Vivyan
I had been in that hallway for eleven minutes before the silver light went out.
Not by design. I'd been going to bring Celeste tea, as I did most afternoons, the blue mug with the chipped handle and a slice of lemon floating on top, and I'd found the den door standing half open and a warlock's voice murmuring behind it. And so I had stopped. I had stood in a stripe of dusty sunlight with one hand wrapped around a perfectly good mug and my back pressed to the cool plaster, as still as a held breath, listening to the best thing that had happened to me in weeks.
Someone buried something inside you a very long time ago.
I'd felt the words go through me like a bell struck in a church. Beyond the door the room was crackling, the air thick and humming, a scent of lavender and burnt wic
