By dawn, the Guthrie house smelled of wet earth and scorched salt. Smoke curled from the cracked beams overhead, where the wards had snapped and bled into the wood like old secrets refusing to stay buried. Outside, the swamp murmured softly — frogs, distant thunder, the hush of cypress knees pushing up through black water as if the land itself was waking from a long sleep.
Rowan sat cross-legged on the floorboards of what had once been the front sitting room — now little more than a ruin of broken doorframes and scattered ash. Maisie lay curled in her lap, small face soft with exhausted sleep. Her thumb still brushed the charm Lucien had pressed into her palm hours ago — a smooth disc of old silver stamped with a sigil that hummed against Rowan’s skin every time Maisie twitched.
The Circ
