Page 16

Rowan smelled the rot before she saw it.

It clung to the edges of the old willow grove, acrid and wrong.

Her boots squelched in soil that pulsed faintly with residual magic.

The corrupted ley node sat like an open wound in the earth, its wardstone cracked through the center, weeping a viscous thread of green-tinged light that should never have existed.

Linden crouched beside her, fingertips hovering just above the damage, his face grave and oddly calm. Rowan stared at the ruined circle, bile rising in her throat.

“Third one this week,” she muttered, rubbing her arms against the chill. “This is certainly escalating.”

Linden didn’t answer immediately. His hand dropped lightly to the dirt, and golden threads flickered between his fingers, tracing the shattered lines. “Someone’s redirecting the flow,” he said softly. “Not just cracking them, rerouting them. Siphoning.”

Rowan’s stomach clenched. “Like draining a blood vessel.”

“Or damming a river and catching the overflow.” He looked up at her, eyes steady. “They’re harvesting the ley lines.”

Mottle croaked loudly from his perch on her shoulder. “Excellent. That’s just what we needed. Sabotage and theft. Why not throw in a demon goat while we’re at it?”

“Clove’s innocent,” Linden said, deadpan.

“Clove’s a menace and I’ll say it to her face,” Mottle huffed, puffing up like a self-righteous fungal loaf.

But Rowan wasn’t laughing. Her throat was dry, her palms cold. Something about the ley flow here felt familiar. Sharp, echoing. A magical signature she hadn’t felt since…

“Cassian,” she said aloud.

Linden looked up. His expression didn't change, but she saw it in his shoulders: a slight tightening, like a storm tightening its grip on the horizon. “You’re sure?”

“I didn’t want to be. But…” She knelt beside him, running her hand over the sigils half-buried in the mossy stones. Her magic flared instinctively, protesting the interference. “It’s mimicry. That’s his favorite trick. He never had resonance, so he learned how to fake it.”

Linden frowned. “The Council let him go years ago.”

“Not far enough.” Rowan stood, clenching her fists. “He was always insecure of his lack of inherent power. And he despised you.” She glanced sideways at Linden, her voice brittle. “You… resonated with the land. With everything he wanted and could never touch.”

“He wanted power,” Linden said quietly.

Rowan’s laugh was dry. “Well, he found a way. He’s feeding off the ley lines. Gods know what that’s doing to him.”

A gust of wind rustled the grove, and the air around them shimmered. Subtle, but real. Like someone, or something, was watching.

***

They traced the siphoned magic back through the woods, down a winding root-path that should have been impassable.

Rowan kept pace beside Linden, her fingers occasionally brushing his as they followed the trail of distorted magic.

Each contact was small, accidental, but she felt every one of them echo through her chest like a bell.

The old greenhouse on the edge of Briar’s Hollow was half-collapsed, all ivy-covered glass and rusted hinges.

It hadn't been used in years, left to the rot after its former owner, Elder Moss, vanished mysteriously during a mushroom misidentification incident.

Now it pulsed with residual magic so sharp it felt like teeth.

Inside, it was colder. Wrong.

The walls shimmered faintly, layered with illusion wards. Some clumsy, others disturbingly elegant. Rowan pressed a hand to one pane and whispered a countercharm. The wards flickered, and reality bent inward.

Hidden within the greenhouse’s shell was a makeshift sanctum.

Spellwork lined the inner walls: mimicry circles, ley-tether constructs, siphon jars holding sloshing, glowing liquid magic.

Essence stolen straight from the ley lines.

In the center of it all sat a sigil-carved pedestal, and on it: a black mirror, its surface rippling.

Rowan took one look and said, “I hate that.”

“I think it’s watching us,” Mottle muttered.

It was.

The mirror shimmered and Cassian Vire’s reflection stepped forward.

Not physically. Not yet. But his image sharpened, like a knife catching light.

He looked the same and utterly different. His once-pristine robes were darker now, lined with thread-thin runes. His hair was longer, unkempt, his eyes glowing faintly silver, a borrowed glow, unnatural. And his smile, sharp as ever, made Rowan’s stomach turn.

“Well,” Cassian drawled. “Isn’t this quaint. The broken witch and her living security blanket.”

Linden didn’t flinch. “Cassian.”

“Thorn.” Cassian’s gaze slid to Rowan. “Rowan. I must say, you’ve aged beautifully. Trauma suits you.”

