NINETY-ONE | NOCTURNAL

Lily

The scent of death hung heavy in the air. Lily pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth, begging the rising vomit to stay down. It was all too familiar: the eerie sense of being a step out of time, the little cabins, the pack house looming over everything at the centre of the realm.

Worst of all were the flowers. When she’d been here before, they’d been alive – so alive that they’d looked unreal, the petals too bright, too plump, and the leaves unfurling from their stems glossy green and shimmering with thin silver hairs. Now, they curled in on themselves, wilted and withered, the leaves and petals turned grey and hanging limply upon the brown grass.

Something was wrong.

“Remind me of the plan again, Lils?” Her dad wrung his hands together, his pulse jumping beneath his jaw, sweat slicking his brow.

She sighed. They’d been over it a thousand times – and there wasn’t that much to remember at all, really – but clearly he needed something to focus on, something to distract him