Chapter 875 - 877
The fire had long since burned down to embers when Jude opened his eyes again. The others were asleep around the pit, curled in blankets and fur throws, a quiet tangle of limbs and slow breathing.
He didn’t remember closing his eyes, and yet the last thing he recalled was watching them, watching their faces shift with the flickering light, seeing how unease still clung to them like damp air.
Now the air felt colder. He sat up and looked around the camp, squinting into the dark edges of the forest.
No movement. But something in him stirred, a faint thrum that vibrated not in the ground but in his chest.
He got to his feet without waking anyone and stepped beyond the circle of the fire’s glow. The wind moved strangely tonight, swaying in half-rhythms that didn’t match the rustling leaves. As he walked toward the path leading past the river, he thought again of the blue smoke. It hadn’t appeared today, not visibly. But each of his wives had given him small signs that something was still off. Tiny things, words repeated twice in the same tone, lips moving before sound came, eyes blinking in a pattern too deliberate to be random. These things haunted him now.
The river shimmered faintly under the moonlight. Jude crouched and dipped his hand into the water. Cold, as it should be. Still real. Still consistent. And yet the trees leaned closer somehow. As if the island itself was watching him.
He stayed there for a long time until he heard the soft crunch of footsteps behind him. He turned sharply, hand instinctively reaching toward the knife at his belt, but he relaxed when he saw Sophie.
She stopped a few feet away, arms crossed over her chest, her face pale in the starlight. "You couldn’t sleep either," she said.
Jude nodded. "Too much on my mind."