“Your family will be fine. I’ve already made arrangements.” Viktor’s hand emerged from his coat. “Your wife will receive a settlement. Your daughters’ tuition will be covered. They’ll be told you died in an accident, a lab explosion, perhaps. Something befitting an apothecary.”
Tobias went pale. “You’ve already…”
“I’m not a monster, Tobias. Just a businessman protecting his interests.”
Hazel pressed herself against the oak’s bark when she saw what Viktor withdrew.
An obsidian blade. Lightless, humming with dark magic that made her teeth ache. She’d seen illustrations of fae-killers in her grandmother’s grimoires, but never the real thing. The weapon was illegal in forty-seven supernatural jurisdictions. Possession alone carried a century in the Pit.
The fae saw it too. His face went gray as ash. “Viktor?—”
“It’s nothing personal.” Viktor examined the blade like a man checking his watch. “You have a family. I have a family. We both do what we must to protect them.”
“I’ll recant. I’ll tell them I made it up, that I was settling a personal grudge…”
“We both know that won’t help now.” Viktor looked up. “I’m sorry, old friend. I truly am.”
“Please. My girls?—”
The blade moved faster than human eyes could follow.
But Hazel’s witch sight caught every detail. The way Tobias’s hands came up too late, a futile gesture against the inevitable. The obsidian edge sliding between his ribs with terrible ease. The way his silver blood, fae blood ancient and bright, bloomed across his white shirt like ink spreading through water. The exact moment his life force flickered and died, his eyes going flat and empty while his mouth still shaped his daughters’ names.
Then the explosion.
Magic erupted from the fae’s death like a bomb, waves of silver and gold power crashing through the forest. Hazel’s defensive shields flared to life, wrapping her in purple light as the death magic slammed into her barriers. The impact drove her backward into the oak’s trunk, bark scraping through her jacket. She couldn’t inhale. Couldn’t move.
She gasped.
A tiny sound. Barely audible over the settling magic.
Viktor’s head turned toward her hiding spot. Slowly. Deliberately.
Their eyes met through the curtain of leaves. His expression didn’t change. He simply looked at her the way he might look at an unexpected line item in a ledger.
Then he smiled. Small. Polite.
Hazel ran.
She crashed through the underbrush,branches catching at her jacket and whipping across her face. The moonbell basket was gone, dropped somewhere in those first panicked seconds, hours of careful work scattered across the forest floor. Behind her, heavy footsteps pounded through the fallen leaves. More than one pursuer. Viktor had called in backup.
“This way,” Azrael hissed, streaking ahead on a path only he could see.
Hazel followed, lungs burning, feet catching on roots she’d walked around a hundred times before. She’d known these woods for twenty years, had mapped every game trail and hidden stream, but panic made her stupid. Her boot caught on a root and she stumbled, catching herself against a birch tree. The bark was cold and damp beneath her palms. Real. Grounding.
Move, she told herself.Mourn later. Move now.
The footsteps were getting closer.
She pulled a handful of sage from her gathering pouch, whispered a quick misdirection charm, and scattered the herb behind her. Not enough to stop determined pursuers, but it might buy her a few minutes. Might make them question which direction she’d gone.
“Stop using magic,” Azrael called back. “You’re leaving a trail.”
He was right. Panicked hedge witches made stupid mistakes, and magic left signatures that anyone with the right senses could follow. She bit down on her power, forcing it back into the careful shields she’d maintained since childhood. The magical signature would fade, but slowly. Too slowly.
The town’s edge appeared through the trees. Streetlights casting orange pools on empty sidewalks. Neat suburban lawns with their sleeping houses and ordinary problems. The comforting bulk of her shop building, three stories of converted Victorian with its hand-painted sign: Wicked Brews.
Home. Safety. The only place in the world that was truly hers.
