Page 28 of Little Witch

The kitchen sat quiet once she'd gone. All three of us processing in our own directions. Orias reached over and squeezed my hand on the table without a word. Rowan stood at the counter still, staring at nothing, something working behind his eyes he clearly wasn't ready to say out loud yet.

"We should get moving," I said eventually, wiping the last of the tears off my cheeks. "If we're doing this tonight."

"We are." Orias stood, came around the table, and kissed me. Soft. Unhurried. His hand cupped my jaw like he needed the contact as much as I did after everything the last hour had cost all of us. "For luck," he murmured against my mouth when he pulled back.

I looked past him to Rowan. He was watching the two of us with an expression I couldn't fully read. Something caught between want and restraint. His mouth opened like there was something he needed to say before we walked out that door.

He didn't say it. Just shook his head slightly, like he was talking himself out of it in real time, and pushed off the counter instead.

"Let's go," he said. Voice rougher than usual.

Neither of us asked what he'd almost said. But I noticed it anyway. And I had a feeling I wasn't the only one who would keep noticing it, right up until he finally decided to say it out loud.

Chapter Fifteen

The moment we stepped past the treeline, the world changed around us.

I felt it before I saw it. The air went thick, cold in a way that had nothing to do with the season, and the ordinary sounds of the forest cut off all at once — no rustling leaves, no birds, nothing. Like the woods themselves had gone still on purpose, holding their breath around the three of us.

Amber's hand found mine almost immediately, fingers laced through mine tight enough that I could feel her pulse hammering against my palm. Rowan walked a half step ahead of us both, silent, eyes scanning the treeline the way he always did when something felt wrong, which lately was constantly.

The trees loomed taller than they had any right to, black branches twisting into a canopy dense enough to swallow the last of the evening light whole. Every step sank soft into damp ground, leaves and soil giving under our boots, the only sound in a forest that had otherwise gone completely silent.

The whispers started faint. Barely a murmur, threaded through the wind, impossible to make out clearly. But they were there. Growing. Pulling.

"Do you hear them?" Amber breathed, barely audible over the low hum building around us.

"Yeah." I kept my eyes moving, scanning the dark between the trunks. "Feels like they're pulling us somewhere."

She didn't answer, just tightened her grip on my hand. I could feel the tension running through her fingers, the small hitch in her breath every few steps. She was scared. She was also still walking forward, which told me more about her than any conversation could have.

We kept moving, the dark thickening with every step, trees pressing closer together like they were narrowing on purpose, funneling us somewhere specific. The whispers climbed louder, though they still weren't words exactly — more like pressure, a pull behind the ribs that had nothing to do with sound and everything to do with something ancient recognizing exactly what it wanted.

Rowan stopped first, arm shooting out to block Amber before either of us fully registered why.

"Something's wrong," he said, low.

The temperature dropped another few degrees, sharp enough that I felt it settle into my bones. That specific, familiar wrongness. Being watched by something that didn't blink.

I saw them before I could name them. Shapes at first, too far to make out clearly, shifting between the trunks like oil sliding across water. Then closer. Then close enough that the shapes resolved into something with too many joints and eyes that glowed without any real light behind them.

Shadow-things. The exact kind I'd been killing one at a time outside her window.

Except there'd only ever been one at a time before. Tonight there were at least six, and something about the way they moved — coordinated, patient, spreading out to flank rather than just charging straight at us — told me these weren't scouts anymore.

"Run," I said, already stepping in front of Amber, shadow gathering thick and cold around both my hands.

The first one lunged before the word had fully left my mouth. I met it head-on, dark meeting dark, my hand closing around something that thrashed and tried to bite through fingers that weren't entirely solid anymore. I fed it exactly what I'd fed the last four I'd killed — the specific, absolute silence right before something that didn't belong in this world stopped existing in it — and it came apart in my grip like ash caught in wind.

Two more came from the left immediately after. I turned into them, letting the shadow spread wide around me, using the dark itself as both weapon and shield, ducking a swipe from claws that would've opened my throat if I'd been a half second slower. One went down hard, torn apart between one blink and the next. The second got a hit in, four thin lines opening across my forearm, cold-burning and useless against how little it actually slowed me down.

Rowan had his own fight going a few feet over, wind roaring around him in a controlled, violent spiral, throwing two of the things clean off their feet and into the trunks hard enough to hear something crack on impact. He was efficient about it, brutal in the specific, economical way he'd always fought even as a kid.

"Amber, stay back!" I shouted, catching a fourth thing by what passed for its throat and choking the shape out of it entirely.

She hadn't moved from the spot Rowan had planted her in, eyes wide, hands raised like she wasn't sure what to do with them, magic she barely understood yet clearly straining under her skin without any outlet for it. Sparks of something pale and unformed flickered around her fingers, gone before they could do anything useful.

That hesitation nearly cost her.