Chapter 13 Winnie
It starts with fire.
A small flame, cupped between two hands.
It dances in the darkness, casting light only far enough to reveal a pale wrist, the curve of a jaw, the outline of a mouth trying not to tremble.
The hands holding the flame are callused, sure, but there’s a shake to them, a kind of grief baked too long into the bones.
Snow falls slow and heavy all around us. Thick as wool, it shouldn’t be possible—snow and fire side by side—but it doesn’t melt, doesn’t hiss or smoke, just settles. On shoulders, on lashes, in the hollow between two sets of feet that don’t quite bridge the gap.
The world is quiet, too quiet, like it’s holding out for something, for someone.
And I know them.
Not by name, not by face, but by something older, something in my blood.
One of them is cloaked in gray, her magic crackling faintly under her skin, like a smothered ember.
The other’s hair blazes like mine, copper and untamed, full of heat.
Her magic burns hotter and she doesn’t try to hide it.
If anything, she leans into it, dares it to consume her.
Their hands hover close, never touching. The flame rests between them, flickering with every breath they take.
I know I’m dreaming, but it doesn’t feel like a dream. It feels like…I’ve stepped into someone else’s memory.
The red-haired witch speaks first.
“I would have done it,” she says. Her voice is low, raspy with unshed tears. “I would’ve bound myself to you.”
The other shakes her head slowly. “I know.”
“You wanted it too.”
“I did.” A beat. “Still do.”
“Then why didn’t we?”
The gray-cloaked witch doesn’t answer right away, just lifts her chin and glances past the falling snow to something I can’t see—beyond the trees, beyond the night, beyond the quiet ache that stretches between them like a tether pulled too tight.
“They were afraid of us,” she says finally. “Afraid of what we could become together. What we already were.”
“We could’ve changed everything.”
“We could’ve burned it all down.”
“And they knew it.” The red-haired witch steps closer. “So they told us to dim ourselves. To separate. To pretend it wasn’t real.”
“They only left us one choice,” the other says. “Bind ourselves and dilute our power, become less—or stay apart, and lose each other slowly.”
The red-haired witch swallows. Her eyes glisten, even in the firelight.
“Two flames are easier to extinguish than one wildfire.”
The other lets out a quiet, broken sound. “I couldn’t ask you to give that up.”
“You didn’t have to ask.”
Their hands touch.
And for a moment, the snow stills.
The flame between them roars upward—gold and red and searing white. It doesn’t hurt. It feels like memory, like mourning. Like a scream that never had the chance to be voiced.
Their silhouettes are outlined in light.
Then it all goes dark.
The dark doesn’t stay. It shifts—into warmth, into color. The fire is still there, but smaller now. It rests in a wide hearth made of smooth black stone. The two witches sit in front of it, shoulder to shoulder, their silhouettes barely distinct from one another in the glow.
I don’t know if this is the same moment or a memory folded into the last. I don’t know if I’m seeing what was, or what could’ve been.
Their hands are still touching.
“I would’ve risked it,” the red-haired one says, voice softer now. “Even if it ruined us, even if the binding tore us apart.”
The other looks down at their joined hands. “You were always braver than me.”
“No,” the redhead replies, barely a whisper. “Just more reckless.”
They laugh, quietly. But the sound doesn’t reach their eyes.
Outside the windows, snow still falls. A wind moves through the trees—slow and low, like it’s humming.
“They made us think it was love or power,” says the gray-cloaked witch. “That we had to choose.”
“And we did.”
A pause.
“But I’ve never stopped wondering,” the red-haired witch continues. “If we bound ourselves now…not with magic, but with choice, with memory…would it still work eventually?”
The other reaches up, brushing a curl back from her face. Her touch is careful, reverent. “If it does,” she murmurs, “then maybe someone will feel it. Someday.”
“They’ll know.”
“They’ll know what we couldn’t say out loud.”
The red-haired witch lifts her head and looks straight at me.
Not the other witch—me.
Her eyes burn like coals.
“Wake up.”
And I do.
I sit up too fast.
The blanket tangles around my legs as my heart pounds against my ribcage, like I’ve run miles in my sleep. I brace a hand against the mattress, trying to catch my breath, but the room feels too small, too quiet.
The fire must’ve gone out; only the faintest orange light glows from the hearth downstairs, casting warped shadows up the stairwell.
