She doesn’t smile. She just presses her hands together, fingertips trembling.
“I have to be ready,” she says. “Because I don’t think we’ll get a warning when whatever’s coming arrives.”
I don’t correct her. Because she’s right.
For the next hour,she practices laying lines, drawing protective layers in different directions. I show her how to reinforce with blood—just a drop—and how to seal a line using breath instead of voice if stealth is required. She absorbs it all. Like it’s already in her. Like Johanna passed it down through marrow and memory and grief.
Mari stays inside, Delphina sitting with her. I hear their laughter through the open window. It cuts through the weight in the air like sunlight through mist.
After Krista’s fourth attempt at a fire ward, she sags back onto the ground, hair clinging to her temples, face flushed.
“I’m useless with heat spells,” she mutters.
“Your affinity’s with boundary work,” I say, tossing her a flask. “Not aggression. You’ll hold the line, not break through it.”
“Comforting,” she says, after a long drink. “I’ll be the magical equivalent of a well-locked door.”
I glance at her. “You’re more than that.”
She meets my eyes, and something flickers there—tired but steady, worn but burning. She nods once.
“Good,” she says. “Because if something tries to take her, I’ll burn this whole town down to stop it.”
And I believe her.
CHAPTER 11
KRISTA
The night tastes like woodsmoke and rain that never quite arrives.
It’s cool but not cold, the air damp and still holding the weight of something that hasn’t broken yet, and I find myself barefoot on the porch long after Mari’s gone to bed. The floorboards are warm from the day’s sun, and I curl my toes into the old wood as if the house might hold me steady if I just touch it hard enough.
I’m tired in a way that no sleep can fix.
Not the kind of tired that comes from work or from worry, but the bone-deep weariness that follows when you’ve been trying to be brave for too long, when you keep smiling because you think the people around you need it more than you do, and you’ve forgotten what your face looks like when you’re not pretending everything’s fine.
The garden is dark but not silent. Crickets hum like a lullaby meant for something older than people, and the trees sway like they’re listening. I know this feeling. It’s the one that always used to settle in around midnight back in the old apartment, when Michael was out and the silence stopped pretending it waspeaceful. It’s the moment the mask starts slipping, even when no one’s watching.
Hardin steps onto the porch without a sound.
He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t announce himself or ask if he can stay. Just walks up beside me and stands there, quiet and heavy in that way he has, like a thunderstorm right before the crack. He smells like pine smoke and metal and something warmer beneath it, something steady. His presence doesn’t ask permission. But it never pushes either.
“I didn’t hear you come up,” I say, not looking at him.
“You were somewhere else.”
I nod, watching the trees. “I usually am, these days.”
He doesn’t press. He just waits.
The wind stirs the edge of my sweater, and I wrap it tighter around myself like it might hold in more than heat.
“You ever spend so long pretending something didn’t hurt that you almost forgot it did?” I ask, voice quiet, almost to myself.
Hardin doesn’t move, but I feel his attention settle sharper on me.
“I used to think Michael wasn’t cruel,” I say. “That I was just sensitive. That maybe I was too needy or too tired or not graceful enough in the ways he needed me to be. He never raised his voice. Never hit. He just… peeled me back, one word at a time.”
