17. Leire
SEVENTEEN
LEIRE
Shadow speaks my name.
Not out loud—he can’t manage that yet, the control magic still wrapped too tightly around his throat. But through the remnants of our familiar bond, through the thread that was never fully severed no matter how hard they tried, I hear him.
I’m on my knees beside Anouk’s worktable, where Shadow lies surrounded by crystals and herbs and the detritus of an all-night ritual.
The apothecary smells like smoke and sage and something sharper underneath—the acrid scent of magic being forcibly unwound.
Candles flicker at the cardinal points, their flames burning colors that don’t exist in nature. Purple. Gold. A blue so deep it burns.
Thornveil Apothecary has been transformed into a ritual space. Anouk cleared the back room sometime before midnight, pushing aside shelves of ingredients and creating a circle of protection that hums with steady power.
Anouk looks exhausted. She’s been working since midnight, layer by layer peeling back the control magic that’s bound Shadow for years—his controlled stillness at the center of her circle the only sign he’s still fighting from inside.
Her hands are steady despite the fatigue, her movements precise as she traces sigils in the air above his still form.
The coven leader doesn’t do anything by halves.
“The outer bindings are weakening.” Her voice is hoarse from hours of chanting. “He should be able to communicate now. Fragmentary. Painful. But possible.”
I reach for Shadow. My hand hovers over his head—wanting to believe, not daring to yet. His fur is cleaner—I’ve been grooming him obsessively whenever I visit, trying to undo years of neglect one brush stroke at a time.
His voice in my mind is fractured. Wrong. Like hearing someone speak through broken glass, each word edged with pain. I tried. Couldn’t stop them. Couldn’t warn you.
“I know.” The words catch in my throat. “I know you tried.”
Each thought seems to cost him enormous effort. His body trembles on the table, muscles spasming against invisible restraints. Anouk’s wards flare brighter, containing whatever energy he’s expending to reach me.
“The betrayal.” My voice is barely a whisper. “They made you do it.”
The words carry centuries of anguish, echoing through my skull like a bell tolling. Forced me to testify. To say things I never believed. To drive you away from everyone who loved you. I fought, Leire. Every day for two years, I fought. Tried to break free. Tried to warn you. Tried to find you.
Something in my chest cracks open and spills before I can stop it. Not the ugly, gasping sobs from the mill—something quieter. Deeper. The release of two years of hatred I’d been carrying for someone who never deserved it.
All of it a lie.
“I’m sorry.” I press my forehead to his fur, feeling the fragile flutter of his heartbeat beneath the matted coat. “I’m so sorry I believed them. I’m sorry I hated you. I’m sorry I didn’t look harder, didn’t question—”
His voice is fading, the effort of communication draining what little strength he has. Not your fault. Their design. All of it. They’re good at what they do. Centuries of practice.
“Rest now.” Anouk’s hand settles on my shoulder, surprisingly gentle for someone so formal. “The communication took too much. He needs time to recover before I can remove the deeper bindings.”
Shadow’s eyes close. His breathing evens out, settling into something closer to natural sleep than the magical coma he’s been trapped in.
The bell above my door chimes.
Iskra Sable walks in.
She looks the same as always—warm smile, kind eyes, that aura of helpful neighbor she’s cultivated so carefully. She carries a paper bag that smells like Moonpetal’s scones, a detail she’s probably calculated for maximum neighborly effect.
“Leire.” Her voice is gentle. Concerned. “I heard about your familiar. How is he doing?”
I don’t move from behind my workbench. My hand rests casually on the smoky quartz—the stubborn one, heavy enough to crack a skull if thrown with enough force.
My eye catches the corner of Iskra’s commission notes, still tucked under the edge of my workbench trays. Real name. Real address in Lakeside. Two weeks of correspondence and a signed deposit receipt I kept out of professional habit.
I photograph every page and text him. Her home address is on the commission paperwork. Real one—she paid by check.
Caius already has people there. Good catch.
The protection charm I’d been crafting for her. The bitter irony of it settles like a stone.
“Recovering.” I keep my voice neutral. Careful. “Anouk’s been helping.”
“That’s wonderful.” Iskra sets the bag on my counter with practiced casualness. “I brought something to keep your strength up. You must be exhausted.”
“How did you know about Shadow?”
She blinks. The perfect picture of innocent confusion. “What do you mean?”
