slippinmickeys

[slippinmickeys]

Familiar (53/?)

Dana lay beneath him, her breath still ragged, her body trembling with the aftershocks. His weight pressed her down, heavy and grounding, yet she couldn’t bring herself to move. Not when every part of him still clung to her, his heartbeat a frantic echo of her own.

She lifted her hand to his cheek, just to touch him, but where her fingers brushed, a faint shimmer rose between their skins. Gold, soft and alive, as though light itself was seeping from their bond.

Her breath caught. She trailed her fingers along his jaw, down the curve of his shoulder, and the glow followed, spreading in slow tendrils that kissed across his chest before curling into her own skin.

“Fox,” she whispered, startled by the beauty of it.

His head lifted, eyes wide, reflecting that same light. He pressed his hand over hers, and the shimmer flared bright enough to make them both gasp—sparks running like quicksilver along their arms, down to where their bodies were still joined.

“It’s us,” he said softly, awed. Then, after a beat, rougher: “It’s the bond.”

A shiver went through her. Wonder, yes—but threaded with something sharper. This wasn’t just closeness. This was magic. Power. The kind of thing others might see, might want, might take.

She swallowed, her heart stumbling against her ribs. Still, she couldn’t look away.

“We glow when we touch,” she said in wonder. 

He nodded, marveling, and then his lips found hers again, and the light answered, swelling brighter, warming her from the inside out. She broke the kiss on a shaky laugh, pressing her forehead to his as his body softened and he slid out of her. “It grows brighter when we—”

“When we touch,” he finished for her, “with want.” His smile then faltered at the edges, like he, too, felt the weight of it. 

Then, with a low groan, he rolled to his side and pulled her with him, their bare skin sliding together, the glow blooming bright once more before softening into a faint pulse.

They lay tangled in each other’s arms, staring at the shimmer where their bodies met. It was beautiful. Terrifying. Inevitable.

She smoothed her hand across his chest, tracing idle circles. Wherever her fingers roamed, the shimmer followed, sparking faintly like fireflies in midsummer fields. She laughed under her breath, unable to help it, and pressed her palm flat over his heartbeat. “This is incredible,” she whispered, her words soft.

He turned his head, his lips brushing her hair as he answered. “I can’t tell if it’s us, or the magic, or both.” His voice was hoarse, raw from more than passion.

Dana shifted, meaning to take his hand—and froze. Her own wrist caught the light, and the mark there stirred. The four curling lines she had grown used to seeing were moving. Not wildly, not enough to doubt her eyes—but the delicate spirals seemed to draw inward, tightening toward the center like a whirlpool’s pull. They pulsed faintly, sharp as thorns, alive.

Her breath caught. She lifted her arm closer to him. “Fox,” she whispered, “look. Look at your mark.”

He raised his wrist, and sure enough, his spirals had changed too, mirroring hers. The curling lines seemed to coil inward in the same rhythm, faint light flickering between them like a shared heartbeat.

She lifted her face to him, studying the way the light caught in his features—the sharp planes of his cheek, the curve of his mouth, the shadow of stubble on his jaw. He looked almost otherworldly, like a man pulled out of myth, shaped by magic and bound to her alone.

Her chest tightened, but not from fear. It was too much. Too good. She kissed him, slow and tender, and the glow swelled again, suffusing them both until it felt as though the night itself might give way to dawn.

When they finally broke apart, he shifted onto his back, and she rolled with him, sprawling half across his chest. His arm banded around her, his hand spread wide at the small of her back. For the first time since she could remember, Dana felt entirely safe—safe in a way that had nothing to do with spells or blades or running north.

“You feel it too, don’t you?” she asked, her cheek against his chest, her voice small but steady.

His fingers brushed her spine, slow and deliberate. “Yes. Like the bond’s no longer just in here—” he tapped his wrist lightly “—but everywhere. In the heart. In the blood.”

For a long while, neither of them spoke again. They lay tangled together, wrapped in the hum of their bond, listening to the evenness of each other’s breath and the whisper of the soft fire in the hearth, letting the magic flicker and fade and swell again as if it, too, was content to bask in them.

Finally, Fox’s voice broke the quiet. “Do you think the innkeeper’s offer of supper is still good?” She smiled into his skin—she was famished as well. “I’ll dress and go down and—”

“No,” she cut in sharply, sitting up. “No. You came into this room as a familiar, and I’d prefer that’s how you leave it. I… I don’t wish to draw any further undue attention.”

He pressed a kiss to the crown of her head. “As you wish.”

Heat rose to her cheeks as she sat up fully, suddenly aware of her bare form in the candlelight. For a moment she hesitated, but when she stood, his gaze followed her—half-lidded, dark, and utterly unashamed. For the first time in her life, when a man looked at her with that kind of roving appreciation, she felt enlivened by it rather than threatened. Power stirred in her blood, answering his hunger with her own.

She bent to retrieve her shift from the floor, and when the linen slipped over her curves, she heard a tortured breath escape him. The sound made her smile to herself. Once dressed, she returned to the bed, leaned down, and kissed him. The kiss lingered, sweet and warm, and the glow flared brighter between them as though the bond delighted in their nearness. She marveled at it, then pulled back. 

“I’ll be back with food,” she said.

He caught her hand before she turned, bringing her knuckles to his lips in a gesture so tender it stole her breath. Then he let her go.

***

The hallway felt narrower than before, the stairs steeper. Dana walked down them absolutely convinced everyone would see the change in her—would know she had been undone and remade, would sense the glow still clinging to her skin. Surely the building must have shaken as their room had—as she had; surely the bond itself still reverberated in the air. She was no longer what she had been before.

But no one gave her so much as a glance. A pair of farmers hunched over their mugs didn’t look up. The hearth snapped and hissed. Only the innkeeper’s eyes rose to meet hers as Dana reached the bottom of the stairs.

“After supper, are you?” the woman asked, arching a brow.

Dana nodded. Her voice felt thin in her throat. “Yes.”

“Would you like to eat it here, or would you like to take it up?”

“I’d like to eat in my room, please.”

The innkeeper smiled, bustling away toward the kitchen. “I’ll have it for you in a moment.”

Dana exhaled a breath and rested a hand briefly against the doorframe. Her pulse was still quick, her body still aware of the man waiting upstairs. Even here, away from him, the bond hummed beneath her skin like a secret fire.

***

Dana balanced the tray carefully as she slipped back into the room, closing the door softly behind her. Fox had pulled on his leggings but was still bare to the waist, sprawled across the bed, lazy and sated. The sight of him—hair askew, skin golden in the lamplight—made her throat tighten.

“I brought supper,” she said, setting the tray down on the small table near the bed.

He stretched, unhurried, and came to join her. “You look off put."

“I feel… different.” She hesitated, searching for the words. “As though the world can tell, even if no one said a thing.”

His smile was faint but kind. “I know what you mean.”

Somewhere outside, voices drifted through the floorboards—the scrape of a chair, the muted stomp of boots across the common room. A reminder of the world below, ordinary and oblivious, while here she was remade. The thought steadied her, deepened the strange new confidence curling through her veins.

She uncovered the dishes one by one, lifting the polished cloches. Her breath caught. A bowl of thick stew, the scent of root vegetables and herbs rising rich and comforting. Fresh bread, still warm, with a dish of softened butter. And beside it, a little plate of late berries—black, red, and glistening.

She hadn’t asked for it. She hadn’t spoken a word. Yet it was precisely what she had longed for—nourishment and sweetness in equal measure.

Fox raised a brow. “This is just what I wanted.”

“Me too,” she said. 

He shook his head in wonder. “This land listens.” 

They sat close together at the small table, their knees brushing. Each time their skin touched, the glow stirred—no longer a blaze but a soft, pearly shimmer that seemed to gather and fade with the rhythm of their closeness.

She tore off a piece of bread, spread butter thick across it, and offered it to him. He leaned in, teeth grazing the crust as he took it from her fingers. The brush of his lips sent a tingle racing up her arm.

“You’ll ruin me,” he murmured, chewing slowly, his eyes telling her that he didn’t mind if she did.

She smiled and broke off another piece for herself. The stew was hearty, spiced just as she would have asked for if she’d had the chance. She felt it warm her all the way down, settling into her stomach like an ember. When she glanced at Fox, he was watching her, green eyes glinting as though the food in front of him was nothing compared to her.

She looked away quickly, focusing on the berries. She plucked one, red and ripe, and bit into it. Juice spilled down her lip, sweet and tart, and before she could brush it away, Fox leaned in. His thumb grazed her mouth, catching the bead of liquid, and the glow between them flared brighter.

Her breath caught. “Fox…”

He drew the berry-stained thumb slowly to his mouth and sucked it clean, never breaking her gaze. The glow pulsed, answering the sharp twist of heat low in her belly.

Fox swallowed thickly. “Are you… Terribly sore?”

Dana considered herself. She had been a virgin before today, and while there had been an initial pain when he first entered her, she now felt only a vague prickle of discomfort. Mainly what she felt was an ache, but not one caused by their activity. One that would only be assuaged by his touch. 

She shook her head, and he licked his lips. 

They finished the meal slowly, wordlessly—bread, stew, berries, each bite shared, each brush of fingers deliberate. By the time the last dish was empty, the air between them had shifted again, charged and tight, but softened by the comfort of food and the simple miracle of having found each other here.

Fox reached for her hand as she set aside the final dish, his thumb stroking across her knuckles. The glow answered at once, brightening between them.

“You’re still hungry,” he said, voice low, roughened.

Her pulse stumbled. “Yes.”

But she wasn’t speaking of food.

The tray clattered faintly as he pushed it aside, pulling her onto his lap with a swiftness that stole her breath. She went willingly, her legs curling around him, the glow blooming between their bodies like fire catching kindling. His mouth was already on hers, tasting of stew and berries and her, and she thought, dizzy with want, that she could spend a lifetime learning what it meant to ruin him.

***

Fox stood from the chair with Dana’s legs still wrapped around his waist and kissed her deeply, holding her tight to him with one arm and using the other to reach down and tug loose her boots, dropping them to the floor with one and then another hollow thump.

She seemed to barely notice, one hand threaded through his hair and the other raking over his back, her nails dragging against his skin with delicious urgency. Wherever she touched, light stirred faintly, like sparks leaping along dried grass. He carried her to the bed and laid her gently on her back, bracing himself above her.

For a moment he only looked at her—cheeks flushed, lips swollen from his kiss, the plait she had tied that morning half undone. Strands had slipped free in fiery disarray, a tumble of copper against the pillow. Slowly, almost reverently, he reached up and loosed the rest, letting it spill over her shoulders and across the bed like a river of light. His fingertips brushed her temple, and the bond shimmered there, answering the touch with a faint glow.

His chest clenched tight. Dana had been through so much—accusation, capture, near loss—and still she looked up at him with trust shining clear in her eyes. She deserved more than hunger. She deserved to be worshipped. 

Instinct, rather than memory, drove him—a knowing, born of her, of them. 

Fox bent to kiss her again, slower this time, tasting her sigh before trailing his lips along her jaw, down her throat, to the hollow where her pulse beat fast. Light followed him, faint pulses blooming wherever his mouth touched her. She arched toward him, whispering his name like a prayer.

When his hand moved lower, it met the barrier of her dress. Rather than tug, he lingered. Patient. One by one, he found the fastenings and loosened them, his knuckles brushing her ribs, her waist, her hips as he worked. 

The fabric slackened, parting just enough for his hand to skim along her side. He eased it back carefully, sliding it from her shoulders until it pooled in folds around her waist, leaving only the thin shift beneath. He nosed the linen down, baring the soft swell of her curves, the glow rising instantly to gild her skin. His mouth followed, lingering at her collarbone, tongue tasting the flutter of her pulse before tracing lower, leaving a wet, golden trail as he descended.

Gods, and then— 

He closed his lips around the tight, blushing peaks of her nipples, one and then the other, each begging to be savored. His hands cupped her breasts, lifting them to his eager mouth. She hissed at the contact, the sound arrowing straight to his cock, and he ground himself against the mattress in a futile bid for relief. With every stroke of his tongue he unraveled further, seething with lust—but this was for her, and only her.

He pressed lower, kissing a molten path across her stomach until he reached the bunched folds of her dress. With careful hands he drew her skirts higher, baring the pale skin of her legs, his lips brushing worship onto every inch. She shivered, muscles rippling under his touch, her breath quickening as the glow shimmered across her belly.

When his fingers spread her, parting the delicate, crocus-petal folds, she trembled, clutching at his shoulders with a sound that was something like a gasp—caught between hesitation and need, the light of their bond burning brighter with each breath.

“Fox?” she breathed, uncertain.

He lifted his head just enough to meet her eyes, one hand reaching up to smooth the fabric at her hip where light was already seeping through. “Only if you’ll let me, love,” he said. 

A beat passed, then she nodded—hesitant, but the trust was there, trembling yet strong.

When he lowered his mouth to her, she startled at the strangeness of it, hips jolting. A sound escaped her, half protest, half plea. But then he lingered, slow and patient, letting her feel each stroke of his tongue, each devoted press. The light flared with every movement, painting her in shimmering pulses, brighter and brighter until her breathing broke and spilled into a soft cry.

Her hand flew to his hair and tangled there, urging him closer. She gasped his name, thighs quivering against his shoulders, and with each tremor the glow burst sharper, filling the room with a golden sheen.

He smiled against her, the seafoam taste of her bright on his tongue, hungry for every sound she made, every shimmer of light. His own body burned with need, but he ignored it, wholly intent on her. On giving her this. On showing her what it meant to be undone not by force, not by fear, but by joy.

She broke apart beneath him, radiant, light spilling from the bond in luminous waves that lit her skin as she cried out. The sight seared him, filled him, and he thought he could live forever on that sound, that shimmer, that gift.

When she finally sank back, limp and panting, the glow faded to a soft afterglow, clinging to her skin in faint sparks. He pressed a kiss to her thigh, then climbed up beside her, gathering her against his chest. She laughed breathlessly, dazed and shining still, her fingers knotted in his hair.

“I didn’t know,” she whispered. “I didn’t know it could be like that.”

He kissed her temple, heart pounding. “You deserve nothing less.”

For a long moment he held her, fighting the ache still coursing through his body, the sharp edge of want he had pressed into the mattress rather than her. The bond still hummed between them, answering every ragged breath, every racing thought. He let it steady him, let her weight against his chest be enough.

***

A tree. Roots sunk deep. Bare branches against a pale sky.

A bud, swelling at the tip of a branch.

Petals unfurling, slow and certain, spilling soft light into the stillness.

A fox, golden eyes watching, waiting.

Dana woke warm, tangled in strong arms and steady breath. For a long moment she lay still, letting herself drift in the rare quiet. Her fingertips traced the slope of Fox’s shoulder, memorizing the simple miracle of him beside her. They had stolen this night. She wanted to keep every heartbeat.

When his eyes opened, he caught her watching and smiled. The kiss that followed was slow, unhurried, until their bodies stirred against one another and warmth rose again. Their second joining was gentler, threaded with laughter muffled into the pillows, sighs that gave way to gasps, soft cries swallowed by the gray edge of dawn.

Afterward she dozed against his chest, lulled by the rhythm of his heart. But when the first pale light crept above the rooftops, his breath faltered. His body tensed beneath her.

He fell out of bed and staggered, listing to the side, his face showing the same agony that Dana felt inside. 

She threw herself towards him desperately, reaching out, but her hands closed on the air where Fox had been standing, and the change came all the same—bones tightening, limbs twisting until all that remained was the fox on the floor panting, looking up at her with sad, golden eyes.

She lowered herself to the floor next to him and threw her arms around his neck, her chest aching as she pressed her face into his fur. They had only just found this, and already it was torn from her.

Dana sat next to him, petting him as she would a beloved pet and watched as the same golden light glowed through his fur where they touched. 

Finally, when she felt more calm, she said:

“Do you think…” Her voice caught, and she tried again, this time through their bond, which came easily now. “Do you think the Overseer knew this would happen? That we’d…” 

It wasn’t until after they’d made love that she thought back to the old man’s questions to her on their way to the village, about what happened when they touched, that she’d thought perhaps he knew what would happen. The memory flushed hot through her, and she couldn’t finish.

Fox lifted his sharp gaze. “He said something to me,” he murmured through the bond. “‘One dawn, one choice.’”

Her head snapped toward him. “What does that mean?”

“I think we’re about to find out.”

With a sense of unease, she dressed by habit more than thought, fumbling with laces, hunting for her satchel, counting what little they owned. When she lifted Bite from where it leaned against the wall, the hilt felt… warmer. She glanced down—and the runes that had always been dead stone to her seemed to sharpen, as if the metal itself had turned its face toward her.

She could read them.

The words rose to her lips before she knew she meant to speak, quiet as breath:

“When the last of Dark and Light collide one shall fall And Magic shall return”

Fox’s head came up, golden eyes fixed to hers. Through their bond came the barest thrum—shock, awe, a pulse of fear.

“We need to talk to him,” he said. “The Overseer. Now.”

***

They went down to the common room in the thinning pale. The inn was nearly empty: one woman with both hands wrapped around a cup; two empty benches by the cold door; a hearth that threw more shadow than heat. The Overseer sat in the far corner—composed, tall hat shading his eyes, staff upright at his side. Relief loosened what had been clenched inside her.

The innkeeper herself brought breakfast—porridge, a heel of bread, a crock of butter and a few stewed apples—and set it before Dana with a nod. She did not set anything before the Overseer. He inclined his head as if to thank her anyway.

Dana glanced between them. “Will they—”

“They’ll not serve me,” the Overseer said mildly, before she could finish. “But I break no law by sitting. Shelter is not denied.”

The simple cruelty of it scraped at her. She tore bread for Fox and slipped him pieces beneath the table. Each time her fingers brushed his fur, a soft flare of gold breathed over their contact and faded. The Overseer watched those little lights with an expression she could not name—sober, certain, almost… relieved.

She couldn’t hold it any longer. Dana slid Bite from its sheath and set the blade across the table. The metal looked dull as always in morning light, but the hilt—those lines bit into the grip as if newly cut—seemed to catch and keep every flicker of gold from her hand.

“I can read them,” she said, scarcely above a whisper. “Like the runes on the blade.”

The Overseer leaned in. When her fingers brushed Fox again, that faint light climbed into the runes like breath through embers.

“Those,” he said quietly, nodding at the hilt, “have been there even longer.”

“How do you know?” Dana asked.

He reached out and traced one line with a single, careful finger, the way a man might touch a relic. The look in his eyes went soft and far-off.

“Because I was there when they were written.”

She stared. “You were—”

“My witch,” he said, voice gone rough, “is the one who ferried you away—down past the Veil—to the step of your farmwoman mother.”

The words knocked the air from her. Fox pressed closer against her leg, steadying her.

The Overseer moved his gaze back and forth between them. He did not hedge. He did not look away.

“It is time,” he said. His voice carried no hesitation, only certainty. “Time for you to know the truth—who you are, and what has bound you together since the beginning.”

He let the silence hold a beat before continuing. “You were born of prophecy. Both of you. The words are etched into this blade… but they are not—”

The door banged open, cutting him off.

Cold swept the room, tossing the banked hearthlight. Half a dozen men entered in white cloaks that fell in heavy folds, armor bright enough to throw spears of light across the rafters. Their boots struck the floorboards in a measured thunder that made the cups tremble on the tables.

The innkeeper went to meet them, calm and composed, speaking low. When the captain spoke to her, she turned and lifted one pointed hand toward the shadowed corner where Dana, and the Overseer sat, Fox at their feet. The men began to make their way over. 

Dana’s heart lurched into her throat. Of course. They’d come for him—for the Overseer, a man who wore shadow openly into a house of the Light. Her palm flattened against the table, ready to run, to fight, to—

The lead knight stopped at their table and looked at her. For a long breath, there was only the faint creak of his white leather gloves and the wild beat of her heart.

Then he went to his knees.

Steel rang softly on wood. The men behind him knelt as well, a ripple of white and bright metal folding down until it seemed the inn itself bowed.

“Princess,” the captain said, head bent, voice carrying to every corner. His eyes flicked once to the Overseer—measuring, wary—then returned to Dana. “We have come to bring you to your mother. The Queen. The Witch of Light.”

