FOUR
1154 Words
The wind tasted like salt and static.
Lira stood at the edge of Eastvale Pier, the city’s glow flickering behind her like a memory she couldn’t shake. The Hollow murmured under her skin-whispers of things unsaid, truths she wasn't ready to name. In the distance, the call came again. Not a voice. Not exactly.
But she felt it in her bones.
The summoning.
She hadn’t stepped foot into the coven’s heart in nearly six months, not since she’d broken rank to chase something forbidden- magic that pulsed beneath the city’s surface, and the vampire who’d made her blood feel like it burned in her veins. Darian Velen. She hadn’t seen him since that night in the alley, but the memory of his voice haunted her dreams like perfume and danger.
And now the sisters wanted her back.
Not a request. Not a reunion. A reckoning.
The air split with a shimmer.
A figure emerged from the shimmer like a smudge of oil and shadow. Cloaked in onyx velvet, the woman’s eyes glittered violet in the dark. The High Envoy. Maelis.
“Lira Selene.” Her voice curled like silk around a blade. “The Mother calls. You will answer.”
Lira didn’t flinch. “She has a mouth of her own, doesn’t she?”
Maelis arched a single silver brow. “You forget your place.”
“No,” Lira replied, pulse steady despite her heart’s flutter, “I think I finally remembered it.”
But her words didn’t matter. The air cracked. The spell snapped shut around her like a leash.
Darkness rushed up.
####
She opened her eyes in the heart of the forest.
Velmire Grove.
The trees here were too tall, their bark lined with glowing sigils, their roots twisted like sleeping serpents. It had been a sanctuary once. Now it felt like a cage.
A circle of women waited.
Seven of them, cloaked in varying shades of black and indigo. At the center stood Mother Nyra, the High Witch, veiled in midnight threads that shimmered with spells older than the city itself. Her eyes were unreadable. Her presence-immovable.
Lira stepped into the circle, barefoot on the moss-drenched stone.
Nyra’s voice held no welcome. “You have defied the sacred accord. You’ve walked beyond our walls. You’ve consorted with darkness.”
“I haven’t consorted with anyone,” Lira said coolly, though Darian’s face flickered through her mind like a flame. “I walked alone. And I found knowledge.”
Maelis hissed. “You sought the vampire.”
The others stirred. A ripple of tension rolled through the grove like wind through leaves.
Nyra lifted a pale hand. Silence returned.
“What you found,” she said, “was corruption. What you carry now is stained.”
Lira blinked. Her throat dried.
“What do you mean-carry?”
But Nyra moved closer, not answering. Her eyes bore into Lira’s. “Your magic is tangled. Poisoned. You think you can wield both light and shadow and not pay the price?”
“I didn’t make a deal,” Lira snapped. “I didn’t give him anything.”
“Yet something was given. That is enough.”
A whisper rolled through the circle: Blood-bound. Touched. Marked.
She took a step back.
They knew. Somehow, they knew what she’d felt the moment Darian had looked at her-seen her-and made her body hum with a power deeper than spellwork.
“You summoned me to punish me,” Lira said, voice low. “But you didn’t ask why. You never do.”
“We don’t ask witches why they betray the fold,” Maelis said. “We protect the weave. That is all.”
Lira stared at the women who had once called her sister. Their faces looked carved from stone. Beautiful. Cold. Afraid.
“You want to cut me off,” she whispered. “You think that’ll make the truth disappear.”
Mother Nyra’s hands rose. “It is not punishment. It is containment.”
Before she could move, the spell struck.
It felt like drowning.
Her veins pulled tight. Her magic fought back, resisting, screaming. But the bond the coven shared was older than her will. Older than any single witch. It locked around her core and began to siphon.
Not all of it.
But enough.
Her breath tore from her chest.
A sharpness bloomed in her ribs. Then silence.
When she opened her eyes again, the stars overhead had changed.
####
They left her at the edge of the forest.
Disoriented. Half-magic. Alone.
She staggered through the streets of Eastvale like a ghost, trying to gather what was left of her strength. Her magic still flickered beneath her skin, but it was pale, quieter. She felt like a candle gutted by the wind.
Every instinct screamed at her to go home. But she didn’t have one anymore.
So she found herself walking-until her feet led her to the only other place her thoughts had wandered in the past week.
The Catacombs.
A neutral zone. Darker magic moved here. And so did he.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to see him. But her body thought otherwise.
####
The underground bar smelled like absinthe and blood-ink.
Demons sat beside fae. Shifters crowded booths. No one looked twice when she entered.
Except him.
Darian Velen didn’t rise from the velvet booth, but his eyes found her through the crowd like smoke finds fire. He didn’t smile. But the weight of his gaze devoured her.
Her knees almost buckled.
She sat opposite him, breath ragged.
“I told you not to go back,” he said. Voice calm. Dangerous.
“I had no choice.”
“You always have a choice.”
“I’m not like you,” she snapped. “I’m not immortal. I have rules.”
His gaze hardened. “You’re wrong. You’re exactly like me.”
She looked away. “They took some of it. My power.”
Silence stretched.
“Not all of it,” he said, eyes sharp as a blade. “I can still feel it on you.”
She swallowed hard. “They know about you.”
“I don’t hide.”
“That’s not strength. That’s ego.”
His smirk was razor-thin. “You came to me, witch.”
Lira’s heart raced. She hated the truth of it.
“I don’t know what I want from you,” she said.
“I do,” he replied.
She met his gaze again, trying not to sink into the storm behind his eyes. But she was already sinking. Already trembling.
He reached out, slowly.
Not to touch.
To offer his hand, palm up.
Power shimmered above it, blood-dark and tempting.
“I can give you back what they stole,” he murmured. “But it comes at a price.”
“I haven’t agreed to anything,” she said, voice strained.
“No,” he said. “But you will.”
- Writer
