Page 5

Story: The Hazelwood Pact

The ritual site was a glade so old it didn’t remember a time before magic. Rowan arrived late.

Technically, one couldn’t be late to a harmonic rite.

It began when both casters were present, breath aligned, hands linked, intent shared.

But that didn’t stop Rowan from stomping into the clearing like she’d been personally insulted by every moss-covered stone.

Her boots squelched in the damp grass, her shawl flapping behind her like an irritable flag.

The clearing was ringed with standing stones carved with faint glyphs, old enough to weep lichen and gossip.

And there he was. Already barefoot, because of course he was. Linden stood in the centre of the circle, shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows, hair half-tied and already catching bits of falling blossom. He looked like something conjured by a lonely bard. He looked like he belonged.

Rowan felt the headache bloom behind her eyes like a spell gone sideways.

Probably tension. Or dread. Or the fact that she hadn’t slept more than three consecutive hours since this whole damn harmonic rite business started swirling around her like a particularly persistent wasp.

She stepped into the glade with the grace of a woman entering her own execution, shoulders hunched, jaw set, already halfway to a snarl.

“Nice of you to show up,” Linded said, voice calm but warm. As if he were greeting her at a garden gate with a cup of herbal tea and not standing across from her about to perform magically-mandated couples therapy with soulstrings and clover pollen.

“If you’d prefer I leave, just say the word,” she snapped, crossing her arms over her chest and immediately regretting it, because it only made her aware of the way her heart was stuttering off-beat and disjointed.

Linden smiled. Like an orchard gate on a spring morning. Like a hand offered without expectation. “I’m glad you came.”

Rowan narrowed her eyes, ostensibly so she wouldn’t have to look directly at the soft hollow of his throat, where his pulse beat quiet and steady and unfairly serene. “Let’s get this over with before I remember any better options like drinking the local well dry or self-immolation.”

He only nodded and gestured toward the altar at the center of the circle.

It was a rough-hewn slab of granite sunk into moss, ringed with warding stones and ferns that curled protectively toward the sigils.

Two silver bowls of saltwater gleamed in the dappled light.

Between them, a small drift of dried petals, rose, marigold, something pale that might’ve been ghost lily, lay scattered over an etched ring of bone dust and clover pollen.

The ingredients pulsed faintly with contained power.

The setup was precise, reverent, meticulous.

He must’ve done it himself. Bastard.

Rowan exhaled sharply and stepped across the circle’s boundary. The wards recognized her touch, the magic humming low against her skin like the first pluck of a harp string. She moved to stand opposite Linden, grounding her boots against the stone and willing her spine to stop trembling.

“First harmonic rite,” she muttered, just loud enough for the birds to hear. “Step one: Touch the idiot.”

“Technically,” Linden said, in that maddeningly mild tone of his, “we begin with synchronizing breath.”

“Worse,” she said flatly, eyes narrowed to slits. “Now I have to breathe with the idiot.”

He didn’t rise to the bait. Just extended his hands toward her, palms open and steady. Waiting.

Rowan stared at them like they were venomous.

Long, elegant fingers dusted with flecks of gold powder.

Nails clean and trimmed. Faint calluses on the pads from years of handling seedlings, stringing protective runes, twining vines into wards.

Hands that had once cupped her face like something precious. Hands she had not touched in ten years.

Three seconds passed.

Four.

Don’t be weird about it , she told herself savagely. Just hold the damn hands, perform the damn rite, fix the damn ley lines, and go home to scream into a pillow and pretend none of this ever happened .

Her fingers met his.

And the world stilled.

It should’ve felt neutral. Professional.

Clinical, even, like plugging in a ley stone or completing a circuit.

But it didn’t. It felt like pressing bare skin to sun-warmed stone.

Like stepping into a bath at the perfect temperature.

His hands were warm and dry and steady. Not gripping.

Not demanding. Just… there. Welcoming. His fingers curled slightly to meet hers, not laced but aligned, like twin notes played in harmony.

Her breath hitched in her throat. She masked it with a cough and immediately regretted that, too.

“Okay,” she muttered. “Let’s breathe.”

One inhale.

One exhale.

And then the air shifted.

Magic stirred. Not in her veins, where it usually lived, unruly and twitchy, but under her skin.

In the soil. It rose around them like morning mist over tea, gold-tinged and tentative, warm where it should’ve been wild.

It smelled like rosemary and cracked pepper.