[slippinmickeys]

Familiar (53/?)

Dana lay beneath him, her breath still ragged, her body trembling with the aftershocks. His weight pressed her down, heavy and grounding, yet she couldn’t bring herself to move. Not when every part of him still clung to her, his heartbeat a frantic echo of her own.

She lifted her hand to his cheek, just to touch him, but where her fingers brushed, a faint shimmer rose between their skins. Gold, soft and alive, as though light itself was seeping from their bond.

Her breath caught. She trailed her fingers along his jaw, down the curve of his shoulder, and the glow followed, spreading in slow tendrils that kissed across his chest before curling into her own skin.

“Fox,” she whispered, startled by the beauty of it.

His head lifted, eyes wide, reflecting that same light. He pressed his hand over hers, and the shimmer flared bright enough to make them both gasp—sparks running like quicksilver along their arms, down to where their bodies were still joined.

“It’s us,” he said softly, awed. Then, after a beat, rougher: “It’s the bond.”

A shiver went through her. Wonder, yes—but threaded with something sharper. This wasn’t just closeness. This was magic. Power. The kind of thing others might see, might want, might take.

She swallowed, her heart stumbling against her ribs. Still, she couldn’t look away.

“We glow when we touch,” she said in wonder. 

He nodded, marveling, and then his lips found hers again, and the light answered, swelling brighter, warming her from the inside out. She broke the kiss on a shaky laugh, pressing her forehead to his as his body softened and he slid out of her. “It grows brighter when we—”

“When we touch,” he finished for her, “with want.” His smile then faltered at the edges, like he, too, felt the weight of it. 

Then, with a low groan, he rolled to his side and pulled her with him, their bare skin sliding together, the glow blooming bright once more before softening into a faint pulse.

They lay tangled in each other’s arms, staring at the shimmer where their bodies met. It was beautiful. Terrifying. Inevitable.

She smoothed her hand across his chest, tracing idle circles. Wherever her fingers roamed, the shimmer followed, sparking faintly like fireflies in midsummer fields. She laughed under her breath, unable to help it, and pressed her palm flat over his heartbeat. “This is incredible,” she whispered, her words soft.

He turned his head, his lips brushing her hair as he answered. “I can’t tell if it’s us, or the magic, or both.” His voice was hoarse, raw from more than passion.

Dana shifted, meaning to take his hand—and froze. Her own wrist caught the light, and the mark there stirred. The four curling lines she had grown used to seeing were moving. Not wildly, not enough to doubt her eyes—but the delicate spirals seemed to draw inward, tightening toward the center like a whirlpool’s pull. They pulsed faintly, sharp as thorns, alive.

Her breath caught. She lifted her arm closer to him. “Fox,” she whispered, “look. Look at your mark.”

He raised his wrist, and sure enough, his spirals had changed too, mirroring hers. The curling lines seemed to coil inward in the same rhythm, faint light flickering between them like a shared heartbeat.

She lifted her face to him, studying the way the light caught in his features—the sharp planes of his cheek, the curve of his mouth, the shadow of stubble on his jaw. He looked almost otherworldly, like a man pulled out of myth, shaped by magic and bound to her alone.

Her chest tightened, but not from fear. It was too much. Too good. She kissed him, slow and tender, and the glow swelled again, suffusing them both until it felt as though the night itself might give way to dawn.

When they finally broke apart, he shifted onto his back, and she rolled with him, sprawling half across his chest. His arm banded around her, his hand spread wide at the small of her back. For the first time since she could remember, Dana felt entirely safe—safe in a way that had nothing to do with spells or blades or running north.

“You feel it too, don’t you?” she asked, her cheek against his chest, her voice small but steady.

His fingers brushed her spine, slow and deliberate. “Yes. Like the bond’s no longer just in here—” he tapped his wrist lightly “—but everywhere. In the heart. In the blood.”

For a long while, neither of them spoke again. They lay tangled together, wrapped in the hum of their bond, listening to the evenness of each other’s breath and the whisper of the soft fire in the hearth, letting the magic flicker and fade and swell again as if it, too, was content to bask in them.

Finally, Fox’s voice broke the quiet. “Do you think the innkeeper’s offer of supper is still good?” She smiled into his skin—she was famished as well. “I’ll dress and go down and—”

“No,” she cut in sharply, sitting up. “No. You came into this room as a familiar, and I’d prefer that’s how you leave it. I… I don’t wish to draw any further undue attention.”

He pressed a kiss to the crown of her head. “As you wish.”

Heat rose to her cheeks as she sat up fully, suddenly aware of her bare form in the candlelight. For a moment she hesitated, but when she stood, his gaze followed her—half-lidded, dark, and utterly unashamed. For the first time in her life, when a man looked at her with that kind of roving appreciation, she felt enlivened by it rather than threatened. Power stirred in her blood, answering his hunger with her own.

She bent to retrieve her shift from the floor, and when the linen slipped over her curves, she heard a tortured breath escape him. The sound made her smile to herself. Once dressed, she returned to the bed, leaned down, and kissed him. The kiss lingered, sweet and warm, and the glow flared brighter between them as though the bond delighted in their nearness. She marveled at it, then pulled back. 

“I’ll be back with food,” she said.

He caught her hand before she turned, bringing her knuckles to his lips in a gesture so tender it stole her breath. Then he let her go.

***

The hallway felt narrower than before, the stairs steeper. Dana walked down them absolutely convinced everyone would see the change in her—would know she had been undone and remade, would sense the glow still clinging to her skin. Surely the building must have shaken as their room had—as she had; surely the bond itself still reverberated in the air. She was no longer what she had been before.

But no one gave her so much as a glance. A pair of farmers hunched over their mugs didn’t look up. The hearth snapped and hissed. Only the innkeeper’s eyes rose to meet hers as Dana reached the bottom of the stairs.

“After supper, are you?” the woman asked, arching a brow.

Dana nodded. Her voice felt thin in her throat. “Yes.”

“Would you like to eat it here, or would you like to take it up?”

“I’d like to eat in my room, please.”

The innkeeper smiled, bustling away toward the kitchen. “I’ll have it for you in a moment.”

Dana exhaled a breath and rested a hand briefly against the doorframe. Her pulse was still quick, her body still aware of the man waiting upstairs. Even here, away from him, the bond hummed beneath her skin like a secret fire.

***

Dana balanced the tray carefully as she slipped back into the room, closing the door softly behind her. Fox had pulled on his leggings but was still bare to the waist, sprawled across the bed, lazy and sated. The sight of him—hair askew, skin golden in the lamplight—made her throat tighten.

“I brought supper,” she said, setting the tray down on the small table near the bed.

He stretched, unhurried, and came to join her. “You look off put."

“I feel… different.” She hesitated, searching for the words. “As though the world can tell, even if no one said a thing.”

His smile was faint but kind. “I know what you mean.”

Somewhere outside, voices drifted through the floorboards—the scrape of a chair, the muted stomp of boots across the common room. A reminder of the world below, ordinary and oblivious, while here she was remade. The thought steadied her, deepened the strange new confidence curling through her veins.

She uncovered the dishes one by one, lifting the polished cloches. Her breath caught. A bowl of thick stew, the scent of root vegetables and herbs rising rich and comforting. Fresh bread, still warm, with a dish of softened butter. And beside it, a little plate of late berries—black, red, and glistening.

She hadn’t asked for it. She hadn’t spoken a word. Yet it was precisely what she had longed for—nourishment and sweetness in equal measure.

Fox raised a brow. “This is just what I wanted.”

“Me too,” she said. 

He shook his head in wonder. “This land listens.” 

They sat close together at the small table, their knees brushing. Each time their skin touched, the glow stirred—no longer a blaze but a soft, pearly shimmer that seemed to gather and fade with the rhythm of their closeness.

She tore off a piece of bread, spread butter thick across it, and offered it to him. He leaned in, teeth grazing the crust as he took it from her fingers. The brush of his lips sent a tingle racing up her arm.

“You’ll ruin me,” he murmured, chewing slowly, his eyes telling her that he didn’t mind if she did.

She smiled and broke off another piece for herself. The stew was hearty, spiced just as she would have asked for if she’d had the chance. She felt it warm her all the way down, settling into her stomach like an ember. When she glanced at Fox, he was watching her, green eyes glinting as though the food in front of him was nothing compared to her.

She looked away quickly, focusing on the berries. She plucked one, red and ripe, and bit into it. Juice spilled down her lip, sweet and tart, and before she could brush it away, Fox leaned in. His thumb grazed her mouth, catching the bead of liquid, and the glow between them flared brighter.

Her breath caught. “Fox…”

He drew the berry-stained thumb slowly to his mouth and sucked it clean, never breaking her gaze. The glow pulsed, answering the sharp twist of heat low in her belly.

Fox swallowed thickly. “Are you… Terribly sore?”

Dana considered herself. She had been a virgin before today, and while there had been an initial pain when he first entered her, she now felt only a vague prickle of discomfort. Mainly what she felt was an ache, but not one caused by their activity. One that would only be assuaged by his touch. 

She shook her head, and he licked his lips. 

They finished the meal slowly, wordlessly—bread, stew, berries, each bite shared, each brush of fingers deliberate. By the time the last dish was empty, the air between them had shifted again, charged and tight, but softened by the comfort of food and the simple miracle of having found each other here.

Fox reached for her hand as she set aside the final dish, his thumb stroking across her knuckles. The glow answered at once, brightening between them.

“You’re still hungry,” he said, voice low, roughened.

Her pulse stumbled. “Yes.”

But she wasn’t speaking of food.

The tray clattered faintly as he pushed it aside, pulling her onto his lap with a swiftness that stole her breath. She went willingly, her legs curling around him, the glow blooming between their bodies like fire catching kindling. His mouth was already on hers, tasting of stew and berries and her, and she thought, dizzy with want, that she could spend a lifetime learning what it meant to ruin him.

***

Fox stood from the chair with Dana’s legs still wrapped around his waist and kissed her deeply, holding her tight to him with one arm and using the other to reach down and tug loose her boots, dropping them to the floor with one and then another hollow thump.

She seemed to barely notice, one hand threaded through his hair and the other raking over his back, her nails dragging against his skin with delicious urgency. Wherever she touched, light stirred faintly, like sparks leaping along dried grass. He carried her to the bed and laid her gently on her back, bracing himself above her.

For a moment he only looked at her—cheeks flushed, lips swollen from his kiss, the plait she had tied that morning half undone. Strands had slipped free in fiery disarray, a tumble of copper against the pillow. Slowly, almost reverently, he reached up and loosed the rest, letting it spill over her shoulders and across the bed like a river of light. His fingertips brushed her temple, and the bond shimmered there, answering the touch with a faint glow.

His chest clenched tight. Dana had been through so much—accusation, capture, near loss—and still she looked up at him with trust shining clear in her eyes. She deserved more than hunger. She deserved to be worshipped. 

Instinct, rather than memory, drove him—a knowing, born of her, of them. 

Fox bent to kiss her again, slower this time, tasting her sigh before trailing his lips along her jaw, down her throat, to the hollow where her pulse beat fast. Light followed him, faint pulses blooming wherever his mouth touched her. She arched toward him, whispering his name like a prayer.

When his hand moved lower, it met the barrier of her dress. Rather than tug, he lingered. Patient. One by one, he found the fastenings and loosened them, his knuckles brushing her ribs, her waist, her hips as he worked. 

The fabric slackened, parting just enough for his hand to skim along her side. He eased it back carefully, sliding it from her shoulders until it pooled in folds around her waist, leaving only the thin shift beneath. He nosed the linen down, baring the soft swell of her curves, the glow rising instantly to gild her skin. His mouth followed, lingering at her collarbone, tongue tasting the flutter of her pulse before tracing lower, leaving a wet, golden trail as he descended.

Gods, and then— 

He closed his lips around the tight, blushing peaks of her nipples, one and then the other, each begging to be savored. His hands cupped her breasts, lifting them to his eager mouth. She hissed at the contact, the sound arrowing straight to his cock, and he ground himself against the mattress in a futile bid for relief. With every stroke of his tongue he unraveled further, seething with lust—but this was for her, and only her.

He pressed lower, kissing a molten path across her stomach until he reached the bunched folds of her dress. With careful hands he drew her skirts higher, baring the pale skin of her legs, his lips brushing worship onto every inch. She shivered, muscles rippling under his touch, her breath quickening as the glow shimmered across her belly.

When his fingers spread her, parting the delicate, crocus-petal folds, she trembled, clutching at his shoulders with a sound that was something like a gasp—caught between hesitation and need, the light of their bond burning brighter with each breath.

“Fox?” she breathed, uncertain.

He lifted his head just enough to meet her eyes, one hand reaching up to smooth the fabric at her hip where light was already seeping through. “Only if you’ll let me, love,” he said. 

A beat passed, then she nodded—hesitant, but the trust was there, trembling yet strong.

When he lowered his mouth to her, she startled at the strangeness of it, hips jolting. A sound escaped her, half protest, half plea. But then he lingered, slow and patient, letting her feel each stroke of his tongue, each devoted press. The light flared with every movement, painting her in shimmering pulses, brighter and brighter until her breathing broke and spilled into a soft cry.

Her hand flew to his hair and tangled there, urging him closer. She gasped his name, thighs quivering against his shoulders, and with each tremor the glow burst sharper, filling the room with a golden sheen.

He smiled against her, the seafoam taste of her bright on his tongue, hungry for every sound she made, every shimmer of light. His own body burned with need, but he ignored it, wholly intent on her. On giving her this. On showing her what it meant to be undone not by force, not by fear, but by joy.

She broke apart beneath him, radiant, light spilling from the bond in luminous waves that lit her skin as she cried out. The sight seared him, filled him, and he thought he could live forever on that sound, that shimmer, that gift.

When she finally sank back, limp and panting, the glow faded to a soft afterglow, clinging to her skin in faint sparks. He pressed a kiss to her thigh, then climbed up beside her, gathering her against his chest. She laughed breathlessly, dazed and shining still, her fingers knotted in his hair.

“I didn’t know,” she whispered. “I didn’t know it could be like that.”

He kissed her temple, heart pounding. “You deserve nothing less.”

For a long moment he held her, fighting the ache still coursing through his body, the sharp edge of want he had pressed into the mattress rather than her. The bond still hummed between them, answering every ragged breath, every racing thought. He let it steady him, let her weight against his chest be enough.

***

A tree. Roots sunk deep. Bare branches against a pale sky.

A bud, swelling at the tip of a branch.

Petals unfurling, slow and certain, spilling soft light into the stillness.

A fox, golden eyes watching, waiting.

Dana woke warm, tangled in strong arms and steady breath. For a long moment she lay still, letting herself drift in the rare quiet. Her fingertips traced the slope of Fox’s shoulder, memorizing the simple miracle of him beside her. They had stolen this night. She wanted to keep every heartbeat.

When his eyes opened, he caught her watching and smiled. The kiss that followed was slow, unhurried, until their bodies stirred against one another and warmth rose again. Their second joining was gentler, threaded with laughter muffled into the pillows, sighs that gave way to gasps, soft cries swallowed by the gray edge of dawn.

Afterward she dozed against his chest, lulled by the rhythm of his heart. But when the first pale light crept above the rooftops, his breath faltered. His body tensed beneath her.

He fell out of bed and staggered, listing to the side, his face showing the same agony that Dana felt inside. 

She threw herself towards him desperately, reaching out, but her hands closed on the air where Fox had been standing, and the change came all the same—bones tightening, limbs twisting until all that remained was the fox on the floor panting, looking up at her with sad, golden eyes.

She lowered herself to the floor next to him and threw her arms around his neck, her chest aching as she pressed her face into his fur. They had only just found this, and already it was torn from her.

Dana sat next to him, petting him as she would a beloved pet and watched as the same golden light glowed through his fur where they touched. 

Finally, when she felt more calm, she said:

“Do you think…” Her voice caught, and she tried again, this time through their bond, which came easily now. “Do you think the Overseer knew this would happen? That we’d…” 

It wasn’t until after they’d made love that she thought back to the old man’s questions to her on their way to the village, about what happened when they touched, that she’d thought perhaps he knew what would happen. The memory flushed hot through her, and she couldn’t finish.

Fox lifted his sharp gaze. “He said something to me,” he murmured through the bond. “‘One dawn, one choice.’”

Her head snapped toward him. “What does that mean?”

“I think we’re about to find out.”

With a sense of unease, she dressed by habit more than thought, fumbling with laces, hunting for her satchel, counting what little they owned. When she lifted Bite from where it leaned against the wall, the hilt felt… warmer. She glanced down—and the runes that had always been dead stone to her seemed to sharpen, as if the metal itself had turned its face toward her.

She could read them.

The words rose to her lips before she knew she meant to speak, quiet as breath:

“When the last of Dark and Light collide one shall fall And Magic shall return”

Fox’s head came up, golden eyes fixed to hers. Through their bond came the barest thrum—shock, awe, a pulse of fear.

“We need to talk to him,” he said. “The Overseer. Now.”

***

They went down to the common room in the thinning pale. The inn was nearly empty: one woman with both hands wrapped around a cup; two empty benches by the cold door; a hearth that threw more shadow than heat. The Overseer sat in the far corner—composed, tall hat shading his eyes, staff upright at his side. Relief loosened what had been clenched inside her.

The innkeeper herself brought breakfast—porridge, a heel of bread, a crock of butter and a few stewed apples—and set it before Dana with a nod. She did not set anything before the Overseer. He inclined his head as if to thank her anyway.

Dana glanced between them. “Will they—”

“They’ll not serve me,” the Overseer said mildly, before she could finish. “But I break no law by sitting. Shelter is not denied.”

The simple cruelty of it scraped at her. She tore bread for Fox and slipped him pieces beneath the table. Each time her fingers brushed his fur, a soft flare of gold breathed over their contact and faded. The Overseer watched those little lights with an expression she could not name—sober, certain, almost… relieved.

She couldn’t hold it any longer. Dana slid Bite from its sheath and set the blade across the table. The metal looked dull as always in morning light, but the hilt—those lines bit into the grip as if newly cut—seemed to catch and keep every flicker of gold from her hand.

“I can read them,” she said, scarcely above a whisper. “Like the runes on the blade.”

The Overseer leaned in. When her fingers brushed Fox again, that faint light climbed into the runes like breath through embers.

“Those,” he said quietly, nodding at the hilt, “have been there even longer.”

“How do you know?” Dana asked.

He reached out and traced one line with a single, careful finger, the way a man might touch a relic. The look in his eyes went soft and far-off.

“Because I was there when they were written.”

She stared. “You were—”

“My witch,” he said, voice gone rough, “is the one who ferried you away—down past the Veil—to the step of your farmwoman mother.”

The words knocked the air from her. Fox pressed closer against her leg, steadying her.

The Overseer moved his gaze back and forth between them. He did not hedge. He did not look away.

“It is time,” he said. His voice carried no hesitation, only certainty. “Time for you to know the truth—who you are, and what has bound you together since the beginning.”

He let the silence hold a beat before continuing. “You were born of prophecy. Both of you. The words are etched into this blade… but they are not—”

The door banged open, cutting him off.

Cold swept the room, tossing the banked hearthlight. Half a dozen men entered in white cloaks that fell in heavy folds, armor bright enough to throw spears of light across the rafters. Their boots struck the floorboards in a measured thunder that made the cups tremble on the tables.

The innkeeper went to meet them, calm and composed, speaking low. When the captain spoke to her, she turned and lifted one pointed hand toward the shadowed corner where Dana, and the Overseer sat, Fox at their feet. The men began to make their way over. 

Dana’s heart lurched into her throat. Of course. They’d come for him—for the Overseer, a man who wore shadow openly into a house of the Light. Her palm flattened against the table, ready to run, to fight, to—

The lead knight stopped at their table and looked at her. For a long breath, there was only the faint creak of his white leather gloves and the wild beat of her heart.

Then he went to his knees.

Steel rang softly on wood. The men behind him knelt as well, a ripple of white and bright metal folding down until it seemed the inn itself bowed.

“Princess,” the captain said, head bent, voice carrying to every corner. His eyes flicked once to the Overseer—measuring, wary—then returned to Dana. “We have come to bring you to your mother. The Queen. The Witch of Light.”

