Silver in the Wood (The Greenhollow Duology, #1)

by Emily Tesh

Silver singing in my wood; silver songs for summer’s prince.”

Not even Silver’s bones for his mother; not even that. Well, what did the wood care for mothers? Tobias should have known.

I got myself captured by some revenant perversion of the old gods and buried alive by a gang of dryads and now I’m bound to a wood. Really I think it went quite well, don’t you?

“You’re a damned flirt as well as a rat,” Tobias said bluntly.

There was wickedness in the wood before, but now it is gone, and I am glad. You were unhappy, but now you will not be, and I am glad.”

“Go,” she managed. “Grow.”

“He’ll need you.” “You won’t, though.” “No,” she said patiently, “because I’m not a people. But I will still love you.” “You as well, my dear,”

The readers of the AO3 who read, kudosed, and commented on an earlier version of this story; it wouldn’t exist without you!

Was he not the Lord of the Wood, nearer demigod than mortal man, master of time and seasons, beasts and birds, earth and sky? “Your mother is here,” said Bramble. Silver froze. After a long silence he managed, “Make her go away.”

Silver had never dared to ask her if she was really still mourning his father or if she just found the sober attire of the widow convenient for her purposes. Hunting monsters could be a messy business. Bloodstains hardly showed on black.

Fabian Rafela had not, of course, been a vampire. He had been something much worse.