Page 7 of Moth to a Flame

She didn’t answer or look at me, just surveyed the damage, and I saw her shoulders slump slightly. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter—exhausted. “Just…get out.”

Something wasn’t right. She sounded angry, but as my antennae twitched, that wasn’t what it tasted like. All they sensed was the sadness from before, but magnified tenfold. Through the illusion of anger, I felt her devastation when she looked at that crushed flower.

This wasn’t just about money or inconvenience. I’d destroyed something important.

Get to the light. Stay by her side.

“I can help fix this,” I said. That’s what I’d done my whole life: fix other people’s problems.

She laughed, and it was humorless. “Unless you can turn back time or resurrect dead plants, I don’t think⁠—”

A strange tingling sensation crawled across my skin. It started at my hands and spread up my arms until my antennae stuck straight out.

The crushed flower was…glowing. Faintly, probably not visible to human eyes, but definitely glowing. Silver light pulsed from its broken stem and between its petals.

“What are you looking at?” The witch scowled.

The glow intensified. The tingling was in my chest now too, warm and building, almost like a sneeze that couldn’t get out. The broken flower began to vibrate.

Then the glow exploded outward in a cloud of shimmering pollen.

My hands flew to my face, trying to block it. Who knew what kind of weird powers something in this greenhouse of toxic treasures had? But the pollen was everywhere. I felt it coat the inside of my nose and lungs, along with my antennae, which were twitching like crazy. The witch gasped as it settled over her too, her eyes wide with shock.

For a moment, nothing happened. We just stared at each other, her skin covered in silver, glowing dust.

Then I felt her.

Not physically—emotionally. A rush of exhaustion and frustration and bone-deep loneliness that definitely wasn’t mine slammed into me so hard I staggered. Beneath that, a thread of warmth, of connection, that felt like coming home after a long journey. An echo of the light I’d seen in her.

What the fuck?

“No,” the witch whispered, gaping at me in horror. “No, no, no⁠—”

And then I felt that too. Her panic flooded through me like we were sharing the same nervous system. I certainly hadn’t signed up for that.

“What did you do?” I demanded, even though I could feel that she was just as confused as I was.

“What did I do?” She whirled on me. “You’re the one who crashed through my greenhouse and crushed my Moon Queen flower!”

“A what?”

“A Moon Queen flower! It’s—” She pressed her hands to her temples. “Can you feel that? Can you feel me?”

I could. Gods help me, I could. Her anger was still there, but underneath it was fear and sadness that she was trying desperately to hide. And beneath that…an echo of what I was feeling.

She could feel me too.

“This is bad,” she muttered, pacing now, glass crunching under her boots. “This is really, really bad.”

“What is it? What’s happening?”

She stopped pacing and looked at me. It was an assessment, and I suddenly felt pinned to a spreading board. She was noting my height, my tattoos, my piercings, the blood still dripping down my face. Cataloging me.

Then something slipped through her analysis.

Attraction.

It was hot and slid down my spine, and I felt my cheeks flush at the same time hers did. Then her eyes went wide, and she shoved it down. She’d thought I was attractive for exactly half a second before remembering I’d destroyed her precious ritual, and her annoyance flared at the impulse.