Chapter 15 Winnie
I don’t remember crossing the threshold—just the weight of her in my arms and the echo of the magic still humming behind my ribs.
Fleur doesn’t stir. Her head rests against my shoulder, dark brown strands damp with sweat, breath shallow but steady. She’s warm, too warm, though not in the fevered way I’d fear—more like something recently extinguished. Like the heat of a spell still burning at the edges of her skin.
The tavern hasn’t fully quieted; the air feels thick with something waiting to settle. Every step I take stirs it. The stairs groan louder than they should, the floorboards feel too soft underfoot.
I don’t look back.
I don’t dare.
The hearth’s memory still flickers in the corner of my vision, the sigil flaring not with anger but…recognition. I hadn’t done anything, not really. And yet, it had bowed.
And Fleur had fallen.
My arms ache by the time I reach her bedroom, not from carrying her, but from the weight of what just happened.
From the feeling that something saw me.
And didn’t flinch.
I push the door open with my hip and ease us inside. The room is dim, lit only by the faint amber spill from the stairwell. It smells like flour and cedar and something warm I still can’t name—me.
My space.
But she doesn’t feel out of place here. Not now, not anymore.
I lower her onto the bed as gently as I can.
Her brow twitches when her head hits the pillow, but she doesn’t wake.
I hesitate, hovering for a second before I pull the quilt from the foot of the bed and drape it over her.
She looks pale. Not ghostly, just…spent.
Like whatever she gave downstairs took something she wasn’t meant to give alone.
I grab one of the small sachets from her nightstand—lemon balm, maybe chamomile, something I once heard helped after spell work that went too deep—and tuck it near her pillow.
I suddenly don’t recall where I heard that, but there is a knowing non-the-less.
I don’t know if it’ll help; I just need to feel like I’m doing something.
Then I sit—not in the chair, but on the floor.
The wood is cold against my back as I lean into it, knees bent, arms loosely wrapped around them. I’m not sure if I’m keeping vigil or trying to remember how to breathe.
Fleur should be the one helping me understand what just happened, explaining what it meant, but I saw the way the magic moved. I felt the way it shifted, not with resistance, but with recognition. As though it had been expecting me.
Like it already knew me.
And I’m not sure which part of that scares me more—the fact that it worked…
Or the fact that it didn’t surprise me.
I rest my forehead against my knees and close my eyes, but the images keep playing behind my eyelids anyway—the circle flaring, the way the candles burned too tall and too still, the way the whole tavern seemed to lean in, and then…the shift.
The moment I touched her, and it all changed.
It hadn’t pushed back.
It had listened.
My fingers are still tingling. I flex them in the dark, half-expecting to feel something crackle between them, but there’s nothing now, just skin and bone and a lingering sense of having been cracked open and seen.
I don’t know what I did, if I even did anything, but the magic reacted like it recognized me. Like it had been waiting for me, not her. Not the trained witch, the one with a bloodline and years of practice.
Me.
Just a tavern girl with a half-broken family grimoire tucked on a high shelf I haven’t opened in years.
My stomach twists. I don’t know if it’s guilt or fear or some awful braid of both. Fleur had the spell, the herbs, the circle, and it still swallowed her whole.
And yet somehow I walked in, touched her hand, and the entire tavern bowed.
What if it wasn’t a fluke?
What if it’s not over?
What if it’s me?
The thought curls tight in my chest, too big to swallow and too familiar to ignore.
And then—I’m not sitting on the cold floor beside Fleur’s bed. I’m small again, maybe nine, maybe ten. The tavern was quieter then, dimmer.
My mother was still alive.
She’s standing by the back door, salt pinched between her fingers, drawing a line across the threshold.
Not a circle, not a sigil, just a line. Clean and quiet and deliberate.
“You always do that,” I’d said. “Why?”
She didn’t look at me when she answered, just kept moving her fingers, her voice calm. “Keeps what’s ours, ours. Keeps the rest out.”
