Chapter 17
Seventeen
The square was emptying fast.
Maude pushed through the thinning tide of merchants with the single-minded focus of someone who had already rehearsed the scene a hundred times in her head.
Lanterns guttered out one by one, shutters clapped shut.
The air carried its familiar tangle—fish brine and tar, the smoke of meat stalls, the crisp bite of river water cut with salt off the bay.
This was the Driftmarket, Mistwood’s sea-facing bazaar where ships docked low against stone steps slick with algae, where gulls wheeled lazy arcs overhead, calling for scraps.
It all felt ordinary, almost soothing—except for the rumble that thrummed under her boots.
She was too tired to be properly afraid.
The ley-point was here. Old as the town—older, maybe—vibrating at the bend where river met sea and trade had been struck for centuries. Bailey always said ley lines carried memory. Oaths, promises, bargains—you could hear the bones of them if you pressed your ear to the cobbles.
She stopped in the center of the wharf, shouldering off her satchel.
Her body was still running on scraps after the night with Oli, the two of them bent over the first loom until dawn, his voice full of political promises and coffee-laced optimism, her hands blistered from weaving ironvine and blackthorn until they bit.
When he’d finally left, she’d stripped down and scrubbed herself raw in the bath, then collapsed into bed and slept like she’d been struck with a mallet.
The sun had moved across the sky and set again before she’d dragged herself upright.
A wasted day. But the sooner she set the three looms, the sooner this mess would be contained, and maybe—maybe—she could rest. Maybe even take a much-needed break from it all.
Oli’s ambition flickered through her head as she dropped her satchel on the cobbles.
A seat in the court.
She huffed. It was a game only he could stomach—meeting hunger with charm until it thought itself fed. Though…if he pulled it off, everything in Mistwood Hills might shift. Maybe it would mean protection. Maybe it would mean more knives waiting in the dark.
Maude knelt and drew the salt circle, voice flat with exhaustion as she muttered the working lines. “Second loom,” she said to the empty dock. “Anchor. Drain. Hold.”
The pulse under her feet deepened. Dust skittered inward across the stones. And then, like a held breath snapping free, the pull began.
Crates groaned, splitting; the air bent sideways. A lantern snapped its hook and careened into the circle before crumpling to ash. The river’s surface rippled, tugged as though invisible hands were dragging it up the bank.
Maude braced harder, pressing both palms into the ironvine ring. “Hold,” she hissed, sweat burning her eyes. “Just hold—”
Her heart slammed. She didn’t move. Couldn’t.
The ring buckled, flexed, then locked with a low boom that rattled her ribs. The pull collapsed inward, the sucking wind cutting off so fast she nearly fell face-first into the dock.
Silence crashed down with such force it rang in her ears.
Maude dropped her arms, hands scraped raw against the buckled wood. Her lungs burned, her body shaking with exhaustion.
“Maude?” Wesley’s voice cut across the docks.
Through the haze of flour dust, he stumbled into view, a torn sack at his feet and white powder plastered over his coat like some ghostly disguise.
All around them, crates had toppled, gulls shrieked overhead, and half the traders were coughing through the mess—one man wringing out his fishnets now powdered pale, another swearing as his apples rolled off the pier.
Maude stayed crouched in the center of the wharf, the ring still blazing hot beneath her palms. Wesley’s eyes went wide as they locked on her. “I thought we fixed this.”
“We patched it,” she said, throat tight with strain. “That’s all. The curse is still feeding. I had to cut it off before it spreads.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“Didn’t matter if I told you. It still had to be done.”
Wesley was breathing hard. His eyes searched hers, narrowing with worry. “Have you told anyone else about this?”
She swallowed. “Oli knows.”
His shoulders loosened. “Good.” He stood, wiped his hands against his trousers, then held one out to her. “Come on.”
Maude only stared at it. Her own fingers shook faintly where they pressed into her knees, and she curled them into fists, willing the tremor still.
His gaze lingered—on the pallor of her face, the cracked press of her lips, the way her shoulders sagged. She felt him measure all of it.
“You need food,” he said at last, firm but not unkind. “When did you last eat?”
Her silence was answer enough. His mouth set in a hard line.
“I don’t know much about the craft, but I’m fairly certain spellwork and an empty stomach is a bad mix,” he said. “Bad for your aim. Bad for my nerves.”
Maude sighed long and thin, then placed her hand in his.
