5. Anouk
FIVE
ANOUK
Mathilda Thornwood’s cottage smells like dried flowers and grief.
The scent hits me the moment Caius opens the door—a combination of rose petals, old books, and the particular staleness of a space that hasn’t been lived in for days.
The morning light filters through lace curtains, illuminating dust motes that drift lazily in the air.
Everything is exactly as it should be. Exactly as Mathilda left it.
Exactly as the person who killed her wanted it to appear.
“The wards recognized you.” Caius’s voice is low, pitched for privacy even though we’re alone. “They let us in without resistance.”
“I keyed them myself, three years ago. Mathilda asked me to update her protections.” I step inside, my heels clicking against worn hardwood. “She was paranoid about security. Said she’d felt someone watching her.”
Three years. She’d been feeling watched for three years, and I’d dismissed it as an elderly witch’s anxiety.
Another failure to add to my growing collection.
The cottage is small but meticulously maintained.
Hand-crocheted doilies on every surface—the same pattern Sunny Clearwater sells at the bakery for tourists who think magical doilies will improve their love lives.
Photographs in mismatched frames covering the walls—decades of Thornwood family history captured in fading prints.
A knitting basket beside a well-worn armchair, the half-finished project still waiting for hands that will never complete it.
Flowers bloom in the window boxes despite the season, their magic fading without their mistress to sustain them. Berry Thornwick’s bookshop sent a condolence wreath that’s started to wilt against the doorframe.
We’re here for journals, not sentimentality.
“Where do we start?” Caius moves through the space with careful precision, his large frame somehow not disturbing a single item. The economy of his movements is impressive—and distracting. I keep noticing the way he navigates the cramped room without touching the furniture.
The way the morning light catches the sharp planes of his face.
Stop that.
“Her study.” I gesture toward a door on the far wall. “If she was hiding documents, she’d keep them close to where she worked.”
The study is even smaller than the main room—barely large enough for a desk, a chair, and three floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed with volumes that span centuries.
Mathilda’s handwriting labels the spines of hand-bound journals, each one dated and categorized with the precision of a lifelong archivist.
Official records. Everything documented, everything in its place.
None of it useful.
I pull open desk drawers while Caius examines the bookshelves. The silence between us is heavy, charged with awareness I refuse to acknowledge. Every time he moves, I track him from the corner of my vision. Every time I reach for a new drawer, I’m conscious of his attention on me.
“She was thorough.” Caius pulls out a journal dated forty years ago, flipping through pages of careful notations. “Meeting records, correspondence archives, spell documentation. Everything a council member should keep.”
“Too thorough.” I close another drawer—more of the same. “These are the records she wanted people to find. The official version of her work.”
“You think there’s an unofficial version.”
“Mathilda survived on this council for sixty-three years. She knew how to keep secrets.” I survey the room, trying to see it through her eyes. “The question is where she kept them.”
The search stretches on without yielding anything but dust and anguish.
“There’s nothing here.” Frustration sharpens my voice more than I intend. “Either she destroyed her research before they got to her, or—”
“Wait.” Caius goes still beside the largest bookshelf. His head tilts—a predator’s gesture, listening for prey. “Do you smell that?”
“I smell roses and old paper.”
“Underneath. There’s…” He presses his palm flat against the bookshelf, eyes closing. “Preservation magic. Old. Layered. Hidden beneath standard wards.”
I move closer, reaching out with my own senses. He’s right—there’s a second layer of protection woven into the wood itself, so faint I’d missed it entirely. Human senses wouldn’t catch it at all.
Wolf senses, apparently, are more discerning.
“How did you—”
“Wolves track by scent.” His eyes open, meeting mine. This close, I can see the faint laugh lines at the corners that deepen when he’s amused. “Magic has a smell. Old magic has a very particular smell.”
“You never mentioned that.”
“You never asked.”
The words land with more weight than they should. Years of distance, and I’ve never thought to ask how his senses work. Never thought to learn anything about him that wasn’t directly relevant to council business.
Never allowed myself to be curious.
He holds my gaze for a moment longer than necessary, then turns back to the bookshelf. “There’s a compartment behind this. The preservation magic is concentrated here, near the floor.”