I thought it was superstition, a habit, something she’d picked up from her mother or some old book in the attic.
But sometimes, when the storm winds got too sharp, or the tavern creaked too loud late at night, I’d find fresh salt lines under the windows. Rosemary tucked in the stairwell, a cup of water resting beside my bed, still and undisturbed.
She never called it magic.
But the tavern always felt different afterward, calmer, like it finally had a moment to relax.
I thought it was her doing the protecting.
Maybe it was the tavern.
Maybe it was both of them.
Maybe…it still is.
The memory fades, but the feeling stays, that low, pulsing hum beneath the floorboards. Like something rooted here has always been awake, watching, waiting.
I shift slightly, stretching one leg out and pressing my palm to the floor. The boards are cool under my skin, but there’s a steadiness to them now, a quiet, like the tavern has settled for now, but not fallen asleep.
It knows I’m here, aware of its significance now.
And somehow, it doesn’t seem to mind.
I close my eyes again, just for a second, just to breathe.
That’s when I hear it—soft, like fabric rustling, and the smallest intake of breath. I look up fast, knees popping as I uncurl.
Fleur shifts under the blanket, face pinched like waking hurts a little. Her eyes flutter open, slow and uncertain. For a second, she just stares at the ceiling, and then she turns her head and sees me.
Her gaze lands like a weight, not sharp, not afraid, just…searching.
Measuring.
Like she’s trying to decide if I’m real.
I don’t say anything.
Neither does she.
We just look at each other—long enough that it starts to feel like something’s passing between us without words. Not a thought, not even a question, just the quiet press of I was there.
I saw you.
The silence stretches, delicate but not uncomfortable. The kind that can only exist when everything that just happened is still too big to touch.
Fleur swallows, slow and audible in the hush.
Then, finally, she speaks.
Her voice is rough at the edges, but steady. “What did you feel?”
I blink, caught off guard by the question, not because I don’t have an answer, but because I’m not sure how to say it.
My gaze drops to the floor, to the faint outline of a scuff near the leg of the bed, something grounding and ordinary.
When I speak, my voice comes out quieter than I mean it to.
“It didn’t feel dangerous.”
I pause, fingers curling around the hem of my sleeve.
“It felt…familiar.”
That’s when I see it—the weary expression Fleur had been sporting replaced by something else, something not foreign exactly, but wildly unexpected.
The faint remanence of…a smile.
Not a full one, just the barest softening at the corners of her mouth. A flicker of something almost wry, like she’d been holding her breath and only just remembered how to let it go.
She leans her head slightly toward the pillow, eyes still on mine. There’s something quieter in them now—not certainty, not relief.
But maybe a knowing.
She doesn’t confirm what I said, doesn’t explain, but she doesn’t dismiss it either.
Instead, she shifts under the blanket and murmurs, “Do you mind staying for a bit?”
Her voice is barely there, the edge of a thread unraveling.
“Just in case.”
I nod gently, and she shifts beneath the quilt and scoots slightly toward the wall, just enough to make room. Her eyes never leave mine. Then, without speaking, she lifts a hand and pats the spot beside her.
An invitation. Quiet. Unspoken. Certain.
I don’t hesitate.
The bed creaks softly as I climb in, careful not to disturb her more than I have to. The blanket’s still warm from her body, as is the space between us.
She stays facing me.
I settle on my side and close the distance without asking, one arm sliding around her waist like I’ve done it a hundred times. Her breath hitches, just barely, and then evens again.
Then, slowly, she shifts closer, tucking herself into the curve of my body. Her forehead presses to my collarbone, then lower, nestling into the crook of my neck like it’s instinct, like it’s safe.
I hold her tighter without thinking.
Her fingers find the fabric of my sleeve, soft and hesitant, and they don’t let go.
We don’t say a word.
Inside me, something breaks open in the silence. Not like something shattering, but like something thawing, letting go.
I press a kiss to her forehead before I can think better of it.
Not a promise, not a question.
Just something true.
And then, slowly, I let sleep take me.