Chapter 76

When Ethan returned to Everspring Meadow, he found the group already plucking flowers.

These weren’t the most dependable allies, he knew. Not dim, just unmoored, still grappling with the reality of being Dreamwalkers. They clung to an ostrich-like denial, heads buried until something blindsided them. He trusted that, without a shock like Tessa’s fate, they wouldn’t have jumped the gun and broken their pact to wait.

Amid the meadow’s shouts, Ethan pegged Bennett as the one steering the flower hunt. He sidled up, probing for the why.

Bennett laid it out: the flowers shifted, vanishing under their markers. His fix was to log each find, verify it, then harvest. Clumsy but solid. Ethan nodded, impressed by the quick thinking. Time wasn’t on their side, and Bennett’s cautious tally—checking every petal against the envelope’s specs—was a safe play.

Solid, but missing one thing.

Not his fault, really. The meadow’s sunlit charm, its rolling blooms and crisp air, felt like a world apart from Weaver’s Hollow’s gloom. Easy to forget this paradise was still the village’s turf.

And Arachnis’s eyes were everywhere.

Ethan didn’t buy the absence of spiders here. No webs, no skittering legs, sure—but they were watching, lurking in some unseen way, tracking every move the Dreamwalkers made.

Bennett’s plan was green, focused on what he could see, blind to Arachnis’s real edge. She didn’t need to rig traps from the start; with her countless spies, she could tailor them on the fly, twisting their plans against them.