They walked together down the emptying square, boots scuffing in the flour dust.
Wesley glanced at her sidelong. “What are you craving?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it. Craving? She couldn’t think of anything. Mostly, she craved sleep. But her stomach made a low, traitorous growl. Her mind scrambled. Something quick, easy, anything to stop him fussing.
“There’s a stall near the edge of the wharf,” she muttered. “Strings of fairy lights. Char & Chime—they do moon-crusted skewers.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Moon-crusted…?”
“Charred meat with star-anise glaze. The fairies sprinkle it with powdered comet-tail.”
“Sounds perfect.”
It was more than perfect. The stall shimmered in the river breeze, fairy lights dancing in a shifting canopy overhead.
The lights weren’t bulbs—they were the fairies themselves, small as fists, wings glimmering like stained glass.
They darted between the branches and the open grills, trailing sparks that rained down on skewers lined with jewel-bright cuts of meat and vegetables.
Smoke curled fragrant and strange: sweet, metallic, threaded with something like lightning. It made her mouth water.
Wesley’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve walked past this place a hundred times. Never stopped.”
“Well, you’re about to discover flavor. Big day for you.”
Wesley nudged her shoulder, the kind of casual contact that felt both right and wrong all at once. She shook it off as they ordered two skewers each, the fairy vendor chittering in a language like bells dropped into water.
Maude sank her teeth into the meat. Comet dust burst across her tongue—sweet at first, then sharp, like biting into thunder. She hissed softly through her teeth.
Her body, stupid thing that it was, sighed in gratitude.
Beside her, Wesley groaned, head tipping back. “Saints. This is better than anything I’ve ever made.”
“You said that out loud.”
“I’ll live with the shame.” He licked honey from his thumb and went in for another bite.
Maude tried not to stare. Tried not to notice how the glittering light threaded through his hair, catching on strands of gold, or how the river wind tugged at his shirt. She told herself he was annoying. A nuisance. But for the first time, she also thought: safe.
Damn it all.
They sat on the low stone wall, steam curling from their food, the black water lapping below. Sparks drifted from the fairies overhead, making the river look star-pocked.
The words slipped out. “What brought you to Mistwood Hills?”
He blinked at her, then chewed slowly. “That’s the first question you’ve ever asked me that wasn’t an insult.”
“Miracles are rare. Consider yourself blessed.”
A laugh escaped him, fading into something quieter.
He leaned his elbows on his knees, skewer balanced in one hand as he stared at the water.
“I lived in Tarrowfast before this. Big place, all brickwork and smoke, streets so tight with people you could barely breathe. You’d think being packed in tight would make people closer, but it didn’t.
Everyone rushing, eyes down, no one knew anyone.
I hated it. Felt invisible in a crowd moving too quickly to even look you in the eye.
Kitchens there were the same—fast, loud, brutal.
Work ’til your bones give, and still no one remembers your name.
Everything was about profit margins and perfect plating, not people.
“I wanted…something closer to the earth. Something that mattered.” His gaze slid toward her.
“I heard people lived slower here. Thought maybe I could make something I was proud of. I wanted to build a place where the bread on someone’s table wasn’t just another transaction.
So far…I think I was right.” His gaze skimmed the square, the fairy lights, the river breathing steadily against the dock.
“My mother used to say healing meant giving people back to themselves. Baking feels like that too. Just a sweeter way of doing it.”
Maude tilted her head, studying him. Not mockingly—she didn’t have the energy for it. Just a quiet filing-away of the fact that maybe, for once, he didn’t seem like an idiot. “Sweet,” she echoed. “Very on-brand.”
He smiled, but his eyes stayed on the water.
Maude tilted her head again. “Tarrowfast…I know the one. Big merchant village across the marshlands? I’ve heard the witches there charge fortunes just to steep tea leaves.”
That pulled a low, genuine sound from him, head shaking. “You’re not wrong. Except it’s worse. They’d sell you nettle soup as an elixir if you looked rich enough.”
“So you won’t be returning?”
“Not a chance. You’re stuck with me, Harrow.” His smile crooked.
Maude chewed, skeptical. “Sleepy villages come with slow-town gossip. Everyone knows everyone’s business. You’ll be watched twice as hard as you were ignored in Tarrowfast.”
“I’m starting to realize that.” He shrugged. “But even with the gossip, it feels more like a home than anything I’ve ever experienced.” His smile tilted toward her. “I think I like it better this way.”