Chapter 86: Spotless Crime Scene
It didn’t take them long to return to what they called their "hideout." A partial excavation beneath a rock face, barely wider than a makeshift shelter, but it had the advantage of being dry, camouflaged, and relatively protected.
There, Élisa and Maggie gathered wood. This time, starting a fire was much easier than the previous day. The air was less saturated with moisture, as if the forest itself was offering them a reprieve. The twigs crackled quickly, and the flames rose, casting a warm, flickering glow on their faces.
The smell of grilled meat soon dominated, acrid, thick, almost overwhelming after so many hours spent hunting and fighting. Maggie busied herself around the fire with unusual concentration. She turned the pieces, monitored the juicy thighs with almost methodical precision.
She was hungry. But it was more than that. It was also a way to keep her hands occupied, to push back the residual adrenaline. To stop herself from overthinking.
Behind them, slightly apart, Dylan had isolated himself.
He had found a flat rock overlooking a small mossy slope. The kind of place from which one could observe without being seen. He had settled there, the gem in his hands, nestled in his palm like a torn-out heart.
It was heavy, warm, almost alive. Smooth as glass, but traversed inside by black striations, like veins frozen in fluid light. It pulsed faintly, like a sleeping heart.
Dylan observed it in silence.
He knew what he was going to do. What he had to do.
But he also knew the risk. The slightest distraction, the tiniest weakness, and it—that thing inside him, that creeping presence lurking in the shadows of his consciousness—would seize the opportunity. It would insinuate itself. It would bite. It would demand.
He had to be ready.