Chapter 21 Fleur
The village looks different in the daylight.
Not changed, just quieter. Like the storm took something with it when it left.
Snow still lines the eaves and clings to the edges of roofs, but the sky has gone pale and clear.
Smoke rises from chimneys; a few townsfolk linger in doorways, speaking in hushed voices, blinking into the light.
One man mutters something about the clocks stopping, while a woman near the bakery says she dreamed the moon spoke to her. No one seems eager to name it magic.
Just the storm messing with things.
I keep my head down and move through the narrow street.
No one stops me.
But a few eyes linger longer than I’d like.
They know I was in the tavern. They know I walked through the snow when no one else dared to. I wonder if they know something else, too.
My cottage sits just past the baker’s, where the cobbled road meets the woods. The shutters are still closed. A dusting of frost clings to the windowpanes. I pause at the door, fingers resting on the latch.
It was only one night.
And yet, it feels like the whole world shifted.
Inside, everything is where I left it. The kettle on the table. The half-finished charm still lying open beside my notes. Even my boots by the hearth, stiff with dried mud.
A strange ache curls in my chest.
I should be relieved.
But all I feel is the absence.
I set my basket down, fingers lingering on the handle before pulling away. The fire takes a few minutes to coax back to life. While it builds, I move through the space—touching, adjusting, grounding myself in the familiar.
Outside, the village creaks softly back into motion.
Inside, I wonder if I brought the quiet with me.
He’s not here.
Jinx, who usually twines around my ankles before I even get the door fully open, is curled up somewhere warm without me.
I press the dish back into place and close the cupboard gently. The silence that follows is heavier than it should be. I breathe through it, forcing my shoulders to loosen, forcing the air to move in and out like everything is fine. Normal.
It isn’t.
A thread has been pulled loose in my chest. I shouldn’t feel his absence so sharply, but I do.
Eventually, I step back outside, basket in hand.
The air is crisper than it was the night of the storm—clearer, touched by the faint sweetness of thawing ice and sun-warmed bark. As I walk past the first few evergreens along the tree line, something tugs at the edge of my senses.
The forest feels…shifted.
Not darker. Not dangerous. Just different.
As if the magic stirred awake during the storm didn’t quite settle back to sleep.
Patches of green peek through the snow where the ground has begun to warm from the storm. I crouch by a familiar bend in the path, brushing away the frost to uncover the soft, silvery fronds of wild feverfew. A little farther in, the roots of a split alder tree hum faintly beneath my fingertips.
It’s all still here.
But not untouched.
As I gather herbs—feverfew, chickweed, the early shoots of valerian—I notice more signs. Stones nudged just out of place. Moss growing in perfect spirals. A ring of toadstools that wasn’t there before.
The magic hasn’t gone. It’s only changed shape.
Like me.
Like everything.
By the time I turn back toward home, my basket is half full and my thoughts are heavier than I’d like. The tavern tugs at me—its warmth, its impossible quiet, and the girl I left standing in the doorway with her hands in her sleeves, unsure how to let me go.
I don’t know how to stay gone, either.
Not from him, but definitely not from her.