Three days have passed since the night of the storm.

The boys and I have slipped back into our normal routine – songwriting and recording from early morning to late at night, suppers around the kitchen counter, Alastaire and Ben drinking their body weight in champagne while Felix and Elliot look on disapprovingly, Lyall nagging me (sweetly) to sing for him.

No one seems to know about me sneaking out of the cabin three nights ago to visit Mia’s grave, or my too-close-for-comfort experience with Alastaire on the living room floor.

Even the puzzling events earlier that evening – Kitty and Felix and I getting stuck in an infinite loop between my house and the forest, the empty, darkened streets, the mysterious way that the trees seemed to open up before us as we walked through the storm – all of that feels so distant and irrelevant that it might as well have been forgotten.

And that frightens me.

Kitty told the rest of the guys about it all the very next day. At first they thought she was joking – but when Felix and I both insisted that it really happened, Elliot suggested, in his usual sensible, levelheaded way, that we must have gotten disorientated in the storm.

After all, what we experienced is technically impossible, so I don’t blame them for not believing us. 

I almost don’t believe it myself.

Neither Kitty nor Felix has mentioned it again since then, and everything seems to have returned to normal.

Almost everything.

Felix’s typical day-to-day mood, which can only really be described as bad, has iced-over into a restrained, cold indifference – towards everyone and everything, myself included.

I’m certain it’s related to the way he lost control in my bedroom when he saw my bleeding foot the other night.

We haven’t spoken directly to each other since then, except when he’s asking me to slow down a guitar riff or try a new chord or sing backup.

“I said C minor after the chorus Ash, not D minor,” Felix snaps. “And Ben, cool it on the drums. You’re giving me a headache. Let’s try again. From the top.” 

Case in point.

We’ve been practicing all day, and I’m starting to feel like I’ll be happy once the boys and Kitty are on the plane back to England and I can stop torturing my fingers with non-stop guitar-strumming.

That might be sooner rather than later. We’re finally working on the album’s final track. The seventh song. After it’s recorded, they’ll be gone.

Which is for the best. Right?

I’m in my usual spot on a black velvet piano stool near the back, my gran’s acoustic guitar resting across my knee as I strum out the tune for the hundredth time in the past hour. 

Lyall is on my right behind his electronic keyboard. Ben, with his drum kit, is on my left. Alastaire’s up front with his electric guitar, flanked by Elliot and his base guitar. And as usual, Felix is at the center of it all, his mic firmly in hand, his undeniably amazing voice holding the music together.

As he sings, I think back to Mia’s words on the night of the storm, when I went to the graveyard to meet her.

She was trying to warn me about someone, and I have a pretty good idea who.

Felix’s knuckles go white as he clutches the mic, screwing up his face as he hits a high note at the start of the second verse.

Even now, his face twisted in that special sort of bliss and elation only music can bring, he looks amazingly beautiful, controlled, powerful. Perfect.

“I’ll find the key

That unlocks all your doors

Be mine

Before midnight

Be my prisoner

I’ll be yours.

‘Cause I’m here to take you

You’re under m- BEN FOR GODSAKES I SAID KEEP THE DRUMS IN THE BACKGROUND! I CAN’T HEAR MYSELF OVER THAT SHITSTORM. AGAIN, FROM THE TOP.”

The room is silent for a second as Felix stops yelling, his eyes blazing with fury as he shoots Ben a deathstare.

“Geez, chillax,” Ben says. “You take everything way too s-“

“I’m leaving,” Alastaire says, leaning his electric guitar against the wall. “I think that’s quite enough practice for today. Are we in agreement, gentlemen?”

Lyall mutters something about being hungry, which Ben enthusiastically agrees with.

“The second verse is a good place to stop for tonight,” Elliot says. “I’ll make a note and we’ll pick it up tomorrow.”

“Dibs on that tin of caramel in the pantry!” Ben suddenly yells at the top of his lungs, dashing out of the studio followed by Lyall, who is screaming “NOOOOOOO!” behind him.

Elliot follows behind them, leaving me alone with the last two people who I want to get caught between.

Felix and Alastaire.

The recording studio is silent as Felix narrows his eyes at Alastaire, who shoots him a challenging smile in return.

I feel like I’m glued to my piano stool, unable to move or speak.

There’s this unnatural quiet for a moment, as the two boys stare at each other, the tension crackling between them like a dark, violent electricity, the growl of the building storm.

A sudden thought occurs to me. 

Has it always been this way between them? They always seemed to get along fine in interviews. They seemed like friends. Is this poison because of me? Did I cause this?

“Please, just stop,” I say, raising my hands up to my face in case I start to cry. “Don’t fight.”

Felix's expression as he watches me is one that I've grown to recognize. 

Regret. Longing. Utter, inconsolable despair.

The same expression he, or rather than man the looks like him, wore in my dream as he killed me. The same expression he wore that night when he lost control with my bleeding foot in his hand.

“Ashling, I-” he says, before Alastaire cuts him off.

“Your wish is my command,” Alastaire says, glancing in my direction. “Come along Cupcake.”

Before I can stop him, he’s taken my acoustic guitar off my lap and laid it in its guitar case, before grabbing my hand and pulling me off my seat.

I expect Felix to say something, or stand in the doorway, or hit Alastaire over the head with the mic stand or something, but he barely reacts. He just watches out the corner of his eye as we walk out the room, Alastaire pulling me along behind him.