We remove books in careful stacks, piling them on the already-crowded desk.
The work brings us into close proximity—shoulders brushing, hands nearly colliding as we reach for the same volume.
Each accidental touch sends warmth crackling through my skin, makes my magic stir in ways I can’t quite manage.
The hidden compartment reveals itself once the bottom shelf is clear—a section of paneling that’s slightly darker than the rest, worn smooth from years of secret access. Caius presses his palm against it, and the wood slides aside with a soft click.
Inside: journals. A dozen at least, bound in leather and protected by preservation spells so old they feel like breathing. The covers are scorched at the edges, blackened by fire that didn’t quite destroy them.
Someone tried to burn these. Someone failed.
Not entirely, though. Flipping through the nearest volume reveals scorched pages, missing entries, whole sections reduced to ash. These are fragments—rescued but incomplete.
“Mathilda.” My voice comes out rough. “She must have rescued them before—”
Before they could be completely destroyed. Before whoever wanted them gone could finish the job.
Before she died trying to protect them.
I pull out another journal with careful hands. The leather is warm against my fingers, the preservation magic humming with recognition. It knows me—knows my magic, my authority, my right to read what’s inside.
Mathilda keyed these protections to the coven leader. She wanted me to find them.
She just didn’t live long enough to tell me they existed.
The handwriting is shaky. Urgent. Nothing like Mathilda’s usual precise script.
We sit side by side on the study floor, backs against the desk, journals spread between us. The position is undignified for a coven leader, but there’s no room for formality when facing revelations that could shake the foundations of everything we know.
“The dreams are clearer now.” I read aloud, my voice steady despite the trembling of the pages. “I remember… before. We were different. Witches and shifters, not enemies. Not separate. Partners. The magic was… complete.”
Caius is silent beside me. His thigh presses against mine—unavoidable in this cramped space, or so I tell myself. His warmth is distracting. Grounding. Both at once.
I turn the page.
“The Severing was a ritual. I don’t know who performed it. But it tore a fundamental truth apart. We’ve been broken ever since.”
“The Severing.” Caius’s voice is low, thoughtful. “Valesh mentioned that word before she was captured. So did Iskra.”
“It’s in our archives too. The redacted sections.” I flip through more pages, scanning Mathilda’s increasingly frantic notes. “I’ve seen references—gaps in the historical record, documents that end mid-sentence, entire centuries that seem to have been erased. I assumed it was poor recordkeeping.”
“It wasn’t.”
“No.” The word tastes bitter. “It was deliberate. Someone removed the evidence of what we used to be.”
More pages. More revelations.
“The pairings were celebrated,” I read. “Witch and shifter, magic and instinct, finding balance in each other. The Warding Lines were stronger then. The protections more complete. We didn’t just coexist—we complemented each other.”
“My pack elders react strangely when old magic is mentioned.” Caius turns a burned page with careful fingers. “Not confusion. Grief. As if they’re remembering a loss they can’t name.”
“Because they are. They’re grieving a history that was stolen from them before they were born.” I find another passage, this one underlined three times. “Listen to this: ‘Someone doesn’t want this known. I felt them watching. I have to tell someone before—‘“
The entry ends mid-sentence. The next page is blank.
Mathilda never finished writing. Never got the chance to record whatever final piece of knowledge she’d uncovered.
Someone made sure of that.
“The Preservers.” Caius’s jaw tightens. “They’ve been protecting this secret for centuries. Removing evidence. Silencing anyone who gets too close to the truth.”
“And Mathilda got too close.” The pieces click into place. “She started remembering things she wasn’t supposed to remember. Started asking questions no one was supposed to ask.”
“Started threatening the careful lie they’ve maintained for generations.”
I lean my head back against the desk, staring at the cottage ceiling.
Cracks spider-web across the plaster—age and settling, probably, though in Mistvale you can never be certain.
Magic does strange things to architecture.
Just last month, Ember’s candle shop spontaneously developed a second floor that only appears on Tuesdays.
“They killed her to protect this.” My voice sounds distant, even to my own ears. “They’ve been killing people to protect this for centuries. Anyone who remembers. Anyone who questions. Anyone who threatens their precious ‘natural order.’”