She rolled her eyes. “Nearly doesn’t count. Besides, this is different. We need real protection.”
“You’re in nymph form half the time. That’s protection enough,” he argued.
I watched her pace. Three steps to the window, pause, three steps back. “Tor, you’re making me dizzy.”
“Sorry.” She stopped, but her hands kept moving, fidgeting with her sleeves. “I just... it felt targeted this time.”
Calder took another bite of his apple, chewing slowly, solely because he knew it annoyed her. “Because it was. Someone’s been watching us.”
“All the more reason to make the wards tonight,” Vitoria said. “Stronger wards.”
“Maybe weshouldlie low,” I countered. “They just raided us, Tor. Going out tonight?—”
“Is exactly what they won’t expect.” Her voice had that edge it got when her mind was made up. “They think they scared us. Think we’ll hide.”
Calder tossed his apple core into the kitchen bin. “Maybe because hiding is the smart thing to do, Vitoria. Syneca just had a blade to her throat.”
I touched the cut, my jaw tightening. “I’m standing right here. Fully alive, by the way. But he’s right, Tor. This feels reckless, even for us.”
“Everything feels reckless when you’re hunted.” Her eyes flashed. “When was the last time you felt safe, Syn? In the last month alone, when did either of us stop looking over our shoulders?”
The question lingered because we all knew the answer. Never.
Calder crossed his arms. “And your solution is to wander into the Bloodwood during a Blood Moon. With half the hunters probably watching our building.”
“My solution is to create wards that will actually protect us.” Vitoria’s voice was quiet now, but that made it more dangerous, not less. “The kind that can only be made under a Blood Moon. We do this ritual, we get real protection, or we die trying. At least then it’s our choice.”
I looked between them—Calder’s worried frown, Vitoria’s desperate determination. “Tor?—”
“I’m going.” She was already moving toward our makeshift weapons cache beneath the floorboards. “With or without you.”
Calder and I exchanged a look. We both knew that tone.
“Damn it, Vitoria,” I muttered, reaching for my bag of unused stones, because apparently, when Vitoria decided to court death, my only option was to bring better weapons to the fight. I was the Rune Weaver. I’d have to be there, or there was simply no point.
We slipped through the bookstore downstairs like shadows, then kept to specific alleys where the Magistrate’s patrols rarely ventured. Above us, Silas followed, a dark shape against theBlood Moon. My guardian. My anchor. Even though he was pissed at me for forcing him into his shadows earlier.
“They’re doubling patrols inside the city tonight,” Vitoria whispered as we pressed against the wall of a speakeasy, waiting for voices to fade. “The Blood Moon makes them nervous.”
“Good. Nervous hunters make mistakes.”
The city’s edge came too fast and not fast enough. Beyond the wall lay the Bloodwood. Ancient, mostly dark, full of things that would kill us just as readily as any hunter. But it was also the only place we could do magic beneath the moon and perhaps not die. The only place we could be what we truly were.
We climbed the wall in silence, dropping into the forest beyond. My boots sank in the ash, layers of it, soft as snow, the residue of fires that had swept through this place again and again over centuries, each burning leaving its own mark. The world was plagued by the Erelith, deposits of purple eternal flames that were scattered throughout Fuerlis, but none that sat on our path, thank the Furies. The trees here grew gnarled and twisted, their bark blackened, branches grasping toward the sky like charred fingers. I kept my eyes on the patches of moonlight that broke through the skeletal canopy, using them to pick my way between the crooked trunks. Something screamed in the distance, high and piercing, cut short by a sound that might have been feeding. Closer, I heard the rustle of movement through dead underbrush, the crack of a branch that could have been the wind but probably wasn’t.
Silas landed beside me without a sound, his massive griffin form magnificent and terrible in the moonlight. Ash puffed up around his talons, swirling briefly before settling back into the perpetual gray dust that coated everything here—the crooked trees, the exposed roots, even the air tasted of old smoke, though we hadn’t had a Burning in over five hundred years. I reachedup, running my hand along his feathered neck, drawing strength from his dark presence.
“I know you’re pissed at me. Save it for later,” I whispered. He snapped his beak with a fierce clack but protested no more. He was going to be moody for days.
“Ready?” Vitoria asked, her voice tight with anticipation.
I wasn’t sure if I was surprised or not to find Katarina waiting in the clearing, her blonde hair wild, her hands shaking as she traced patterns in the dirt. Earth magic. Stable. Grounding.
“You came,” Kat breathed, relief flooding her voice. “I didn’t know... after the raids?—”
I shot Vitoria a look. “You were planning for thisbeforethe raid.”
Kat might’ve been an acquaintance of Tor’s, but I trusted no one. A third would make this easier, faster even. But I still didn’t like it. I trusted only those closest to me when blatantly breaking every law. Kat had her own family to protect though, and who was I to deny a witch for wanting to live?
