Page 7 of Little Witch

"About anything worth sharing?" He arched a brow. "You've had that face on all day."

I nodded and lied through my teeth. "It's just a lot. Festival stuff. I'm tired."

The Halloween Festival was the biggest thing Autumn's Hollow did all year — the whole town dressed up in everything spooky and magical, drawing visitors who wanted a taste of real magic on the one week it ran strongest. Halloway's Hearth always sat at the center of it, pastries and sweets for every event on the calendar. Normally it was my favorite time of year. Tonight it just felt like one more thing pressing down on a town that already felt too heavy.

Like something was wrong underneath all of it.

"Walk you home?" Orias asked, shrugging his jacket the rest of the way on.

"I'm fine."

"Amber."

"I mean it. I'm fine." I said it lighter than I felt, mostly for his sake. "I moved out last month so you'd stop feeling like you had to babysit me every night, remember? Kind of defeats the point if you walk me home anyway. Or you keep inviting me to stay."

Something flickered across his face — not quite hurt, not quite something else. "It's not babysitting."

"I can handle a walk home." I bumped his shoulder with mine, softer than I meant it. "Seriously. It's fine."

He studied me a beat too long, the kind of look that made my skin feel too thin, like he could see straight through the lie sitting under the bigger one. "Fine," he said eventually, though he didn't sound like he meant it. "Text me when you're back."

"I always do."

He hesitated, then reached out and tucked the same loose strand of hair back behind my ear that kept slipping free, his fingers warm against my temple for half a second too long. "Be careful," he said, quieter now, all the teasing gone out of his voice. "I mean it."

"I will."

Before I could think better of it, I rose onto my toes and pressed a kiss to his cheek, quick, the kind of thing a sister was allowed to do. His jaw was rough with stubble under my lips, and he went very still for the half second it lasted.

"Night, Orias."

"Night, little witch." He hummed.

I turned and walked before I could see whatever was on his face, because I already knew what was on mine, and I didn't need the confirmation.

It was because I liked him. Just as much as I'd once liked Rowan, if I was honest with myself — only Rowan had left town, and it was easier to pretend I didn't think about someone who wasn't around to remind me every day.

It was a lot harder to do that with Orias, when I saw him half-dressed in our own kitchen on a near weekly basis, when his voice was the first thing I heard most mornings and the last thing most nights.

I liked him more than a girl was supposed to like the boy her mother had married into the family, more than I had any right to after everything he and Rowan had already given up to keep me steady these past three years. I couldn't live under his roof anymore, sharing a hallway, hearing him move around the kitchen at two in the morning, because staying meant being close to him, and being close to him had turned into something I couldn't pretend was sisterly anymore.

It had never been sisterly. Not once.

I wanted things I had no business wanting. I wanted his hands on me the way they'd been on my jaw a hundred small, deniable times. I wanted to know what he tasted like instead of guessing. I wanted, God help me, more than I would ever let myself have.

It was too much. He was too much, and I was too tangled up in what was left of my family to risk breaking the only piece of it I still had. I couldn't lose him as family for the sake of wanting him as something else.

I'd done it once.

I'd kissed Rowan. I'd thought about how I liked him. Wanted him. So I'd kissed him.

And he'd run out of town to get away from me. Which told me all I needed to know.

So I walked, and I let the distance do what it always did, and told myself the ache in my chest would fade by the time I got home.

The streets were quiet now, most of the shops dark, lampposts casting long golden beams into the gathering dusk. The wind stirred again, carrying pine and damp leaves.

Without meaning to, I looked toward the Whispering Pines, my gaze snagging on the dark line of trees at the edge of town. They stood silent and still, and somehow alive all the same. Watching. Waiting.