“I didn’t tell anyone I found him. The only people who knew were Aslan, Anouk, and the Protection Network.” I let the words hang in the air between us. “So how did you know?”
Flicker. There and gone, fast as a heartbeat. But I catch it—the same wrongness I sensed during her first visits, the off-ness I’d attributed to paranoia. The mask slipping, just for a moment, revealing something cold and calculating underneath.
“News travels fast in small towns.” Her smile doesn’t falter. “You know how Mistvale gossip works.”
“I do.” I step around the workbench. Closer to her. Closer to the door. “I also know that you’ve been watching me since I arrived. That you knew about the ward alarm before anyone should have. That you always seem to appear at exactly the right moment with exactly the right amount of concern.”
Iskra’s smile fades. Not disappearing—transforming. Becoming something harder. Colder. More honest.
“You’re smarter than we gave you credit for.”
“We?”
“The Preservers.” She doesn’t bother with pretense anymore.
Her posture shifts, shoulders squaring, chin lifting.
The helpful neighbor vanishes like mist in sunlight, replaced by something predatory.
“We’ve been watching you for years, Leire Firesinger.
Since before your first familiar bond. Since before you even knew what you were. ”
“And what am I?”
“A threat to everything we’ve built over centuries.
” She moves toward me, and I back up, keeping the workbench between us.
“Your exile should have been enough. Cut off from your coven, your familiar, your support systems—most witches with mate potential fade. Their magic destabilizes without proper anchoring. They become harmless.” Her eyes narrow.
“But you came here. To Mistvale. And now you’re forming something with a tiger shifter, and everything we’ve worked for is at risk. ”
“So what now?” I keep my voice steady, though my pulse is racing. “You kill me? In broad daylight, in the middle of my shop?”
Iskra laughs. The sound is wrong—brittle, humorless, nothing like the warm chuckle I remember from her first visit.
“I’m not here to kill you, Leire. I’m here to give you one last chance.” She pulls something from her pocket—a crystal, dark and pulsing with malevolent energy that makes my skin crawl.
“Come with me willingly. Let us complete what we started. A binding—old magic, designed to permanently suppress mate potential. Not exile you from it. Cauterize the possibility entirely.” Her voice drops, silk over steel.
“You’ll forget the pull. Forget him. Live a perfectly ordinary life.
And I promise your tiger won’t be harmed. ”
“My tiger?”
“Aslan Nexis.” The name rolls off her tongue like a curse. “We know about him. We know he’s nearby, thinking he can protect you. But if you force our hand—if you make us take you by force—he’ll die. Slowly. Painfully. And you’ll watch every moment.”
Fear lances through me. Not for myself—for him. The thought of Aslan bleeding out in some dark alley because of me, because I was too stubborn to surrender—
No.
I straighten my spine. Square my shoulders. Meet Iskra’s cold eyes with everything I have.
“You’re wrong about one thing.” I let my magic rise, let it crackle at my fingertips like static before a storm. The crystals around me respond, humming with resonant energy. “He’s not my protector. He’s my partner. And neither of us is going anywhere with you.”
I throw the smoky quartz.
Everything happens at once.
The crystal shatters against Iskra’s hastily raised shield—not a direct hit, but enough to stagger her backward. I’m already moving, grabbing crystals from my workbench, channeling energy into them with desperate efficiency.
Iskra snarls. Her magic lashes out—dark, twisted, nothing like the clean energy I’m used to working with. It slams into my wards and I feel them buckle, feel the shop’s protections straining against power they were never designed to withstand. The display cases rattle. Glass cracks.
The amethyst screams—a sound no one else can hear but that drives into my skull like a spike.
The door explodes inward.
Not Aslan—three Preservers in dark clothing, their faces masked, their movements magically enhanced. They move too fast, too smooth, their edges blurring with speed that isn’t natural. They spread out, cutting off the exits, hemming me in.
“Take her alive.” Iskra’s voice cuts through the chaos. “We need her intact for the binding.”
I throw a charged quartz at the nearest attacker.
It detonates on impact, sending him flying into a display of tumbled stones.
Another one moves to flank me and I spin, catching her with a burst of raw power that I barely control.
The energy is wild, unstable without a familiar anchor, but I channel it anyway—pour everything I have into defense, into survival, into buying time.