“Go rot,” she snapped, too shaken to find anything cleverer.

Cassian tilted his head. “But why rot when I could consume ? The ley lines don’t care who draws from them. They sing to anyone who knows how to listen. All your precious ‘resonance’ and rituals? Sentimentality dressed up in ceremony. I’m just tapping into its power.”

“You’re bleeding the Hollow dry,” Rowan hissed. “You’re destabilizing everything.”

“The Hollow is already broken,” he said. “You broke it. I’m just using the pieces. I deserve a piece.” His voice cracked, his composure slipping. “You all left me scraping for scraps of magic while you danced with golden light in your veins.”

“And now you’re a parasite,” Linden said evenly.

Cassian’s image crackled, glitching slightly, rage leaking through. “You’ll regret interfering.”

“I already regret seeing your face,” Rowan snapped, then reached forward and slammed her palm against the pedestal.

Magic surged. The mirror shattered with a scream.

The room plunged into silence. Dust curled in the air. The siphon jars trembled and one exploded, coating the wall with glowing ichor.

Linden grabbed her wrist and yanked her back just before a feedback loop cracked the pedestal in two.

***

Later, back at Elder Juniper’s cottage, the hearth crackled low and sullen in its stone cradle, as if even the fire had been subdued by what they’d found.

The Council had gathered, filling the parlor with the damp tension of held breath and too many half-spoken fears. The air was thick with old smoke and older memories.

Elder Juniper moved like something rooted to the earth itself.

Slow and deliberate, every step carrying the weight of decades.

Her fingers, ink-stained and callused, tugged down a dusty tapestry from the topmost shelf of the archives cabinet.

The cloth unfurled with a hiss of disturbed enchantment, ancient threads catching in the firelight like veins pulsing beneath a living thing’s skin.

It was beautiful, in a way that made Rowan’s throat go tight.

The tapestry depicted a great and gnarled tree, its roots reaching so deep they curled into themselves, spiraling in a triple knot.

Around the base, three concentric rings of figures danced hand in hand: witches, fae, shadow-kin, and humans interwoven without distinction, lit by starfire and song.

Magic stitched in gold and mossy green curled across the fabric like mist, alive even now.

Juniper’s voice, when it came, was a stone dropped in a still pool.

“The Heartroot,” she said, her gaze never leaving the tapestry. “Where the first pact was woven: blood to blood, vow to vow. Beneath Briar’s Hollow. Hidden for a hundred generations. It may be the only place strong enough to anchor a final reweaving.”

Final.

The word tasted like ash on Rowan’s tongue. She crossed her arms over her chest, warding against the chill that had crept in since sundown.

“Final?” she asked, though she already knew. Knew by the way the elders stood too still. Knew by the ache in her bones that always came before something irreversible.

Juniper turned. Her silver braid coiled like a spell over her shoulder, heavy with silence. “This ritual won’t be like the others. It will require absolute resonance. Harmony.” Her gaze flicked from Rowan to Linden. “And intimacy. Of the old kind.”

Something low in Rowan’s belly went molten.

Juniper’s voice softened, but it did not lose its weight. “Sacrificial and binding. A joining not just of bodies, but of power. Of trust. If you perform it, you will not come out the same.”

There was a moment when no one moved.

Then Linden’s hand found hers.

Just a brush. A touch at the edge of her fingers, reverent, trembling slightly, like he couldn’t believe he was allowed.

Rowan didn’t pull away.

Instead, she turned her hand and laced their fingers together, palm to palm. Felt the heat of him seep into her, steady and grounding.

The Council murmured, but their voices faded. The room blurred at the edges, the fire humming in her blood, the tapestry still glowing faintly with its stitched promise. Beneath them, the ley threads stirred. Waited.

Rowan looked at Juniper, chin lifting.

“Then we’ll go,” she said, her voice low and unshakable. “To the Heartroot.”

And beside her, Linden, quiet Linden, always full of sunlight, said only, “Together.”

Their joined hands pulsed with a shared heat that had nothing to do with the hearthfire.

And the house, ancient and listening, exhaled.

That night, back at Linden’s cottage, Rowan sat in front of the fire while Mottle snoozed grumpily on a cushion. She felt raw and restless, like her skin didn’t fit.

Linden sat beside her. Not too close. Not pushing.

“You alright?” he asked softly.

“No,” she said, then leaned against his shoulder anyway. “But I trust you.”

His arm came around her without hesitation, warm and steady.