Page 56 of Shifting Hearts

TEN

Ghosts of the Coven

Emilia

I haven’t been here in ten years, but the town square hasn’t changed one bit. It’s still small and damp with the scent of moss and pine smoke, still caught somewhere between charm and rot. Like it’s pretending not to be a hunting ground.

The witch’s shop is tucked between an old bookstore and a taxidermy museum. Fitting. Dead knowledge and dead things.

I push open the green painted door and the bell overhead jingles. Every hair on my neck rises.

“Emilia,” says a voice I hoped I’d never hear again.

“Hello, Mother.” I use the old moniker even though I know she hates it.

Her name is Moira now. She gave up “Mom” when I turned sixteen and refused to join the coven’s blood oath.

She said I was tainted by wolf blood. That I was an “imbalance.” That my loyalty would always belong to beasts over blood.

She wasn’t wrong but I never expected her to cast me out for it.

Moira stares at me now with the same cold eyes she always had, silver, sharp, and framed in black eyeliner that doesn’t smudge. Her hair’s longer and streaked with white. But she still moves like a snake wrapped in silk.

“What brings you to Ashridge, child?”

“I think you know.” I keep my gaze locked on her as she moves around the space slowly.

“Try me,” she counters with a smile.

“There’s a summoner in the woods, binding corrupted beasts. One tried to kill me and another was sacrificed. That’s dark witchcraft and it smells like our bloodline.”

Her smile is slow. Cruel. “And you think it’s me?”

“I think you taught someone who didn’t forget.”

She turns, walking deeper into the shop. The shelves are cluttered with jars, candles, bones, and books with locks. The air hums with low magic, half-finished spells clinging to everything like dust.

“You left,” she says softly. “Ran off with your tail tucked, pretending to be human. Psychic readings? Tarot cards? Cheap tricks.”

“Better than using blood magic to control monsters.”

She spins. “You were born of monsters. I was trying to protect you.”

“No. You were trying to erase me.”

Her eyes narrow. “You were the first of our kind to carry wolf and witch blood. That’s not balance, Emilia. That’s a curse. Your father’s blood made you soft.”

“No. It made me strong enough to walk away.”

We stare at each other, a decade’s worth of hurt and hatred between us and then she sighs.

“There is someone. One of the younger witches. Nara.” The name lands like frost on my skin. “She was obsessed with shadow craft. She resented you. She thought you were the reason the coven refused to teach blood bond magic.”

“She’s wrong.” I’m not asking, I’m telling her.

“I know. But it didn’t matter. She disappeared three months ago. After her sister was killed in a rogue land dispute.”

Rogue land. Like what Lucian was investigating.

“She’s trying to raise revenants,” I whisper. “That’s why the shifters are being hunted. She’s binding their power to claim territory.”

“No, she’s rebuilding the forest in her image,” Moira says. “Just like I warned you would happen if you refused to take your place.”

“You didn’t want me to take a place, you wanted me to sit in chains.”

“And now your silence has fed a fire that will burn this town and all the other around it.”

I leave the shop with more questions than answers and a heart full of ash. Nara. We grew up together, but she was cruel in quiet ways… whispers, spells left half-cast, hexes she swore were “jokes.” I ignored her. I pitied her. And now she’s killing wolves fuelled by an imagined feud and grief.

And she won’t stop until someone stops her or dies trying. I don’t go back to the cabin not yet. Instead, I go to the lake.

Crystal Falls glitters under the weak sunlight, the mist clinging to the waterfall like silk. I kneel at the water’s edge and dip my fingers into the surface.

“Show me,” I whisper.

The water shimmers and I see an image of her. Nara, dressed in black, standing over a corpse with a silver knife. Carving and chanting. Claiming land that was never hers.

The image flickers and then shifts. Now I see Lucian. He’s bleeding and alone. And he’s walking into her trap. My heart stops. She’s going after him.