I lean against the doorframe, the floorboards creaking beneath me. In truth, it’s like I lived my whole life underwater, and coming into my power gave me the first real breath of air I’ve ever taken. It’s like being the storm instead of the sea, the flame instead of the moth. Everything responds to me, bending to my will, and every day I awake excited to learn what else I am capable of.
But I don’t want my sister to feel worse than she already does, so I search for more mundane words. “It is like the world is an instrument and I am learning to play it.”
This was, evidently, still the wrong thing to say. Her face crumples, but she smooths it away quickly. “That must be wonderful.”
“Charlotte…”
“I am happy for you.” She sets down her brush and closes the grimoire reverently. “Truly.”
But I can see it in her eyes—the hunger for something beyond these walls, beyond being decorative and protected and powerless. She wants to be feared instead of desired. She wants magic in her veins.
Charlotte is hunched over my grimoire in the kitchen, surrounded by herbs and candles. The house sleeps around us, silent except for the ticking parlor clock and Father’s distant snoring. I should stop her, but something makes me wait in the shadows, watching. Wanting to see what happens.
She lights the candles with trembling fingers. Wax drips onto the scarred wooden table where Mother kneads bread each morning. Carefully, she arranges the rosemary and sage in a circle, then recites the words for a simple charm to extinguish a flame, her voice barely a whisper.
Nothing happens.
She tries again, louder this time, and I can hear the desperate plea in her tone. My heart cracks a little.
The candles flicker. For one brilliant second, I think it might work.
But it’s no more than a draft from the window, and the flames keep burning bright.
Charlotte’s shoulders shake. She presses her hands over her mouth to muffle her sobs, and I slip away before she knows I saw.
Charlotte is retching into a chamber pot, her whole body convulsing. The acrid smell of vomit mixes with the lavender sachets Mother keeps in our linens.
Mother holds her hair back, shooting me an accusatory look. “What did she drink, Rebecca?”
I examine the empty vial on Charlotte’s nightstand, my shoulders slumping. “A courage potion. Poorly made.”
“I only wanted—” Charlotte gasps between heaves, “—to feel brave—”
“You might have killed yourself,” I say, trying to sound angry instead of terrified.
“What is the point of living if I can never truly live?” she whispers.
Mother shakes her head, her jaw tight. “Stop speaking nonsense.”
That night, I hide my grimoire beneath a loose floorboard in the corner. But it doesn’t stop her from peeking through the window whenever I leave for coven circles, her face pressed against the glass like a child watching adults at a ball she cannot attend.
I’m Charlotte now, following Rebecca through dark streets. My heart pounds with rebellion and excitement. I shouldn’t be here, but I cannot stay in the suffocating safety of the house one more night.
Ahead, Rebecca slips through a gate into a walled garden. I creep closer, peering through the iron bars.
Nine women stand around a fire. The garden is wild and untamed, nothing like the plots our neighbors tend. Their voices rise and fall in a language I do not understand, and the flames dance in impossible shades of green, purple, and silver. Power crackles in the air.
And then I see her.
She is older than Rebecca, in her thirties, with thick dark hair that falls past her shoulders and winter-blue eyes that seem to see through everything. She moves with a confidence I have never witnessed, as if the world bends around her instead of her bending to fit it. She wears trousers and a blouse instead of a dress, unconstrained by corsets or bloomers.
I must know her name. I must know more about her.
She laughs at something another witch says, and the sound makes my chest ache with longing. She is powerful, free, and beautiful in a way men fear instead of in a way they think they can control.
The gathering ends. I should run home before Rebecca catches me.
But I cannot stop watching that woman as she says her goodbyes and leaves for home.
