The Witch of Fading Echoes A Fading Witch. Four Fallen Gods. One Deadly Bargain. #3
Need frightened her more than magic ever had.
Selene closed the book and stood.
Her body ached from the spell. Her thumb had stopped bleeding, but the cut throbbed in time with her pulse. Her tongue still moved uselessly behind her teeth, searching for sweetness, salt, blood, anything. There was nothing. Only texture. Only pressure. Only the memory of flavor.
Taste had been such a small pleasure.
She had not known it was a world until it was gone.
The blue candle beside the ledger had burned down to a nub of wax. Its last thread of smoke curled toward the ceiling like a beckoning finger.
Selene looked up.
Above the apothecary was a room no customer had ever seen.
Her sealed attic.
The place where Ashwick witches put the objects they were too afraid to use and too sentimental to destroy.
“No,” she whispered.
But her hands were already moving.
By full dark, the storm had returned with teeth.
It slammed rain against the roof, battered the crooked clocktower, and dragged thunder over Bellgrave’s rooftops like chains across stone.
The city below Selene’s attic had gone black except for the occasional smear of gaslight trembling through the rain.
The clock above the shop groaned in the wind, its dead bell shuddering in the tower though it had not rung in twenty-seven years.
Selene climbed the narrow stairs with Niall’s spellbook tucked under one arm and a brass tray balanced in both hands.
On the tray sat grave salt, black thread, burnt rosemary, four stolen coins, a chipped bowl, a blue candle, and a knife with a handle made from saint-bone.
Minor luck spirits, the ritual claimed.
Small, hungry, bargain-loving creatures. Mean little things that lived in gutters, dice cups, crossroads, and the breath between one bad decision and the next. A witch could trap them with salt. Bribe them with copper. Trick them with wordplay if she was clever and cruel enough.
Selene could handle minor spirits.
She had handled worse.
She had buried family, lied to magistrates, stolen from churches, stitched her own wounds by candlelight, and told grieving mothers when a soul had already passed too far to call back.
She could handle small gods with grubby hands and greedy mouths.
She could handle anything that fit inside a circle.
The attic door resisted when she pushed it open.
It always did.
A breath of stale air slid over her face, carrying the smell of dust, old herbs, wax, mouse droppings, and trapped magic.
The ceiling sloped low on both sides, forcing Selene to duck as she stepped inside.
Broken mirrors hung from the rafters beneath black cloth.
Moth-eaten curtains covered a round window no one could see from the street.
Shelves lined the walls, crowded with jars of captured last words.
Each jar held a faint glow.
Some blue. Some gold. Some red as fresh wounds.
Whenever lightning flashed, the last words stirred in their glass prisons, mouths without faces forming syllables that never reached the air.
Selene set the tray in the center of the room.
“You are not begging,” she told herself.
The words sounded thin.
She was not begging.
She was conducting research under extreme circumstances.
She was seeking information from lesser entities.
She was not putting her throat beneath the blade of anything powerful enough to smile while cutting.
Selene pushed Niall’s warning from her mind and knelt.
The floorboards were old, dark, and scored with the marks of previous rituals. Her mother’s. Her grandmother’s. Hers, from before she knew better. Some circles had been scrubbed away. Others remained as pale scars in the wood.
She poured grave salt in a careful ring first, wide enough to hold four minor spirits if they came in a cluster.
Then she laid black thread along the inner edge, knotting it at the cardinal points.
Burnt rosemary came next, crushed between her fingers until the bitter scent rose sharp and green through the dust. She tried not to think about how awful it would be when smell left her too.
No.
Not when.
If.
She placed the four coins at the quarters of the circle.
Each had been stolen from the eyes of a saint-statue.
Saint Arvel, patron of merciful lies.
Saint Morcant, patron of prisoners.
Saint Oriel, patron of locked doors.
Saint Vessa, patron of women who survived their own funerals.
The coins were cold, darker than silver, and stamped with faces worn almost smooth by rain and prayer.
Selene set the chipped bowl in the center of the circle and filled it with a pinch of salt, three drops of her blood, and the ash of the rosemary.
The blue candle went behind it.
The flame caught before she touched it.
Selene stilled.
A soft sound moved through the attic.
Not a voice.
Not yet.
The last words in their jars turned toward her.
Selene swallowed.
She could stop.
She could close the book, scrape the salt away, bury Niall’s warning under bricks again, and wait for the curse to take whatever it wanted next. Touch. Hearing. Sight. Her entire body reduced piece by piece into a haunted room she still had to live inside.
