I reach for her magic on reflex and feel nothing. I have to remind myself this ismemory.
Arthur hops from branch to branch while she fights her way across the blasted ground. She moves like a newborn: too many limbs, no balance. At the treeline she collapses, lies there gasping, then starts crawling again as the sirens of the first responders wail in the distance.
He shows me scraps—her dragging on stolen clothesblasted into the trees, stuffing smoke-grey hair down her collar, vanishing into a hollow beneath the same broken branches that held his attention moments ago.
She’s still there.
The feed judders as the chime of my phone yanks me back into my own skull, along with half a dozen fires to put out. A headache blooms behind my eyes.
The site has been ‘checked and cleared.’ The official line: no survivors—just a ley line burp and a few singed trees.
Arthur, however, hasn’t left.
He sends me impressions while I sign forms and snarl at councillors: the glow dying from the damaged ley line, the crash site cordoned off, responders tramping about. No one looks in the right place. No one sees the small, awkward mound of branches where the not-quite-right woman buried herself and passed out.
I take a Ministry car—no coven, no audience. At the outer cordon I flash my credentials and a bland smile. Arthur circles high, a faint silhouette against the stars.
“Evening, sir,” one of the wardens says as I duck under the tape. “There’s a bird that won’t leave the site.”
I school my face. “I’ll see if I can coax him off the wards before he cooks himself. You can leave.”
No one questions it. No one questionsme. No one ever thinksanimal magewhen they look at me, and I prefer it that way.
I step into the burnt area and ley line power hits the soles of my feet like a live wire. The air is thick with the sharp, metallic tang of spent magic and the bitter scent ofcharred sap. My own power strains against the nullifying wards the Ministry slapped over the area.
Arthur dips low, then lands on a branch to my right.
Show me.
He hops once, then launches again, gliding towards the darker edge of the woods. I follow, boots whispering through ash, leaf-mould, and mud.
Close to the treeline, I hear it—the faintest rustle, a ragged breath.
Arthur drops to a low branch, then to the ground, pecking at a tangle of fallen limbs.
She’s there.
I pull the singed branches away and find her curled in the hollow, clothes thrown on without regard for fit, hair a smoky tangle. Her skin is too pale against the dirt, her expression utterly blank—a mannequin someone forgot to animate all the way. But her eyes?—
Lilac. Wide. Shock-blown.
For a second, I forget how to inhale.
It’s the same feeling from the house. The same wrong-right thrum under my sternum; my magic leaning towards hers like iron to a lodestone. The same pull not to hurt her.
Which is, again, ridiculous. I am a Hunter; she is an unknown quantity crawling out of a ley line on the same day a sentient house vanishes and a flying building falls out of the sky. The list of sensible reactions doesnotinclude staring at her as though I’ve been slapped.
I shove the thought down and school my face into standard, reassuring authority. Professional.
“I thought I heard something,” I say, pitching my voice low, gentling it. “Are you all right?”
Nothing. She merely looks at me, eyes too bright in the moonlight. No flicker of recognition, no attempt at a story. Shock, then. Or a very good act.
“Are you hurt? Were you camping? Did you see the house?”
Still silent.
I crouch, keeping my movements slow. Up close I see the fine tremor in her hands, the way the borrowed jumper hangs oddly on her curves.
