Chapter 1
Syneca
The world gnaws at our kind with iron teeth and silver tongues. So, as our first, I write these truths in soot and memory, that you might live long enough to burn brightly. Remember: a Blood Moon brings blood magic, and blood magic brings ruin.
There was something almost beautiful about the way cold steel kissed my throat, the hunter’s blade finding that delicate space where breath becomes whisper, where life reaches the edge of ending.
He pressed against my back with the promise of violence, and I found the dark peace that came when magic sang through my fingers.
“One sound, witch,” the bastard breathed against my ear, his threat carrying a strange note of satisfaction, “and I’ll carve out your windpipe.”
How typical. Twenty-seven years of hiding, only to be undone by some hunter who probably couldn’t even spell ‘magic’ correctly. The irony would have made me laugh if I weren’t about to die for it.
Behind us, three more hunters moved through my tiny apartment, their boots shaking the floorboards like thunder, their hands searching for evidence of the illegal magic that lived in my bones.
They searched for the secrets I’d woven into stone and silver, for the enchantments that shouldn’t exist and the art I’d bled into it—in spite of every law saying I had no right to create unmonitored.
In this moment, blade to throat, magic hidden, hunters circling, I stood with a truth I’d always known: there were only two ways to exist in this world, and I’d spent my life dancing between predator and prey, learning to find grace in the spaces where both collide.
We were allowed to be witches, to breathe and blink and consume. We just weren’t allowed to do magic outside of direct orders from the Magistrate. We weren’t allowed to live unregistered. Each witch must be accounted for. Watched. Controlled.
And Vitoria, my sister in all but blood, wasn’t.
If they found her? If they discovered a fire witch was sleeping in the room next to mine every night, we were both dead.
The hunter’s voice was sharpened steel. “Where is she? The other witch they say lives here with you and the Heartless One.”
I kept my face blank, deciding if there was a way to kill him with the water dripping from our faucet, even as my heart hammered. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
His blade pressed deeper. A trickle of blood ran down my neck. “The Magistrate speaks highly of your runework. Says you’re valuable. But not so valuable I can’t bleed you dry right here on your kitchen floor if you’re lying to me.”
Through our clouded window, I caught a flash of black hair on the rooftop across the street before green eyes met mine. Vitoria. She’d made it out. Thank the Furies.
“Search the place again,” the hunter snarled to his men. “Tear it apart if you have to.”
They would. And when they found nothing, they’d leave.
At least I hoped so. And then, maybe tonight I’d finally win an argument, and we’d just stay home.
Stay safe. But I wasn’t holding my breath.
Because Vitoria was just shy of reckless.
Fierce. The kind of person who’d rather die fighting than live kneeling.
She was me, but two inches shorter and holding far fewer secrets.
She was me if I didn’t have to leash every move.
The kind of person I’d follow straight into the Underworld.
The hunter released me with a shove that sent me sprawling across the floor, slamming into a pile of books they hadn’t destroyed.
Yet. Leather bindings cracked beneath my weight, and a pressed moonflower, its silver petals still faintly luminescent, fluttered from between yellowed pages.
“We’ll be watching, Rune Weaver. One toe out of line. ..”
They left our door hanging off its hinges. Fuckers.
I waited until their footsteps faded before touching the cut. Amateur work. Barely deep enough to scar. If you’re going to threaten someone, at least commit to it. Still, the message was clear: they knew. And next time, they’d probably send someone competent.
“Syneca?” Vitoria’s voice came from the window a moment later. She swung inside, landing as silently as a cat. The black lace curtain hung in tatters above her, torn from its rod, of course. Her eyes were wild with fury and fear. “Are you hurt? Did they—”
“As if Silas would have let anything happen to me.” My eyes found the corner of the room where my familiar lurked, held in place by my will alone.
Had I needed him, truly, he would have ripped this building to shreds protecting me.
“I’m fine.” I caught her hands as she reached for my throat, her fingers still cold from the fire escape. “Just a scratch.”
“Just a scratch? That bastard had a blade to your throat because of me.”
“Tor—”
“No.” She stepped back, pacing over the splintered remains of our kitchen table.
Dried herbs scattered under her feet, lavender and chamomile mostly, and small carved runes that had lined the table’s edge now lay scattered across the floorboards like broken teeth.
