Maren's hands stilled on the tea canister. She didn’t want to share but she’d already said too much. Plus, she was trying to prove her innocence. Might as well tell the truth. "My magic's been unstable since the storm. Small things at first. Shadows moving without direction. Spells misfiring. Nothing dangerous, just wrong."
"Wrong how?"
"Like something's interfering. Or calling to it." She measured tea leaves into a pot, focusing on the familiar ritual. "I tried a diagnostic spell yesterday. It showed nothing. But I can feel it."
"Have you told the Council?"
"And say what? My magic feels weird but I can't prove it?" Maren's laugh came out bitter. "They'd use it as evidence I'm losing control. That I'm the threat everyone thinks I am."
Tristan moved closer, his boots quiet on the wooden floor despite his size. "Is that what you think? That you're a threat?"
"I think I'm tired." She poured hot water over the leaves, watching them unfurl in the steam. "Tired of people looking at me like I'm one bad day away from destroying everything around me."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have." Maren met his gaze across her small kitchen. "I know what I am. I know what my magic can do. But I also know I didn't cause those accidents, didn't crack those wards, didn't make that lantern explode."
"Then what did?"
"I don't know." The admission tasted like defeat. "But I'm going to find out before someone gets hurt and I get blamed for it."
Tristan studied her. "Show me."
"Show you what?"
"Your magic. A warding spell, something basic." He gestured toward the door. "Prove to me it's not doing what they think it's doing."
Maren's first instinct was refusal. Showing someone her magic felt intimate, vulnerable, like letting them see her stripped down to bone and breath. But something in Tristan's steady gaze made her pause.
He wasn't asking her to perform. He was asking her to trust him.
"Alright," she said quietly. "But outside. I don't practice shadow work indoors if I can help it."
They stepped into the cold together, breath fogging in the sharp air. The cottage sat near a small stream, frozen solid now and covered with a thin layer of snow. Moonlight turned everything silver and shadow.
Maren walked to the stream's edge, her shadows spreading across the ice like dark water. "Standard protective ward. Creates a barrier against hostile magic and physical threats. I use them to reinforce the forest boundaries."
"Go ahead."
She centered herself, pulling power from the deep well inside her chest where shadow magic lived. It rose smoothly at first, familiar and controlled. Her hands moved through the patterns her mother had taught her, weaving darkness into intention.
The ward began to form, a shimmer of silver-black light arcing over the stream.
Then something pulled.
Maren gasped as her magic lurched sideways, yanked by an invisible force she couldn't see. The ward collapsed, power scattering wild across the ice. Where it touched, frost patterns appeared that seemed wrong, geometric and sharp instead of organic.
"Stop," Tristan said sharply.
"I'm trying—" The magic wouldn't respond. Wouldn't settle. It poured out of her like water through broken fingers. It was looking for something.
Then, the ice cracked.
Not a small crack. A deep, resonating snap that echoed through the frozen stream like gunfire. More fractures appeared, spider-webbing outward from where her magic had touched.
Maren tried to step back but her boot caught on something. She stumbled, balance failing, the cracked ice shifting under her weight.
Tristan moved faster than should've been possible.
