Chapter 16
Chapter
Sixteen
I’M DONE PLAYING NICE
Iwake to sunlight streaming through the curtains, thin ribbons of gold cutting through the gaps in the fabric and falling across the bedspread in warm, lazy lines.
My hand reaches across the sheets before I’m fully conscious, drawn to the fading warmth of another body.
The indentation in the mattress beside me tells a story without words, Ezra’s presence through the night, a physical memory pressed into Egyptian cotton that still carries the faint scent of him.
For a moment, I simply breathe. I wait for the panic to come, the way it always does when I wake beside someone who isn’t there anymore, that cold rush of wondering if it meant anything at all.
It doesn’t come.
Instead of the familiar churn of abandonment, instead of the anxious spiral of what does this mean and where do we stand now, I feel something I almost don’t recognize at first. Peaceful.
The silence in the house isn’t lonely the way silence usually is for me.
It’s respectful, almost reverent. By now, I’ve learned to read the difference between the two. This house has taught me that.
I roll onto my side, facing the empty space where Ezra has been sleeping.
My fingers trace the outline his body has left behind in the mattress, following the contour of it the way you’d trace a map of somewhere you’d like to return to.
I smile before I even realize I’m doing it, remembering his arms around me, his lips against my temple, the way he murmurs the word “Marvel” against my skin like a quiet, private declaration just before we drift off together.
We are tangled in each other like we have been doing this for years, like our bodies already know the shape of the other.
There is no urgency to any of it. No performance, no rush.
Just a slow, unhurried intimacy that feels so foreign and so right at the same time it almost frightens me.
“This is new,” I whisper to myself, stretching languidly beneath the covers, arms reaching toward the headboard until my shoulders pop.
The absence of uncertainty feels strange in my chest, like a room you’ve always known cluttered suddenly cleared out.
Foreign, yes. But welcome. Like finding more space in yourself than you remembered having.
I shower and dress with unhurried movements, letting the hot water work the last of the sleep from my muscles.
I select a deep purple sweater dress from the wardrobe, the kind that hugs every curve without asking my permission first, that settles against my body like it was made exactly for it.
I pair it with knee-high boots, pull my braids over one shoulder, and take a breath in front of the mirror.
As I make my way downstairs, the smell finds me before the kitchen does. Coffee, rich and dark, and something sweet underneath it, buttery, warm, with just a hint of citrus zest. My stomach answers before my brain catches up.
Sir sits perched on the island counter with the regal composure of someone who has been waiting far too long and wants you to know it.
His tail is curled neatly around his front paws, his coat impeccably groomed, his eyes trained on me with unmistakable judgment.
“You’re late,” he announces, as if I have somewhere to be at seven thirty in the morning.
“Good morning to you too,” I reply flatly, scanning the kitchen.
Beside the sink, a French press of coffee sits still warm, the dark liquid rich and fragrant.
Next to it, a small plate holds three perfectly golden scones.
A folded piece of paper leans against the base of the coffee pot, my name written across the front in precise lettering that somehow manages to look both neat and unhurried at the same time.
I unfold it slowly, something warm unfurling in my chest before I’ve read a single word.
Keisha,
I sleep well beside you, but that does not surprise me.
Thank you for sharing your space, your trust, and your warmth.
Mace, Lucien, and I are patrolling the border wards. The instability needs attention and it’s not getting better on its own. I’ll come by the shop later to discuss what I talked to you about last night.
—Ez
I press the note against my sternum for a long moment, eyes closed, just holding it there. Then I fold it carefully, tuck it into the pocket of my dress, and reach for a scone.
“He makes good pastry,” Sir observes from his perch, his chin lowering to rest on his paws with an air of deliberate nonchalance.
“Ezra made these? Not the house?” The question comes out genuinely surprised.
The manor has a habit of providing things before you know you need them, but baked goods from scratch, at this hour, from a man who’d spent the night, that’s something else entirely.
“Well, that’s a first.” I narrow my eyes at the cat, who has absolutely not fooled me. “You read my note.”
