She really thought she had it this time. She’d found mention of cord magics, of knots woven with intention, then unbound. The release of energy. The opening of a cage.
It seemed soright.
There her wolf was, trapped inside her. All she had to do was set the damn thing free.
And yet again, she had failed.
She pulled her hand back, flexed her fingers to work the ache out. The outline of salt clung to her skin; she dusted it off against her skirt and watched the pale grains drop to the stone. She wanted to smash the bowl. She wanted to burn the book. She wanted to call up the stairs and ask Lunarion to come down and do it himself.
Instead, Layla did what she always did. Closed her eyes. Breathed. Reached for the margins where she’d scribbled notes.
Inhaling a sharp breath, she picked up her pen and adjusted a few symbols here and there. Dashed out a line.
It felt like the answer was staring her in the face, and she was just too stupid to see it.
She let her hand fall to her lap and tipped her head back until the base of her skull met the cool wall.
“I’m not asking for much,” she said to the ceiling. “I’m a shifter. I just want toshift.”
Her notes were mocking her now. Laughing at her inability to solve their riddle. She pushed the book away in disgust, her eyes settling on the small crate in the corner of the room. The one containing those grimoires that she’d learned through painful experience, she shouldn’t touch unless someone was dying.
For a moment, a crazy thought entered her head. She quickly pushed it away. That sort of magic wasn’t to be played with lightly, certainly not by a self-taught, semi-incompetent witch like herself. There were spells in there, rituals, that promised the caster the deepest desires of their heart.
But there was a price. There was always a price.
Witches before her had played with that kind of fire. Blood magic. Death magic. All young shifter children were taught about the dark spells witches had used a hundred years ago in their bid for power. Spells that boiled the blood, melted the flesh, froze every nerve-ending in agonizing torture.
Those women had likely started their descent into madness with just a bit too much curiosity.
There had to be another way. She would find it.
For hours she worked, though she didn’t feel them pass. Time always worked strangely in the basement. The clock upstairs had a way of moving on without telling her.
Eventually, after countless failures, she began to surface from the madness of her research. She became aware of herself in pieces. Her jaw tight from clenching, her shoulders high up where stress kept the muscles taut, the thread at her wristcutting into the skin. She loosened it and retied it tighter, because the sting helped ground her.
The floor above creaked, the normal complaint of old wood. She ignored it. The radiator hissed. She ignored that, too. Her universe narrowed to the salt and the cord and the candle before her.
It flickered as she spoke the words.
Something tightened, almost like a grip finally taking hold, and she leaned into it as allowing herself to fall from a cliff—
—and the world upstairs exploded into sound.
The bookshop door slammed against its stop with a violence that shook dust from the basement beams. The sound dropped through the floor like a hammer.
Layla flinched so hard her hands streaked the chalk. Her heart went feral in her chest.
She was already moving. Raising her hands above her head, the room rearranging itself at her will. Books snapped closed, chalk dust melted away, smoke dissipated into clean air. The rug above muffled a second heavy step. She waved her hand and the candles burst upwards in columns of flame.
“Shit,” she muttered, wrestling her panicked magic. She closed her fist, and the candles extinguished as one.
Voices, one low and heavy, one quieter and colder, one she knew in her bones and never wanted to hear again.
She grabbed the lantern and ran for the stairs.
By the time she reached the top, the panel was closing behind her, and she was swallowing her fear, choking on it. The cold air slapped her across the face.
She burst out of the corridor and into the shop as the front door closed. The chime echoed through the dimly lit space.
