HELLO I LIVE



My state’s on fire and my town is filled with smoke, but I’m here and I have bees to gift you! Big thanks to @frankielucky for inspiring me to write this T.T ily



Here’s an excerpt!

———



Blake had always loved the gardens of Beacon.



They were lush with love and care from Professor Peach’s classes catering to them throughout the year. Isolated in a far corner of the school that bordered the cliffs overlooking Forever Fall forest. A veritable sanctuary from student life.



Accompanied only by the crumbling eye of the moon, her hand carded through the wall of the hedge maze, soft leaves shifting off her palm with velvet kisses. Fireflies flitted from one wall to the other, some settling within the leaves like forgotten holiday lights.



The gardens were her favorite secret hideaway when the world grew too stuffed with noise. She came here when Cardin’s mocking made her ears ring. When the past haunted her dreams, or a flash of red hair sent her into heart palpitations.



She came here to recenter. To heal. But there was only one place in the maze where she could truly breathe.



Blake melted from the crevices of a hedge, shadowlike with her liquid steps. She’d entered a grove of sorts - a clearing as wide as a concert hall and decorated with rose bushes at the edges. In the center of the clearing stood a fountain of enormous size. Practically a pond, with the ancient statue of a single Hunter standing at its center. The head was gone, lichen had grown over the gray stone clothes, and he had no weapons. Only his elbows locked to his waist, palms facing the sky, as if praying.



The fireflies were humming and bouncing golden light across the pond’s surface like stars. A few little bugs flitted past her eyes carelessly, making them glow in the fountain water. Her chest felt heavy in her next breath, her glowing eyes fading back to their usual gold amber. She settled at the rim of the fountain, turning her back to the reflection like it said something she didn’t like. Her fingertips dug into the cracked ivy and marble. It was creeping towards midnight, but the restlessness under her skin hadn’t abated since she rolled out of bed and snuck to the gardens.



Why couldn’t she stop dreaming of him?



Her nails dug deeper into the stone until the skin at her first knuckles ached. They weren’t even bad dreams. They held a single electric blue eye, glossy black horns. They whispered of nights around campfires. Some of them were memories. Like how he made her laugh when they weren’t on missions. How gentle he’d been between the disappointments.



She hated how easy it was to remember the good times, when she knew a lot of the black expanse trapped in her memories had been caused by him. Full hours of memory erased by the rage that boiled beneath his skin, unchecked. She’d seen the ugliness of him. She’d felt his palm on her cheek at high velocity. She’d seen him murder innocents and claim it was in self defense.



But that night she’d dreamt of him on the train, carrying her away from harm as if he cared for her. Only for her. The night before, it was the kiss they shared at sixteen. Her first kiss.



Thinking about it made her sick.



It made her angry.



She released a heavy sigh, raking her hands through her hair and accidentally tugging the bow from her ears. She winced at the pull, looking down at her palm and the simple black ribbon fluttering against her fingers. There was an ache she couldn’t quite name that settled into her bones.



“Blake?”