[slippinmickeys]

Me to my readers. Finally:

[slippinmickeys]

Familiar (52/?)

(This is the NSFW chapter you've been waiting 90,000 words for.)

The sound of the latch falling home lingered in the air, sharp against the hush.

Fox didn’t move from the door at first. He just stood there, watching her with a gaze that made her feel like he saw more than she wanted to show. The last light through the shutter slats banded his face in gold and shadow, marking the lines of his jaw, the sweep of his cheekbone.

Dana’s pulse kicked hard, though she kept her hands flat on the table beside her satchel. “You didn’t answer,” she said, her voice suddenly tremulous.

“I was… occupied,” he said, the corner of his mouth curling faintly.

She swallowed, suddenly aware of the smallness of the room—the narrow bed, the single washstand, the way the air seemed to press close around them. “Occupied with what?”

His eyes swept over her, slow as if taking in every detail, before they lifted to meet hers again. “Deciding whether to lock the door.”

Her fingers tightened on her satchel. “And?”

He stepped toward her, relaxed, each movement deliberate enough that she felt it in the tightening space between them. “I decided I would.”

The warmth of their bond brushed against her like a slow exhale, curling through her ribs, under her skin. She could feel the shift in him—not the quicksilver playfulness he sometimes wore, but something heavier, more intent.

Fox crossed the space between them in two unhurried steps until he loomed over her, the size of him still surprising her, and he closed in until he seemed to fill the narrow room. He stopped just short of touching her, though every line of him promised that he could, that he would, if she gave him even the faintest leave.

The weight of the day pressed in from all sides: the strangeness of the world, the silent streets, the shuttered windows, the Overseer’s absence like a hollow in the air. But here—here it was only him.

Her pulse thudded, quick and certain.

Fox’s eyes swept over her face, lingering, reading, as though he could feel every beat of her heart through the weave of the bond. Then, with the smallest tilt of his head, he stepped even closer, and the space between them narrowed to a breath. His hand lifted, not quite touching her cheek, only hovering, the air between his skin and hers alive with heat.

Her body leaned toward him without permission, every nerve urging her forward.

But a thought that had been gnawing at her rose sharp and insistent, cutting through the thrum of want.

“Fox—wait.”

The word left her in a whisper, but it stilled him instantly. His hand dropped, though his eyes didn’t leave hers, still burning with that intent, tethered to her by something neither of them could name.

Dana pressed her palm flat against her satchel, grounding herself. “There’s something I need to ask you. Before… before any of this.” 

The bond shivered between them, his frustration muted but present—tempered by curiosity, by the steadiness she always found in him. He inclined his head a fraction, silent, waiting.

“I worry,” she started, “that the decisions you make are not your own.”

He tilted his head, watching her, patient and waiting.

She took a breath and pressed on before she lost her nerve. “The way you became my familiar…” She faltered, then forced the words out. “The raven told me that a witch chooses her familiar, and her familiar chooses back. But I never chose you.”

His eyes stayed on hers, sharp and searching.

“I choose you now,” she rushed to say, reaching out, fingers trembling, and caught his hand before she lost the courage. His palm was warm, callused, steady against her own. She clung to it like an anchor as she pressed on.

“But I fear… I fear your fealty to me, the depth of your feeling… What if someone has given you this life? This life that’s not your own. What if it’s that magic that’s endeared me to you?”

He studied her for a long moment.

“Dana,” he said at last, voice low. “How do you feel about me?”

“How do I—”

“The first words you said to me,” he cut in, a smile tugging faintly at his mouth, “were to drive me off. To be gone. ‘I have a shadow already! I’ve no need for a new one!’” He finished the memory in a teasing falsetto.

Despite herself, she smiled.

“Do you still wish me gone?” he asked softly.

She shook her head.

“Then you see,” he said softly, thumb brushing her knuckles. “Whatever magic brought me to your side, it was not enough to keep me there. You did that. Your courage. Your strength. Your resilience.” His gaze softened. “And your beauty.”

His hand slipped free only so he could lift it to her face, his palm warm against her cheek. She leaned into his touch.

“When we were separated,” he murmured, voice low, “the Overseer offered me my freedom.”

Her throat tightened. “From me?”

“From you,” he answered. “I didn’t take it.”

Dana leaned back slightly, though her hand tightened around his. “But that’s what I’m saying! The you—the whole you. The man I don’t know. The one who walks in sunlight. The one with memories and a past. The mage.” She swallowed hard. “What if he would choose something different? Someone different.”

Her gaze dropped to the mark on her wrist. She touched it lightly, and in answer, his own flared with soft light across his skin.

“And what if by marking you, I’ve doomed you to a life you didn’t choose? I couldn’t live with that.”

A fat tear slid down her cheek.

“But I do choose you,” he said softly, reaching up to wipe the tear away.

She opened her mouth to protest, but he leaned toward her, earnest, every line of him tight with conviction.

“I am bewitched,” he said. “By some power that stole my memory and tied me to you and to your service. But I can feel enough of myself, enough of what is still my own free will, to know that I would choose you anyway. When I regain my memory”—he lifted her hand to his lips, brushing a kiss across her knuckles—“I will choose you then, too.”

Her breath broke. She launched herself into his arms, and he caught her easily, one arm cinched tight around her waist, the other cradling her head against his chest. For a moment she let herself sink into him, small and sheltered in the strength of his embrace.

But then she pulled back, blinking through tears, needing to look him in the eye. He let her go, reluctantly.

“You asked how I feel about you?” she whispered.

“You don’t have to—”

She pressed a finger to his lips, silencing him.

“I love you,” she said simply. “Not because of the bond, or the magic, or the way you’ve saved me without thought or hesitation—but because you saw me before I even knew who I was. You never tried to control me or stop me from being who I am. You trusted me, challenged me, stayed when you didn’t have to. And somewhere along the way, that quiet, steady loyalty became the most certain thing in my life—the only certain thing.”

His eyes searched hers, overwhelmed with emotion. She shook her head faintly.

“If what you feel is anything like what I do—” she began, but before she could finish, his hands were on her face, cupping her cheeks with a reverence that left her trembling.

The moment hung suspended, air crystallizing between them. His eyes blazed—green as the luminous lichen in Highveil. He leaned in until his forehead pressed to hers.

“I would drown the world to slake your thirst,” he whispered, the words hooking into her very soul. And then his mouth was on hers.

***

The kiss seared her. There was no hesitation—no shyness, no restraint. His mouth claimed hers like it had always belonged there, and she met him with equal fervor, clutching at the linen of his tunic, her heart hammering so hard it shook through her bones.

His touch burned as well: one arm wrapped low around her back, pulling her flush against him, the other cradling the nape of her neck to better angle her to him. She melted into the heat of him, the solidity, the ferocity.

Her hands fluttered—up his face, down the strong line of his shoulders, across his waist. She didn’t know where to touch, only that she needed to, that instinct drove her to find more, to feel more.

She was so frazzled with indecision, a nervous laugh slipped from her. Fox pulled back at once, eyes darting to hers. She turned her gaze aside, shy, then back up to find the fire still banked in his.

“Dana,” he rasped, “how much do you—”

“I know what comes next,” she blurted, cheeks heating. 

She knew the mechanics—life on a farm taught one early. And Mildred had been frank, teaching her that there was no sin in desire, only the danger of letting someone else’s will eclipse her own. It was part of the reason she had turned from Alexander. With him, she had felt no true regard—only the urge to tame her, to keep her like some rare and lovely thing caught in his fist.

Still, knowing and doing were worlds apart, and with Fox standing before her, she felt the chasm between them yawning wide. A little thrill of fear tangled with want. Not fear of him—never that—but fear of what it meant to step fully into this choice.

Fox’s hands were steady, reverent, each movement an asking rather than a taking. And for the first time, she understood what Mildred had meant: the choice was hers, and she wanted.

Her eyes skimmed down him, lingering over the hard planes of his chest, the breath moving through him. She swallowed and smiled, embarrassed but not—not with him.

“Where do I put my hands?” she asked, laughing softly.

His expression stayed intense, unflinching. He stepped back just far enough to pull his tunic over his head and drop it aside. When he came back to her, his eyes were locked on hers, sharp as arrowheads.

“Wherever you damn well want,” he said, serious as a vow.

She reached forward, hands tracing the firm ridges of his chest, the warm skin, the faint scatter of hair beneath her fingertips. Down over the taut lines of his abdomen. He shivered under her touch, a sharp breath leaving him.

Curiosity guided her hand lower, to where the evidence of him pressed against the fabric of his stockings. She’d glimpsed boys at the river, seen the outlines of men in passing, but this—this was heat and weight and life. She brushed him lightly, skin against cloth, and he drew a hiss through his teeth.

“Like this?” she whispered.

His jaw tightened, voice low. “Yes. Like that.”

Then his mouth was back on hers, and she was aware of everything—the rough cadence of his breath, the heat of his body, the way his hands clutched her like he’d never let go. There was nothing delicate, nothing cautious—only truth, raw and unstoppable.

Fox’s mouth left hers and trailed down the column of her throat, a slow, searing path that stole her breath. Each brush of his lips, each scrape of his teeth, left her trembling. He nosed lower, into the hollow where her pulse hammered, then down to the edge of her bodice, breath hot against the fabric that hid her.

Her fingers fumbled for the clasp at her throat. The cloak slipped free, falling heavy to the floor. She reached back next, hands clumsy with urgency, searching for the knots of her laces. The harder she tried, the worse they shook.

Fox stilled against her, panting hard, his forehead pressing to her shoulder. She felt the change in him—the sharp hunger tempered by something softer, steadier.

His hand closed gently over hers. “Dana,” he rasped, voice rough but careful. “Let me.”

Her chest heaved, heat rising to her cheeks as she gave the smallest nod.

He worked at the ties with a patience she hadn’t expected, loosening each in turn until the bodice slackened. His fingers brushed the back of her shoulders as he slid the garment down and away, leaving her in her threadbare shift, the thin fabric nearly translucent in the candlelight.

She stood trembling before him, bare-shouldered, the rise and fall of her breath unsteady. Fox’s gaze swept over her with a reverence that made her knees weaken. The lean muscles of his bare chest caught shadow and light, every line of him alive with restrained force.

When his eyes met hers again, they were full—of heat, yes, but also of something that steadied her, something that made her lift her chin despite the way she shook.

And then he reached for her, slow and sure. 

The room was quiet but for the rasp of their breathing, the faint crackle of the fire in the room’s small hearth.

Fox’s fingers found her—the slope of her collarbone, the trembling curve of her shoulder. His fingers drifted down her arm, a featherlight stroke that raised gooseflesh in their wake. She shivered, though the air was warm.

Her shift was thin, worn soft from years of washing, and when his palm brushed her waist, she felt the heat of him as if nothing lay between. His breath hitched, rough and uneven, and he closed his eyes for a moment as though steadying himself.

Then he bent to her, his mouth closing slowly over the tender curve of her breast with a low, worshipful sound that went straight through her, as though he had touched something older than flesh—something secret and buried deep. She arched into him, and the hesitation in him shattered. His hands gripped, sure and hungry, while his lips found her nipple through the thin weave of her shift. The pull of his mouth, the scrape of his teeth, sent a thrill racing over her skin, her nerves alight—flaming, fizzing—as the bond between them flared and tightened.

When he pulled back, she let forth a plaintive, whining sound she didn’t recognize, but his hand skimmed back up, fingers curling at the ribboned neckline of her shift. He toyed with the edge, testing, giving her every chance to pull away. She didn’t.

Instead, she raised her own hand, trembling, and tugged the ribbon loose herself. The fabric gaped, a bit of it wet from his mouth. 

Then she shrugged a shoulder and the garment fell away, and she stood there naked before him, the pebbled skin of her nipples pulling tight in anticipation. His chest rose sharply as he looked at her, not with hunger alone, but with awe—as though he’d never seen anything so dangerous and so precious at the same time.

“Dana,” he murmured, almost a prayer.

The bond stirred, a pulse of heat and ache that threaded through her ribs. She swayed into him, into the heat of his bare chest, and his arms came up around her at once, folding her in with a gentleness that nearly broke her.

Her face pressed against the hard line of his shoulder, she let out a shaky laugh that caught on a sob. He made a low sound—comfort, need, both—and tipped his head to press his mouth to her temple, her hair, her jaw, slow as though each kiss were sealing something eternal.

Her hands drifted along the skin of his shoulders, down along the slope of his rib cage until they encountered the top of his wool hose. He hissed against her skin, reaching down to still her hands. 

When his eyes found hers, he said only one word: “Bed.”

She nodded, throat too tight for words.

His hands were warm as they framed her waist, guiding her back a step at a time. The edge of the mattress caught her knees, and she sank onto it, the coarse sheets that covered it scraping her skin.

Fox lingered on his feet, gaze locked on hers, and in that span of stillness she watched his fingers go to the ties of his boots. The leather thudded softly to the floor, one and then the other. Then his hands slid higher, to the fastening of his wool hose. The sound of them pulling free was low, intimate, more startling to her than a footstep in an empty room.

Her breath caught as the hose joined the boots in a heap, leaving him in only a pair of pale linen braies that clung to him in the firelight. So little left between them. And through that thin cloth, she glimpsed her first true sight of a man’s desire, startling and undeniable, and it made her pulse leap.

When he came down to her, the shadow of his body closed over hers, the heat of him flooding the narrow space between them.

For a breathless heartbeat, they only looked at each other—her bare skin against rough linen, their bond thrumming so fiercely she thought it might split her open. Fox loomed over her, chest bare, eyes raking over her in a way that stole the breath from her lungs. Not greedy. Not careless. Devoted. He looked at her as though he were seeing something holy, something he’d never expected to be allowed to touch. The air between them seemed to hum with it, the bond thrumming through her blood until her skin prickled with heat.

Dana fought the urge to curl in on herself, to shield what little modesty she had left. Not from shame, but from the strangeness of being so wholly revealed, of standing bared before someone who saw her as no one ever had.

. But his gaze stopped her. Whatever he saw—whoever he saw—was enough to still the trembling in her limbs.

When he rolled toward her, the mattress dipped, the warmth of him pressing full along her side. His arm slid beneath her shoulders, drawing her against him until she could feel the thud of his heart, hard and unrelenting, against her breast. The length of him pressed to her hip, a solid weight through linen, impossible to ignore. She swallowed, her body lighting with equal parts wonder and nerves.

“Fox…” It was hardly more than a whisper, his name spilling from her lips like a plea.

He shifted, bracing on an elbow above her, his breath hot against her cheek. “Dana…” he answered in a murmur. She could tell he was holding back, but she didn’t want that. Every part of her cried for more.

She reached for him, fumbling at the edge of his braies. He caught her hand, briefly stilling it, then let go—granting her choice.

When she urged at the linen, he shed the last of it in one quick motion, tossing it to the floor. The breath caught in her throat. She’d thought she knew what to expect, but the reality of him—heavy and thick—made her cheeks flame, her belly clench with both shock and an aching need she hadn’t known she could feel.

Her hand fluttered, uncertain where to land. But then he was lowering himself again, docking himself between her knees, the weight of him covering her, the heat of bare skin to bare skin stealing away any last trace of hesitation.

Fox moved over her, careful, deliberate, bracing himself so she bore only as much of his weight as she wanted. Still, she felt every inch of him, his body fitted to hers like it had been carved for no other purpose. Her pulse drummed in her ears, her breath shallow as he settled between her thighs.

“Are you sure?” he rasped, the words trembling against her lips.

She nodded, though her throat was too tight for sound. Her hands rose, framing his face, and that was answer enough.

He took himself into his hand and rubbed the thick head of himself against her seam, coating it in the slip that pooled there. She looked down, watching, dazed, wondering how it would fit, how it would feel. She had seen coupling before, in Mildred’s fields, rough and instinctive, but this was something very different. 

Then their eyes met, and in the dark heat of his gaze she felt a promise—that he would not break her, that he would be patient, that he was hers.

When he eased into her, her body tensed—an ache sharp enough to draw a gasp. He stilled at once, forehead pressed to hers, his breath ragged, waiting, giving her the moment. She clung to him, heart hammering, and then… slowly, the pain softened, made way for something deeper, fuller. She exhaled, her body opening, and when she whispered his name, he began to move.

The rhythm came halting at first, then surer, stronger, building between them until it filled the air like the pounding of a second heartbeat. The bond burned through her veins, brighter than fire, brighter than fear. Every touch of his hands, every drag of his mouth against her throat, every thrust of his hips—each fed into the pulsing current that tethered them.

If she thought she knew sorcery before, she was wrong. This—this—was magic.

Their breaths tangled, rough and desperate. She was lost in him—in the heat, in the weight, in the raw need that was hers as much as his. Her hips rose to meet him, her body learning him, chasing a feeling that seemed to hover just beyond reach.

And then, together, they crested.

The world shattered into light.

It burst from their joined bodies, sparking across her skin, flaring through her veins, the makeup of her blood changing. Magic ripped free like a storm, scattering in brilliant arcs that lit the rafters and made the very walls tremble. She cried out, clutching him, as the bond sealed—final, unbreakable, eternal.

Fox groaned her name, the sound raw and reverent, and collapsed against her, his body shuddering with the last tremors of release. Still the light poured from them, shimmering, weaving them into one.

Where their skin touched—his hand against her hip, her palm against his back—it glowed, soft and radiant, as though the fire of the stars themselves now lived beneath their flesh.

Dana lay breathless beneath him, dazed and awed, her body and magic both undone. She had never known such wonder. Never known such belonging.

And through it all, the bond sang in her blood—no longer a thread, but a blazing cord of light.

[slippinmickeys]

Familiar (51/?)

The road curved between fresh green fields, the tender shoots swaying in a mild breeze. Wildflowers freckled the ditches in pale yellows and soft blues, the delicate lace of wild carrot blossoms dancing on air that carried the damp-sweet scent of turned earth. In the distance, bees moved lazily between the first blossoms of the hedgerows, their hum a low, steady counterpoint to the rustle of grasses along the swale.

Fox padded at Dana’s side, his paws soundless on the packed dirt. The Overseer walked a little ahead, the soft tap of his staff keeping time with their steps.

“Where are we going?” Fox asked, his voice low. “I assume you have a destination.”

“I do,” the Overseer replied, though he didn’t elaborate.

The sun had begun its slow descent, shadows stretching long across the road.

“There is a village ahead,” he said after a moment. “An inn. A good place to sleep tonight.”

He glanced back, his eyes passing briefly over Fox before resting on Dana’s wrist as she absently rubbed at the bond mark.

“How does the bond feel above the Veil?” he asked.

“Easier,” she said. “It’s easier to connect to him here.”

He nodded, as if considering that. “Do you feel it even when you’re not touching?”

“Yes… sometimes.”

“And when you are?” His gaze lingered, just for a heartbeat, on the space between her hand and Fox’s ruffled shoulder.

Dana frowned slightly. “Stronger.”

He gave the smallest smile, nodding.

She glanced at him, but he had already turned his eyes back to the road.

Ahead, a burst of starlings rose from the fields, the flock curling and tumbling through the sky. The raven joined them for a single turn before catching an updraft and soaring higher.

***

Fox listened as the Overseer spoke to his witch.

Above the Veil, their bond was a live thing—quicker, stronger, impossible to ignore. His senses, already keen in this form, felt sharpened to a dangerous edge. A fox could read the air below the Veil well enough, but here the wind whispered to him in layers rich with secrets. The ground thrummed faintly beneath his paws, as if the earth’s pulse beat just under the surface, calling to him.

And Dana… she was everywhere. His awareness of her had collapsed inward, dense as a star, dragging him into her gravity. Not just through the bond, but through every point of contact: her fingers combing through the ruff at his neck, the measured pull of her breath. He could track the steady rise of her pulse in the hollow of her throat, watch the warm breeze tease the fine hairs along her arms. Her scent came to him in delicate strands—goldenrod pollen clinging to her sleeve, the faint oil in her hair, the salt-bright edge of her breath. Beneath it all was a deeper, darker note, purling from her center. It wound through him like a coiled bowstring ready to loose.

“You’re very quiet,” she murmured through the bond, her voice brushing against his mind alone.

