20. Torin #2
“Mild euphoria. Possible singing. Nothing dangerous.” She grins. “Probably.”
Sakura takes the glass. “At this point, I’ve learned to just accept it.”
“That’s the spirit!” Zeph raises her own glass. “To the bear and his storm! May your coffee deliveries continue and your weather stay romantic!”
“That’s not—” I start.
“Cheers!” The room erupts in agreement.
I drink. The beer is excellent—warm and complex, with undertones of honey and wildflowers and magic. Almost immediately, I feel lighter. Happier. Like the world is golden and perfect and nothing could possibly go wrong.
“Definitely mild euphoria.” I set down the glass. “Zeph, what’s in this?”
“Trade secret.” She winks. “But I call it ‘Claiming Day Celebration.’ Only made for very special occasions.”
The party flows around us. Rhodes documents everything, because, of course, he is. Aslan and Leire exchange knowing glances, the shared understanding of recently mated couples who recognize exactly what we’re feeling.
Anouk catches my eye across the room and makes her way over, champagne untouched, her expression shifting into something more deliberate.
“The council audit is complete.” Her voice is quiet, meant for us rather than the room.
“Two other members had connections to Valesh’s cell— Councilors Dresh and Faine.
Both have resigned pending investigation.
Faine had access to the Registry ward logs.
He’s how the trap at the property line knew we were coming.
” A pause. “The coven is restructuring. Properly, this time. It will take months to sort through what she corrupted, but we’re doing it. ”
“Thank you.” Sakura’s voice is genuine. “For all of it. The investigation, the archive work—”
“It’s what the coven is for.” Anouk’s expression warms by a fraction. “Protecting the community. Including the ones we didn’t protect well enough before.” She lifts her champagne in a small private toast and moves away.
“This is nice.” Sakura leans back against my chest, my arms around her waist. “I never thought I’d have this.”
“The party?”
“The belonging.” She tips her head back to look at me. “For the first time in my life, I’m not waiting to leave. I’m not expecting them to ask me to go. I’m just... here. Part of things.”
“You’re part of me now.” I kiss her temple. “Which means you’re stuck with all of this.”
“I think I can handle it.”
“Even the poetry?”
“Especially the poetry.” She turns in my arms, facing me. “I expect regular verses. At least one per week about my various attributes.”
“Your various attributes could fill entire journals.”
“Then you’d better start writing.” She rises on her toes and kisses me—soft and sweet, in front of everyone, with zero concern for propriety.
Someone wolf-whistles. Probably Zeph.
We don’t stop.
The party winds down in the late afternoon. We slip out as the others are still talking, needing quiet after the noise, needing each other after the crowd.
The documents are still on my kitchen table where Grandmother Peach left them.
We sit down together.
The parchment is older than anything I’ve seen in the coven archives. Yellowed at the edges, the ink faded to a reddish brown in places, some sections in languages neither of us can read. But enough of it is legible. More than enough.
“The Severing.” I read the header aloud. “A record of the Great Separation, Year of the Broken Moon.”
Sakura leans in beside me. Her fingers trace the faded text without touching it.
“What was the Severing?” she asks, though she’s already reading, her expression going still and careful in the way it does when she’s absorbing something that matters.
We read in silence for a while. Then I turn the page.
The account is clinical in places—the language of record-keepers who wanted to preserve the fact of what was done without preserving the shame of it. But the facts themselves are plain enough.
“Witches and shifters paired freely.” Sakura’s voice is quiet. “The claimings strengthened the Warding Lines. Protected communities. Created bonds that made both species more powerful.” She sets the page down. “It was normal. It was just... what happened.”
“And then certain factions decided it was dangerous.” I find the passage and read it aloud.
The language is careful but the meaning isn’t: the pairings made individuals harder to control, harder to manipulate.
Power that couldn’t be managed was power that needed to be eliminated.
“Fear,” I say. “That’s all it was. Fear of what they couldn’t own. ”
“So they performed the Severing.”
I nod. The ritual is documented in the later pages—a massive, coordinated working that weakened the natural affinity between witches and shifters.
Made claiming bonds rare instead of common.
Stripped centuries of knowledge from the record, so that the generations who came after would believe the rarity was natural.
Would believe that what the Preservers protected was an order that had always existed.
“It wasn’t a natural order.” Sakura’s voice has an edge to it now. “They built an artificial one. Created through violence and deception, and then told everyone it was the way things had always been.”
“And each new claiming weakens it.” I set the last page down. “Leire and Aslan. Us. Every bond that forms pulls at the ritual’s foundation.”
“Is that dangerous?”
I consider this. The Network has been watching the Warding Lines for years, noting the shifts, the strengthening in areas with recent claimings.
“The Preservers won’t give up easily. There will be more cells from other places, more attempts.
” I meet her eyes. “But the direction of things has changed. We’re not fighting against something inevitable. We’re—”
“Part of something inevitable.” She finishes it. Her hand covers mine on the table. “The old ways coming back.”
We sit with that for a moment. The weight of it and the warmth of it at the same time.
Then Sakura looks up. “I want to feel the Warding Line.”
We walk the Warding Line.
The forest is beautiful in late afternoon light. Pine and earth and the distant sound of streams. Bears in the distance, going about their daily routines, offering nods of greeting when they spot us. The community knows. News travels fast, and claiming marks travel faster.
“Elder.” One of the younger bears—barely out of his teens—approaches with barely contained excitement. “Is it true? You claimed the weather witch?”
“She claimed me, actually.”