“It’s dangerous. I know.” I dragged my finger around the rim of the cup. “Which is why I never told you. If the hunters took you, if they made you talk, you could honestly say you didn’t know. But apparently Eda Mire thinks that protection isn’t necessary anymore.”
The accusation was clear. She just shrugged, unrepentant. “Your situation is changing more than you want to admit. They’ll need to know everything if they’re going to survive what this world will throw at you.”
The word ‘survive’ hit me hard. I knew what she meant. It had been five hundred years since the last Burning. Fivehundred years when it should have been two. The Phoenix was late.
Half the world believed the hunters had finally found the bloodline and severed it at the root, sparing us all from the cycle of ash. The other half lived in constant terror, knowing that magical debts always came due. That if the Phoenix line still walked among us, and if one of them carried the mark, the Burning could ignite tomorrow. Or today. Or in the next breath.
And here sat Eda Mire, talking about survival like she knew something the rest of us didn’t. She stood, moving to a cabinet near the window. When she turned back, she held a small cloth bag in one hand. In the other, something that made my breath catch.
A Life Rune. Still pulsing with faint red light.
Draven Varrow’s Life Rune, no doubt.
“Payment delivered,” Eda Mire said, tossing the cloth bag to Calder. “Contract completed.” The Life Rune disappeared into a drawer so quickly I almost wondered if I’d imagined it.
“Now, let’s discuss the Blood Moon.” She looked directly at me. “Vitoria told me you saw a man.”
I’d been avoiding this topic. I didn’t want to hear the truth if it condemned me. But still I told her. The Ripper’s blade at my throat. The hand that grabbed him. My fear that we’d conjured something in that circle.
Eda Mire cut me off with a sharp gesture. “Impossible. You cannot conjure during a Blood Moon within a salt circle. The energies cancel each other. Whatever grabbed him was already in the wood.”
“But—”
“Some shifter, probably. That man has as many enemies as his father. The Bloodwood is full of ridiculous people doing ridiculous things. Stop borrowing trouble.”
She began pulling different materials from her shelves—silver, iron, something that might have been bone. “I need twelve binding runes by week’s end. The kind that holds regardless of transformation.”
Lycan runes.
“Silver inlay?”
“Precisely.”
A knock echoed from the back room. Eda Mire’s entire bearing shifted.
“Storage room. Now.”
We knew that tone.
The secondary room was cramped; its shelves lined with legitimate remedies nobody ever bought. Through the door crack, I watched a figure enter. They moved like water pretending to have bones. Too fluid. Too comfortable.
“The Magistrate refused,” the figure said. “The contract stands.”
“Then he’s chosen poorly.” Something slid across the wood. “Tell your master not every hunt warrants violence. I simply cannot curate the runes he’s asking for. Perhaps someone in the Chancellery would be better suited. A Rune Weaver he could offer permanent safety to.”
After an angry grunt, they left, and Eda Mire returned to us. “The Championships start tonight. Opening ceremony. You’re all going.”
“We weren’t planning—” Vitoria started.
“Actually,” I said, following Calder out of the cramped space, “the Magistrate made attendance mandatory for all employees. I have to be there.”
“Then we all go,” Calder said. “Better to be seen together at a public event than noticeably absent after what happened to Varrow. They’re hunting.”
Vitoria’s face shifted to something almost like excitement. “At least it’ll be fun. When’s the last time we did something that wasn’t work or running?”
Eda Mire pulled a vial from a high shelf, pressing it into my hand. “If things go badly, you know where the other place is.”
The Bloodwood cottage. Where Gran had taken her final breaths. A place I’d sworn to never return. As if the blood would still coat the walls. As if her screams would still echo in the closets, like they had in my mind the night Silas dragged me away.