He shook his head—unable to tell her what he was thinking without crossing into indecency, yet unwilling to lie.

“The shadows grow long,” he said instead, voice low. “I’m eager to regain my human form.”

Her heartbeat skipped—barely enough for anyone else to notice, but to him it was thunder. Her breath shifted, that smallest shiver of awareness.

“As am I,” she answered.

His gaze caught hers, holding for a moment too long before he tore it away. Fox shook out his coat and padded ahead toward the village’s edge, where the Overseer had chosen to stop for the night—before he let himself dwell on how little the dark would hide.

***

The road sloped gently toward the village, the last stretch hemmed in by low stone walls gone mossy with age. The sun had already dipped low, painting the peaks in bronze and throwing long shadows across the fields. From a distance, the place looked lively enough—broad streets, tall houses with slate roofs, a market square at its heart. But as they drew closer, the stillness became impossible to ignore.

Shutters were drawn on many of the shops, their painted signs faded and peeling. A cobbler’s window was thick with dust, a single boot lying unfinished on the workbench inside. The flower boxes under the apothecary’s eaves had gone to seed. In the wide square, the stalls stood empty save for one, where an old woman sold early greens from a wicker basket, her eyes following them as they passed.

The air smelled faintly of woodsmoke and something older—a dry, brittle scent like parchment left too long in the sun. Birds called from the thatch, but no children’s laughter echoed in the streets. Even their footsteps seemed too loud.

“Where are all the people?” Dana asked.

“The magic above the Veil is dying,” the Overseer said. “There aren’t many left.”

Dana processed this, her gaze drifting toward the horizon where the sun sagged lower still, gilding the rooftops. Someday soon the sun might set on magic altogether, she thought—and that day might be closer than anyone dared to believe. She thought of the Dark Mage’s words: the last . Here, it was easier to believe them.

Fox padded close at her heel, his fur brushing her skirts. She kept her eyes ahead, but the thought nagged at her—what would they make of her here, walking in with a fox at her side? Below the Veil, it would have been unthinkable.

“Do you think it’s wise?” she murmured. “Me walking into a village with a fox following me?”

“They’ll notice you,” the Overseer said, his voice low but certain. “Not him. Above the Veil, it isn’t unusual for a familiar to walk openly with his witch.”

She glanced down at Fox. He flicked an ear at the word witch , but the warmth in their bond steadied her more than the Overseer’s reassurance.

They passed an open-fronted bakery where a single rack of loaves cooled in the window. The baker—a round man with forearms dusted in flour—nodded to them without surprise. Dana felt the hum of magic in him as they drew near, subtle but undeniable, like catching the scent of herbs in rising steam.

Here and there, she caught that same quiet presence in others—the woman sweeping the stoop of a tavern with a broom she didn’t need to touch, the stable boy who looked up from his work to nod politely while a set of bridles coiled themselves neatly on a peg behind him. No one stared. No one asked questions.

The inn stood at the far end of the square, its wide sign swinging gently in the evening breeze: The Starling and Crown . Just as Dana pulled open the door, the raven and Moth took flight, disappearing into the eaves above.

Inside, the timbers of the front hall gleamed dark with polish, but the benches by the door stood empty. The air was warm, scented faintly of rosemary and polished wood. Only a handful of patrons occupied the common room—a man in a deep green cloak nursing a steaming cup, an older woman by the hearth knitting as the fire burned in an unnaturally steady rhythm. All glanced up as Dana, Fox, and the Overseer stepped inside. All looked away again without comment, though their eyes lingered on the Overseer.

He let the door fall shut behind them, his gaze sweeping the room once before settling on Dana.

“This is where I leave you,” he said.

Dana turned sharply. “You’re not staying?”

From the doorway behind him, the last light of the sun slanted through, gilding the side of his face and catching on the crystal of his staff.

“No,” he said, quiet but certain.

“Have you no coin? I have enough for all of us, or you could—”

“He’s not welcome here,” came a voice from across the room.

The innkeeper stepped out from behind the counter—a tall woman with pale hair drawn neatly back, her eyes a soft, unyielding grey.

“This is a village of Light,” she said. “If he wants a room, he’ll find one past the border.” The words held no malice, but there was no bending in them either.

Dana’s mouth opened to argue. “But he’s an old man—surely you can—”

A warm hand settled on her arm. She looked up to find the Overseer shaking his head.

“My flock and I will be fine,” he said.

“Then we’ll come with you—”

“No.” His tone was final.

“I don’t understand.”

“Lass.” He gave her arm a small squeeze. “Lay your head on a soft pillow this night. With the dawn will come answers—more than you may be ready for.”

He bent beside Fox, murmured something too low for her to catch, then straightened and walked into the fading light beyond the door without looking back.

“You’ll be wanting a room, then?” the innkeeper asked, her gaze shifting to Dana.

Dana hesitated, still staring at the doorway where the Overseer had gone. The street beyond lay in shadow now, the last edge of the sun gilding the rooftops in molten gold. His absence seemed to pull something out of the air—lightening it, yes, but leaving it emptier too. The thought of him being turned away simply because his magic ran Dark gnawed at her.

“Yes,” she said finally, turning back to the counter. “A room.”

The innkeeper gave a single nod and reached beneath the counter for a heavy iron key. “Up the stairs, second on the left. Supper’s still hot if you want it.”

Dana took the key, the cool metal biting against her palm, and crossed the common room without another glance at the patrons. 

They ascended the stairwell, footsteps muffled on the thick pile rugs that covered the steps.

She pushed open the door to her room and stepped inside, Fox padding in after her. Without turning around, she set her satchel down on the small table near the bed and toed off her boots, pulling her stockings with them.

“I didn’t realize Light and Dark kept to their own sides here,” she said, her tone sounding more uneasy than she meant it to be.

No answer.

She turned—and found Fox in human form, the last traces of gold from the window catching in his hair as he leaned back to close the door. The latch fell into place with a resounding snick.

The sound seemed to echo in the small room, and the air between them shifted—warmer, charged, as if the quiet outside had followed them in but changed its nature entirely.

[slippinmickeys]

The X-FIles 7.17 "All Things" | 11.03 "Plus One"

[slippinmickeys]

Familiar (50/?)

The portal pulsed faintly behind them, the last threads of green light bleeding away into the burnished forest beyond it. Ahead, the world was white and sharp-edged, snow swirling in a relentless wind that bit at Dana’s cheeks and clawed through her cloak.

She kept her hand on the hilt of Bite as she tried to keep her balance, each step sinking into uneven drifts as they trudged into the mountains. The air tasted thin here, every breath crisp and stinging. Beyond a few yards, the wind blurred everything to shifting shadow and white haze, as if the mountains themselves were hiding.

Fox padded silently ahead, tail low, and she felt a pang of lonesomeness for the warmth of his hand in hers.

The cold lived both without and within, a different kind of chill settling in her chest. The Dreyn was still out there, hungry for magic and impossible to kill. The Dark Mage had seen her face, knew more about her than she did. Neither of them would stop until they had what they wanted.

Dana tightened her grip on the blade’s hilt and tried to keep her eyes on  the Overseer’s back as he led them higher into the peaks. Snow whirled around him, catching on his grey robes, eyes squinting against the assault. She wanted to ask where he was taking them, how far this journey went, what waited at the end of it—but the bite of the wind drove the words back down her throat, freezing them before they could form..

The wind whipped up through her cloak. She reached up to pull the hood up and over her head, shivering.

“Are you well?” Fox’s voice broke through her concentration, concern for her bleeding through their bond. He had paused from where he trotted lightly on top of the crust of snow, one paw curled back.

“I’m cold,” Dana answered. She didn’t have the lithe body of a woodland creature and her boots sank deeply into the snow with each step. Cold was creeping in, and wet. 

Fox turned to the Overseer and spoke to the group, his words sharp and incredulous. “We’re not prepared for this,” he said, as snow began to build up on his coat, sticking to the fringe of hair along his sides and back. “No supplies, no proper clothes, no way to survive a mountain crossing. How are we supposed to make it through the Veil like this?”

The Overseer turned his gaze and lifted his staff, pointing ahead to where the raven circled in the snow-laden sky. She let out a single harsh caw before tucking her wings and diving toward the base of a looming cliff face. Dana narrowed her eyes, following the bird’s path. There—a darker patch of stone half-hidden in shadow, a narrow fissure where rock met ice.

As they drew closer, the world seemed to hush. The wind dulled, snowflakes falling slower in the air, seeming to hang in the sky unnaturally. Even the mountain felt like it was holding its breath, waiting. Dana’s pulse picked up, an odd weight settling in her stomach as the raven vanished through the crack without hesitation.

The Overseer didn’t slow. His staff thudded softly against the frozen ground as he passed through the shadow of the cliff and gestured them onward. Fox glanced back at Dana, uncertainty rolling down their bond, but she took a step forward anyway, unable to stop herself.

They slipped into the fissure one after another, the cold rock brushing close on either side, the air verging and expectant. A faint shimmer hung in the narrow gap, like moonlight caught on invisible threads, and Dana felt it ripple over her skin as she passed through.

With her next step, the world changed. 

Light flooded her vision—golden and so bright it blurred the edges of everything. The bite of the wind vanished. Warm, damp air wrapped around her, thick with the scent of rain-soaked earth and green life. Somewhere above, birds sang, their voices clear and strange music carried on a current.

As the glare eased and her eyes adjusted, the shapes around her sharpened into focus. Towering trees arched high overhead, their trunks streaked with luminous patches of lichen, leaves whispering in colors that seemed to shift with the light. Between them stretched a wide meadow, its far edge lost in a haze of silver mist, with shifting greens and bright, untamed hues that shimmered like frost on a windowpane.

Underfoot, the ground was soft and loamy, carpets of moss spreading out like the fingers of a lake until they came up against a shore bright with flowers. Blooms were everywhere, green spikes coming up out of the ground, the tops heavy with petals of every color—tight knots of dahlias, thornless roses, spikes of larkspur, purple as the light of pre-dawn. Below the Veil it had been autumn, dead leaves choking the ground, but here it was spring.

Dana’s step locked in surprise, breath catching in her throat as the full beauty of the place struck her. Colors so vivid they almost seemed to glow pressed in from every side, each detail impossibly sharp. Behind her, Fox padded out of the fissure and stopped short, his fur lifting slightly at the touch of strange magic humming in the air.

Dana stood rooted, the moss soft beneath her boots, eyes sweeping the glade. The honey-bright blossoms swayed gently in a breeze that kissed her face, and a faint shimmer hung in the air as if the light itself were alive. After the frozen bite of the mountain, it was like stepping straight into a dream.

Behind her, the fissure gaped dark and narrow, a jagged shadow between two slabs of stone. Snow still whirled in the world beyond it, visible through the opening, yet the place where Dana stood was untouched by frost. It was as if the crack were a seam between seasons—winter on one side, endless spring on the other.

Fox padded to her side, his fur brushing her leg, ears flicked forward and nose twitching. The bond between them thrummed brighter here, alive in a way that made her skin prickle. She reached down, fingers sliding through his coat that was wet with snowmelt, wetting her palm.

Ahead of them, the Overseer stepped fully into the meadow, his staff sinking slightly into the soft earth. The moth clung to his shoulder, wings quivering as though it too felt the hum in the air. The raven wheeled above them once, then landed on a flowering branch ahead, feathers stark against the riot of color.

Dana turned slowly in place, taking it all in. 

Fox tilted his head. There was a pressing feeling coursing between them—like they both wanted to speak but didn’t have the words. 

The Overseer’s voice came low and reverent. “Welcome to Highveil,” he said, turning towards them. “You’ve come home.”

***

They left the meadow behind at an unhurried pace, the Overseer leading them along a narrow road that wound between stands of luminous-trunked trees and low, rolling hills. Overhead, the light shifted slowly, deepening from gold to the long-angled glow of late afternoon. Shadows stretched across the path, and the air grew slightly cooler, laced with the scent of woodsmoke.

Signs of life dotted the land, though they felt… thinned. An orchard heavy with blossom, but only a handful of trees tended. A hayfield edged with wildflowers, no scythes or carts in sight. Houses crouched on the hillsides, some with fresh thatch, others sagging into the earth. It wasn’t deserted, but the spaces between people seemed wider than they should have been.

Every so often, some flicker of strangeness would catch her eye—a bird the size of her forearm gliding overhead with feathers that shimmered green to gold; a cluster of flowers that turned to follow them as they passed; a low stone bridge built without mortar, its arch so perfect it might have grown from the earth. 

Fox stayed close to her side, his tail occasionally brushing her leg. The bond between them felt more intense here, more true, like a warm hand resting at her lower back.

When the road crested a hill, the raven appeared overhead, her shadow gliding over the grass before she swooped down to land on the Overseer’s staff.

“There’s a familiar nearby,” she said. “Its magic is tangled—fading in places where it should be strong. It needs help.”

The Overseer frowned. “That can mean many things. We’ll have to see for ourselves.”

Fox’s ears pricked, and Dana felt the ripple of alertness from him.

“It may be nothing,” the Overseer said, “but better we tend to it now than find trouble later.”

The moth rose from his shoulder in a slow spiral, following the raven as she banked away toward a stand of tall grass and wildflowers at the base of the hill. The Overseer followed at a steady pace, his grey robes brushing the seed heads.

“Wait for us on the road,” he told Dana without looking back. “We won’t be long.”

Dana watched them go until the grass swallowed the glint of his staff, leaving only the hum of insects and the warm hush of the afternoon. 

Fox stayed standing for a moment, tail swishing idly, before circling once and settling beside her. She let the quiet stretch, listening to the faint rush of wind in the high branches.

“The Overseer said we were home. Does any of this bring anything back to you?” she asked at last. It felt easier to speak to him through their bond than it had below the Veil, the words slipping between them like water down a stream. 

Fox’s ears twitched. “In the way that a half-forgotten dream does,” he said after a pause. “Shapes, scents… they feel close, but when I reach for them, they slip away.”

She studied him, fingers absently combing through the thick ruff of fur at his neck. “Not even the plants? The air? Anything?”

“It’s all different, and yet—” he stopped, eyes drifting toward the hills where the Overseer had gone. “Something in it stirs a part of me I can’t name. Like I’ve walked here before, but on a road just beyond the next rise.”

“So it’s recognizable,” Dana said, her grip tightening slightly in his fur. “From before… this.” 

Fox’s gaze flicked back to hers, gold and steady. “Yes. And maybe the road ahead will bring it back to me.” His tail thumped once against the moss. 

The words settled warm between them, softening the weight in her chest. She leaned, eyes following the slow drift of a cloud across the pale sky, and let herself simply breathe.

The breeze shifted, carrying the faint scent of something sweet from the meadow they’d left behind. Fox rested his chin on his paws, his eyes half-lidded but alert in the dappled light.

Dana’s gaze wandered over the road, the grass stirred by wind, the place where the Overseer had vanished. The stillness pressed in, deep enough that it made her restless. Her hands found the strap of her pack, fingers curling in the worn leather.

Maybe it was the silence. Maybe it was the distance from everything familiar. But suddenly she wanted to see what she still carried from the world below the Veil.

Dana shifted her pack into her lap and loosened the flap. She hadn’t looked inside since they’d left the apothecary, but the thought of finding something familiar—anything from before the mountain—felt grounding.

Her fingers brushed the leather of her spellbook, the smooth weight of Bite’s scabbard, the folded cloth bundle of herbs from Silas. Beneath those lay the small braid of rivergrass he’d given her, still faintly green.

Something hard rolled against her palm. She drew it out.

The calling stone.

Its pale surface was dulled with road dust, but the leather cord Fox had tied around it was still in place. She turned it over in her fingers, remembering the weight of it in her pocket, its occasional glow, the moment they’d leapt the falls together.

Fox’s ears pricked, his golden eyes flicking from the stone to her face. “The calling stone,” he said.

She nodded, brushing a thumb over the cord.

Bootsteps whispered over the moss. The Overseer was returning along the roadside, the raven winging low beside him, the moth clinging to his shoulder.

“All well?” Fox asked as the Overseer drew near.

“It will find its way home,” the Overseer said. “Its magic was a touch… tangled. Strange, but nothing lasting.” His eyes flicked briefly toward the meadow before settling on the stone in Dana’s hand.

“So,” he said quietly, “you still carry it.”

Dana hesitated. “I found it at the bottom of my pack. Can you explain it to me? What it does? How the Dark Mage used it, what you did to this one?”

The Overseer stepped closer, planting the tip of his staff in the earth. “It does many things, depending on who holds it. For a mage, it is a tether—a way to call what is theirs back to them, or to find it again if it’s lost.”

Fox’s ears twitched, his gaze sharpening. “Could he use it against us?”

“Yes,” the Overseer said evenly. “He could use it to find Dana. He can give a stone to agents, like Alexander—people he’s bewitched or persuaded into serving him. They use it to call him when they’ve found what he sent them after. Or he can use it himself, reaching through the tether to see where it leads. To control those who carry it. It calls to those who are magical,” he went on. “As I mentioned, he left many below the Veil. Hoping to find you.” With this, his eyes fell on Dana and she shifted uncomfortably. 

“And the etching you put on it?” she asked. 

“It stops him from being able to see. Alexander tried to use one in the apothecary — to walk beyond the protection wards placed there.”

Dana’s stomach tightened. “So the Dark Mage would have seen me there?”

“More than seen,” the Overseer said. “He is extremely powerful. More than most. He could have taken hold of any magic within reach. The runes I placed upon it stop that.”

She glanced down at the stone in her palm, then at Fox. “Except… that’s not true, is it. Not always.”

Fox’s head turned toward her, ears high. “What do you mean?”

She wet her lips. “Beneath the falls right before we jumped… That night by the fire. Weeks ago. Your eyes went cold, like ice had glazed over them, and you said something strange—‘One will fall.’”

Fox blinked at her, confusion plain. “I never—”

“You did,” she said firmly. “And the stone in my pocket burned so hot I could barely hold it. It glowed green—brighter than I’ve ever seen—and it faded only when I stepped away from you.”

The Overseer froze. His hand tightened on the carved shaft of his staff, a flicker of something sharp and knowing in his eyes before he masked it. “When was this?”

“Before the bonded spell,” Dana said.

“That shouldn’t be possible.” The words came out clipped, almost too fast, before he smoothed them. “The etching blocks a call entirely.”

Fox’s tail flicked once. “So what happened?”

The Overseer’s gaze lingered on him a fraction too long, assessing, measuring. “Something we will… watch for.”

“Should I get rid of the stone?” Dana asked. She had felt an odd compunction to pick it up when they had first found it, but maybe that was the magic of the Dark Mage calling to her through the stone itself. 

“Nay,” the Overseer said. “It may yet prove useful.”

He turned away, but the set of his shoulders was tense, and the air between them felt tighter than before—as if an unseen thread had been plucked, and all three of them could still feel it vibrating.

[slippinmickeys]

The chemistry between Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny is fucking insane. Every time Scully touches Mulder, she's so tender and slow. But when he touches her, he's teasing, brushing his lips past her ears in a whisper and then pivoting away from her, or tugging on her necklace and then moving his hand away like nothing happened. She's always trying to reel him in, tether him to earth, and he's always trying to pull her along with him. He's like a current she knows she should resist, but she can’t bring herself to push against it. So she follows him wherever he goes, and he keeps looking back to make sure she’s still there.

[slippinmickeys]

Familiar (49/?)

“You can… read them?” Fox said. 

Dana didn’t answer, instead, she knelt down closer to the fire where the light was better and turned Bite point-down into the dirt at her feet so that she could see it, looking like a knight making a vow to her king. She studied the small sword for another moment and then flipped it over to look at the other side. 

Fox knelt beside her. 

“Dana?” he said softly. 

She looked up at him and then lifted Bite, handing it to him. 

The blade caught the firelight, and the runes that were upon it seemed to glow in the light.

“North for what seeks you,” he read aloud, their bond mark tingling as he spoke. 

Dana pressed her lips together, then said. “Flip it.”

He turned the small sword over. 

“Look beside you for what you seek.” He turned to look at her.

“Look beside you for what you seek,” she repeated, her words weighted with unspoken significance. “North for what seeks you.”

“What does it mean?” Fox said breathlessly. 