“It was facing upward,” he counters, voice utterly unmoved. “And it concerned matters directly relevant to your safety and ongoing magical development, which falls squarely within my purview as your Familiar.”
“That is a real stretch, and you know it,” I mutter, pouring coffee into my favorite mug, the one Lin gifted me, with the words ‘Witches Brew’ written across the front in sparkly black script. Once I made it just right, I plopped down on the stool in front of him at the island.
“So,” Sir continues, stretching his front legs out slowly and then pulling them back in with theatrical leisure, “I am not surprised that Lenora used a forbidden spell to try to strip your magic away. Yes, before you ask. I heard what Ezra told you last night. I can only be grateful for the woman’s remarkable inadequacy in executing it.
It seems her failings are considerably far-reaching. ”
I nod, chewing slowly. Sir is swinging early this morning.
“Maybe she cast it correctly,” I say, once I’ve swallowed, “and it simply didn’t work on me the way she intended, for reasons we haven’t fully pieced together yet.
What matters right now is that we know. I’m not missing magic.
I never was. The spell built a wall around it, a wall that’s been there my whole life.
” I swallow hard against the bitterness of that, pushing it down where it belongs for now.
“The question is whether those missing pages still exist somewhere we can actually reach them.”
“Well, now the wall is crumbling,” Sir observes, his gaze drifting to the window, where the morning light has turned the frost on the glass to glittering silver. “Conveniently timed with your return to Ruby Springs.”
“Nothing convenient about it.” I wrap my hands around the mug, letting the warmth seep into my palms. “The spell is weakening because it wasn’t executed properly from the start.
A crack in the foundation, not a door someone left open.
The real question isn’t just how it was cast, it’s who cast it.
Whether my aunt actually did this herself or convinced someone else to do it for her.
All the signs point to her. I want to be certain before I say it out loud in a room where it matters. ”
Sir’s tail twitches once, a slow, deliberate flick. “I suspect we will learn the answers sooner rather than later. These things tend to surface when the interested parties grow desperate.”
I finish my coffee, drain the last of it with both hands around the mug, and wrap a second scone in a cloth napkin to tuck into my satchel. “Let’s hope later gives us enough time to prepare for whatever those answers look like.”
The walk through Ruby Springs feels different this morning, though I can’t say exactly how until I’ve been outside for a few minutes and the feeling settles into something more specific.
The air has a biting edge to it that wasn’t there yesterday, sharper and more insistent, the kind of cold that cuts through your coat regardless of how well you’ve buttoned it.
I pull the fabric tighter around me and tuck my chin toward my collar.
Sir trots alongside me at a pace that suggests he could go faster but has decided to take pity on me, occasionally brushing against my ankle in what he would absolutely never admit is a form of comfort.
“Something feels off,” I murmur, slowing my steps as we reach the edge of the town square.
The cobblestones here are frost-kissed, glittering faintly in the pale morning light.
The storefronts are just beginning to show signs of life, lights flicking on, curtains drawing back, the distant smell of breakfast from the direction of the Cackling Hen.
Then I hear it. The sound of cars. Engines accelerating, tires against wet pavement, the low sustained rush of traffic moving somewhere at speed.
Except the street in front of me is empty in both directions.
Not a single vehicle in sight, and none of the town’s residents use cars the way the outside world does.
The sound doesn’t belong here. It’s bleeding through from somewhere else, pressing against the edges of this place like water finding the seam in a dam.
Sir’s ears swivel forward, his posture stiffening almost imperceptibly. “The wards,” he says, his voice quieter in my mind than usual, which on its own is enough to make my stomach drop. “Sound shouldn’t carry through from the outside world. Not like this.”
I press my lips together, absorbing that.
If the wards are thinning enough to let ambient noise bleed in from beyond Ruby Springs, then whatever Ezra, Maceo, and Lucien are out there doing this morning is more urgent than Ezra’s note let on.
The question I can’t quite set aside, is whether the deterioration is accelerating now because of Lenora, or because of me.
Because of what’s starting to wake up inside me.
Whether my returning power is disrupting something instead of restoring it.