VELMORRA

FIVE

The fire in the hearth burned low, casting flickering gold across the stone chamber where Lira sat. Her fingers were cold despite the warmth, hands wrapped tightly around the goblet of herbal wine someone had thrust into them. The dream still clung to her skin like a fever, vivid and wrong and too real.

The scent of him hadn’t left her.

Darian.

Even now, in the chill of the coven’s sanctum, she could feel the phantom press of his hands on her skin, the rasp of his voice against her ear.

"Say you want this."

She nearly dropped the goblet.

"Lira Vayen."

The High Priestess’s voice echoed through the chamber, sharp enough to cleave through any lingering daze.

She looked up. The entire inner circle of the coven stood cloaked in the light of thirteen black candles. Their faces were veiled, but their judgment was palpable.

"You’ve been summoned to give account for the disruption at the barrier," the High Priestess continued. "Your magic was found-twisted, unstable. Do you deny it?"

Lira rose slowly, spine stiff. "I don’t deny I was there. But I wasn’t the cause of the rupture."

"You were seen with him," another voice hissed. “The vampire.”

"A Lord of the Fold," someone else added. “And you touched him. You let him mark you.”

A collective gasp rippled across the room. Lira’s jaw clenched.

"I didn’t let him mark me. He did it to save my life." Her voice shook, but not from fear. From fury. "And if you were really watching, you’d know I tried to resist it."

"Resistance means nothing," the High Priestess said coolly. "Intent is meaningless to the weave. Magic remembers only action."

That was the price of their world-where memory bled into spellwork, and guilt could rot the core of power.

"You brought him into the dreaming." The accusation came from her left, from a witch she once trained beside. "You let him in.”

Her mind spun back to the dream. His mouth. His voice. The way she had melted under it.

"I didn’t let him. I-I don’t even know how he was there."

"Lies," someone muttered.

"No," another whispered. "Dreamwalking... it’s old magic. Forbidden."

The High Priestess raised her hand, and the chamber fell silent. Her gaze pierced through the veils.

"You are to be bound."

Lira flinched. "What?"

"You will be stripped of your casting rights until we determine if your connection to this creature endangers the coven."

A protest rose in her throat, but the magic was already swirling. The black candles flared. The binding was coming.

She took a step back, instinctively, but vines of spellwork coiled around her wrists-cool and golden, deceptively gentle. They weren’t physical, but the sensation was unmistakable.

“You will stay in the sanctum under guard. No casting. No summoning. No contact with any being of shadow.”

And like that, her link to the world she’d bled for-studied for, sacrificed for-was cut.

The silence afterward was louder than the chant.

Lira stood frozen, her magic sealed inside her like a scream behind glass.

They dismissed her.

Just like that.

She was nothing now but a liability. A risk. A witch with questionable loyalties.

She turned without another word and walked out of the sanctum, the trailing vines of magic clinging to her wrists like shackles.

And in the hallway beyond, cloaked in the cool hush of the ancient tower, she ran headlong into someone she never expected to see.

"Fancy meeting you here, sweetheart."

Lira’s breath caught.

Arien Taloré leaned against the pillar, arms crossed over his chest, smirking like he owned the very air.

A warlock.

And her ex.

One she hadn’t seen in nearly two years.