1 Eira
Eira
Eira Eckhart stood on the threshold of the Potions Patisserie on a crisp autumn morning, her skirts brushing the ground as
she fumbled through her keys, trying to find the right fit for the front door. One would think that three years into running
her shop she’d know the difference between her house keys and her shop keys, but that had never been something she’d bothered
committing to memory. For a brief moment each morning she worried her memory loss from that fateful fall three years ago had
caused everlasting damage, until she remembered that she was just bad at figuring out which keys worked in each door. And
so, every morning, she tried each key before finally sliding the right one into the lock and letting the door swing open.
A chill instantly crept up Eira’s spine as Pennyroyal, Eira’s beige-and-brown-speckled rabbit, hopped into the store before
she could. A heavy, unsettling silence hung in the air, as if something unseen in the room was quietly pulsing with a dark,
oppressive energy. Something wasn’t right. A witch’s practice space was sacred, and the shop always had a certain feeling
to Eira.
The energy in the room was different this morning, and it made her feel a little bit sick.
She roamed the space slowly, turning the corner into her workspace and making sure that no one was in the building.
Everything seemed right; nothing was out of place.
Her sleep potions remained beside the shop’s large front window, where they had been when she’d corked them last night in preparation for the full moon.
Eira’s hands were planted on her wide hips, her toe tapping on the worn wooden floorboards.
“Does something feel off to you?” she said to Pennyroyal, who had hopped onto the desk and started smelling the various herbs
Eira had left scattered across the surface.
The rabbit thumped her hind paws sharply, a quick, agreeing gesture.
“Yeah, I concur. Something isn’t right.” Eira said again, toe still tapping the ground in an anxious beat. She shook her shoulders
in a stretch and exhaled loudly before sitting at her worktable. “Penny, we’re just going to need to cleanse the space and
hope.”
The rabbit stomped her paws again.
Eira decided that making magic was the best way to restore the peace in her space, so she got to work. With her sleeping potions
all but done, she knew that she needed to stock up on healing poultices next. A little bit of lemon balm, witch hazel and
calendula got thrown into a bowl with a dash of several other herbs . . . and a little bit of Eira’s personal magic. Before
she knew it, Eira was placing the salves into small jars with a tiny brush inside so that her customers could easily apply
the poultice to whatever needed healing.
She hummed a song that the tavern’s bard had been playing the night before—the bard was new to town, and so many of the songs
he’d played she had never heard before. But this one had stuck in her head as if she’d known it her whole life. “ ‘The wise
witch watches, as the sweet soldier stares, the world waits for winter, the somber soul schemes . . .’ ”
Once she managed to shake the strange feeling, her morning routine became much more peaceful—as it usually was. She placed the bottles of potions on the tables where her customers could shop and refreshed her herb stocks for anyone who needed a custom potion that day.
“‘The wise witch watches,’” she sang again.
She wished more witches had been wise. When she’d opened her shop a few years ago there were still some witches on the run,
the ones whose magic had been outlawed. A wise witch would have pretended they weren’t a witch at all, and then maybe some
of them would have survived. Instead, Eira was left alone in Cilirien—not just the only potions witch in town, but the only
witch entirely. The rest had been killed by the monsters of the Iron Empire for simply being able to wield the Flow . . .
all because the lord general had deemed that all magic aside from alchemical castings, potions, and poultices was illegal.
Eira scolded herself for even thinking about the Flow. Even the term for Astra’s magic was all but forbidden now. As if the
potions witches who survived had forgotten where their magic came from. . . but nevertheless, she wasn’t allowed to even reference
the source of her livelihood anymore.
The shop bustled with customers coming and going, and the hours flew by. The bakery next door made the absolute best brisket
Eira had ever had, so when her stomach’s grumbling became too loud for her to focus on anything else, she headed over to grab
something to eat quickly before bringing it back to the Potions Patisserie. As she handed Pennyroyal a bowl of fruits and
vegetables and sat down to dive into the excellent-looking sandwich, the bell above the shop doorway sang in response to yet
another customer interrupting Eira’s respite. No rest for the wicked, she thought with a wry smile, standing and brushing her skirts off as she looked up at the most ruggedly handsome man she’d
ever seen.