“It means,” said a voice from close by. “That you’re ready to cross the Veil.”

***

Dana jumped at the sound of the voice, twisting fast, Bite already raised and gleaming in the firelight. At the edge of the circle stood an old man. Stooped and thin as winter branches, his grey robes hung loose around his frame, and he leaned heavily on a staff that seemed to hold him up more than he held it.

Fox recognized him a breath before she did. He stepped forward, his anger dissipating, as alarm and disbelief flickered across his face. “Are you—what happened?”

The Overseer lifted one hand in reassurance and moved slowly closer, lowering himself onto the trunk of a nearby windfall with a weary sigh, the moth fluttering silently at his elbow. The fire painted deep lines on his face, age etched in places where it hadn’t been before. Overhead, the raven shifted on her branch, feathers rustling, watching them all with her bright, sharp eyes.

Fox crouched closer, concern creasing his brow. “You don’t look well.”

The Overseer gave a thin, humorless smile.

“I believe you mean I look old,” he said. 

Fox exchanged a look with Dana, a flicker of unease passing between them.

The Overseer shifted slightly, wincing as though the act of sitting upright cost him something. His fingers tightened briefly around the head of his staff before he spoke again.

“Every time I use my power, I spend myself,” he went on. “Years, all at once, burned like kindling.” He stared into the flames again, eyes dimmed but steady. “My magic is finite, boy. When it’s gone, so am I.”

Fox swallowed, glanced up briefly at Dana—and then back at the Overseer. He had sacrificed much to help them.

“What happened back there?” Fox asked. 

“The Dark Mage. We fought the Dreyn side by side, if you can believe it,” the old man said, voice rasped with exhaustion. “His sword burned dark as pitch, and still the thing only flinched. I used more power than I should have just to keep it from draining us, and it still wouldn’t die.” He shifted, wincing, as though the memory weighed on his bones.

Inside her, fear turned tight and hot. “The Dreyn fled,” he went on. “Wounded, hungry, but not dead. The horse saw to my escape. Bore me far enough to reach your track, then left me and went back to its rider.”

Fox flinched. “In the village,” he said. “As we were trying to get away. You helped that creature. The Dark Mage’s stallion.”

She swallowed thickly and could feel a different kind of tension rising in Fox, his emotion swirling up through their bond as a cool breeze sweeps into a hot kitchen.

“I helped his familiar,” the Overseer corrected, quiet but firm. “As I do.”

Dana’s gaze darted between them, fingers tightening on Bite—something in the way Fox’s fists clenched at his sides made her stomach knot tighter.

“Helping him helps the Dark Mage,” Fox hissed.

The Overseer only shook his head, weary.  “Not every familiar has the bond you do. That stallion is a proud creature, bound to a master who sees him as little more than a weapon. I offered him freedom. He refused… but he did not betray your path.”

Dana had questions of her own, but the tension between the Overseer and Fox made the air feel heavy and she held her tongue. 

The raven swooped down from her perch, landing on the ground near the fire. Her black eyes fixed on Fox, then slid to Dana, glinting like polished stone. “The world binds more than masters do,” she said, blinking. “Threads tug unseen, and not even a witch can cut them all.”

Dana felt a chill trace over her skin, though the fire burned bright. Perhaps fate isn’t a chain or a blessing, she thought, just threads pulling two people together, no matter how far apart they start.

She glanced at Fox, but he was staring frankly at the raven, his breath coming in short pants. 

She stepped forward. 

“Why are you here?” she finally spoke. “Why do you help us?”

“I help familiars,” the Overseer said, shrugging. “As I promised my witch I would.”

Fox shook his head slowly, frustration coiling tighter in his voice. “No. There’s more to it than that.” He looked between the Overseer and the raven, his jaw tight. “You drop hints, riddles—threads you say are binding—but you never tell us what they are. You know something about all of this, about me, about Dana, and you just sit there, watching.” His breath caught, raw anger scraping his throat. “You lord the knowing over us while we stumble blind.”

The Overseer’s eyes narrowed, his own temper flaring to life. “Think you know everything, do you?”

“I know nothing!” Fox snapped, rising to his feet now, the words spilling hot and sharp. “I have no memory. Only a compulsion to serve this witch.” 

Dana felt her breath hitch in her chest, but Fox had already built up a head of steam and was finally releasing it.

“And you!” He pointed an angry fist at the Overseer. “You with your vague speeches and hints and half-truths. The heir of Light. The last. The prophecy. We know nothing of these things! Because you have told us nothing! A help? Hah!”

Fox’s anger left the air crackling, his chest heaving as the last words spat out of him. Even the fire seemed to gutter under the weight of his fury.

The Overseer regarded him for a long, unreadable moment. 

“You fight with the Dark Mage though he wants Dana dead,” Fox pressed, his voice sharp, demanding. “You keep things from us. Tell us it’s not yet time to know them. Why?”

The Overseer’s gaze, old and unblinking, settled on him. “Because the future has been written,” he said at last. “Many paths lead toward it. And he must be alive to tread it. As must you. This is not the time for your confrontation. That will come.”

Beside her, Fox paled. Dana shifted uneasily, her fingers tightening on Bite’s handle. “How do you know this?” she asked, hesitant but unable to stay silent.

The Overseer’s eyes seemed to dim with memory, his voice lowering. “My witch was a seer,” he said. “A woman unmatched in her gift. She foresaw all of this. Every choice, every thread. And if we want to save the magical world, if we want to save its future—your future—we must all walk the One Path.”

Fox stared at him, the firelight throwing sharp lines across his face. His jaw worked as if he had more to say, more to throw at the old man, but no words came.

“And what is the One Path?” Dana asked. “Where does it lead?” 

“North of the Veil,” the Overseer said. 

“So you said when you stepped into our firelight,” Fox said, glancing at Bite. “What do the words on the blade mean?”

“What do they say?” the Overseer asked. 

Dana could see Fox’s exasperation building and put a calming hand on his arm. 

“Look beside you for what you seek,” she read. “North for what seeks you.”

“What else does it say?” 

Dana felt her brow furrow in a chevron of confusion.

“On the hilt, lass,” the Overseer said. 

She looked to the hilt. The runes there, she still couldn’t read. 

“I don’t know,” she admitted. 

The Overseer’s gaze flicked to where her hand rested on Fox’s arm. 

“You will,” he said.

***

A breeze stirred the ashes at the fire’s edge, carrying the faint scent of damp earth and smoke. Beyond the small circle of warmth, the forest was shifting, the deep black of night thinning toward slate grey. The first hints of dawn threaded between the branches, quiet but relentless, and Dana felt a tight pull in her chest.

If both the Dark Mage and the Dreyn were still out there, they couldn’t linger a moment longer.

Her fingers tightened on Fox’s arm, grounding herself against the tension still humming through him. He stood beside her, gaze locked on the Overseer, his shoulders rigid, every muscle tight with the effort of holding himself still. 

The Overseer leaned heavily on his staff as he pushed himself upright. “We should move,” he said, voice rough, but steady enough. “North. The Veil isn’t far now.”

Dana glanced up at Fox. For a moment, she thought he might refuse. Tell the Overseer that he could take his staff and put it in a rather indelicate position and that they’d find their own way. But when his eyes met hers, they were weary but determined, and he gave a sharp nod. 

Together they bent to scatter the fire, smothering the last embers until only smoke coiled low and thin over the earth. Overhead, the raven launched skyward with a soft beat of wings, vanishing into the paling dark.

The Overseer waited until they were ready, his presence a watchful presence behind them. When they finally turned north, the horizon was already beginning to smolder with light.

***

Daylight spread through the thinning trees as they walked, the mist slowly lifting off the forest floor. The path began to rise, and as Dana crested a small ridge, the trees opened just enough for her to see the jagged cliffs to the north. Beyond them, snow-capped mountains rose like teeth into the pale morning sky, their icy ridges stark against the sunlight. The sight made her chest tighten. They were impossibly far, brutal in their promise of cold and danger.

Dana’s fingers curled around Bite’s hilt as they walked, her eyes falling again and again to the runes. Look beside you for what you seek. Her gaze slid to Fox, padding behind her, next to the Overseer, tail brushing low to the ground. Was that what the blade meant? That the answer she’d been chasing was already with her? Or was it something else—someone else—they hadn’t met yet?

Her stomach knotted. And the other words… North for what seeks you. That one felt heavier, darker, like a pull she couldn’t see and couldn’t escape. Something—or someone—was waiting for her out there. Hunting her, maybe. The Dark Mage. The Dreyn. 

She tightened her grip on the blade, as if the pressure of her fingers could squeeze meaning out of the metal. A warning or a promise, she couldn’t tell. Maybe both.

The raven glided ahead, wings whispering through the air before it hopped on a low branch beside her, keeping pace as she walked. Its dark eyes fixed on her, unblinking, as though it could see the weight of her thoughts laid bare. The silence stretched for a few steps, the crunch of leaves and the faint snap of twigs underfoot filling the space between them.

Finally, Dana drew a breath, the cold air stinging her lungs. “Is Silas well?” she asked, voice barely above a murmur.

“He will heal,” the raven replied, voice calm as water in a still pool. Dana would have felt better if she could have seen her friend with her own eyes, but she had to trust what the raven said was true. 

She hesitated, glancing again at the distant peaks. “Silas,” she said, “spoke of the Veil. What do you know of it?”

“It is the boundary of the land of magic,” the raven said. “Only those with power may cross it.”

“What is it like?” Dana asked.

There was a pause, then a faint shift in the raven’s tone, almost like a smile. “You’ll see.”

“Have you been across it?”

“I lived above it with my mage for many years.”

Dana frowned slightly, her hand brushing Bite’s hilt as she asked, “Who was your mage?”

“A mage of dark magic.”

“Was he… bad?” The word slipped out before she could stop it.

“No magic is all bad. Nor all good,” the raven said, her feathers lifting and settling. “The two schools are merely different sides of the same coin, though those who practice them may tell you otherwise.”

Dana let that sink in before murmuring, “How did you find your mage?”

“He found me,” the raven said. “I was injured. He healed me and asked me into his service.”

“How so?”

“The witch or mage chooses their familiar. The familiar chooses back.”

The words landed oddly in Dana’s chest. She hadn’t chosen Fox. As far as she knew, Fox hadn’t chosen her, either—not really. They had been bound before they’d even met.

The raven seemed to sense her unease. “The bond between witch and familiar is as different as the witches themselves,” she said softly. “Fear not.”

Dana glanced over her shoulder. Fox padded quietly behind her, the Overseer and the moth following a few paces back. Their presence was comforting, but the shadow of the mountains looming in the distance still filled her with dread.

They reached a small clearing, and the air grew heavy, charged with that strange hush Dana remembered from the glade where she and Fox had first found the calling stone. The Overseer moved past them, planting his staff in the leaf-strewn earth as his gaze fixed on the snow-tipped peaks.

“The Veil lies beyond those mountains,” he said, his voice roughened with fatigue but certain.

Fox’s ears flicked back, his tail lashing once. “You said it was close now,” he growled, frustration biting at the edges of his words.

Dana stared at the distant ridges, her heart sinking. How could they possibly hike through all that? The journey looked endless, pitiless in their promise of cold and danger. They would freeze before they even reached the foothills.

The Overseer turned, the faintest trace of a knowing smile tugging at his lips. “Not everything is as it seems.”

He set the staff firmly into the ground. Power thrummed outward in a green ripple, making the leaves stir and the air shimmer. Then, with a sound like tearing silk, a tall, arched portal split the space before them, revealing the mountains up close on the other side. Snow swirled in the frigid wind that gusted through, biting into Dana’s skin and frosting the leaves at her boots.

“The way north awaits,” the Overseer said, his voice carrying over the sudden roar of winter air spilling into the autumn hollow.

[slippinmickeys]

Familiar (48/?)

The cord bit into his wrists, was wrapped tight around his chest, squeezing, making it difficult to breathe. But it wasn’t just rope that bound him, it was magic, too; odd and discordant, humming with someone else’s power. He pulled once, twice, but it only cinched tighter. 

Stone pressed against his knees. His head throbbed, his ribs screamed where he'd been thrown. He tried to lift his chin, but the dark dragged him under again—

—then, just as suddenly, up. A flicker in his sightline. Yellow-green eyes watched him from the shadows. A black cat crouched low, tail twitching once, silent and knowing. It didn’t blink, just stared, judging. Watching.

He wanted to speak, but no sound came. The world swam.

Through the roar in his ears, another voice cut through. A woman’s voice. Distant, urgent. Pleading.

 “…prophecy…”

The magic twisted tighter, sinking its claws into him.

“…heir…bound…”

He tried to focus, to cling to her voice, but it slipped, muffled, lost in the torrent of foreign magic clawing at him. It seemed to go on and on and he floated up and out of it and then sank back down, swimming in and out of consciousness. 

The chanting started. Quick. Wrong in every way. Words made of teeth and iron hooks, dragging something loose inside his chest. Every syllable scraped his nerves raw.

“NO!” 

The word came from her, sharp and breaking, a scream that seemed to tear the world apart.

For a heartbeat, the magic binding him tangled with something achingly known—and then it tore loose, shattering through him, jagged and wrong, leaving fire-and-ice agony in its wake.

—Fox woke with a strangled breath, heart hammering, sweat chilling his skin. It took him a moment to realize where he was. To feel the weight and warmth curled against him, Dana’s hand fisted lightly in his tunic, her breath soft against his chest.

She sniffed to awareness, inhaling deeply, the current of disquiet from his dream drifting through the bond that marked their skin. He tried to pull it back, but it was too late. 

Dana sat up, her hand still clutching his front. 

“Are you well?” she said, blinking into the dying firelight. Above them, the sky was awash in stars, the pinpricks of light like the sun shining through a curtain of dark linen. 

He swallowed, needing a moment to adjust to his surroundings. To her. It had only been a 

week—perhaps two—since they’d last been together, but their time apart had felt interminable. 

“It was the dream again, wasn’t it?” Dana asked, sitting up completely. The cool night air drifted in where she’d been pressed up next to him, and he shivered, once. 

“Yes,” he panted, his breathing just beginning to regulate. 

Dana rose and added another piece of wood to the fire, sending up a plume of orange sparks that blazed and then winked out. Her face was amber in the fire’s renewed glow, her freckles lost in the monochrome.

She came back over to him and lowered herself mindfully to the blanket he still lay upon, reaching out to loosely lace her fingers with his. 

“Was it the same?” she asked. 

“Yes,” he said once again. “And no.”

She tilted her head at him, curious. 

He rubbed a hand over his face. There was grit there amongst the shadow of hair that grew, though he would be freshly shaved again with dusk. “There was a woman there trying to help me. She mentioned a prophecy. An heir.”

Dana’s mouth pressed into a long, thin line. “Like the Dark Mage.”

He nodded.

“I was bound,” he said. “But it wasn’t just with ropes,” he went on. “This time I could feel… it was with magic, too.”

She nodded at this. 

“You saw more this time? It was different?”

“It was the same,” he said. “ I was more.”

She looked at him for a long moment, 

“You’re a mage,” Dana said softly. 

He thought of the moment in the backroom of the apothecary, the magic of the sea witch’s grimoire rising up to meet him like the tide.

“Yes.” 

The word landed heavily between them, a stone dropped into still water, ripples spreading in the silence. 

Dana swallowed. Looked at him. “Your body is starting to remember,” she said. “Even if your mind won’t.”

His hand up in the air, the magic trying to course through him, but held back by some unknown force. A force like the binding of a cord.  

“Do you think,” Dana started, “that the dream you’re having is—”

“—the memory of my being bewitched,” Fox finished. He was certain now. The feeling was the same. 

“What was done to me, to change me…”

He looked up at her. The firelight played across her face—curious, open, unafraid. 

“It’s binding my magic, too.”

Her expression didn’t change. There was understanding there. 

“So your dreams are memories,” she said after a moment.

He nodded once.

Dana looked over to her satchel and then pulled it to her, digging inside until she pulled out the spellbook and began rifling through the pages. After a few moments, she sighed unhappily. 

“What?” he asked. 

She shifted closer, licked her lips. “I was hoping there would be a spell,” she said. “To help you regain your memories. Maybe even your power.”

He smiled, rueful. “How easy that would be.”

“It has helped me in the past. When I’ve been in need,” she explained, nodding towards the book. “But I’m beginning to get the sense that it’s as stubborn as Penny White.” 

“Who is Penny White?”

“Mildred’s good-for-nothing hinny,” Dana explained. “I opened the gate when I ran, freed every animal I could, but that lump’s probably still glued there, hollering for dinner.” 

Fox chuckled and reached out to wrap his hand around her wrist. She dropped the spell book back into her satchel and turned her hand over in his, lacing their fingers together once again. 

“I’m sorry,” she said earnestly. 

“Don’t be.” 

Dana squeezed his hand. “You deserve to know your past, Fox. You deserve to know who you are.” She shifted, leaning a little closer. “So do I. It’s something we share.”

He let her words settle in his chest, grounding him.

“So we’re both connected to the prophecy the Dark Mage spoke of.” He watched as she took a deep breath, tilted her chin to her shoulder. “Perhaps this isn’t just your story after all,” he went on. “But ours.”

Her eyes shone in the firelight. 

“Everything has to be connected,” she nodded. “The Dreyn. The Dark Mage. All of the things that he said—” A look washed over her face, like she’d only just considered something. “What did the Overseer tell you?” she asked. “He obviously knows far more than—”

Anger overtook him. Anger at the Overseer. The frustration of not knowing pulling at already frayed nerves. He squeezed her hand and then rose to his feet, suddenly too irritated to stay seated a moment longer. 

“I asked the Overseer,” he growled. “To tell me who I was. But he only said I wasn’t ready yet.”

“Do you think he knows?”

Fox hesitated, considering the question. “Yes. But he’s waiting. For what, I don’t know.”

Dana blinked up at him. “Do you think he survived… whatever it was we left behind?” 

His anger veered ever so slightly toward concern. The man may be withholding important information, but he had helped both Fox and Dana. At great cost to himself. 

“I don’t know,” he finally said. “I hope he did. Because I have questions for him.” 

“About who you are?” 

“About who we both are,” he answered, looking at her levelly. 

Her gaze faltered under his. 

“The Heir of Light,” she said, her voice quiet, repeating the words of the Dark Mage. 

Fox nodded. 

“The last,” he said. 

Dana’s hand reached for Bite, though her eyes remained on the fire. It didn’t seem a conscious action. 

“The prophecy he spoke of… He seemed to think I was a threat to him.”

“Yes,” Fox said, lowering himself back down so that they were on the same level. “He seemed sure of it. Like he’s spent his life preparing for it.” He was quiet for a moment. “Do you think it’s true?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But if it is… if I’m the last… maybe my mother was the one before me.”

“She must’ve known something,” Fox said. “Why else would she hide you?”

Dana looked down at the blade in her hands. “She left me with people who didn’t know what I was. But maybe that was the point. Maybe it was the only way to keep me safe.”

“She was protecting you,” Fox said softly.

Dana nodded. 

Her voice faltered, then steadied. “I want to know who she was. If she’s still alive.”

“She saved you,” Fox said. “That’s a start.”

Dana gave a quiet hum of agreement, then added, “And that thing in the jail—the Dreyn. It wasn’t supposed to be there. The Dark Mage was surprised to see it.” She shuddered with the memory. “It drained me,” she whispered. “Took my magic. My strength. I think… I think if it had kept going, it would’ve killed me.”

Fox’s jaw clenched.

“It wasn’t just pain. It was a hollowing. Like it was pulling the magic out of me, stripping it down to nothing.” She looked up at him. “If that creature is loose now—if there are more like it…”

“Then the world’s even more dangerous than it used to be.”

She nodded.

“And then there’s you,” Dana added softly. “You cast that protective spell.”

Fox swallowed tightly.

“It took something from you when I did it. I’m sorry.”

“No,” she said quickly and placing her hand on his chest. “You did what you had to do. You protected me.”

His eyes searched hers. “But it drew from you. Through our bond.”

She hesitated. “Then maybe it’s stronger than either of us thought.”

Under Fox’s skin, the bond seemed to shift and surge with its own strange gravity, and he knew she felt it too. It moved between them like water in a rockbound inlet, waves ricocheting off unseen walls, a ceaseless back-and-forth that gathered its own momentum and would not still.

