13. Leire #2
My heart stutters. “What about it?”
“I can sense where you are. Not what you’re thinking. Not what you’re feeling. Just—location. Direction. Whether you’re close or far.” He looks at me. “I’ve been trying to ignore it. Pretend it isn’t real. But after what Elio said—”
“About mate potential?”
“About witch-shifter pairings being real. Being possible.” He stops walking. Turns to face me fully. “I’m not fighting it anymore, Leire. Whatever this is, whatever it becomes—I’m not running from it.”
The declaration hangs between us. Heavy with meaning.
“The building should be just ahead.” He changes the subject before I can respond—before I can figure out how to respond. “I smell old magic. Suppression spells, like Elio described.”
“And Shadow?”
He’s quiet for a moment. His nostrils flare, testing the air. “Cat. Faint. Underneath the other smells.”
My heart clenches. “He’s here.”
“Leire.” His hand catches my arm. Warm. Solid. Grounding me when I want to run straight into that building without thinking. “Whatever we find—”
“I know.” I meet his eyes. “I know it might be bad. I know he might be too far gone to save. But I have to try.”
He holds my gaze for a long moment. Then nods. Releases my arm.
We move forward.
The old mill is exactly as decrepit as it sounds.
Three stories of rotting timber and broken windows, half-swallowed by climbing vines that definitely aren’t natural.
The mist pools thick around its foundation, and there’s a wrongness to the air—a weight, a pressure, like the magic here has curdled into poison.
Even the grass around the building grows strange—too tall, too dark, bending away from the structure like it’s trying to escape.
“Wards.” Aslan circles the building slowly, his footsteps silent on the damp ground. “Old ones. Meant to hide, not protect.”
“Hide what?”
“Whatever’s inside.”
I reach out with my own magic—tentative, careful. The suppression spells push back, oily and cold, sliding against my senses like rotten silk.
“He’s here.” My voice catches. “I can feel him. Barely, but—he’s here.”
Aslan tries the door. It swings open with a groan of rusted hinges. Inside, darkness. Dust. The smell of old magic and decay, thick enough to taste.
We step through.
The ground floor is empty except for debris—fallen beams, rotted machinery, piles of unidentifiable organic matter I choose not to examine too closely. Our footsteps echo in the hollow space. The mist seeps through gaps in the walls, pooling in corners like living things.
“Upstairs.” Aslan tilts his head, listening. “I hear breathing. Slow. Shallow.”
We climb the stairs carefully, testing each step before committing our weight. The wood groans but holds. The second floor is more of the same—emptiness, decay, the oppressive weight of hidden magic. But there’s a door at the end of the hall. Closed. Warded with symbols that make my skin crawl.
“Can you break it?”
I study the ward work. It’s complex—layers upon layers, some ancient, some more recent. Different hands, different traditions, all woven into a barrier meant to keep everything out. But there are cracks. Weak points where the magic has degraded over time.
“Give me a minute.”
I pull a crystal from my pocket—the clear quartz I’ve been carrying since the attack, the one that flared when we channeled power through it. It pulses warm against my palm as I push energy into it, directing it toward the ward’s weak points.
The magic resists. Pushes back. For a moment, I think it won’t work—my power isn’t stable enough, isn’t strong enough without a familiar to anchor it.
Then Aslan steps closer. Not touching, but near. His presence steadies me. Not magic—we don’t share magic like witches and familiars do. But his nearness grounds me anyway. Gives me stability to push against.
The ward cracks. Shatters. The door swings open.
And there, curled in the corner of the bare room, is Shadow.
He’s smaller than I remember.
Memory has a way of distorting things—making the precious seem larger, the beloved more substantial.
But Shadow is just a cat. A sleek black cat with matted fur and visible ribs and eyes that stare at nothing.
He’s lying on bare floorboards, no blanket, no food or water in sight.
They’ve been keeping him like this for who knows how long. Months. Years.
I drop to my knees beside him. My hands hover, afraid to touch, afraid to confirm what I already know.
“Shadow?”
No response. His chest rises and falls with shallow breaths, but his eyes remain fixed on some middle distance I can’t see. The emptiness I noticed in the square is worse here. Complete. Like someone carved out everything that made him himself and left only the shell.
“The control magic.” Aslan crouches beside me. “I can see it. Wrapped around him like chains.”
I look closer—not with my eyes, but with my magical senses.
And there it is. Threads of foreign magic wound through Shadow’s essence, binding him, suppressing him, overwriting every impulse with commands from somewhere far away.
The magic is old—years old, layered, reinforced every time he tried to fight it.
“This has been here since before the betrayal.” My voice shakes. “They’ve been controlling him this whole time. He never chose to testify against me. He couldn’t choose anything.”
I touch his head. His fur is rough, unwashed, but still soft underneath. Familiar. I know this fur. I’ve buried my face in it a thousand times, crying, laughing, just breathing in the comfort of knowing I wasn’t alone.
For a moment—a single, heartbreaking moment—his eyes flicker. Recognition surfaces in that flat emptiness. Desperation. Apology. The Shadow I knew, trapped somewhere deep inside, fighting with everything he has to reach me.
I’m sorry, those eyes say. I tried. I couldn’t stop them.
Then the control magic yanks him back under, and his eyes go blank again.
I crack.
The walls I’ve built—the sarcasm, the self-deprecation, the armor of humor I’ve worn since the exile—they crumble like wet paper.
Two years of grief hits me all at once. Two years of hating the one creature who loved me unconditionally.
Two years of believing I was unworthy of love because even my familiar turned against me.
All of it, manufactured. All of it, a lie.