Velvet Ashes

They buried the truth with her.

Black Hollow remembers the girl who disappeared.
They remember the rumors.
The headlines.
The candlelight vigil beneath the trees.

What they seem to forget, however, is the promise.

Six years ago, Elaria Nightfern vanished without a single trace. The sweet, strange, too-quiet Elaria - the girl who preferred forests over parties and flowers over friends. The town had already made up their minds; she simply ran away.

They're wrong.
She's back.

Quieter. Colder. Watching.

There's only one person who looks at her and sees the ghost of who she once was.
Lucian Hale - golden boy, pastor's son, future accountant, Elaria's childhood friend - remembers the girl who pressed wildflowers into his books and whispered that the forest kept secrets better than people do.

The night she disappeared was stained inside his brain. What he can't seem to remember is why. As tension coils between them - old feelings buried beneath grief and suspicion - Lucian begins to uncover pieces of a truth the town worked hard to forget.

A hidden ritual.
A poisonous flower.
A vow made inside the ribs of a lightning-struck oak tree.

Elaria didn't run.
She survived.
And the secrets she's been carrying since childhood doesn't just threaten the town of Black Hollow -

It threatens Lucian. Because there's just some promises that grow roots and these roots drag the truth back out eventually.