Ivory and Fire

Forks

Forks.
Even the name tastes like rot.

It's a town soaked in gray—a place where sunlight comes to die. Some immortal creatures find comfort in the shadows. I find them suffocating.

From my bedroom window, the evergreens swayed under a curtain of mist and drizzle, the landscape so endlessly green it felt offensive. Nature thrived here in a way I never could again. Alive. Rooted. Breeding. Unaware of how precious that state truly was.

I pressed my fingers to the cold glass and watched a drop of rain slide down like a tear. The irony wasn't lost on me.

"Brooding again?"

Emmett's voice was a rumble behind me, warm despite its teasing edge. I didn't turn. I didn't need to. I could see him in the reflection: bare-chested, lounging across the bed like some mythic beast. All strength and ease. My other half, in the way we pretend love can still mean something after death.

"I'm thinking," I murmured.

"Thinking looks suspiciously like sulking from back here."

I turned my head slightly, just enough for my hair to fall in a perfect curtain of gold over one shoulder. "Then maybe you should stop watching me and read your little magazine."

"Can't. I've already read it six times." He sat up, resting his elbows on his knees. "Besides, you're prettier."

I rolled my eyes but didn't argue. He wasn't wrong. I was beautiful. Lethally, painfully so. But it was a beauty that came with a price I never stopped paying.

I moved away from the window and began brushing through my hair in slow, deliberate strokes. It was pointless—my appearance was always perfect now. Frozen. Unchanging. But the motion helped me stay still.

"Forks is a prison," I said softly.

"You say that like we haven't lived in worse places."

"Maybe. But this one feels like it remembers us."

Emmett didn't answer right away. He wasn't a man for metaphors. He saw the world in simpler terms—hunt, protect, love. Sometimes I envied that.

But Emmett had never had everything ripped away at once. He'd never felt the sharp contrast of before and after like I had. He hadn't been made for display.

I turned toward him. "I dreamt about the child again."

His expression shifted, just enough for me to catch the flicker of pain. "Rosie..."

"She had golden hair," I whispered. "And dimples. She looked like you."

Emmett crossed the room in two strides, wrapping his arms around me. "I know," he said into my hair. "I see her too sometimes."

We stood like that for a moment, suspended in silence that only the dead could hold.

Then the air changed.

A sharp ripple of unease passed through the house like a current, and I felt my body go alert. It was subtle, but unmistakable: Alice was seeing something.

I pulled back from Emmett, eyes narrowing.

Downstairs, Alice's footsteps were too light, too quick. I heard her pause, then Jasper's low voice: "What is it?"

She didn't answer right away.

"A girl," she said finally. "Isabella Swan. Charlie's daughter."

The name meant nothing to me. I frowned. "Why would you be seeing her?"

Alice's voice was taut. "She's... involved in something. It's unclear. But she's coming here."

"Here, as in Forks?" I asked.

Alice hesitated. "And to school."

I exchanged a glance with Emmett. This wasn't exactly breaking news. Humans came and went. Teenagers moved, enrolled, transferred. It meant nothing—usually.

But Alice's visions never arrived without reason.

"What kind of something is she involved in?" I pressed.

"I don't know." Alice sounded uncertain, which meant the future was shifting. Too many decisions at once.

I didn't like it.

We didn't get involved with humans. Not if we could help it. It was dangerous enough pretending to be one. Each time a new face appeared, the game became more precarious.

And yet...

Something in Alice's tone made me uneasy.

—————————————————————————

It happened faster than I expected.

By Monday, Edward was gone.

He didn't leave a note. Didn't offer an excuse. Just vanished.

For nearly a week, he didn't come home. Not during the day. Not at night. I could feel Carlisle's concern rising, and Esme grew tight-lipped with worry. No one wanted to admit the obvious: Edward had been unstable lately. This... wasn't new.

But it was worse now.

"Do you think it's about the girl?" Jasper asked one evening as we sat in the living room.

Alice was perched beside him, still staring off into some thread of time only she could see. "Maybe," she said. "Or maybe it's what he's thinking about doing to her."

My chest tightened. "He wouldn't."

But even I didn't believe that.

Edward had always walked the thinnest line among us. He hadn't fed on humans in decades, but the monster in him was tightly wound, ever-present. We all had our temptations—mine had always been envy. Rage. Control. Edward's was darker. His thirst had been closer to madness once.

And now, there was her.

This girl—Bella Swan—had appeared, and within days Edward was feral and gone. There was only one conclusion to draw.

He wanted to kill her.

———————————————————————

The day he returned, the entire house held its breath.

I was in the garage when I heard his car. The tires hit gravel with unnecessary force, the engine cutting off in a clean, angry silence. A door slammed.

Footsteps. Steady. Measured. Too measured.

I moved toward the hallway and found him standing there, pale and still as stone. His eyes were dark—not red, not gold. Somewhere in between.

"You're back," I said.

He didn't answer.

I narrowed my eyes. "Did you kill her?"

He flinched like I'd slapped him. "No."

"Then what are you doing here?"

Edward looked past me, jaw tight. "I'm going to try something different."

The way he said it chilled me. Not triumphant—resigned. Like a man walking willingly into a storm.

"What does that mean?"

"It means," he said quietly, "I'm going to sit next to her."

For once, I was speechless.

"Are you insane?"

"Probably."

I grabbed his arm. "Edward, listen to me. We've spent decades building this life. One mistake—one—and it all comes down."

"I know."

"Then why risk it?" I hissed. "For her? A stranger?"

He looked at me then, really looked at me. And there was something in his eyes I hadn't seen in years. Hunger, yes. But something else. Something infinitely worse.

Hope.

"I don't think she's a stranger," he said.

And then he walked past me, like he hadn't just thrown a match into the powder keg.