HEXED

Chapter One: Double Sixes

The tavern was loud, smoky, and exactly the kind of place Wren Ashcombe liked best — full of men who had too much coin, too much confidence, and not nearly enough sense to notice when the dice weren't behaving quite the way dice were supposed to.

"Come on then," said the man across the table, a broad-shouldered merchant named Gorrick who had already lost considerably more than he could properly afford. "One more roll. Double or nothing."

"You've said that four times now," Wren said, propping her chin on one hand, doing her very best impression of a woman who had absolutely no vested interest in the outcome. "I do hope you're not planning to sell your cart to cover this one."

"One more roll," Gorrick said again, sweat beading at his temple.

"If you insist."

She picked up the dice, rolled them once between her palms for show, and let them tumble across the worn wooden table.

Nobody watching would have seen it — the small, private wink she gave the dice a half-second before they landed, the particular warmth that flickered briefly behind her eyes and vanished before anyone thought to look properly.

Double six.

"HA," Gorrick said, delighted, scooping up his winnings before she'd finished pretending to look disappointed. "Beginner's luck, girl, that's all that was."

"Must be," Wren agreed solemnly.

She lost the next hand.

Deliberately, of course — a small, forgettable loss, just enough coin to keep Gorrick's confidence swelling nicely, just enough to make the crowd gathering around their table believe the dice truly were simply fickle rather than obedient.

By the eighth roll, she had turned double sixes six separate times, lost twice on purpose, and relieved half the tavern of a genuinely impressive quantity of silver.

"You've got the luck of the gods tonight," someone muttered, awed.

"I really don't," Wren said sweetly, sweeping the last of her winnings into the small sack at her belt. "I've simply got excellent wrists."

Nobody in that tavern knew Wren Ashcombe had magic.

That was, in fairness, rather the entire point. A cardsharp who was known to be magic got watched. Got searched. Got run out of every town with a witch-hunting ordinance still on the books, which was most of them. A cardsharp who was simply lucky, on the other hand — charming, quick-fingered, occasionally accused but never once caught — got invited back to lose money to next week.

She had built an entire life on precisely that distinction.

"Same time next week, boys," she said, standing, tucking her winnings away with the easy confidence of someone who had done this a hundred times and intended to do it a hundred more.

She walked home through streets gone quiet and dark, the sack of coin heavy and satisfying against her hip, humming something tuneless under her breath.

Her rooms were small — one cramped floor above a shuttered bakery, paid for entirely with money that had never once been earned honestly — but they were hers, and the moment the door closed behind her, Wren let out a long breath and allowed herself, finally, to simply be.

She lit every candle in the room with a single, lazy gesture of her hand.

She hummed louder now, dancing a few unnecessary steps across the floorboards, and flicked her fingers toward the kettle on the cold hearth — flame blooming to life instantly beneath it, water beginning to warm without a single match struck.

"Nobody," she informed the empty room, spinning once with her arms out, "is ever going to catch you, Wren Ashcombe."

She made the coins in her sack multiply, just briefly, just for the sheer pleasure of watching silver spill across the table like water — knowing full well the extra coins would fade come morning, that this particular trick was purely for her own amusement rather than any genuine gain.

She was happy.

Genuinely, thoroughly happy, in the specific way that came from being extraordinarily good at something and getting away with it every single time — no rules, no consequences, nothing but her own magic and her own cleverness and a whole city full of people who would never once suspect the truth of either.

She had absolutely no idea, humming and spinning candlelight around her small rented room, that this particular kind of freedom was about to run out spectacularly.