The sky was beginning to lighten. He would be changing soon, whittled down and carved back into something small and earthbound—a creature too far from her warmth, stripped of the limbs that could enfold her against his chest, the feel of her body pressed to his slipping away with the dawn. He covered her hand in his own and leaned his head forward, lightly touching his forehead to hers. 

“Dana,” he whispered. 

He felt her pull back slightly from him. 

When he opened his eyes, he met hers looking back. There was the faintest spark of gold in them, there one moment, gone the next. Then her eyes drifted shut and she closed the little distance between them, pressing her lips into his. 

All thought, all worry, all the weight of unknowing disappeared when their mouths met, leaving only the warmth of her kiss. Her tongue sought his, languid as the morning tide, pulling him under in a way that felt both inevitable and entirely new. His hand found her cheek, thumb brushing over soft skin, and she leaned into it, deepening the kiss with a need that matched his own. Time slipped loose around them, everything else falling away until there was nothing but breath and heat and the fragile, desperate certainty of her mouth on his.

But then, behind them, the crack of a branch from not far beyond the circle of light cast by their fire. 

They broke apart, leaping to their feet. In Dana’s hand, Bite was already aloft, at fighting ready. 

He scanned the tree line, every muscle coiled, certain the mage they’d been fleeing would emerge from the shadows. But then the firelight flickered over something else—a stag, a single shining eye catching the glow as it lifted its head, mouth still working the tender leaves it had pulled from the forest floor. It studied them for a breath, then slipped silently back into the night.

Fox let out the breath he’d been holding, a shaky huff of relief. He turned to Dana, half ready to laugh at their own nerves—but the sound died in his throat. She wasn’t watching the place where the deer had vanished. Nor was she looking at him.

Her gaze was fixed on the blade in her hands, eyes wide.

“Dana?” he asked, cautious now.

Slowly, she looked up at him, wonder dawning across her face. Her voice was hushed, reverent.

“North,” she whispered. “For what seeks you.”

He blinked, trying to make sense of it, but before he could speak, she swallowed hard and said, almost disbelieving—

“Fox… I can read the blade.”

[slippinmickeys]

Hi. I see you met Gillian. What is she like? How was your experience?

Thanks

I have met Gillian at Cons, which are like lightening-quick, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it 5 second encounters.

If you’re referring to the video of her signing a copy of Want with a personalized inscription, the people in the video are the lovely people who work for SaYes Mentoring, who relayed my inscription request. I was not there.

[slippinmickeys]

Familiar (47/?)

​​​​They ran until breath became a stranger.

The world narrowed to pounding feet, the crack of branches, the rasp of lungs scraping for air. Dana didn’t know how long they’d been running—minutes? hours? Time had lost all meaning somewhere between the howl of ancient magic behind them and the forest swallowing them whole. Morning had broken fully, casting long gold slats through the thinning canopy above, but even the light felt brittle. Untrustworthy.

Fox darted ahead of her, little more than a streak of copper and white, his movements sharp but slowing, the slight limp he’d had since they reunited more pronounced. Dana’s legs trembled beneath her, each step heavier than the last, her boots dragging through damp leaves and churned mud. Her breath tore ragged from her chest, and still she pushed forward.

They couldn’t stop. Not yet.

The wind shifted—she tasted salt, distant water—and her stomach twisted. They were nearing the northern cliffs. Maybe that was good. Maybe it wasn’t. She wasn’t sure anymore.

Fox paused at the top of a rise, tail twitching, and turned back to her. His flanks rose and fell with effort, fur matted and streaked with the wet of dew and dirt. “Here,” he said, voice breathless through their bond. “Just a moment. We need to breathe.”

Dana collapsed beside him without protest, dropping to her knees and bracing her hands in the loam. She was shaking. Her blade seemed to drag at her hip. Her satchel bit into her shoulder, its weight growing ever heavier.

For a moment, there was only the sound of their breath and the rustle of the forest.

“How is your leg?” she finally asked.

“Still attached to my body,” he said. “Are you well?”

“I think,” she whispered, “I might be dead.”

Fox huffed, ears flicking toward her. “If you’re dead, I’m worse.” He flopped down beside her, tongue lolling, sides heaving. “Do ghosts pant?”

She let out a laugh—dry and cracked.

She pulled her satchel off of her shoulder, digging into it with a trembling hand for the bladder of water she knew rested there. But her fingers came to rest on the small flask Silas had given her, which clinked faintly as she pulled it free.

“Might I hope that’s a potion infused with endurance, clarity and the strength to keep going?” Fox asked.

Dana opened the cork with her teeth. The scent of cloves and something sharper—ginger, maybe—rose up to meet her.

“I’d settle for whatever keeps me upright,” she said, and tipped it back.

Warmth bloomed down her throat and into her belly, spreading outward like firelight. Her limbs didn’t stop aching, but the shaking eased, and her breath came easier.

Fox sat up, watching her, narrow snout still open in a pant. He didn’t look any less tired than she felt, and he bent down and licked briefly at his sore ankle.

“Perhaps I should try the healing spell again?” she asked, shoving the cork back in.

Fox looked up quickly as if embarrassed to be caught doing something so animalistic, but she held his gaze steadily and sent a pulse of reassurance through the bond between them.

He seemed to relax slightly on his haunches.

“Perhaps you could,” he said.

Dana shifted to her knees and pulled the satchel closer. Her fingers were steadier now as she loosened the ties on the pouch of herbs—yarrow, comfrey, mallow root. Only a little left. But she didn’t think she’d need much.

She crushed them between her fingers, and the scent rose around her, sharper now, more familiar. Grounding.

She glanced at Fox. He was watching her closely, his ears high, eyes bright despite the exhaustion that clung to both of them.

This time, she didn’t fumble for a strand of his hair. She reached out and gently plucked one from the thick fur near his shoulder. He didn’t flinch.

Bite’s blade flashed briefly as she pricked her finger. The pain was sharp, but fleeting. A single drop welled up.

She let it fall into the crushed herbs in the center of her palm. Then she closed her hand, drew in a breath—and spoke the spell as if it had always belonged to her:

“From root to vein, from sky to stone, By blood and bond, not flesh alone, Mend what’s torn, restore what’s true, My will, my heart—I give to you.”

She didn’t falter, the words leaving her lips steady and sure.

The magic came instantly.

A shimmer passed over her skin like the hush before a storm. Light bloomed at her fingertips, delicate and golden, and spilled from her palm into the space between them. It curled toward Fox like a ribbon in water, drawn by the thread that bound them.

He blinked, startled—not in pain, but in wonder—as the light touched his paw, his ankle. His fur stirred in a wind that didn’t blow. The mark from the bonding spell pulsed faintly, as if echoing the rhythm of her words.

Dana could feel the spell take hold in a quiet, potent thrum. Power moved through her with ease, no longer hesitant or unsure, so unlike the first time she’d tried the spell.

Fox let out a breath, long and low. Then he stretched his leg cautiously and gave an approving flick of his tail.

“Well,” he said, voice tinged with relief, and a little awe. “Well.”

She rubbed the bits of herb out of her hand and stood, her legs still weak and stiff, despite Silas’s restorative elixir.

“Perhaps travel will be easier now,” she said.

Fox rose to standing, flexing his fully healed leg. “I’m like to never want to travel again after this,” he said.

Dana couldn’t help but give him a weary smile. She felt the same way.

“We’ll walk now,” she said. “Just walk.”

He gave a small nod and fell into step beside her as they continued on, the world shifting from silver morning into the slanted gold of afternoon. Neither had the energy for more talk.

The trees thinned, then thickened again. The path—if it could even be called that—twisted and tangled, nothing but a faint thread of trodden underbrush winding through the early autumn forest.

Dana pressed a hand to her side, where a dull cramp had begun to burn. Her legs throbbed with every step, and her boots, damp with sweat and the fading memory of morning dew, squelched against her heels. Fox trotted ahead, his paws near-silent on the mossy ground, but even he was flagging, tail low, gait uneven.

Dusk had begun to settle by the time Dana finally let herself drop to the forest floor beneath a crooked, moss-veiled tree. The sky above was now streaked with red and the first hints of lavender, clouds limned in gold. Her limbs screamed in protest as she folded them beneath her. Every muscle throbbed, her back ached, and the skin around her shoulders felt rubbed raw where her satchel had dug in.

She sat for a long moment, motionless, staring at nothing.

The weight of it all pressed in at once—what they had seen, what they had done, what they had barely escaped. The Dreyn. The prophecy. The Dark Mage’s eyes, cold with knowing, the words “your mother” on his lips. And still, something inside her had not caught up. It was too much to hold. Too much to think. She could feel it circling in her chest like a storm, but she pushed it away for now.

“We’ll talk,” she murmured hoarsely. “Later.”

Fox gave a soft huff of agreement as she pulled out the small wool blanket from her bag and he curled in beside her without another word, his flank pressed against her hip, grounding and warm. For a moment, she let herself lean into it.

“No fire?” he asked, his voice low, already drifting toward sleep.

“I don’t have it in me.”

They lay together under the spreading limbs of the tree, the air cooling by degrees. Dana closed her eyes, hoping for sleep to claim her. But it didn’t. Her body was spent, beyond exhaustion—but her mind wouldn’t follow. Every time she neared the edge of rest, it dragged her back with some fresh worry, some flicker of memory: the crack of the trapdoor. The wet thump of the viper’s body hitting the cobbles. The sight of the Overseer’s bloodied face. The raw assault of the mage’s gaze.

She rolled onto her side, restless, but it didn’t help. Her legs still ached. Her thoughts still churned. Her magic still stirred under her skin like smoke trapped under an iron snuffer.

Fox shifted, his soft fur brushing against her arm. Just enough to remind her he was there. His warmth, the steady rise and fall of his breath.

“I’m fine,” she said, though her voice betrayed her.

“You’re not,” he murmured, eyes still closed. “What is it?”

She hesitated. The words felt foolish as they formed—but they came anyway.

“I don’t feel safe.”

Fox cracked an eye.

“I know we’re far,” she said. “But it feels like they’ll find me. Like he’ll find me. Like my magic’s some kind of beacon. Is that silly?”

He didn’t laugh. Didn’t scoff. “That doesn’t sound silly.”

Her throat tightened.

“Is there a spell?” he asked gently. “Something that could shield your magic? Keep it from being sensed?”

She pulled her spellbook from her bag with shaking fingers. The cover felt warm in her hands, as though it already knew what she needed. She opened it, skimming the two other spells the book contained.

There, across the middle of the next page, overlaying a description of the uses of meadowsweet, ink blossomed and curved.

A Shielding Spell: To Conceal Magic Below the Veil

Dana read it twice before letting out a breath. “It needs willow bark and bog myrtle.”

Fox was already rising to stand. “I’ll help.”

They foraged by the last rays of the sun, Fox sniffing through fallen leaves, nosing at bark and shrubs. Between them, they found enough to fill her wooden bowl. She ground and mixed and whispered the words the spellbook gave her, letting the bowl rest between her hands as the power settled.

She felt it flow outward—slow and cool like a river, cloaking her skin, then Fox’s. It settled gently, like a second skin of stillness.

“Do you feel it?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Like chain mail. Heavy and light all at once.”

She nodded and closed the book, but paused before putting it away, rubbing her hands over the cover and thumbing the thick pages along their edge.

“It does this,” she said. “Gives me what I need, when I need it. It’s like it listens.”

Fox peered at it. “Is there a spell in there for conjuring a warm bed under a sturdy roof?”

The ink dulled, the page growing faint.

Dana laughed softly. “No. I’m beginning to sense it only deals in emergencies and epiphanies. Creature comforts offend its sensibilities.”

She tucked the book back into her satchel, stifling a yawn.

Fox circled once and curled back beside her, his eyes drifting closed. “Sleep. I’ll keep watch.”

“You’re already falling asleep,” she whispered, smiling.

“Only a little.”

They lay there, the two of them pressed close beneath the trees, wrapped in quiet and spellwork and everything left unsaid.

And finally, finally, sleep came.

***

Dana stirred in the dark, the hush of the forest pressing in close. The air had grown cooler, damp with night, but she was warm—her body pressed against something firm and alive. Her hand, half-curled in sleep, rested against the slow rise and fall of a linen-clad chest—solid and warm. Human.

She blinked.

Fox.

No longer furred and four-legged, but flesh and blood beside her. Long-limbed and lean, the heat of his body a low, steady burn. One of his arms lay loose around her waist, and his breathing was steady, contented. In the faint moonlight, his face was soft in sleep—shadows hollowing his cheeks, lashes dark against his skin, full lips slightly parted. Even at rest, there was something striking in his stillness. Something noble. Beautiful.

She exhaled slowly and let her eyes close again, tempted to stay there, tucked into his side. But something stirred in her—the restlessness of energy regained, the small magic of Silas’s draught still lingering in her blood.

Though Fox was warm beside her, the night carried the chill of autumn and of the north.

She thought about building a fire. Something small, just enough to take the edge off the cold.

Sliding away gently, she gathered a small bundle of kindling and pine needles from the forest floor. She crouched beside the pile and reached for her satchel, fingers brushing over her flint. She paused.

No.

She straightened and drew in a breath, grounding herself.

Her lungs filled with the scent of pine and damp earth, and she remembered the candles in Silas’s shop, how they’d leapt to life with her breath. She shaped her exhale around that memory.

Intent. Focus.

A single breath out—and a flame sparked in the heart of the kindling.

Dana sat back, satisfied pleasure curling through her. The fire flickered to life, small but proud, and she could feel the protective spell still wrapped around her magic, tucking it safely away from any watching eyes—but not from her.

She leaned back to admire her work.

Behind her, Fox stirred.

She turned to see him shift onto one elbow, his eyes hooded with sleep but sharp and assessing as they slid over her in the small firelight. A low, satisfied sound escaped him.

“That’s a clever trick,” he said, his voice rough with sleep.

She shrugged, suddenly shy under his gaze. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t.” His eyes swept over her again, slower this time. “Come here.”

Something in his words curled something low in her belly and bloomed.

She moved toward him, drawn like a tide, until she was nestled against his side once more. His arm came around her, anchoring her, and the world narrowed to her own tremulous breath and the heat of him against her.

It felt right.

Her cheek rested against his shoulder. He was warm, his heartbeat steady under her palm. She should sleep. Should let her mind still and drift off again. But—

She didn’t want sleep. Not yet.

Fox was watching her, the firelight flickering in his eyes. They held a spark of tenderness. And something else—something deeper, darker, hungrier. His gaze caught hers and held it, and suddenly she couldn’t look away. The fire beside them crackled gently, but the true fire was in his eyes, and it lit something fierce inside her.

“Dana,” he murmured, low and rough. Her name, and everything wrapped inside it.

She leaned into him—into the heat between them, into the bond that pulled them close, into the way her body curved into his like she had always belonged there.

His lips met hers.

The kiss was unhurried, but it seared—slow and deliberate—their desire undeniable. His hands roamed her back, her hips, relearning her shape with reverent certainty. She rolled herself on top of him, one of her hands tangled in his hair, the other fisting the blanket beneath them. Her breath hitched as the spark inside her flared—wild and electric.

And for the first time, she felt safe enough to let it burn.

She didn’t know what she needed. She only knew she needed more. She pressed into him, pulling him closer with both arms, thrusting tentatively with her hips.

He hissed in a breath, sharp and trembling, and reached down to still her hands—gentle, but firm.

“Not here,” he said, lips still brushing hers, breath shallow and shared. “Not like this.”

“Not like what?” she panted, lost in the rush of feeling. More was everything. More was the only thing that made sense.

She moved again, hips pressing against his, and the friction was exquisite. Her breath stuttered.

His did too, a deeper sound this time—something more than breath, something barely held together. And it thrilled her.

She was doing this to him. Whatever this was—this ache, this need, this pull—it was hers. It was because she was his.

He lifted his head to touch his forehead to hers, eyes closed. “Don’t think I don’t want to.”

“Then why—”

“Because if I start,” he said, voice tight and ragged, “I won’t be able to stop.”

His hand came to her cheek, brushing a thumb across her skin. “And it shouldn’t be when we’re half-dead. Not in the dirt. Not after what you just survived.”

Her breath caught—and this time, not from want, but from something gentler. Something that wrapped around her chest like light.

Fox opened his eyes.

“Dana,” he said again, softer now, “I want you. But I want it to be all of us—whole, steady. Not something we steal from the edge of exhaustion.”

She swallowed, her body still thrumming, but her heart shifting.

“All right,” she whispered, sliding back to his side.

He nodded and kissed her again—slower, just once, but it went through her like a vow.

Then he pulled her against him and tucked her head beneath his chin.

And this time, when she closed her eyes, it wasn’t sleep she fell into.

It was peace.

[slippinmickeys]

Familiar (46/?)

Fox walked toward the window with a slight limp, ears pinned back, fur still bristling as he kept watch. Dana felt the tug of their bond—tight and urgent—and ducked into the workroom to grab her satchel. Her spellbook was already inside. Silas pressed a warm flask into her hand, muttering something about strength and energy, before turning to help Maren sweep aside the rug near the hearth.

A moment later, Maren stepped in close and handed her a wrapped parcel. 

“Provisions,” she said, her eyes watery. “I wish I had more to give you.” 

Dana took the food and put both it and the flask into her satchel, turning to the older woman with tears in her own eyes. She reached out a hand. “Thank you,” she said, finding it difficult to speak past the lump in her throat. 

Maren glanced at her outstretched hand, then shook her head and pulled her in for a tight hug. “Don’t let anyone tell you who you are,” Maren said fiercely into her ear. “You already know.” 

One more tight squeeze and then the woman released her, sniffing and briskly wiping at her eyes. “Now go! And don’t forget your blade!”

Dana, fighting back a swell of emotion, glanced toward the edge of the workbench where Bite lay. She reached for it without a word, the weight of it steadying in her palm. She looped it through her belt and turned to Fox, who had trotted in anxiously from the window—her anchor, her witness, the one person who hadn’t let her go. 

“Courage,” he said, looking up at her with his golden eyes. 

Silas pulled open the hatch. Cold, damp air wafted up from the darkness beneath. A narrow flight of stone steps led down, carved into old earth and lined with crumbling mortar.

“This cellar runs behind the buildings on this row,” Silas said, brushing dust from his hands. “The apothecary, the baker’s next door, the weaver’s, the old tannery and its storehouse—if we exit out the storehouse we’ll come out in the alley running perpendicular to the shops. It’s not a clean escape exactly, but it gets you out of here without being seen.”

The Overseer gave a sharp nod. “Then that’s the way. All of you had best get moving.”

“You’re not coming?” Fox asked. 

“I’ll be along,” the Overseer said, and turned to walk back into the shop of the apothecary, his grey robes sweeping along behind him.

Dana watched him go and turned back when she heard the apothecary’s voice. 

“I’ll take you as far as the village’s edge,” Silas said. He touched Maren’s hand briefly before offering Dana a determined nod. “Let’s move.”

Dana looked from the stairwell to Fox, then back at Maren, her heart squeezing with a sharp pang of gratitude.

“I—” she started to say.

“Go!” Maren rushed, turning away to hide her tears. 

Dana descended first, careful on the uneven steps, the glow from the lantern Silas had handed her casting long shadows. Fox padded beside her, alert. The Raven fluttered silently down into the stairwell as Moth alighted on Dana’s shoulder. The viper slipped ahead like a whisper.

A moment later, Maren grabbed Silas’s arm as he was about to descend. 

“Alexander is gone,” she hissed “Move quickly!” 

Fox let out a vicious growl. 

Silas swore and hustled down the steps, the lantern he was holding swinging in his haste, casting odd shapes on the rough walls. 

They didn’t speak until the hatch closed behind them, sealing off the noise of the waking village above. The stairwell swallowed them in shadows and silence, and the only sound was the soft echo of their footsteps as they slipped beneath the earth. 

Ahead, Dana could see the pulsing glow of the wards protecting the apothecary in the high corners of the small tunnel, the light gradually dimming the further along they walked.

