All Chapters of Teeth and Thorns : Chapter 1 - Chapter 3

The air in the Blackwood Forest did not merely circulate; it held its breath. To anyone else, the woods at three in the morning were a sensory void,a wall of black pine, damp earth, and the oppressive, freezing silence of a northern autumn. But Noah was not looking at the forest. He was looking through it, his world illuminated by the narrow, bouncing beam of a headlamp strapped to his forehead. He knelt in the damp moss, the knees of his canvas trousers completely soaked through, and let out a soft, satisfied breath. There, nestled beneath the decaying roots of an ancient, hollow cedar, was a cluster of Luna Silva. In the academic journals Noah subscribed to, the plant didn't exist. It was a local myth, a ghost story whispered by old-timers in the valley. But Noah's grandfather had left behind handwritten journals filled with sketches of the plant,its five-pointed leaves that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it, its deep indigo veins, and its root system that smelled fai

The sun set over Blackwood Hollow like blood spilling across dark slate.By nine o'clock, the wind coming off the mountain was howling, rattling the loose storm shutters of the apothecary with a hollow, rhythmic thud. Inside, Noah was trying to work. He had surrounded himself with the familiar, comforting tools of his trade: a brass mortar and pestle, dried bundles of motherwort and skullcap, and three different field guides on northern botany.It was an attempt to anchor himself. A desperate, calculated effort to prove that the world was governed by kingdom, phylum, and class,not glowing gold eyes, heat radiating off skin like a blast furnace, and men named Francis Blackwood.Francis.Noah ground a handful of dried lavender into dust with far more force than necessary. The memory of Francis’s calloused finger brushing the shell of his ear was still burned into his nerve endings. Every time he recalled it, a betraying surge of warmth pooled at the base of his stomach."You're spiralin