Chapter 344 The Town in the Fog

Emilia’s POV

Everyone who loved me kept telling me to stop. My husband. My friend. The whole tender, worried lot of them. And still, I couldn’t make myself ease off the gas.

“Lily,” I said quietly, “you know how badly I want a child.”

Her fury guttered, just a little, like a flame someone had cupped a hand around.

“Did you know Sebastian and I already picked out names?” I kept my eyes on the road. “Dalton, if it’s a boy. Adaline, for a girl.”

She went silent.

When I risked a glance, her eyes had gone glassy and bright, swimming.

“Emilia…”

I softened, reaching over to squeeze her knee. “Hey. If this works, if I actually get my baby, guess who gets to be godmother?”

That did it. She sniffed hard and crossed her arms, mounting her last, stubborn stand. “Okay. Fine. But two kids minimum. I want twins. One isn’t enough for a godmother to properly spoil.”

Relief loosened something tight in my chest. She wasn’t mad anymore.

“Then you and Scott go make your own set of twins,” I shot back, grinning as I leaned into the next curve. “Leave mine alone.”

“Oh, that is the plan, trust me.”

Maybe it was the shouting, or the laughing, or the way the two of us got so wrapped up in each other that the world narrowed to the inside of the car. Whatever the reason, I’d stopped checking the navigation somewhere miles back, just following the ribbon of road wherever it led.

When I finally looked down at the screen again, my stomach dropped.

The GPS had died. Not rerouting. Not searching. Just a blank, frozen map with a little arrow spinning uselessly in a gray void. And outside the windows, where there should have been coastline and open sky, a thin haze had crept in without either of us noticing. Pale, soft, curling against the glass.

Eve stirred in the back of my mind, restless. “Something’s wrong here,” she murmured.

“Lily, pull out your phone. Check if you’ve got any signal.”

She fished it out, thumbed the screen, and went white. “Nothing. Not a single bar. It’s completely dead out here.”

“Did we pass any signs back there? A road marker, a town name, anything?”

“No.” Her voice had gone small. “Nothing at all.”

Damn it. We were lost. Properly, textbook lost.

“Emilia, maybe we should just turn around. Go back the way we came, while we still remember it.”

I stared out at the fog, which was no longer thin at all. It thickened by the second, swallowing the trees, the road, the distance ahead until the headlights barely punched through it. Driving deeper into that would be reckless. Suicidal, even. I hated to admit it, but she was right. Turning back was the smart play.

I eased off the accelerator, flicked on the hazards, and started the slow, careful business of reversing on a narrow road where I couldn’t see twenty feet behind me. Blinking amber light pulsed out into the mist, a small warning for any car that might come tearing around the bend.

I was inching backward, both hands white-knuckled on the wheel, when a sharp crack split the quiet. A muffled pop, almost like a small explosion.

My heart slammed into my throat. I hit the brakes, threw out a steadying hand toward Lily, and told her to stay put.

“Easy. I’ll check it out.” I climbed out into the cold, damp air.

A blown tire. The front left, shredded and sagging against the gravel. Of course. And of course this rental had no spare tucked in the trunk, not that I’d have had the first clue how to change one if it did.

I ducked back in to break the news. Lily took one look at my face and climbed out too, hugging her arms against the chill.

I stood there at a total loss, running a hand through my hair, trying to cobble together a plan that didn’t exist, when Lily went very still. She lifted one finger and pointed, slowly, at something over my shoulder.

“Emilia. Isn’t that the town from your map? The one you’ve been trying to find all day?”

I turned.

Through the shifting veil of fog, a weathered wooden sign loomed up out of the dark, the town’s name carved deep into the grain.

Thornhaven.

Right there. As if it had been waiting for us all along.

Talk about the darkest hour coming right before the dawn.

I reached back into the car, slung my pack over my shoulder, and made the call. “The car’s done for anyway. We leave it here and walk in. Let’s see if there’s anyone in this town who can lend us a hand.”

Lily nodded, pressing close to my side, and together we started toward the sign, the gravel crunching under our boots. The path led us straight into a dense stand of trees, trunks rising like black pillars out of the white.

We walked. And walked. And still no houses rose up to meet us, no lit windows, no chimney smoke, no sound of life. Just fog and trees and the maddening sense that we were circling the same ground over and over, going nowhere at all.

Deep in the back of my mind, Eve stirred, uneasy, her hackles raised in a way I felt rather than heard.

“It’s too quiet this deep in the woods, Emilia,” she murmured.

Lily’s hand found my sleeve and clutched tight.

“Emilia,” she whispered. “Do you feel that? Like there’s someone out there in the fog. Watching us. The whole time.”