Her tongue pressed against her teeth.
No taste of fear.
No taste of blood.
Only the memory of both.
Selene opened the spellbook.
The ritual was short.
That frightened her too.
The oldest spells were often brief. They did not need elaborate rhymes or ornamental invocations. They were doors with handles worn smooth by centuries of desperate hands.
Selene placed her palm flat against the page.
“By salt for hunger,” she began.
The grave salt snapped.
“By thread for binding.”
The black thread tightened against the floorboards as if pulled by invisible fingers.
“By ash for what has burned and still remembers burning.”
The rosemary smoke rose in a thin, twisting column.
“By coin for fortune’s eye.”
The four stolen coins clicked once against the wood.
Thunder broke above the clocktower.
The attic bent.
Selene felt it in her bones before she saw it: the room dipping inward, the shelves creaking, the roof beams groaning beneath a pressure too vast to belong to anything minor. The jars of last words flared bright. One cracked from top to bottom, spilling a dead woman’s final “run” into the air.
Selene snatched up the saint-bone knife.
The candle flame turned black at the center.
“No,” she whispered.
The circle ignited.
Not with fire.
With shadow.
The first man appeared kneeling in the center of the salt ring, head bowed, one hand braced against the floor as if he had been dragged there from some battlefield beneath the earth.
He did not gasp.
He did not startle.
He simply lifted his head.
Selene forgot, for one breath, how to move.
He was broad-shouldered and dark-haired, his body wrapped in a long black coat damp with rain that had not fallen in the attic.
A scar cut along his jaw, pale against brown skin, disappearing beneath the shadow of stubble.
His stillness was so complete it made every other thing in the room seem frantic and breakable.
His eyes moved over Selene’s trembling hands.
The salt circle.
The saint-bone knife.
The blade at her hip.
Then back to her face.
“You should have drawn the circle wider,” he said.
His voice was low. Rough. Not loud, but the room obeyed it anyway.
Selene’s grip tightened on the knife. “Name yourself.”
His mouth barely moved. “Ronan Blackthorne.”
The name struck the floor like iron.
One of the stolen coins split in half.
Before Selene could breathe, someone laughed above her.
She looked up.
The second man lounged against a roof beam as if he had been resting there for hours, one knee bent, one arm draped with infuriating ease.
He was lean where Ronan was solid, elegant where Ronan was severe, dressed in dark velvet that shimmered green when lightning flashed.
His hair was the color of polished chestnut, his eyes bright and fox-gold, and his mouth curved like he had never met a sin he did not intend to improve.
“Ashwick,” he murmured. “What a reckless little disaster you are.”
Selene jerked the knife toward him. “Get down.”
“Already giving orders.” His smile widened. “I may adore you.”
“You may bleed on my floor.”
“Many have offered. Few have made it memorable.”
Ronan did not look up. “Lucien.”
The warning in his voice scraped along Selene’s spine.
The man on the beam sighed with theatrical disappointment and dropped soundlessly to the floor outside the circle.
Outside.
Selene’s stomach turned cold.
The circle was intact.
The salt unbroken.
The thread still tight.
“How did you—”
A hand closed around her wrist from behind.
Selene reacted on instinct, twisting for the knife at her hip.
The grip tightened just enough to stop her.
Not hard.
Not cruelly.
Gently.
That gentleness shocked her more than force would have.
“No,” said a deep voice behind her.
Selene went still.
The third man stood close enough that his heat touched her back through the air.
He was huge, taller even than Ronan, with shoulders built for armor and hands scarred across the knuckles.
His hair was black and cropped short. A jagged mark ran from his temple down the side of his throat, disappearing beneath a shirt darkened by old bloodstains or shadow.
He looked like violence had once been wild in him and had learned, over centuries, how to wait.
Selene looked down at his hand around her wrist.
He released her immediately.
As if she had chosen it.
“Name,” she demanded, though her voice had roughened.
“Dorian Voss.”
Only that.
No smile. No apology. No explanation.
The fourth man appeared without spectacle.
One moment the old cedar trunk beneath the round window was empty.
The next, he sat on it with his hands folded loosely between his knees, calm as moonlight over a grave.
Selene turned toward him slowly.
He was slender compared to the others, though not fragile. His dark hair fell in soft waves to his collar. His eyes were almost black, reflective as deep water, and too knowing by half. He did not look at Selene first. He looked at the spellbook open on the floor.