Chapter 9
KRISTA
The kitchen smells like apples and dust and the faint lingering trace of last night’s candlewax.
The table is littered with watercolor paper, bits of crayon wrappers, and Mari’s current artistic masterpiece; one she won’t let me look at yet.
She’s got that determined tilt to her head, tongue caught between her teeth like the concentration is leaking out through her mouth, and the tip of her brush is loaded with a suspicious amount of glitter paint.
“Almost done,” she says, without glancing up. “Don’t peek.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I say, even though I’m dying to.
The morning is slow and heavy, wrapped in a kind of quiet that feels borrowed, like it’s letting me rest just a little before it asks for something harder.
The fog never really lifted today. It just pulled back enough to give the trees their shape again.
There’s a hush in the leaves outside, like even the wind’s trying not to interrupt.
I sip my tea. The grimoire sits open on the far end of the table, nestled beside a stack of scrap parchment and a few dried flowers I’ve been experimenting with. I’m not supposed to be reading it this much.
I know that.
Delphina said once that magic needs space to breathe, that if you try to shove too much of it into your skin too fast, it’ll push back. But I keep going back to it anyway. Not for the big spells—not yet—but for the margins. For the notes Johanna scribbled in between the lines.
Things like don’t forget to bless the bread knife and rose petals work better when you sing to them first. She wrote like she was talking to someone she trusted. It feels like being spoken to. And it feels like someone’s listening when I read it.
“Okay. Ready,” Mari says suddenly, standing with both hands behind her back and cheeks flushed like she’s holding a secret made of starlight.
She holds out the paper with a dramatic little bow.
I take it carefully, and my heart does something strange as soon as I see it.
It’s a picture of the three of us—me, Mari, and Hardin—drawn in that soft, smudgy way only six-year-old hands can manage, with big heads and tiny bodies and giant eyes.
We’re standing in front of the cottage, and there are pink hearts floating all around us like bubbles.
Mari is holding both our hands. My hair is a mass of looping curls.
Hardin’s tusks are… aggressive. But there’s a sweetness to it that knocks the breath out of me a little.
“Mari,” I whisper, fingers tightening on the page.
“You like it?”
“I love it,” I say. And I do. But I also feel like the ground just shifted under my bare feet.
She grins. “I think he likes you.”
“Hardin?”
“Yeah. He watches you like your face might change when he blinks.”
I laugh, a little too sharp. “He watches everything.”
“No. He watches you differently.”
She says it like it’s obvious. Like it’s settled.
Later, after I’ve cleaned up the paint water and set Mari up with her worn stack of fairy books on the porch swing, I return to the grimoire. My fingers find the page without trying, flipping to a charm I’ve read three times and never dared to speak aloud.
Small Affections
A spell to open hearts gently. Use with caution. Let the intention be known before the knot is tied.
It’s harmless. Or it’s supposed to be. More of a whisper than a push.
A nudge for honesty. I read the incantation under my breath, fingertips brushing the small charm knot I’ve looped with red thread and a sliver of rowan bark.
The air shivers around my hands, like the moment right before you feel goosebumps rise. Then it stills.
I carry the knot in my pocket for the rest of the afternoon, telling myself it’s just curiosity. Just research. Not anything so stupid as hope.
Hardin shows up near twilight again, as if the trees themselves are done with their secrets for the day and handed him back to me.
“I finished the rest of the rail,” he says, not bothering with hello. “Didn’t want it leaning like that through the frost.”
“You’re handy like a man who hates things falling apart.”
He nods. “Because I am.”
I invite him in for tea. He hesitates again, like yesterday’s quiet moment still echoes louder than he wants to admit. But he follows me inside.
The cottage smells like clove and warm cedar from the sachets I’ve hidden in the corners, and something sweeter from the muffins Mari begged for earlier and then promptly forgot to eat.
Hardin ducks slightly as he passes under the kitchen beam.
He always does. He’s too tall for this place, too wide for the narrow doors, and yet something about him fits here in a way I can’t quite put into words.
I pour the tea. I slide the little charm knot into my hand and speak softly beneath my breath, a whisper between words, just like the book said.
The moment stretches.
He doesn’t flinch.
But his eyes find mine and hold there longer than they should.
“You smell like something burning,” he says, not accusing, just observant.
“It’s clove. Maybe the candle,” I lie, and he lets me.
We sit by the window, the only light coming from the hearth where the flames curl low and lazy, casting everything in amber. The silence between us is thicker than before, but not heavy. Just full.
“I’ve been reading,” I say after a while. “Learning what I can.”
He nods. “I figured.”
“You don’t think I should stop?”
“I think it’s too late to pretend you’re not part of this.”
I tuck my legs beneath me and sip slowly. “Do you ever miss who you were before?”
He doesn't answer at first, and I think maybe he won’t. But then he sets his mug down with a quiet click and looks at the fire instead of me.
“There was never a before,” he says. “Just smaller versions of the same man. Fewer scars. Same bones.”
“That’s bleak.”
“That’s true.”
I lean forward slightly, letting my fingers skim the side of his hand where it rests against the table. His skin is warm, rough, scarred in a way that speaks of blade and weather and time, and I don’t know what makes me do it, but I let my hand settle over his.
His breath catches, almost imperceptibly.
His eyes meet mine.
And for a moment, everything narrows to this one point of gravity, this quiet corner of the world where something real could happen if we let it.
But I pull back.
Too fast. Too much.
The charm knot flares briefly in my pocket, heat against my thigh, then cools like a dying ember.
“I should check on Mari,” I say, voice quieter than I mean.
Hardin doesn’t move. “Of course.”
He stands, nods once, and lets himself out without another word.
I press my hand against my chest and feel the echo of something that almost was.
And I think, maybe I’m not ready yet.
But gods, I want to be.