Chapter 9 Sable #2
I wanted to argue. Wanted to insist that love didn't matter when you'd failed someone so completely. But the words wouldn't come.
Instead, I moved through the room, gathering what I could. A bundle of sage tied with red thread. A vial of her perfume—rose and sandalwood, the scent of my childhood. A small wooden figure she'd carved for me when I was five, worn smooth by years of being clutched in small hands.
Each object went into my bag, each one a piece of her I could carry with me.
"Sable." Harkan's voice had changed. Sharpened. "What is that?"
I followed his gaze to the shelf beside the window, tucked between two jars of preserved moonflower. A small wooden box I didn't recognize.
It wasn't my mother's. The craftsmanship was wrong—too rough, too recent. And the wood was stained with something dark that made my truth-sense recoil.
"What is that?" Harkan asked, following my gaze.
"I don't know." I shoved the grimoire into my bag, slipped it off my shoulder, and moved toward the shelf, my heart pounding. "It doesn't belong here."
"Don't—"
But I was already reaching for it, my fingers closing around the rough wood before he could stop me.
The vision hit like a lightning strike.
A man's hands, scarred and sure, measuring powder into a copper bowl.
His face—his face is wrong. Obscured. Where his features should be, the vision itself seems damaged, gouged out like someone had taken claws to a photograph and raked them across the image.
Three deep scratches through the place where eyes and nose and mouth should be, leaving nothing but darkness and distortion.
He's humming as he works, a tuneless melody that makes my skin crawl.
Two glass vials, filled with liquids that shimmer with barely contained power.
Dragon's bile and phoenix ash suspended in moonwater—I recognize them instantly, know what happens when they meet.
My mother warned me about this combination when I was barely old enough to hold a mortar.
"Never let them touch, Sable. The reaction is instant.
Unstoppable. It will burn through stone itself. "
He places one vial above the other, separated by nothing but a thin membrane of spelled wax. The kind that dissolves slowly. Patiently. A trap that doesn't need a trigger—just time.
His face turns, and for a moment, I almost see him clearly—but the vision blurs, the gouges through his cheek the only detail that remains sharp. He's smiling. Satisfied.
"Burn," he whispers, his voice distorted as if coming from a distant nightmare. "Burn like you should have years ago."
I wrenched my hand away from the box, gasping, my whole body shaking.
"Sable!" Harkan was there, his hands on my shoulders, his face tight with alarm. "What did you see?"
"Dragon's bile and phoenix ash," I choked out. "In moonwater. Separated by spelled wax—it's already dissolving. When they touch—"
I didn't need to finish. Understanding flashed across his face. Every witch knew what happened when those ingredients met. Unstoppable fire. The kind that burned through stone.
"Run!"
He grabbed me around the waist and hauled me toward the door. We were thundering down the stairs, Harkan half-carrying me, my feet barely touching the steps.
"The back!" I shouted. "There's a door through the—"
The world turned white.
Harkan twisted midair, pulling me against his chest, his body curling around mine like a shield.
The explosion threw us through the back doorway, heat and sound and fury slamming into us like a physical force.
But when we hit the cobblestones, it was his back that took the impact, his arms that stayed locked around me, his grunt of pain that vibrated through my bones.
For a moment, everything was ringing silence and the smell of smoke and the frantic beat of his heart against my cheek.
Then he was rolling us over, checking me for injuries, his mouth moving but the words lost in the high-pitched whine filling my ears.
Behind us, my shop—my mother's shop—was burning.
Flames licked from every window, black smoke billowing into the morning sky. Numb, I stood there as my life turned to ash. The herbs I'd painstakingly collected. The potions I'd brewed. The wards I'd woven into every beam and board.
Gone. All of it gone.
"No," I whispered. "No, no, no—"
My mother's workroom. Her things. The only pieces of her I had left.
I tried to run toward the flames, but Harkan caught me, his arms banding around my waist like iron.
"Let me go! I have to—there might still be—"
"It's gone." His voice was rough in my ear, his grip unbreakable. "Sable, it's gone. You can't save it."
"Her things!" The words tore out of me, ragged and desperate. "My mother's grimoire—her ring—I have to—"
"You'll die if you go in there!"
I fought him, anyway. Thrashed and clawed and screamed until my throat was raw, until the strength left my limbs and I sagged against him, watching the flames devour everything I had left of her.
The grimoire. The ring. An entire life of memories. My mother's handwriting. Her pressed flowers. The blanket that still smelled like her perfume.
My childhood. My work. My mother…
Everything was just… gone.
Ash. Nothing but ash.
And somewhere in the Divide, the faceless man from my vision was smiling.
I stopped fighting. Stopped screaming. Let Harkan hold me upright as the fire roared and the smoke rose and the last pieces of my mother turned to ash.
There was nothing left.
Nothing at all.