My favorite rune lamp had been knocked over; its glass chimney rolled beneath a shredded newspaper, headlines rewriting themselves across the page in real-time, words dissolving and reforming as the enchantment pulled in fresh news.
“They’re closing in. And when they find me, they’ll kill you too, just for knowing what kind of witch I am and not reporting me.”
I turned away. The floorboards creaked, old wood that had settled unevenly over the bookstore below, leaving gaps that sometimes let the scent of aging paper and dust drift up into our tiny apartment.
My hand gripped the edge of the overturned cupboard, where protection runes had been carved into the doorframe.
Helluva lot of good they’d done. But I was still alive, so I supposed that was something.
“That’s my risk to take. I choose our friendship over fear, Vitoria. Now and always.”
We both knew what that promise meant in a world like ours. Fire witches disappeared in the night. Their screams echoed from the Magistrate’s dungeons for days before blessed silence fell.
The bitterness of her tone didn’t surprise me. “At this point, does it even matter? They’ll hunt me like I am the Phoenix marked to burn the world again, whether I am or not.”
“But you’re not. You’re just—”
“Just a fire witch. Just the most hunted magical gift in the world.” She paused, opportunity flashing in her emerald eyes. “The Blood Moon is tonight.”
I knew that look. “Vitoria, no.”
“We could do a protection ritual. Real protection. Stronger than these charms,” she said, tossing a bracelet she’d made into the pile of rubble on the floor.
“After what just happened—” I started, but she cut me off.
“Especially after what just happened.” She grabbed my shoulders. “This might be our last chance. We need to ward our house so they can’t get in. If you can manage it, they won’t want to, and they won’t know why. Only you can do that kind of runework, and you know it.”
“Don’t you think if I could do that, I would have done it already?”
She smiled. “You just need a little confidence and the Blood Moon. Trust me. We knew it was going to be a shitshow the second they voted a hunter as Magistrate and look what’s happening.
It was bad three years ago; now it’s a nightmare.
If we don’t try tonight, they’ll keep closing in until there’s nowhere left to run. ”
I stared into the face I’d memorized over three years of shared secrets and whispered conversations and quiet moments. Three years of chaos and inside jokes with Calder, the third person in our makeshift family.
I’d have let that hunter cut my throat, and gladly, if it would buy my friends the safety and happiness they deserved.
“The Bloodwood?” I asked.
Her grin was sharp as a blade. “Where else?”
We moved quickly, gathering what little we needed. Calder found us as we prepared to leave, his handsome, brutal face creased with worry as he lifted the door completely off the hinges with little effort. It wasn’t the first time he’d fixed that damn thing.
His dark eyes found mine, warm brown that complemented his deep umber skin. A pale scar cut across his temple, a souvenir from some job I’d never asked about and he’d never offered to explain. “Your idea or hers?” he asked, his harsh Solairean accent thicker than usual as he stared.
I plucked a half-melted candle from the rubble on the floor. “Does it matter when we’re both stubborn enough to see it through?”
He crossed his arms, the movement drawing attention to exactly how much larger he was than both of us combined. “He cut your throat. Where the fuck was Silas?”
“Exactly where I commanded him to be. I was fine. Had an unregistered familiar—a griffin at that—shown up during a raid, the outcome would have been far worse than this,” I said, gesturing to the room before casting. “Refluo.”
The magic felt like a river running backward.
The broken table legs snapped back together with soft clicks, wood grain realigning as if it had never splintered.
The couch cushions reinflated, their torn fabric knitting closed stitch by invisible stitch, the stuffing drawing itself back inside like a breath inhaled.
Books lifted from the floor in a slow parade, their pages smoothing flat as they glided toward the shelves, slotting themselves spine first into gaps that seemed to widen just enough to receive them.
Chess pieces rolled across the floorboards.
Pawns first, then knights and bishops, the queen spinning once before righting herself, each finding their square on the hand-carved board as it rose to meet them, the whole set lifting to settle back on the side table.
Even the dust gathered itself up in tiny swirls, vanishing into nothing as the lace curtain climbed its rod and rehemmed itself with patient, invisible fingers.
Everything moved with the same inevitable pull, the way water always found its level.