“Thirty. Maybe forty.”
“Idiot child.” But her voice held the same rough affection she’d used when I was fifteen, bleeding magic into failed runes while she coached me and tears streaked my face. She’d held me then, the woman they called the Mistress of Blades, the one whose shop brokered more death than the First Burning. She reached across the counter, her hand covering mine. “You’ll burn yourself out, and then who will make my special orders? I didn’t train you for nothing.”
She said it as a joke, but we both knew the truth. Eda Mire sold simple runes to anyone with money. Healing stones, strength enhancers, protection charms. However, behind the counter, locked in cases that hummed with their own power, she kept the real merchandise. A set of pain transfer runes I’d woven last month from bloodstone, capable of moving a fatal wound from buyer to target, though only once before shattering. They’d cost the buyer twelve thousand crowns.
Next to them, a pair of silence stones carved into black opal that could muffle even a dragon’s roar, worth more than most people saw in a lifetime. The opal held the magic for years instead of months, its natural properties amplifying the weaving until the runes pulsed with life.
“Speaking of special orders,” she said, pulling a locked box from beneath the counter. “Your memory stones sold yesterday. Twenty thousand crowns for the pair.”
Memory stones. I’d spent a week weaving those into pure amber, each one capable of storing a dying person’s last words or preserving a conversation exactly as it happened. The amber was perfect for capturing moments, tree resin that had already spent centuries preserving things in time.
She tossed a small cloth bag toward me. “That’s enough to cover your rent for the next two months.”
“Our bargain doesn’t include you paying with crowns.” I pushed the bag back across the counter. “I need a new set of protection runes. For the Arch.”
Her eyebrows rose. “The Veresear’s acting up again?”
“Every morning it reads me differently.” The lie came easily. I’d been telling it for years. “Sometimes I register as water affinity, sometimes as nothing at all. The Magistrate has threatened to revoke my access if I can’t pass through consistently.”
“Water witches have always had trouble with those detection spells.” She pulled out a different box without hesitation. “Star sapphire this time. Your usual Weaver outdid themselves. These should last longer against the Arch’s probing.”
Five perfect runes, each one carved by anonymous hands as payment for the work I did for her special clients. We both knew the fundamental law she’d drilled into me at a young age: magic flows outward, never inward. A Rune Weaver could protect the entire world but rarely themselves. Like trying to lift yourself by your own bootstraps, she’d said back then, watching me fail again and again before I understood. I could use simple protection runes, but nothing specific to me.
The anonymity was essential to how Eda Mire operated. No names, no faces, just exchanges of service or crowns forsilence. But her real business moved through back doors and whispered recommendations. When merchants needed rivals removed, when crime lords required permanent solutions to their problems, they came to the Gilded Pestle. Not for the woman who mixed tinctures, but for the one who knew every killer worth hiring in three countries, maybe all four.
And somehow, impossibly, she loved me like the grandmother I’d lost. Because we’d both lost Gran that tragic day. Fucking hunters.
“Drink more tea,” she commanded, already refilling my cup. “You look like death walking.”
The back door opened without a knock. Calder entered first, Vitoria behind him, her face still wearing someone else’s features.
“Drop it,” Eda Mire said without looking. “You know I hate that spell in my shop.”
Vitoria let theImagorisspell fade, her actual face emerging like something new, born from flame. I’d tried for months to do that spell, but transformation takes years and years of practice and a deep connection to one’s power to get right. Unfortunately.
Tor immediately moved to the window, checking the street. She’d become more and more obsessed with watching the streets lately. I hadn’t pushed, but something was off.
“Stop that,” Eda Mire snapped. “You’ll scare away paying customers.”
“You do enough scaring for all of us,” Vitoria mumbled back as she stepped away from the clouded window.
Eda Mire dipped a solemn chin at Calder before turning back to me. “A witch’s magic is not supposed to fight them every time it’s used. Your grandmother warned me this fatigue might happen. Your familiar’s binding should make you stronger, but perhaps he also makes the magic work harder to flow.”
Her words surprised me. We’d never spoken of this in front of the others. Blood bindings were the kind of knowledge that got you executed just for knowing about them, never mind being part of one.
Calder leaned forward. “Binding?”
Eda Mire’s smile turned secretive. “Ask Syneca. It’s her story to tell.”
All eyes turned to me. I stared into my tea, watching the steam spiral. For years I’d kept this from them, protecting them from knowledge that could get them killed if hunters ever questioned them, just as they’d protected me this morning. Still, I shot Eda Mire a glare for forcing this.
“When my grandmother died,” I said slowly, weighing each word, “she left me two gifts. Bound to Silas. And protected by Eda Mire.”
“Left you?” Vitoria frowned. “Like in a will?”
“Like in a spell, in Silas’s case.” I looked up, meeting their eyes. “Blood magic. The old kind. The kind that binds souls together for life.”
Calder’s hand moved to his blade hilt. Not threatening. Thinking.
