“You probably cry when the talking owl gives speeches.”
“Only twice,” he said with mock offense. “And once was allergies.”
She caught herself smiling before she could strangle it. His shirt clung damp at the collar, eyes bright with laughter.
Saints. He was pretty. There was no other word for it. Pretty and warm and standing too close, looking at her like she was the only thing in the room.
Her pulse tripped. She turned toward the door. “Come on. We’ve got work.”
“Running away already?” His voice followed her, teasing, but when she risked a glance back, his eyes weren’t mocking. They were steady. Warm. Curious. Like he saw more than she wanted him to.
Her chest tightened. She spun faster, muttering, “If you’re not ready in thirty seconds, I’m leaving you here with your romance novels.”
“They’re not romances!” he called, laughing.
“Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
She stalked out before he could see the flush blooming hot across her cheeks.
South Gate wasn’t quiet. It never was—especially not the week before Samhain.
Lanterns strung from stall to stall burned in fat, honeyed orbs, glamour-flames flickering like fallen leaves caught in midair. A puppet stage clacked at the far end while a trio of teenagers practiced sword choreography near the fountain, their wooden blades colliding with the conviction of people who’d never actually been hit by anything sharp. The air smelled of roasted chestnuts, wet stone, cinnamon, damp wool, and the faint coppery thrum of the ley line that ran straight under the old bronze wyvern perched on the fountain’s lip.
This spot had been Mistwood’s first well. The bricks still showed where the mouth had been sealed and dressed as a fountain centuries ago—blue and amber tiles cracked into a star around the wyvern’s clawed feet. The ley sang through it, soft and insistent, like a heartbeat under blankets.
“Here,” Maude said, and knelt.
She unloaded the third loom’s pieces: ironvine circlet; blackthorn shards cut thin as claws; the parchment sigil she’d inked with rosemary steep and yarrow ash; a wax-sealed shadowbell bloom; a vial of glasswort resin; a folded strip of night-apple peel still glimmering faintly in the shade; a measured scoop of heartmire salt; and, tucked in a cloth, a chalk of wolfsbone—petrified marrow that looked like a sliver of moon.
Wesley crouched beside her, one palm braced on a cobble, theother shading his eyes to watch the lanterns shiver. “So this is the one.”
“This is the one,” she said. “The fountain mouth sits dead center on the line. Everything feeds to it. If this holds, the rest of the street will stop…forgetting what it is.”
He cut her a look. “You mean ‘slowly merging into a patchwork nightmare’?”
“That, too.”
She pretended she didn’t feel the warmth of him at her side and bent to lay chalk: a clean circle around the star of cracked tile, four small dishes at the cardinal points—salt to the north, ash to the south, thistledown east, water west. A knot of kids drifted closer, then drifted back when Maude looked up. Her glance said,Try me. They tried her from a safe distance instead.
“You never actually told me,” Wesley murmured, “why what we did the first time didn’t work.”
“The curse doesn’t break—it moves,” she murmured, ring finger steady as she finished the circle. “Bailey left a note: unspooled interlocks like to collect in a pool. The Weftmark at my cottage is a pool. But the pulse is bigger than one drain. We need three more to keep Mistwood from drowning.” She slid the ironvine ring into place and felt the hum rise through her palm. “Congratulations. You’re standing at drain number three.”
He went quiet—watching, weighing. He did it the way he baked: measuring time, gauging heat, knowing when something was ready without checking twice. Always waiting for the exact moment things turned.
“What do you need?”
“Resin,” she said, handing him the vial of glasswort. “A thin line along the inner rim—clockwise, slow. Count with the ley. Don’t rush. It steadies volatility like a truce: both sides stand down, no one wins, no one loses. It only holds so long as nobody breaks it.”
He nodded, head tipped as if he could hear the beat she meant. After two careful breaths, he poured. The resin ran thinand clear, catching light like water over glass, and for a moment Maude’s throat hurt with something like relief.
She set the blackthorn teeth at quarter points, pressed wolfsbone dust into each thorn’s base to give the ward some bite, then laid the night-apple peel like a ribbon shield over the ring’s heart. “Mask,” she told it, because if the interlock couldn’t smell them, it might not charge them like a bull. “This is to keep the pull from grabbing everything else.”
He didn’t answer. He was laser-focused on the pour. When he reached the end, the resin line connected—one clean loop—and the ring gave a small, satisfiedtick.
Maude wiped her palms, ignoring the thin burn of nerves in her wrists. “All right.” She set the parchment sigil in the ring and pricked her thumb. One drop of blood sank into the ink, and the lines darkened, as if the sigil had been waiting to wake up. “Honesty clause,” she muttered.
“Because spells that lie don’t work,” Wesley said, soft, repeating her lesson back to her.