The air in the passageway had grown colder, heavy with the scent of old stone, damp earth, and the sharp tang of mildew. Dana’s limbs still ached from the events of the day before, but her grip was steady on Bite, and the certainty of having Fox back at her side spread through her like warmth.

Fox trotted just ahead, his limp barely noticeable now, ears alert and golden eyes gleaming in the flickering lantern light. Silas walked close behind him, the apothecary’s breath audible, his eyes scanning every door they passed.

“The tannery’s just ahead,” he said, voice low. “There’s a side entrance—if the hinges haven’t rusted clean through, we’ll come out into the alley just past the square.”

Dana nodded, clutching her satchel tighter. Moth shifted on her shoulder, wings twitching.

“Someone’s coming,” it said, the voice in her head startling her.

Fox stilled, and Dana followed suit.

Ahead, the narrow corridor widened slightly, the faint glow of early morning filtering through a warped wooden trap door at the far end, a narrow wooden staircase leading toward it. Dana could smell the cool, dew-laced air just beyond it—and something else. A wrongness in the light. A pressure in the air that made her stomach twist.

Silas turned toward them and his face fell in the light of the lantern he held. 

“What is it?” he asked. 

“Something’s not right,” Dana said. “Up ahead.”

They couldn’t yet tell what waited above—whether it was the Dark Mage himself, an enchanted, escaped Alexander, or some new horror they hadn’t yet faced—but the energy had shifted. Thickened. As if bracing for what came next.

Silas’s hand gripped the lantern, his knuckles going white. “Back,” he said, pointing somewhere just behind them. “Up through the weaver’s.”

They doubled back in silence, the cobwebs hanging from the low ceiling flicking shadows on the walls. 

“Just there,” Silas said, pointing upward.

Dana lifted her lantern. The light flickered across the rough stone walls, catching on a narrow wooden panel overhead—the weaver’s trapdoor. Weathered and warped with age, it was inset tightly into the ceiling, a single iron ring embedded at its center. Below it, a narrow ladder lay on its side, half-caught on an overturned bucket. 

Silas set his lantern down and picked up the ladder, leaning it against the wall. He turned to the familiars. 

“Will you be able to climb?” he asked them. 

In answer, the viper coiled her way up the first few rungs. 

Fox’s ears went back. “I may need some help,” he said, his voice dripping with displeasure. 

“If he’s amenable,” Dana said, turning to Silas. “I may need to pick Fox up and hand him to you if you can go through first.” 

Silas nodded curtly and put a hand on the ladder, but beside her, Fox gave a displeased sniff. 

The apothecary ascended, the narrow rungs creaking under his weight. When he reached the top, he shoved at the door, which only lifted a few inches. 

Silas grunted and shoved again. The trapdoor gave with a protesting creak, wood scraping against stone. Dust and chilled morning air spilled in. Silas scrambled up and into the room above.

“It’s clear,” he whispered down. “Quickly.”

Dana turned to Fox. “Ready?”

Beside them, the raven hopped deftly from rung to rung, the moth fluttered through the opening in a fluttering spiral, and the viper wove her way upward in a silent, sinuous glide.

Fox watched them and then looked up at her. “Yes,” he said glumly, ears twitching.

She set down her lantern and crouched down to wrap her arms around him, hefting him with a grunt. “You’ve been eating well,” she muttered.

Fox made a noise that might’ve been a growl or a laugh, but he didn’t resist. Still, he was heavier than he looked—dense with muscle, warm and bristling with tension. She staggered slightly as she hoisted him into her arms, up and over one shoulder.

“Saints,” she breathed. “You’re built like a stoneware kettle.”

“One indignity after the next,” he huffed, like he meant to say it under his breath. 

“Do you have thoughts you’re not sharing?” she grunted, awkwardly climbing the first few rungs. 

“Many,” he quipped. 

Once she got to the top, she pushed him up as well as she could. Silas leaned down to take him, lifting Fox by the scruff like a well-trained midwife with a wriggling pup. Fox whipped a disgruntled tail  but didn’t struggle.

Then a sound echoed through the corridor behind them. A dull scrape. A scuff of something dragging over stone.

Dana froze.

Silas’s head snapped toward the sound, eyes narrowing.

Fox’s ears swiveled back. “The tannery passage,” he growled. “Someone’s trying the door.”

The viper hissed from above. Moth fluttered its wings, flitting to land on Silas’s collar. Dana shoved her satchel higher on her back and scrambled up through the hatch, letting Silas take her hand and haul her the last few inches into the weaver’s shop.

The trapdoor shut with a muted thud behind them.

The air inside was musty and still, tinged with lanolin and beeswax. Long bolts of fabric lined the walls, and half-finished garments hung like ghosts from hooks above the counter. Shadows stretched wide across the floor, touched by the first blush of dawn pressing through the shutters.

Fox was already at the window, fur on end.

Silas motioned for silence and crept to the door. He cracked it just enough to peer out into the lane, then dropped back with a grim shake of his head.

“It’s empty,” he said, uneasy.

Dana stepped up beside him and looked through a thin gap in the shutters. The village beyond looked like it had been abandoned mid-thought. No smoke rising from chimneys. No carts or horses. No vendors bringing their wares to the market. Only the silence—and the weight pressing behind it.

“Doesn’t feel right,” she said. “Shouldn’t there be people about? Starting their day?”

Then a flicker of motion. A figure stepped into view at the far end of the street.

Tall and dressed in black so dark it seemed to devour the light, there was the man who had haunted the edges of every whispered warning. The Dark Mage.

He walked with unsettling poise, his long coat tailored close to the body, its velvet folds stitched with a glimmer of silver thread that shimmered like veins of magic. Polished black boots struck the stone with each step, precise and unhurried, and gloves of supple leather clung to his hands like second skin. A high collar framed his face—sharp-jawed, clean-shaven, every line elegant and exacting. No wizard’s robe, no wild hair or ragged staff. This was refinement sharpened into a weapon. A man who had chosen darkness and wore it like silk.

Dana’s breath caught. 

And behind them, a thump from the tunnel they’d just left. 

A second sharp dart of fear pierced her chest. 

Fox turned toward the trapdoor, nosing the air, muzzle pulling back in a snarl.

“Alexander,” he hissed.

“Silas,” Dana whispered, nodding at the trap door. 

With a silent nod, they moved together, grabbing onto a nearby warping board and shoving it on top of the door just as it started to lift. 

They held it—just barely. The warping board skidded slightly as the trapdoor shuddered beneath it, Alexander ramming upward with sudden force. Silas dropped a heavy crate on top. Dana grabbed a second and added her weight to it, heart pounding in her throat.

The thud came again. A grunt.

“He’s trying to force it,” Fox growled before he too jumped on top of the pile.

“You think your weight will be what stops him?” Dana asked.

“Heavier than a stonewear kettle, wasn’t I?” he replied, shifting to balance his weight.

Dana shook her head and turned sharply toward the door.

The raven was already there, peering through the shutters. “We can’t run,” she said, voice tight. “The Dark Mage is out there. Blocking the lane.”

“I’ve got the weight of it,” Silas said, heaving a large sack of wool roving—recently dampened—on top of the pile. “Have a look.”

The struggle beneath them slowed, and Dana moved to the window, Fox close behind. Through the narrow gap in the shutters, they could just see their pursuer at the far end of the street: the sleek, looming figure, jet black hair shot through with grey. He stood still, surveying the silent village as though his gaze could pass through stone.

“We’re trapped,” Dana said, her voice low. “He’s ahead. Alexander’s behind.”

The Raven fluttered nervously on a ceiling beam. “He won’t stop,” she said. “Until he has Dana.”

Fox’s body coiled low. “If he moves this way, I’ll—”

“You’ll die,” Dana said, gripping his scruff. “So will I. We can’t fight him. Not alone.”

The trapdoor shuddered again. A crack splintered through the old wood.

Then, just when panic threatened to crest, the bell over the apothecary’s door gave a distant chime.

The Overseer stepped out into the open street, robes brushing the stone, staff glinting faintly in the strange morning light.

“Looking for someone?” he called, calm and clear.

The Dark Mage turned.

And for a moment—just a breathless, teetering moment—the weight of his power filled the entire lane, thick and electric as a coming storm. Magic began to hum at the edges of things, coiling like smoke in the still air.

Inside the weaver’s, no one moved. No one dared.

“Well aren’t you interesting,” the Dark Mage said, stepping forward and peering curiously at the Overseer. 

The Overseer didn’t flinch. “I could say the same.”

“You’re not a mage but emit dark power,” the man in black mused, his voice light, but a sharpness beneath. “How very curious.” He tilted his head. “What can you do for me?”

“I’m here merely to offer you a warning,” the Overseer replied. “Turn around. Leave this place.”

The Dark Mage laughed. It was a low, amused sound that didn’t reach his eyes. “A warning. From a man in rags.”

His fingers twitched, and the air flexed around him. The cobblestones underfoot cracked softly as if under the pressure of something vast and invisible.

Inside the weaver’s, Dana dared a glance at Fox, who crouched low beside the door, his golden eyes fixed on the street. There was still thumping on the trap door, though Silas was managing to keep it closed. 

“Is he stalling?” she whispered.

“He’s trying,” Fox answered grimly. “The second the mage turns his back or is distracted, we have to run.”

“We’ll never make it,” hissed the viper. “The Overseer may be distracting him, but if you step into the lane, he’ll see you.”

Fox swore. The viper was right. Once they exited the weaver’s they would still have to dart down the lane, past the tannery and storehouse before they could disappear into the alley and out of sight. 

“What if we had cover?” Dana asked. “What if I could magick something?” 

Without waiting for an answer, Dana reached into her satchel and pulled out her spell book, riffling through the pages. Plants, drawings, descriptions, nothing new—and then—filling in the script as she watched, a spell unfurled across a page. A Spell To Conjure Fog. It required nothing but focus and a recitation. She could do this.  

Outside, the Overseer raised his staff.

“You’ve enchanted a man,” he said, voice sharp now. “Used him to breach the walls of a protected place. Threatened innocents. What do you want?”

She closed her eyes, grounding herself in the quiet seam where her magic kissed the waiting earth. Then she looked down at the spell. 

In the lane, the Dark Mage answered the Overseer’s question. “There’s a girl,” he said, and Dana could practically feel his eyes scanning the shuttered windows. “A threat. A prophecy. I imagine you’ve heard of it.”

Dana’s concentration faltered. What had the man said? She looked away from the book and back out at the two older men in the lane. 

“She’s just a girl,” the Overseer said.

The Dark Mage’s expression didn’t change. “Then why protect her?”

Dana swallowed, her mind spinning.

“Dana?” Fox said, his voice worried. 

She looked at her familiar then back at her book. The spell in front of her seemed to waver on the page. 

Then, from his perch above the trapdoor—still braced against the force of Alexander straining below—Silas spoke with a startling calm, a quiet resolve, as though the chaos around him didn’t exist.

“Dana,” he said. “There is nothing in this world but you and your spell. Let everything fall aside. Connect to the earth. Recite your enchantment.” 

Dana looked to the lane once more, just as the Dark Mage lifted one hand and sent a bolt of magic streaking toward the apothecary. The air warped around it, heat and pressure gathering in its wake. The cobblestones beneath the blast line trembled, a low quake shivering through the street.

But before it could land, the Overseer struck his staff to the ground.

Light flared outward in a dome from the staff’s crystal—radiant green laced with white. The bolt collided with it in a roar of heat and energy, the barrier holding fast. Waves of light rippled through the air. The apothecary stood untouched, still and silent behind its shield.

The mage narrowed his eyes at the Overseer. “Interesting indeed.” He took a slow step forward. “Did the girl conjure you? Send you like some guardian ghost?” His voice darkened. “She was hidden from me for years. My children were meant to fulfill the prophecy. But Light took them.” The mage paused, gaze flicking toward the apothecary, as if Dana were still inside. “If she thinks she’s its answer, she’s more foolish than I thought.” 

Behind the barrier, the Overseer’s voice boomed—not with volume, but with gravity. “You will not touch her.”

In the weaver’s shop, the young witch flinched. 

“Dana,” said Fox, and then warmth bloomed through their bond, steady and sure. Despite the chaos outside, the mage’s words, her fear and uncertainty, she drew a breath, let the warmth anchor her, and spoke the enchantment.

The words left her lips like breath into winter air—soft, but charged with purpose. She pictured fog rolling in off the sea, slow and thick, cloaking the shore like a secret. She held that image in her mind and whispered the command.

The air stirred.

At first, it was nothing—just a faint shift, a hush in the street beyond the shutters. Then the temperature dropped, and from somewhere deeper in the village, a silver mist began to unfurl. It curled low along the ground, clinging to cobblestones, thickening with every heartbeat.

Outside, the Overseer squared his stance, as though bracing against a wind only he could feel. The Dark Mage turned slightly, his brow furrowing.

Still Dana murmured the spell, drawing the fog forward like pulling thread from a spool. It pooled around the edges of the weaver’s, masking their doorway and the lane beyond it in a veil of lightless gray. Sound dulled. Shapes blurred.

“Now,” Fox said. 

Even Silas, whose ears were deaf to the language of the familiars, moved without needing to be told. The trap door he was holding shut had gone quiet. After stepping back a moment to be sure it wouldn’t be flung open, he hurried to where Dana and Fox waited and shouldered the door just wide enough to slip into the lane. One by one, they vanished into the mist—Fox’s golden eyes just visible before the fog swallowed him whole. The familiars scattered into the shadows above and below. Dana went last, the final syllable of the spell still warm on her tongue as she stepped into the thick gray veil she’d conjured.

They darted down the lane, ghostlike in the fog. 

Dana’s breath sounded too loud in her ears. Her heartbeat pounded in her throat.

A shout rang out behind them—too indistinct to make out, but edged with anger.

“Faster,” Silas hissed.

They didn’t run. They flew—feet light, silhouettes vanishing and reappearing in the shifting gray. The mist moved with them now, thickening where it needed to, parting just enough to show the next few steps ahead.

There. The alley. 

Fox led the way, taking the corner quickly, skidding across the wet. Dana followed, her boots striking the flagstones of the alley floor. She turned the corner with a gasp, mist still curling after her like smoke from a snuffed flame.

They had made it. 

Each of them paused to trade relieved looks before they moved on, slipping from doorway to doorway, darting past hanging laundry, abandoned crates, and silent shutters. But just as they reached the end of the alley, where a small arched passage would lead them to a courtyard and then the woods beyond the village—

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Alexander’s voice cut through the stillness like a blade.

He stood at the entrance to the wynd, eyes glassy with enchantment. And behind him—

A monstrous black horse, muscular and tall, its flanks shiny as a mountain pool. It snorted and took a menacing step forward. 

“Beware!” shouted the viper. “The stallion is the Dark Mage’s familiar!”

But there was nowhere to go. 

Behind them and down the lane, distracted by the Overseer and the conjured fog, loomed the Dark Mage. Ahead, the only other exit was blocked—Alexander stood there, unsteady on his feet, eyes glazed, and beside him the massive black stallion pawed the ground, its head lowered, tail flicking with agitation.

“I’ll deal with him,” Fox said, his voice low, but before he could move, the viper shot forward, slithering toward the beast with an angry hiss. 

Alexander lurched, trying to stomp her, but she twisted away and struck him—sinking her fangs deep into his other ankle. With a whip of her body, she flipped clear, venom already coursing through her foe, and darted straight toward the horse. Alexander crumpled to his knees with a strangled gasp.

The stallion reared up, giving a whinny and kicking its front feet in the air. “Go!” the viper shouted at Dana and Fox. 

“Fly!” reaffirmed the raven, who swooped under the horse and onward through the arched passage, leading the way. 

Fox and Dana wasted no time, dashing past Alexander—slumped and groaning—and the rearing stallion, Silas close behind. As they passed, the horse came crashing down onto the cobbles and kicked, hooves sharp as razors striking the viper mid-lunge.

“No!” Silas roared.

Dana spun in time to see the viper’s body flung hard against the stone wall, the impact sickening. She writhed once—twice—then fell still, her coils slackening into silence.

Silas lunged toward her, but the stallion wheeled and bucked, catching him in the ribs with a savage kick. He crumpled with a grunt, and rolled onto his back, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.

Dana started toward him, heart clenching, but Fox sprang in front of her.

“Go!” he shouted, raw and anguished. “Viper is gone—don’t let it be for nothing!”

Before Dana could respond, another figure burst from the end of the lane and into the alley—the familiar blur of Maren’s skirts and wild hair.

“No—Silas!” she cried, skidding to a stop and dropping to her knees beside him.

He lifted his head, blood trickling from a gash at his temple. “I will heal,” he rasped. 

Maren looked up. “Go, girl! Now!” 

Dana took a reluctant step, then another—but a sudden weight tugged at her chest, like gravity twisting sideways.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Dana turned—and there he was.

The Dark Mage.

He stood, blocking the wynd as if he had always been there, black cloak rustling in the faint breeze, eyes as black as obsidian.

Fox dropped low beside her, hackles up, teeth bared in a snarl.

The Dark Mage looked past him—past everyone—and fixed his gaze directly on her.

He took a slow step forward.

“So this is the heir of Light,” he said, his voice edged like a blade. “The last.”

Dana stood frozen, though her fingers found the hilt of Bite without thinking.

The Dark Mage tilted his head, studying her like a puzzle.

“Your mother was wise to hide you,” he said. 

Dana swallowed, feeling the soft fingers of dark magic creep steadily toward her from where the mage stood, like a shadow growing long with the setting sun. 

She and Fox took several steps back into the alley, Fox sure to keep his body between hers and the dark figure before them. 

“One will fall,” the Dark Mage said, stepping forward, his voice like metal dragged over gravel. 

With a gasp, Dana looked toward Fox but he seemed unaffected by the words which she had heard come from his own lips, in what now seemed like a different life. 

Before she could compose another thought, the air changed. Again.

Not the way it had before—not with the coiling tension of power, or the sharp snap of magic being drawn—but something deeper. Like the slow pulling of breath through air choked with ash. Dana staggered back half a step. The weakness came on slowly but unmistakably.

Fox turned. “What is that?”

From behind them, where the mist continued to slide in low along the stones—came that feeling. The same one she’d felt in the tower—when her strength had begun to slip away. A drain, as if something inside her were being pulled toward the cold of a sunless death.

Silas swore under his breath. The stallion familiar shifted uneasily, snorting and stomping its hooves. Even the Dark Mage turned, sensing the shift.

And from the edge of the mist came the sound of footsteps. Measured. Unhurried. Approaching.

A figure emerged into view—a man, or something that only looked like one. He wore travel-worn boots and dark, threadbare clothing that clung to his lean frame like it had been soaked and left to dry on him. His dark hair hung damp over his forehead, and his pale skin caught the dawnlight with a strange, dull sheen.

The man—Dana recognized him with dread—was the prisoner from the neighboring cell. The one who had almost killed her when she’d tried to draw on her magic.

His eyes gleamed yellow in the gloom.

He sniffed the air once, slow and deliberate, then smiled—sharp and hungry.

“Ah,” he said. “So this is what true power smells like.”

The Dark Mage’s head whipped around.

He was coming up behind them, positioning himself like a hunter finding a new target, his eyes keenly on the Dark Mage.

Dana’s heart pounded. A chill slicked down her spine.

The man’s smile widened as he flicked his eyes toward her. “She was a meal,” he said, turning to the Dark Mage. “You’ll be a feast.”

The Dark Mage didn’t flinch, but something in his posture shifted. A flicker of recognition. Wariness. He stepped away from the arched passage.

“A Dreyn,” he said, his voice low. “Below the Veil?”

A long blade shimmered into existence at his side, rippling into form from a wisp of shadow. He gripped it without ceremony.

Dreyn, Dana thought. An apt description of a beast who looked like a man. Who sucked the life right out of you. “Are there more of you?” The Dark Mage went on. 

The Dreyn smiled. “Not yet.”

A beat passed, thick with magic and dread.

Then— “Away!”

The voice rang down the alley, hoarse but commanding. In the narrow passage leading out from the storehouse stood the Overseer—bloodied, one arm pressed to his side, but upright and unyielding, his staff crackling with light.

The Dreyn’s head snapped toward him with interest. The Dark Mage did not take his eyes off the thing in front of him.

