Chapter 21
Twenty-One
Against all odds, Maude didn’t feel like an abnormal shard jammed into a puzzle. Begrudgingly, it was as if she’d finally stepped into a picture everyone else had been painting without her.
The midday sun spilled over the square, catching on banners and streamers strung high across the lanes—paper moons, glass stars, pumpkins carved into wicked grins that squinted in the glare.
Stalls crowded shoulder to shoulder, every surface dripping with ribbon, laurel, and charm gone a little overboard.
Steam curled from cauldrons of cider, sweet and spiced, while the air tangled with roasted chestnuts, candied pears, and woodsmoke laced with sage.
Children darted through the press in masks like nightmares, laughter clattering like bells.
A fiddler played fast enough to start a fight. A drummer answered, low and steady. The whole square moved to it—feet stamping, skirts flaring, mugs clinking. Fire-dancers spun near the fountain, sparks streaking upward like meteors.
Her sash read VIOLATION in stark black letters. The rosemary Selene had braided into her curls scratched faintly at her temple. Each time a gaze snagged on her, she pretended not to notice.
“Maude!”
Selene tore through the crowd like a comet, skirts hitched in one hand, nipple tassels attached and spinning wildly of their own accord.
Laughter rippled; applause broke out. Someone nearly dropped a mug. Selene didn’t care. She went straight for Maude, eyes bright with feral delight.
“What is that?” she demanded, breathless, pointing at the box Maude clutched tight.
Maude smirked—slow, dangerous—and flipped open the battered wooden box. The lid bore her runes, faint heat pulsing through the grain. “Something better than tassels,” she said. “Fireworks.”
Selene’s grin went wicked. “You’re going to blow the pants off Alderman Veyne.”
“Off him,” Maude said, hefting the box, “and every sanctimonious crony he’s got lined up beside him.”
Selene whooped so loud—her tassels spinning into such a frenzy that they nearly lifted her off the ground—that the fiddler lost his place.
Maude threw her head back and cackled, helpless against it.
“Give me that,” Selene said, snatching the box before Maude could pull it away. She flipped the latch with all the reverence of a thief mid-heist. “Oh, saints’ teeth—what have you done?”
Maude only waggled her eyebrows. “You’ll have to wait and see.”
With a flick, she shrank the box to a manageable size and tucked it into her satchel. That was when Wesley appeared.
He wove through the midday crowd with infuriating ease—like the press of bodies simply parted for him.
Sunlight struck off him as if he’d stolen it: gold bright in his hair, bronze along the cut of his jaw.
He wasn’t in costume. Just a dark shirt with the sleeves rolled, trousers neat, boots scuffed.
But when he saw her, he smiled. And the world tilted a fraction.
“Witch,” he said by way of greeting, voice warm.
“Baker,” she shot back, deadpan.
His eyes swept over her cloak, her sash, the rosemary tucked. “You clean up terrifying.”
Heat crept up her neck. Treacherous. She turned to Selene as if glaring could redirect blood flow. “Why did I invite him again?”
Selene only smirked, which was a crime.
Then Oli crashed into them—literally, sequins and glitter flying like confetti—already holding four mugs of spiced cider. “My favorite people!” he sang. “And Wesley.”
“Charmed,” Wesley said dryly, taking a mug.
They fell into step like a troupe: Oli leading with scandalous commentary, Selene laughing at every outrageous thing, and Wesley—of course—at Maude’s side.
Close enough that his sleeve brushed hers once, twice.
Close enough that the scent of him—yeast, cardamom, clean soap—cut through cider and smoke. She told herself she didn’t notice.
As they wandered the Samhain festival, Oli heckled the fire-eaters until one threatened to set his hair alight.
Selene dragged them to a mask stall where enchanted visages whispered ghost-echoes with every word.
Maude let herself be bullied into trying one.
She spoke three words—“Get bent, Oli”—and nearly collapsed laughing when Wesley doubled over at the sound.
“Beautiful,” Wesley wheezed, bracing a hand on his knee. “Say it again.”
“Die,” Maude intoned, the mask echoing like cathedral bells.
She ripped the mask off and shoved it at Selene, but Wesley was still looking at her like she’d turned the world sideways for a second.
They ate their way down the square: roasted squash stuffed with sage and cheese; skewers of charmed apples that sparked cinnamon when bitten; hand-pies filled with spiced meat and fig.
Wesley kept handing her things without asking.
She kept eating them without complaint. This should have concerned her. It didn’t.
