The words are a slap, sharp and stinging, because they’re true.
The door closes behind her with a click, leaving me alone with the dawn. A strange, hollow feeling lingers in the air as our vendetta ends, not with violence, but with exhausted acceptance.
Rebecca is right that Charlotte was soft and trusting. She believed the best in everyone, and she deserved so much better.
Now, there’s Hannah, who’s been guarded since we met, unwilling to be vulnerable. She sees exactly what I am and has seen me at my worst. And she still bared her soul to me. Is that courage or self-destruction?
I gaze out beyond the garden, where the forest leads to a wide world I have yet to explore.
The binding is broken. Nothing holds me here except my own choice. It’s time to do the noble thing and let Hannah move on. Time to let her find someone who won’t drink her essence and bring her to the brink of death with every feeding.
32
Hannah
RileyisinElizabeth’skitchen, washing teacups like it’s a normal morning and she wasn’t nearly killed in a feeding ritual a few hours ago. She’s scrubbing each cup with unnecessary force, the porcelain clinking against the sink basin.
“Can’t you use magic to do that?” I ask from the doorway.
She doesn’t turn around. “Aunt Rebecca says it’s character building to do it manually.”
I step into the kitchen, hyperaware of how different everything feels without the binding spell. My chest feels empty, and after what we did, my body is a map of evidence. The bites, bruises, and scrapes might as well be fluorescent.
I’m marked, inside and out.
“You okay?” I ask.
“I’d feel better if I could blast that bitch with a jet of fire, but Elizabeth wouldn’t let…” Riley turns, and her words die as she takes in my state.
The cup in her hand shatters.
Tiny fires crackle around her fingers as the porcelain shards scatter across the floor.
She stares down at her hands like they’ve betrayed her, then huffs and clenches her fists, looking up at me. “Hannah, what did she do to you?”
“What I wanted her to do,” I say, steady and certain.
Riley flinches like I’ve slapped her. “You don’t mean that. It’s the binding spell talking, or sanguine magic—”
“The spell broke at dawn.” I move closer, stepping through the broken porcelain. “I’m here because I want to be. Everything that happened between Julia and me, I chose.”
I’m close enough to catch her familiar lilac scent beneath the dish soap. It smells like something from the distant past, no longer my source of comfort but a memory of the life I used to have.
Riley’s eyes search mine, probably looking for the girl she knew, who read poetry and blushed at compliments and cried during movies. That girl would never have begged a dangerous witch to claim her on a forest floor, and would never have offered her life force repeatedly.
But that girl also got abandoned over and over, and always wondered what was wrong with her that made people leave.
“You’ve changed,” Riley whispers, and it’s not quite an accusation but close.
“Yes. Haven’t you?”
She looks down at her hands, where little flames dance between her fingers, and which bear the scars of her magical awakening. “I spent twenty years trying to be normal. Good at sports, good grades, good daughter. But I was so desperate to fit in that I never asked if normal was what I wanted. Then I woke up and my life was literally on fire, and I had to choose between trying to suppress it or accepting that I’m different, and being different is what makes me special.”
My eyes sting, and my throat is too tight to speak, so I just nod.
“I chose the fire, Hannah. I chose power and danger and a lineage of women who don’t apologize. And it meant losing you, but—” Her voicefinally breaks. “But I’m not sorry for becoming who I was meant to be. I’m only sorry I couldn’t bring you with me.”
“You didn’t even try,” I say, barely audible.
