Page 2 of Autumn L.A.W

“I don’t cause chaos,” Lioness snapped. “I encourage creativity. You, however, have no sense of humor.”

“You set a sketch on fire with your mind three days ago.”

“It was a controlled burn.”

“The paper screamed.”

Rayna cleared her throat. “Ladies. Bas has spoken.”

“Oh, she’s spoken,” Sahara muttered. “She gleefully declared my doom.”

Bas lifted a brow. “If I wanted your doom, Sahara, I’d pair you with Rayna during her PMS week.”

Rayna pointed her pen at Bas’s projection. “Hey!”

Chad slid printouts across the table. “There’s a localized tremor in Central Park. Pre-quake runic interference, faint pulse readings, wildlife agitation. Something’s trying to rise.”

Lioness leaned over the papers, eyes scanning the diagrams upside down. “Ooh, that’s not normal.”

Sahara snatched the page back and turned it. “You can’t read glyphs upside down.”

“I can if they’re pretty.”

“They’re not meant to be pretty⁠—”

Rayna cut in before a full sibling-style brawl broke out. “Look. You two argue like toddlers in a shared playpen, but you watch each other’s backs. Even when you pretend you don’t.” She pointed to Sahara. “You’d tackle a demon with your bare hands if it so much as breathed near Lioness.” Then she pointed at Lioness. “And you’d set that demon on fire with interpretive art.”

Lioness smirked. “I mean. Yeah.”

Sahara sighed skyward. “Fine. Whatever. Let’s just go before the obelisk or volcano or whatever it is gets cranky.”

Bas’s projection softened. “Good. Sahara, keep your grounding sigils ready. Lioness, try not to touch anything that glows unless Sahara supervises.”

Lioness saluted. “No promises.”

Sahara grabbed her backpack and strode toward the door. “Let’s go, Disaster Child.”

“Lead the way, Sand Princess.”

Rayna called after them, “Try not to let Manhattan explode!”

Sahara didn’t break stride. “Ha! You’re sending me with Lioness, remember?”

And with that, the most incompatible duo in the League marched out together—arguing, bickering, and absolutely ready to defend each other against anything that wasn’t each other.

Sahara Nadir hated mornings almost as much as she hated surprises, and Central Park was giving her both.

Mist clung to the grass. Dog walkers and joggers skirted the caution tape that Lioness had conjured before she left to investigate a group of fire trucks nearby. Sahara stepped inside the tape, cordoning off an oddly symmetrical patch of ground near the Ramble. It seemed too triangular, too polished, like the earth had been carved by something with a protractor.

Sahara crouched beside the fissure, her fingertips hovering a breath above the soil. The ground still pulsed faintly, as if the quake had left behind an echo that refused to fade.

“Well,” she muttered, “you’re not natural. You’re not accidental. And you’re absolutely older than my last three middle-aged exes combined.”

Her palm warmed as she drew an anchoring sigil over the crack. Magic hummed under her skin. It was steady at first, then tugging. Something deep beneath the surface seemed to lean upward, curious.

“Nope,” she said sharply, cutting the line of the sigil. “We’re not doing that. I’m not your morning snack.”

A jogger slowed nearby. “Uh, are you a geologist?”