It smelled like autumn apples and the soft loam of the forest floor.

It tasted like something she'd forgotten how to want.

The ley lines rustled.

Their joined hands began to glow.

It was a soft thing just a low golden pulse where their palms met.

A thrum. A slow, coaxing hum that moved from skin to nerve to bone.

Rowan could feel it settle into her ribs.

Into her belly. It vibrated under her sternum like a chord plucked by a gentle hand.

A resonance. She was half sure if she opened her mouth, she’d sing.

And then Linden looked up.

His eyes were caught in the golden light. Alive. Reflective. Full of the ache of old things and the grace of something trying so hard not to hope.

And he smiled.

That did it.

Rowan yanked her hands back like she’d touched an open flame. The glow shattered, dissipating into the air like a breath held too long. The glade itself seemed to exhale in her wake. The wards dimmed.

“Shit,” she muttered, already rubbing her palms on her skirt like she could wipe him off. Like that warmth hadn’t already imprinted.

“It worked,” Linden said softly. Not with triumph. Not with smugness. Just… with quiet wonder. As if it mattered less that the ritual succeeded and more that they had managed it together.

She threw him a look so sharp it could’ve sliced through leather. “Don’t get used to it.”

He tilted his head slightly. “You okay?”

Rowan gave him a brittle smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I am, against all odds, still alive. Great job, team.”

Linden said nothing, only turned toward the altar to extinguish the saltwater bowls with a murmured charm, the smoke curling up like a final sigh.

Rowan didn’t wait for him to finish. She turned on her heel and stalked out of the glade like the hounds of the Wild Hunt were nipping at her heels.

***

Mottle was waiting for her when she returned, perched on the porch rail like a demonic weather vane. His head tilted as she approached, and Rowan didn’t even make it to the top step before he opened his mouth and let loose the verbal equivalent of a slap to the face.

“You smell like horny tension and clover,” he said, voice scratchy with delight. “Did you make out or fight?”

“Shut up,” Rowan snapped, too tired to be clever, too flayed to pretend she wasn’t still reeling.

“So both,” he croaked with gleeful certainty, hopping sideways along the rail like he was doing a celebratory jig.

She slammed the door hard enough to rattle the dried bundles of sage and wolfsbane that hung beside it. The wards flickered faintly in protest, but she didn’t bother whispering an apology. Let the whole Hollow be unsettled. She already was.

The house was quiet, blessedly so. The kind of silence that draped itself across her shoulders like a heavy shawl and didn’t ask questions.

She climbed the stairs slowly, legs leaden, hands twitching by her sides like they hadn’t quite learned how to be hands again.

The attic door groaned in its frame as she pushed it open, and the familiar scent of thyme and old smoke met her like an old friend. Comforting. Contained. Her space.

She peeled off her boots and coat with something that might’ve been exhaustion or ritual shedding or both, and collapsed onto the narrow bed that sat beneath the slanted ceiling, its quilt faded and full of stitched charms. The mattress creaked in protest, and she curled onto her side, burying her face into the pillow she definitely did not, under any circumstances, treat like a stand-in for anyone’s chest.

But her body was treacherous.

Her arms curled tighter around it without permission, muscle memory kicking in where logic refused to tread.

Her palms still tingled. Not with magic, not exactly, but with the afterimage of warmth.

The echo of touch. The shadow of Linden’s hands cradling hers like they were meant to fit.

Like she was something whole. Something safe to hold.

It wasn’t the glow that haunted her, not really.

Not the ritual, not the power, not even the way the ley lines had responded like sleepy hounds waking to a familiar whistle.

No, what pressed against her mind now with the persistence of a bruise was the quiet steadiness of his fingers.

The grounded way he’d held her. No pressure.

No doubt. No hesitation. Just the honest shape of his hands around hers like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Rowan let out a muffled sound and shoved her face deeper into the pillow.

Her cheeks were hot, but not from embarrassment.

From fury. From want. From the sheer stupidity of her own heart, which had apparently decided that after years of cold distance and justified anger, it was time to get sentimental.

She kicked the covers off, then yanked them back on. Turned over. Turned back. Huffed. The bed creaked in complaint.

Ley lines, she could handle. Wild currents of ancient magic, rooted in the marrow of the earth and bound to the will of living things? Sure. That she could manage. That was manageable.

But this?

This ache behind her ribs? This stubborn warmth in her palms? This phantom memory of a boy she’d spent a decade trying to unlove?

This was going to ruin her.