"Forest Girl! Forest Girl!"

I peeled an eye open and glimpsed the black cloak of one of the witches that'd marked me. One of the bitches that began all this.

I was tempted to find a rock and bash her head in. But this happened to be the one that sobbed she was sorry. That she was so tired.

Now I understood.

Didn't mean I forgave her.

She was rushing at me with a tightly rolled scroll in her fist. She was covered in sweat and her hair was greasy and limp as though she'd been running for days.

She's been looking for me.

"What is it?" I sat up. Long hair disheveled from sleeping in the leaves with wet hair.

The girl skidded to a halt and gasped at the sight of my camp.

I twisted to see the smoky remnants of last nights fire and the dark, bare skin of the being sleeping behind me.

Van. He stayed.

The woman shrieked, threw the scroll at me, shouted profanity and bolted.

I unraveled it and with my minimal ability to read was able to decipher that I could escape the demons grasp by cutting away the mark. Why hadn't I tried that?

New hope poured through me.

I rose and began to pace. I had a small dagger for eating, in the bag I always carried with me.

"It won't work." Van was sitting up with his back against a tree. Ankles crossed and hands linked leisurely in his lap.

When had he woke? When did he move?

What's he talking about?

"Your hope." He shook his head.

"It says here. It speaks even of your name and the reaction. She brought it for a reason!" I jutted my chin in the direction the witch had fled.

His gaze followed her and he sighed as he looked after where she'd disappeared. "Sweet thing, that one."

"You tortured her."

"I did." He admitted.

"Why shouldn't I do as this scroll bids?" I held it up.

"You can." He shrugged. "But it won't work."

"Why not?"

"Did you read what the exceptions are?"

I unraveled it again and skimmed it. "Yes. None of them pertain."

"But they do." He tilted his head so far it nearly rested on his shoulder. His feet casually wound from left to right.

I sensed whatever he was talking about wasn't something he was proud of.

"Out with it, Van." I said quietly. Utterly puzzled.

"It says if you love him."

"I don't love you."

"No, you likely do not." He assented. "But what that doesn't fully articulate is that a claim of love circumvents the release from the binding to me."

My jaw hung. "You son-of-a-whore!"

***

"Ironically, I was. Actually."

"What?" I snapped scathingly.

"A son of a whore. My mother was a whore." He explained.

I barely heard him. Recalling that as a condition of him telling me his name I had to do particular acts and say particular things. Including a claim of love. I'd thought it merely part of his cruel manipulations.

But it'd been particularly methodical. He'd known that he risked nothing in giving me his name and gained everything if I said those words. They sealed him to me.

Forever. From what I read.

"What have you done, Van?"

"My job." He sighed. "I'm rather good at it, actually."

"Why are you doing all this?"

"I don't know actually." He said quietly.

"What the hell does that mean!" I expostulated.

He hopped to his feet and descended on me. "I don't know what's happening and I don't know what I'm doing or why I'm feeling things."

"Well what's different about this time?" I said through gritted teeth.

"Everything!" He began pacing and I realized that his leisurely posture against the tree had been a guise for the anxiety washing through him.

He hides it well.

"You're truly good. Absent of sins to be punished for. An innocent victim. None of the others were. That's different. You've fought. You're pretty, spirited and intriguing and I'm infatuated. Nearly obsessed, truthfully. That's never happened before. I've never before been driven to talk to my victims throughout the day and night."

"You didn't do that before?"

He speaks to me endlessly. Haunting my every move.

Mouth compressed, he shook his head. "I merely lurked." He imitated fingers walking around eerily. "Then pounced when they were weakened. So that's different. Usually I happen on my victims for sins they committed. No one has been sacrificed, condemned to me before. And I've never loved one before. Everything about you is different." He deflated.

"You have to let me go."

He gave me an appalled look. "I'm not doing that."

"Be reasonable! You could do it."

"Never." He shook his head adamantly. Lips tight.

"How dare you!"

"How dare I what? Just because I make confessions to you doesn't mean I'm releasing you."

"Wait...Can you do that?"

Could he let me go if he chose.

His face relaxed and his mask fell into place.

"You can..." I said thoughtfully.

"Never." He vowed.

"Van."

He was gone.