It was…easy. Easier than she had any right to let it be.
When the crowd pressed too close, his hand lingered at the small of her back. Warm. Steady. Maddening. When smudges of ash from a roasting pit clung to her sleeve, he brushed them away with infuriating care. Each touch was nothing. Each touch was everything.
She didn’t stop him. That shocked her most of all.
Because usually? She bit. Or hexed. Or both.
Instead, she found herself watching him.
The way his mouth curved easily when he laughed.
The way he carried himself—easy, unbothered—even while Oli tried to scandalize a fiddler by demanding a ballad about goats at full volume.
She’d called Wesley an idiot so often, it had become doctrine. But he wasn’t. Not tonight. Maybe he had never been.
He was…a friend.
Maybe—terrifyingly—something more.
Her fingers curled into her skirt.
Grief had taught her that need was weakness—that it gutted you clean when it left. She had promised herself never again. But Wesley wasn’t asking her to need. He was just there. Hand at her back. Brush of ash from her sleeve. Food passed without words. And she let him. She let him.
Maude was not careless. She was catastrophically careful—and also, apparently, doomed.
The music shifted, and the square opened like a mouth; the crowd flowed toward the fountain for the next set. Fiddles sawed, pipes trilled, the drum grinned. Someone whooped.
Oli grabbed Selene’s hand with a flourish.
Wesley offered his to Maude.
She stared at it as if it were a suspicious mushroom.
“Truce,” he said, soft, as if the word might spook.
Her fingers slid into his, warm against his calluses. “Under the original terms of truce,” she said dryly, “this gesture qualifies as a renewal. Limited duration. Subject to breach without notice.”
A smile ghosted across his mouth as he tugged her toward the square. “Then consider this a clause you forgot to write down: when music plays, the witch is obligated to dance.”
Her eyes narrowed. “That was never in the contract.”
“It is now,” Wesley said, drawing her into the rhythm anyway. “Section Eight, Subpart B: all smoldering glares must be performed in time to the music.”
Wesley tugged her into the circle as Oli sang and spun Selene until her braids whipped like comets.
The wyvern fountain spat silver arcs that misted their faces when they passed too close.
Someone pressed a cup into Maude’s free hand; she drank without looking—spiced, hot, perfect—and told herself the warmth in her chest was the cider, nothing more.
“You’re terrible at this,” Wesley said cheerfully over the music, executing a smug little step that had no business being that light on a man his size.
“Thank you,” she said. “I was trying to radiate menace.”
“It’s working.” He grinned—the kind of smile that made the lantern light show off for him.
Her body did the traitorous thing of remembering: the shape of his palm from earlier, the weight at the small of her back. She scowled at her own feet and let the reel yank her two steps right, one left.
They lasted three rounds before the music turned, the crowd folding inward like a current. Fiddles slipped into something low, vowels drawn out like wind through a hollow reed. The drum fell to a heartbeat. Couples drew together, palms and shoulders and breath.
Before Maude could bolt, Wesley’s palm slid along her spine.
“Stay with me,” he said.
“No. I don’t do slow.”
“Come on, menace. One song.”
She folded her arms. “I bite.”
“I’m vaccinated.” He offered his hand again, palm up. “Please?”
It was ridiculous how loudly the word Please landed. She searched for an excuse and found only Oli, already draped around Selene like a scarf, whispering something into her ear. Selene laughed so hard she nearly toppled. Useless. Both of them.
Wesley’s hand was warm where it settled at her waist. Up close, he was broader than she ever let herself acknowledge—baker’s arms, a heartbeat steady as a drum beneath his shirt.
She stepped into him because the alternative was letting the awkwardness hang forever.
Her forehead brushed the center of his chest.
“You’re so short,” he murmured, amusement in his low tone.
“And you’re obvious.”
He laughed, then—carefully—set his boots wide and lifted her by the waist the smallest fraction and set her on his shoes.
She made a sound she would later deny on penalty of murder.
“It’s practical,” he said, solemn. “I don’t want my spine to seize from leaning.”
She grinned into his shirt. Heat climbed up her neck. Her laugh got lost in the fabric and came back gentler than she meant for it to.
They moved. Not gracefully—she would never give him that—but in time.
His stride shortened; her chin found the hollow near his collarbone; the thrum of the band threaded through him into her.
The square pulsed around them: cider steam, pumpkin glow, fire-dancer sparks catching the air and winking out like tiny meteors.
Selene’s laugh cut bright as a bell; Oli shouted something obscene about hips that Maude refused to process.