses and the Red Sea. Eventually Clover stops and turns to face me.

“You shouldn’t have come…” she starts, but I just throw my arms around her, smothering her words.

“Clover, I’m so glad you’re okay.” She hugs me back and I catch her scent. It is different now, earthy. She smells like the forest itself. “You don’t know how glad I am to see you. I’ve come to take you home.”

She pulls out of my arms. “You must leave, Accacia. I don’t have time to explain. You are in danger.”

“No, I won’t leave without you.”

Clover places her hands on my shoulders and squeezes. Her fingers dig into my skin as her eyes glow even brighter. “Listen to me. YOU MUST GO NOW!” she shouts.

“Please, let me help you.”

“GO!” she says, pushing me away from her. I fall, and it’s as though I am falling into a bottomless pit…

“Wake up. Damn it, Accacia, WAKE UP!”

My eyes snap open to find Ezra shaking me roughly. I stand, pushing him out of the way. “Where is she, where has Clover gone? Did you see her? Which way did she go?” I look frantically about the forest, my eyes desperately trying to adjust to the lack of light.

Ezra grabs hold of me and swings me around to face him. He presses a finger against his lips and pulls me to the ground, tugging me beneath him until he is lying completely over me. It is only then that I realise there is no Rhain or Devin nearby and panic sets in. I attempt to speak, but Ezra simply presses his whole hand over my mouth this time, shaking his head frantically. For long, agonising minutes we lay pressed against the forest floor. Weak sunlight barely penetrates the thick canopy overhead, but despite the sun’s power to kill me I find myself wishing for more of it. I try not to think about the press of Ezra’s chest against mine, the position of his knee between my legs, or the fact that I am cradled in his arms. Eventually, Ezra peels himself off me. He stands, picking up his satchel, and pulls me up with him. “Rhain and Devin have been taken.”

“Taken? Taken where?” I stutter, shaking off the sinful thoughts that seem to want to torture me at the most inappropriate times. I did not want Ezra like that.

“By the fae. Who else?” His body is shaking with anger. “They should never have come along. Now I may lose my friends too.” He turns from me and punches the thick trunk of a tree. I’m pretty certain I hear bones break, but he neither cries out in pain or acknowledges me. He simply walks away.

“Where are you going, Ezra? Will you just wait a minute?”

He swings around, and I collide with his chest. Ezra looks down at me, grabbing my upper arms and lifting me away. “I am going to find my friends, and you are going to stay the hell away from me.”

I want to cry, but I don’t. Instead I poke a finger in his chest. How dare he treat me this way. He looks at me in shock, his eyes resting on my finger, which is still pressed into the hard muscle of his chest.

“You can push me away all you like, Ezra,” I say, jabbing my finger into him again. “You can hate me all you want, but I asked for none of this. None. Whether you like it or not, for now you’re stuck with me. I can be just as stubborn as you.” I glare at him, my own body shaking with anger and hurt.

My hand drops away from him and I feel a sob rising up my throat. Turning away, I cover my mouth with my hand and move deeper into the forest. I don’t care that I am stumbling over my feet because I can’t see my way clearly enough through the tears that well in my eyes.

“Accacia…” he starts, but I ignore him, swiping at my face. Two can play at that game.

“Accacia, I shouldn’t have…”

I keep walking away from.

“Accacia!” He grabs hold of my hand and I whirl around to face him.

“What?”

He flinches from the force of my anger. “What?” I repeat, refusing to look away this time. An angry tear falls from my eye, but I make no move to brush it away. Let him see how he’s hurting me, I don’t care anymore.

He raises a finger and gently swipes away the rogue tear. “I do not hate you, Accacia.”

“You could have fooled me. You have been nothing but cold towards me, angry even. I am sorry about everything. If I could change what has happened, I would. It would have been better if they had taken me. At least I would get to see Clover.” The words spill from my mouth in a jumbled hurry.

“You are right, Accacia. I have been cold towards you. When it comes to you I am…”

“You’re what?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing. Just know, I do not hate you,” he repeats, letting me go.

I don’t believe him. Every time he looks at me it’s as though he wants to run a mile in the opposite direction. I am nothing but an irritation getting in the way of his plans to kill himself. I could scream in frustration. “Well, now that we’ve got that cleared up,” I say sarcastically. “What the hell do we do now?”

He swipes a hand through his hair and looks about us. His eyesight is far better than my own and like all the vampires of Clan Lux he can see very well in the dark.

“I’m not sure. Lights damn it, they just appeared out of nowhere. If it weren’t for you sleepwalking in the forest, we both would have been taken too. I got up to follow you. You wandered off quite a distance.”

“You followed me?”

“Yes. I couldn’t sleep. Rhain and Devin had dozed off. Rather than wake either of them, I went to see what you were doing.”

“Did you see where they took Rhain and Devin? Were they okay? I mean, they didn’t hurt them, did they?”

“Neither of them put up a fight, they appeared to be under some kind of spell. The fae are strange creatures, they all have these bizarre green eyes. They are just like the colour of the trees here.”

“Did you see a female with long red hair? The same piercing green eyes you speak of. Beautiful, tall, practically naked… She would have been hard to miss.”

“No. There was no-one of that description. Why?”

I bite at my nail, thinking for a moment. Had I been so desperate to see Clover that I had conjured her up in my dream? Or is there more to it than that? She had seemed so real.

“Why, Accacia?” Ezra persists. “Talk to me.”

“I think Clover came to me in my dream.”

“In your dream?”

“Yes, no. I don’t know,” I say, frustrated. “I must have been sleeping, and yet she seemed so real. Clover was trying to warn me. She said they were coming, that we were in danger. She was frantic, she wanted me to leave…”

“I see.” Ezra frowns. “Then she is fae now.”

“Wait, what? Just because she has the same weird green eyes, it doesn’t mean anything. Why would she warn me away if she were one of them now? She’s my friend.”

“Precisely, Accacia. This is called the Forbidden forest for a reason. We are not welcome here, and your friend knows that. Do you still have the stone?”

“Yes,” I say, bringing it out of my pocket.

“Warning or not, we have no choice now but to find Clover.”

“What about Rhain, and Devin?”

“If the fae wanted to kill them, they would have. We find Clover, we find my brothers.”