“You can let go now,” I say, scrambling up the stairs that lead from the underground recording studio to the cabin.

“So you can go running back to him?” Alastaire says without turning around to face me. His voice is flat, devoid of emotion. “I won’t let you.”

Alastaire finally lets go as we reach the top of the stairs, emerging into the study through the hidden doorway behind the tapestry.

As we step into the room, he turns around and takes me by my shoulders, leaning in close.

“I meant it when I said that you should stay away from him,” he says, his bright blue eyes strangely feverish, desperate. “Please. Just promise me.”

He’s close, too close.

I step back, wincing as I walk into the bookshelf against the wall. A book falls out onto the floor next to me, but Alastaire barely notices.

“It’s just a few more days until we leave,” he says, leaning in even closer as I cringe against the bookshelf. “I’m practically begging you Ash. Don’t let yourself be alone with him until then. And after… after…”

He looks down, and when he looks up again, I can see that his eyes are slightly wet.

“Afterwards… I’m coming back for you,” he says.

I’m too shocked to say anything. He raises his hand to my face, cupping my cheek. 

Everything that happens after feels like it’s in slow motion, the seconds passing by as he moves towards his goal, and its inevitable conclusion.

He’s going to kiss me.

His eyes widen.

His lips part slightly.

He dips his head.

He leans in closer, until his lips are barely an inch from my own.

Kitty shrieks behind him.

“OH MY GOD,” she says, quickly backing out of the room a second after entering. “I was just coming to tell you I made ravioli for supper. I didn’t see anything. Bye!” I hear her footsteps as she scurries down the hallway.

Alastaire is frozen in place.

My eyes downcast, I turn my head to the side, looking away. 

Away from him.

Away from the decision he wants me to make, but which I just can't.

Not now, anyway.

I can feel myself shaking.

After a few seconds I hear Alastaire footsteps as he leaves the room.

I take a moment to recover, slumping down to the floor.

My leg hits against something.

It’s the book that fell off the bookshelf a moment ago.

I pick it up, noticing its beautiful emerald green color for the first time. It’s old – that much is obvious from the tattered spine with its ornate golden oak leaf pattern – but somehow the cloth cover has kept its vivid hue.

I read the words on the front cover.

The Poems of Francis Ledwidge

Edited by Liam O'Meara

Francis Ledwidge. Where have I heard that before?

A memory of my grandmother stirs to life. Her smile as she arranges a bunch of bright yellow daffodils in a vase, telling me all about her favorite poets. Ledwidge. Keats. Wordsworth. Names that meant nothing to me then.

My hands shake as I open up the book.

As I suspected, there’s something written on the inside front cover.

My darling Immy. Like a poem, our dreams will take flight and color the world. Now and forever, your Bea.

This book was gran’s.

I hold back the tears, holding it against my chest for a moment.

This might be the last thing I have left of her, besides her photos and the ring I found in my mom’s jewelry box.

I take a deep breath, and run my finger over the gilded pages until I settle on a spot. I flip open the book on page seventy-seven.

A single poem stares back at me, old-fashioned black letters standing defiantly against against the browning, moth-eaten paper.

I read.

The Wife Of Llew

And Gwydion said to Math, when it was Spring: 

“Come now and let us make a wife for Llew.” 

And so they broke broad boughs yet moist with dew, 

And in a shadow made a magic ring: 

They took the violet and the meadow-sweet 

To form her pretty face, and for her feet 

They built a mound of daisies on a wing, 

And for her voice they made a linnet sing 

In the wide poppy blowing for her mouth. 

And over all they chanted twenty hours. 

And Llew came singing from the azure south 

And bore away his wife of birds and flowers.

I know this poem. Gran used to read it to me. She said it was about the Welsh myth of Blodeuwedd, a maiden created from flowers and magic so that she could marry some guy who'd been cursed to never have a human wife, or something like that. When she fell in love with someone else, he turned her into an owl as punishment. For not loving the guy she was forced to marry. Just for having a mind of her own. Go figure.

I hear soft footsteps below me, and with a fright I realize that Felix is finally coming upstairs, up from the recording studio. A coldness like freezing water comes over me, and once again I feel dark, icy fingers of darkness wrap themselves around my heart.

So I leap to my feet and run out of the study as quick as I can, still clutching the book as I scramble down the corridor into the open-plan kitchen living room.

“Ash, we saved some ‘av de caramel for ye,” Lyall says, “ye should-”

“Not hungry, thanks!” I say, as I race past, desperate to get to my bedroom before Felix reaches the stairwell, although I’m not entirely sure why.

“But I made ravioli for supper,” Kitty says.

“Thanks, but I’m getting an early night,” I say, running up the black wrought iron spiral staircase as quick as possible.

“Dibs on Ash’s share,” Ben says, to which Lyall responds as usual with a moan.

Only when I’ve run down the corridor and into my bedroom, and my door is shut firmly behind me, do I relax.

I change into my pjs, reaching automatically for the cream woolen blanket that’s always at the end of my bed, to wrap around me as a shawl.

That’s right. I never found it again after Alastaire pulled it off me during the sleep-talking embrace thing on the living room floor.

Where on earth could it be?

So I pull a dove-grey wrap-around cardigan out of the wardrobe, and settle down into the armchair in front of the window with gran’s book.

I read. And read. And read.