And something in me won’t settle.
The dream clings to me like ash—sharp, bitter at the edges. Not foggy like dreams usually are. I can still feel the snow falling on my skin, can still hear her voice telling me to wake up. Her eyes still burn behind mine.
And the sigil.
Gods. The sigil.
I shove the covers off and dangle my feet over the side of the bed. The floor is cold against my feet, but I don’t stop. I barely register the creak of the boards beneath me as I move across the room and out into the hallway.
The tavern is dead quiet, but I swear I can feel something moving. Not wind, not footsteps.
Memory.
Fleur’s door is cracked open. The glow from her room flickers faintly against the dark. A candle, maybe.
I lift my hand to knock but don’t get the chance.
She’s already sitting up in bed.
Her eyes find mine like she was expecting me.
We don’t speak at first, just stare. My breath catches in my throat because I see it in her face—wide-eyed, pale, lips parted like she’s still trying to catch up with something that ran ahead of her.
“You saw them too,” I whisper.
She nods. “The fire,” she says. “The snow.”
I step inside and close the door behind me. “The red-haired one,” I say.
Her eyes flick to my hair, then back to my face. “The other one had a gray cloak.”
We sit in the quiet.
I don’t know how to describe the feeling building inside me, like something old is rising to the surface. Like being remembered by something I didn’t know I’d forgotten.
“They loved each other,” I say quietly.
Fleur nods again, slower this time. “But they never bound themselves.”
“They couldn’t.”
“They were too powerful,” she continues, voice distant. “And the world around them didn’t want them joined, not without diluting their power entirely.”
I cross the room, sink onto the edge of her bed. “They had to choose. Power or love.”
“And they chose to stay apart.”
A pause.
“But not really,” I whisper.
Fleur looks at me, candlelight flickering in her eyes. “No,” she says. “Not really.”
She draws her knees to her chest, arms wrapped around them beneath the blanket. Her lips move like she’s trying to piece something together and doesn’t quite know how to say it yet.
Finally, she says, “That phrase—Descendant of Fire.”
I blink. “From the letter?”
She nods. “I’ve heard it before. A handful of times. Whispered. Written in scraps passed between women in my family. Always vague. Always like a warning.”
“And it meant you?”
“That’s what I thought,” she says. “I come from a long line of fire witches. Herbs mostly, but always fire rituals. My mother said our blood was sparked in flame, that we were made to burn through the dark. I thought it was just lore.”
I hesitate. “But?”
She looks at me.
And then, in a whisper—“But the red-haired witch in the dream wasn’t you.”
It’s not a question; it’s a certainty.
My throat goes dry.
“I think,” she says slowly, “you were her. Or descended from her. That fire didn’t come from me.”
I want to argue. I want to laugh it off.
But all I can think about is how the dream felt like memory, like the fog clearing and returning home.
Like grief.
“I don’t know where I come from,” I say, softer than I mean to. “Not really. I’ve always just…felt things. The pull of certain places, the way the air hums around some people.”
Fleur studies me like I’m something she’s only just now seeing clearly. “I think our ancestors were the ones in the dream,” she says. “And I think the magic remembers.”
My breath catches. “Why now?”
She doesn’t answer right away, just glances toward the window, where the wind presses against the glass, snow spiraling in slow, soundless currents.
“I don’t know,” she says. “But something woke Jinx, something opened the floor. Something pulled me here the night of the Yule Moon, and now something’s opening us.”
I don’t speak—not because I don’t have anything to say, but because I’m afraid that if I do, the moment will slip away. Like mist disturbed by breath, like waking too soon.
The silence stretches between us, but it doesn’t feel empty.
Fleur’s eyes stay on the window, but her hand shifts under the blanket—just enough that it brushes mine.
She doesn’t look at me when it happens, doesn’t say a word. Just lets her fingers rest there. Still. Warm.
And I let them stay.
Outside, the wind sighs against the eaves. Somewhere downstairs, the hearth groans, a single ember cracking in the quiet.
“I don’t think it was just a dream,” I whisper, after a while.
“No,” she says. “Me either.”
We don’t speak again.
When I finally lay down beside her, blanket shared between us, her shoulder close enough to feel, I swear something pulses once more beneath the floorboards—slow and steady, like the beat of something waking up after a long, cold sleep.