“No.” She stepped back, pacing over the splintered remains of our kitchen table. Dried herbs scattered under her feet, lavender and chamomile mostly, and small carved runes that had lined the table’s edge now lay scattered across the floorboards like broken teeth. My favorite rune lamp had been knocked over; its glass chimney rolled beneath a shredded newspaper, headlines rewriting themselves across the page in real-time, words dissolving and reforming as the enchantment pulled in fresh news.
“They’re closing in. And when they find me, they’ll kill you too, just for knowing what kind of witch I am and not reporting me.”
I turned away. The floorboards creaked, old wood that had settled unevenly over the bookstore below, leaving gaps that sometimes let the scent of aging paper and dust drift up into our tiny apartment. My hand gripped the edge of the overturned cupboard, where protection runes had been carved into the doorframe. Helluva lot of good they’d done. But I was still alive, so I supposed that was something.
“That’s my risk to take. I choose our friendship over fear, Vitoria. Now and always.”
We both knew what that promise meant in a world like ours. Fire witches disappeared in the night. Their screams echoed from the Magistrate’s dungeons for days before blessed silence fell.
The bitterness of her tone didn’t surprise me. “At this point, does it even matter? They’ll hunt me like I am the Phoenix marked to burn the world again, whether I am or not.”
“But you’renot.You’re just?—”
“Justa fire witch. Just the most hunted magical gift in the world.” She paused, opportunity flashing in her emerald eyes. “The Blood Moon is tonight.”
I knew that look. “Vitoria, no.”
“We could do a protection ritual. Real protection. Stronger than these charms,” she said, tossing a bracelet she’d made into the pile of rubble on the floor.
“After what just happened—” I started, but she cut me off.
“Especially after what just happened.” She grabbed my shoulders. “This might be our last chance. We need to ward our house so they can’t get in. If you can manage it, they won’t want to, and they won’t know why. Only you can do that kind of runework, and you know it.”
“Don’t you think if I could do that, I would have done it already?”
She smiled. “You just need a little confidence and the Blood Moon. Trust me. We knew it was going to be a shitshow the second they voted a hunter as Magistrate and look what’s happening. It was bad three years ago; now it’s a nightmare. If we don’t try tonight, they’ll keep closing in until there’s nowhere left to run.”
I stared into the face I’d memorized over three years of shared secrets and whispered conversations and quiet moments. Three years of chaos and inside jokes with Calder, the third person in our makeshift family.
I’d have let that hunter cut my throat, and gladly, if it would buy my friends the safety and happiness they deserved.
“The Bloodwood?” I asked.
Her grin was sharp as a blade. “Where else?”
We moved quickly, gathering what little we needed. Calder found us as we prepared to leave, his handsome, brutal face creased with worry as he lifted the door completely off the hingeswith little effort. It wasn’t the first time he’d fixed that damn thing.
His dark eyes found mine, warm brown that complemented his deep umber skin. A pale scar cut across his temple, a souvenir from some job I’d never asked about and he’d never offered to explain. “Your idea or hers?” he asked, his harsh Solairean accent thicker than usual as he stared.
I plucked a half-melted candle from the rubble on the floor. “Does it matter when we’re both stubborn enough to see it through?”
He crossed his arms, the movement drawing attention to exactly how much larger he was than both of us combined. “He cut your throat. Where the fuck was Silas?”
“Exactly where I commanded him to be. I was fine. Had an unregistered familiar—a griffin at that—shown up during a raid, the outcome would have been far worse than this,” I said, gesturing to the room before casting. “Refluo.”
The magic felt like a river running backward. The broken table legs snapped back together with soft clicks, wood grain realigning as if it had never splintered. The couch cushions reinflated, their torn fabric knitting closed stitch by invisible stitch, the stuffing drawing itself back inside like a breath inhaled. Books lifted from the floor in a slow parade, their pages smoothing flat as they glided toward the shelves, slotting themselves spine first into gaps that seemed to widen just enough to receive them.
Chess pieces rolled across the floorboards. Pawns first, then knights and bishops, the queen spinning once before righting herself, each finding their square on the hand-carved board as it rose to meet them, the whole set lifting to settle back on the side table. Even the dust gathered itself up in tiny swirls, vanishing into nothing as the lace curtain climbed its rod and rehemmeditself with patient, invisible fingers. Everything moved with the same inevitable pull, the way water always found its level.
“Such a useful spell,” I said, with a satisfied nod.
Vitoria continued the argument, staring out the window where the red light from the Blood Moon began to creep into our space. “We need protection, Calder.”
Calder pulled an apple from his pocket and bit into it with a sharp crack. “This is quite possibly the worst idea you two have ever had. And that’s saying something, considering Vitoria once thought stealing a ship from the docks for a joyride was reasonable.”
“That worked out fine,” Vitoria said, but her eyes kept darting to the window. “We got what we needed.”
“You nearly crashed.”