The Dreyn merely grinned, unconcerned—as if the Overseer were a curiosity, not a threat. He took in the scene with a predator’s ease, his yellow eyes sweeping lazily across the cobbles, pausing on the mage, the horse, the girl.

Then, slowly, deliberately, he turned—not toward Dana or the Mage or even Silas—but toward the stallion.

The horse’s ears pinned flat. Muscles rippled under its black coat. It snorted, stamping once, but didn’t back away. The Dreyn took a step closer. Another. He lifted one hand.

“Such fine bindings,” he murmured, fingers spread wide, palm glowing faintly as if drawing something unseen from the air. “Even familiars bleed power, if you know how to take it.”

The stallion screamed.

It reared, hooves flailing, eyes rolling white. For a terrifying second, its legs locked midair—then trembled, buckling slightly as the Dreyn advanced, hand still outstretched.

“No!” the Overseer bellowed.

He surged forward, blood still streaked down the side of his face, his staff raised high. A blast of green light exploded outward as he struck the cobbles—the energy slamming into the Dreyn with a flash that knocked the creature stumbling back, smoke curling from his chest, tunic hissing where it met the wet stone.

The stallion staggered away, flanks heaving, but upright. The Overseer edged his way over to it and put a calming hand on the familiar’s flank, whispering a spell under his breath.

The Dark Mage turned fully now, blade drawn and pulsing with black flame, eyes locked on the Dreyn, who rose back to standing. “A creature of hunger,” the mage said. “You should’ve stayed above the Veil.”

The Dreyn smiled again, slow and delighted, and licked his teeth.

That was the moment.

The Overseer didn’t even look at them—just hissed, low and urgent: “Go. Now!”

Dana and Fox scrabbled for the passage and flew through the wynd.

Behind them, the street lit with clashing magic. But ahead of them, the fog beckoned. They didn’t look back, and the air behind them thundered with the storm they’d left behind.

[slippinmickeys]

Familiar (45/?)

Silas sat up sharply, instantly awake.

“Do you get many callers this time of night?” the Overseer asked.

“I wouldn’t know,” the apothecary replied grimly. “We’re usually at home in our beds.”

He stood and came around the counter, pressing himself behind the door, shadowed in the flickering candlelight. The scent of burnt herbs and candle smoke still lingered in the air, curling in the corners of the dim room.

He stuck a finger in the curtain and pulled it back just enough to glimpse the figure on the stoop.

“It’s a man,” he whispered.

“What does he look like?” the Overseer asked softly.

“He’s in shadow. Too dark to see.”

The wards around the apothecary not only cloaked the building from magical view, but also prevented those within from looking out. If it was the Dark Mage, none of them might leave alive.

“Wake Fox and Dana,” the Overseer said to the viper, who slipped into motion at once. “Have them gather their things. They may need to slip out the rear door.”

The snake did as he bade, silent as smoke, disappearing beneath the curtain that led to the back.

A knock rang again—sharp, clear, too casual for the hour. “Hello? I can see candlelight.” called a voice from the other side of the door.

“Do you recognize the voice?” the Overseer asked, low.

Silas looked at his wife. She shook her head.

“Sounds young,” he said.

The Overseer considered, then called silently to the raven on the rafters above. “Is this the voice of the other prisoner?”

“Nay,” the bird replied, feathers rustling.

The man outside knocked again, giving no indication that he planned to stop. 

Maren had her apron in her hands and was wringing the fabric nervously. 

“If he keeps up this pounding and the constable or Nightwatch comes by, we could be inviting more trouble than we care to deal with,” she said, her voice tense. 

The Overseer considered this. Sighed heavily. “Open it,” he said. “But don’t let him in. Let us see what danger lurks beyond the wards tonight.”

Silas nodded, wetting his lips nervously.

“Hide yourselves,” Maren said, turning to the Overseer and the familiars. “All of you. At least get out of sight. If it’s a villager, the look of you will send them running.”

The floorboards creaked beneath the Overseer’s retreating step. Silas waited beside the door, breath even but tight in his chest. Without a word, Maren handed him a lit candle. He drew back the bolt and eased the door open just a few inches, peering into the blue-gray hush of the gloaming.The flame of the candle guttered in the draft.

“We’re closed, stranger,” Silas said warily. “If you’re in need of medical treatment, the blacksmith’s a better surgeon than I.”

“I don’t seek treatment,” the man said. His voice was warm, upbeat, the kind of voice that belonged to easy smiles and boyish charm. “I’m here for a friend. Word has it you’ve been boarding her these last few days. Dana.”

Maren inhaled sharply, her hand flying to her mouth.

“It is early,” Silas said. “Perhaps you can find your friend after the sun has risen. But not here.”

He began to close the door, but the man put a hand against it—gently, not threatening, more petition than force.

“Please,” the man said, more earnest now. “I’ve brought some bad luck to her, and I want to make it right. I know she had trouble this afternoon. I want to help her leave this place. She’s from my village. I promised I’d bring her home. May I come in? I’d rather the constable not see me.”

Alexander, the Overseer thought, his stomach knotting. The boy was tangled up somehow with the Dark Mage. He had been the one to use the stone. His presence could bring ruin down upon them all.

“Bad luck has a way of spreading,” Silas said coldly. “I suggest you take it from my doorstep.”

He moved to close the door again, but the young man pushed back harder. Had Silas not been distracted by the sudden, sharp gasp behind him, he might have managed it. But his head turned at the sound—and in that instant, the door swung open just far enough for the candlelight—and the pale, bleeding light of approaching dawn—to fall across the stranger’s face.

Dana stepped through the curtain from the back room, Fox looming behind her, a silent sentinel, close as her shadow.

And the last thing the Overseer heard before chaos descended was her whisper: “Alexander?”

The name had barely left her lips when Fox moved.

He didn’t wait. Didn’t ask. Didn’t think. One heartbeat he was beside Dana—and the next, he launched forward like a loosed arrow, a flash of fury and motion.

The apothecary door slammed open with the force of his leap, candlelight whipping sideways in the gust. Alexander barely had time to register the blur before a fist met his jaw with bone-cracking force. The sound of it echoed through the narrow street—a sickening thud followed by the wet crunch of cartilage. Alexander flew backward and crashed into the cobbles outside the shop, his limbs sprawling as he landed hard on his back.

Dana cried out. Silas cursed.

And then—the sharp, rhythmic clip-clop of hooves.

“The Nightwatch,” Silas hissed, his eyes darting toward the edge of the square where torches flickered in the decreasing darkness.

“Damn it,” the Overseer muttered. He stepped quickly over Alexander’s prone form and knelt beside him, his long fingers rifling through the young man’s coat and tunic.

“Hurry!” Maren warned. “They’re turning the corner!”

The Overseer found what he sought instantly: the smooth, round calling stone pulsing a sickly green against Alexander’s ribs. He yanked it free with a snarl of recognition.

“Drag him inside. Quickly!” he snapped, already reaching for the dagger at his belt.

Silas and Maren scrambled to obey, each grabbing an arm and hauling Alexander’s limp form through the door as the Overseer pressed the stone to his palm and began to chant. His voice was low and fast, the syllables coiled tight with power. He scored a sharp rune across the surface of the stone with the tip of his blade—deep enough to bite through the glow—and with a final word, the pulsing light dimmed to nothing. 

He ducked back into the apothecary, shoving the door shut with his shoulder and slamming the bolt into place. The apothecary fell silent but for the sound of ragged breathing.

Everyone stood frozen as the sound of horse hooves clopped by the outside of the shop and on into the fading night. 

Alexander stirred on the floor, a thin ribbon of blood trickling from his nose.

Fox stood over him, body trembling with restrained rage, his hands curled into fists at his sides.

Dana caught his arm. “Fox—no.”

Silas joined her, planting a steady hand on Fox’s shoulder. “We need answers. Not blood.”

Fox didn’t look away from Alexander. His jaw was clenched, his chest heaving.

“Fox—” the Overseer said, and before the rest of the warning could leave his lips, the first rays of dawn hit the curtains in the shop windows and the sickening sound of bones snapping filled the small space as the man that had been Fox transformed into Dana’s familiar. 

***

Pain shattered through him as the shift overtook his body—ribs cracking, muscle twisting, arms collapsing beneath him as they shortened into forelegs. He hit the floor with a grunt, claws skidding on wood, his fur bristling in a flare of indignity and rage.

Not again.

Not now.

The change still stole his breath. Stole more than that—his voice, his reach, the ability to hold her. His skin still remembered the weight of Dana in his arms, the silk of her breath against his throat. The echo of her kiss hadn’t faded, not even a little.

And now he was reduced again. Small and powerless.

The ache of it—of losing the shape that had allowed her to look at him like that—her eyes half-lidded, stepping up to kiss him—twisted through him worse than the shift itself. He’d had her in his arms. Held her. He didn’t know when he’d be able to again. Or if. Not with the danger outside.

He turned, fangs bared, hackles raised. His eyes locked on Alexander’s crumpled form, and all Fox’s fury surged up at once.

The man who had turned an entire village against Dana. Who had lied. Who had called the Dark Mage.

Fox took one step forward, a low growl rising in his throat.

The Overseer dropped to a crouch in front of him, blocking his path. Met his eyes without flinching.

“Peace,” he said. “We do not have time for vengeance.”

Fox didn’t move, every muscle drawn tight as a bowstring. The mark on his paw flickered dimly, echoing the magic still roiling inside him. His snarl deepened.

“He’s not worth it,” the Overseer said.

A beat passed. Then another.

Fox’s snarl didn’t cease, but it wavered. His golden eyes stayed fixed on Alexander’s prone body, and slowly, inch by inch, his head dropped in barely controlled restraint.

His breaths huffed fast through his nose, sharp and furious.

And then Dana stepped forward.

She knelt beside him and laid a hand on his shoulder—human or fox, it didn’t matter. Her palm was warm, grounding. Her voice was even warmer.

“I need you,” she whispered.

That was what steadied him.

Fox turned his gaze toward her, and though fire still smoldered in his eyes, it no longer threatened to consume him. He held her gaze. Let it anchor him.

Then he dipped his head, just once, and backed away from the man on the floor.

The Overseer gave a single approving nod before crouching beside Alexander, his fingers reaching to pry open one eyelid.

“Dana,” he said without looking up, “what color are this man’s eyes?”

She hesitated, her voice uncertain. “Brown… I think?”

Fox padded forward, his body low and tense. He peered down, golden eyes narrowing. The exposed eye was green. But not naturally. There was a strange cast to it, a pale, waxy sheen like moss growing beneath glass. Not his green. Not human.

He sniffed, nostrils flaring. The scent rising off the man wasn’t right—sweet and metallic, threaded through with something oily and dark. It didn’t belong to any one person. It felt… conjured.

The Overseer rose slowly, the joints in his knees cracking softly as he straightened. His expression had gone hollow, grim.

“This man is enchanted,” he said. “A puppet on a string.”

Silas swore under his breath. Maren gripped the edge of the counter, her knuckles white.

“He’s been sent to find us,” the Overseer continued, his voice low and heavy. He looked toward the shuttered window, where pale dawn was just beginning to press through the curtains.

“The Dark Mage knows we’re here.”

[slippinmickeys]

Familiar (44/?)

His lips were warm. Known. Like memory, like magic—something she had carried in her bones but hadn’t allowed herself to name. The kiss was gentle at first, the kind that held its breath, testing the shape of things now that they had changed. But when his hand rose to her cheek and she felt the tremble in his fingertips, she melted into him.

The world stilled.

There was no village outside these walls. No fear. No vipers or crows, no salves or sigils or lingering pain. Just the breath between them, the singing in her ears, the certainty of his hands. The bond that shimmered beneath their skin pulsed again, and this time she felt it—magic humming low and sure between them, not insistent, not demanding. Just there. Steady. Real.

He was real.

She had never really done this before though some village boys had tried—Alexander after a fair day, the sourness of cider on his breath leaning in to catch her by surprise. But where before she’d felt revulsion, here she only felt pull. The skim of his lips over hers an inevitability set into motion when the earth was forged.

And then the warm, slow slide of his tongue begging entrance into her mouth—tentative, reverent. Dana parted her lips, breath catching as the kiss deepened. There was no hesitation now. No nerves, no fear. Just the heat of him, the way he fit against her, the way she opened under his touch.

She let go of his hand to fist the fabric of his shirt, anchoring herself as her knees softened, threatening to give out beneath her. Every inch of her felt alive—her skin buzzing where he touched her, her heart thudding hard against the cage of her ribs. She had imagined this, in flickers and stolen dreams, but the reality of it eclipsed all imagining. He wasn’t a fantasy. He wasn’t a hope.

He was here. Flesh and breath and want.

And he wanted her.

Fox’s hand curled around her waist, pulling her flush against him, his mouth trailing from her lips to the line of her jaw, then lower, to the tender place beneath her ear. She gasped, her whole body arcing forward into his.

The mark on her wrist glowed brighter, heat building at the point where their bond shimmered just beneath the skin. His thumb brushed it, and the sensation lanced through her like lightning—sharp, clean, holy. She made a soft sound, one she didn’t know she could make, and he answered it with a low groan against her throat.

“Dana,” he whispered, as if her name was both prayer and plea.

She pulled back just far enough to look at him, her face flushed, lips swollen, breath ragged. His eyes were wild—bright and dark all at once, as if every part of him was caught between restraint and hunger. 

He looked as though he wanted to say something, do something, but was holding himself back. 

“I’m not afraid of you,” she said softly.

“I’m afraid of me,” Fox admitted. His voice was hoarse, shaking with things he hadn’t yet said.

She reached up to run her fingers through the thick, dark weft of his hair, wanting to pull him down to her again, when he pressed his hand to hers, stilling her movement.

“You need rest,” he rasped. “I shouldn’t have, I’m sorry.”

“I’m not,” Dana answered, but pulled back from him just enough. He leaned forward to rest his forehead against hers and their eyes slipped closed. 

The solid heat of him in front of her, the quiet weight of his presence. She couldn’t help thinking again: real.

“I thought I’d lost you,” she whispered. Her voice was raw around the edges, low and aching.

“I thought the same,” Fox murmured. “Every second apart from you…” He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to.

Everything had changed since that night in Highmere—since they’d leapt the waterfall, side by side, into the unknown. For so long, Dana had believed herself alone in the world. An orphan. Unclaimed. It hadn’t occurred to her that family could be something you found, not something you were born into. That it could be built in moments of shared danger, quiet loyalty, and the kind of love that didn’t need to be spoken to be felt.

That truth had crept up on her, slow and quiet, until it crashed down like a wave the first time she found herself without him. The silence was too loud. The emptiness, too sharp. She missed him with an ache so fierce it left her breathless—not just his presence, but the way he looked at her, listened to her, believed in her.

That was when it struck her—not with drama, but with clarity. She hadn’t just come to rely on him. Her heart had shifted, quietly and irrevocably, and he’d become something else entirely.

Dana opened her eyes, and the storm she’d held at bay since the constable’s hands first closed around her arms threatened to rise again—terror, fury, shame—all of it… couldn’t touch her here. Not with him like this. Not with the warmth of his arms wrapped around her, the mark glowing faintly between them.

She reached up and brushed her fingers along his jaw, his cheek, just to feel the solidness of him. To confirm again that he was not some phantom summoned by longing. “You’re really here,” she said.

“I’ll never be far again,” he promised.

She believed him. She wanted to. And yet…

Dana stepped back, just slightly, enough to look him over. He looked tired. More than tired. There were dark hollows beneath his eyes and a tightness in his shoulders that she hadn’t often seen.

She glanced up at the firefly light of the magical weave above the door, at the shape of the magic. Familiar.

“You cast this spell,” she said. “The one protecting this place.” It wasn’t a question. She could feel it in the room, the way the air seemed gentler now, more like him, the wards holding strong at the corners. Tender. Strong. Fox. 

He nodded.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” she said. 

“I didn’t either.” His eyes were sea-storm green in the candle light, and his lips were glistening from their kiss. 

“I have so many questions,” she said, her voice soft and quiet.

“So do I,” he whispered.

They stood like that for a beat longer, the moment quiet and close. But her body had begun to feel the weight of all she’d been through, the magical drain, the haze of smoke still lingering in her senses. She swayed slightly, and Fox reached for her.

“Bedroll,” he said. “Now.”

Dana laughed softly, not protesting as he led her toward it, his hand steady at her elbow, her eyes casting up once again at the wards over the doors. As she sat, as the feeling that she couldn’t be touched while in the embrace of his arms faded, and reality crashed down. She looked up at him.

“The Dark Mage,” she said. “The man in the jail. Fox, how are we going to—”

He knelt down next to her and put a finger gently over her lips, silencing her.

“You need to rest.”

“But—”

“Dana.” The way he said her name gentled the storm inside her. It was firm, but full of warmth—reverent, almost. Like a rope tied to a boat, pulling it back from the current.

“We’ll face it,” he said. “But not right now.”

She searched his eyes, saw the same fear, the same fire, the same unshakable devotion she felt echoing in her own chest. Slowly, she nodded.

“Stay with me?” 

His answer was a quiet nod as he lowered himself beside the head of the bedroll, legs stretched out, shoulders resting against the wall. Dana lay down with a soft sigh, the narrow bedding pressing gently against her spine as she turned and rested her head on his thigh. Exhaustion bloomed in her bones, heavy and insistent, and she let it come, letting the tension drain from her at last.

His arm curled around her, slow and sure, his hand—big enough to span almost the whole of it—resting across her waist. It was warm and steady and his fingers moved in idle, soothing patterns over the bodice of her dress.

“You’ve ripped your skirt,” Fox murmured, voice low and rough against the quiet.

She glanced down. The tear from the loose nail in the clerk’s office had split the fabric clean through, leaving a long strip of her skirt hanging loose. From the top of her boot to the middle of her thigh, pale skin was bared to the firelight.

She heard Fox swallow thickly.

When she looked up, his eyes had gone dark with something he didn’t try to hide.

“Better my skirt than my skin,” she murmured, though her voice wavered just slightly.

“Yes,” he said, gaze lifting to meet hers. “A stroke of luck.”

A beat passed, charged and wordless. The fire crackled in the hearth. Somewhere in the shop beyond, a quiet murmur of voices. But here, in the stillness between them, something more dangerous than silence had taken root.

She didn’t move, didn’t dare. But she felt it again—that low thrum from her sacrum, the echo of their bond and everything beneath it. Not just magic. Not just fate.

Want.

Fox’s hand, still resting along her side, tightened, just slightly, his fingers curling against her ribs like he meant to anchor himself there. He looked like he wanted to say something, but didn’t trust what might come out.

Dana’s breath shivered out.

“I should probably… fix it,” she said, tugging gently at the torn fabric, but her voice lacked any real conviction.

Fox raised an eyebrow, and something wry ghosted across his face. “You’ll sew that up right now, will you?”

She smiled—small, crooked, tired. “Maybe tomorrow.”

“Maybe,” he agreed, his gaze lingering just a second too long before he turned his eyes to the fire.

She let herself watch him in return—his tousled hair, the faint smudge of exhaustion under his eyes, the way his chest rose and fell with the effort of staying composed.

She didn’t feel shy anymore.

Not with him.

She reached out with her hand and laced her fingers with his other hand, and this time when her eyes drifted shut, it wasn’t just sleep that drew her there.

It was safety.

It was him.

***

Maren had drawn the curtains across the front of the shop and the space felt cloistered and dim. There had been commotion on the lane outside when they first trundled out of the workroom—shouts from a few men and the sound of several horses trotting quickly by. The Overseer had pulled a corner of the curtain aside to look: the constable and several of his men. But things had died down and the street outside was quiet. 

Maren and Silas had settled onto stools behind the service countertop and the latter was dozing where he sat, head dropped down, soft snuffly snores emanating from him. The familiars were dozing as well, the raven treating the rafters at the top of the apothecary as a rookery, the moth beside her, the viper curled on the table.

The Overseer would not rest. Not tonight. Not until they were all safely away from the village and the Dark Mage, and whatever that creature was that had fed on Dana. The raven’s description of what it had done, and the clear physical toll it had taken on her was a terrifying prospect. One he had not foreseen. One his witch had not foreseen. And that was rare. 

He had every confidence in the magic of the protection spell—he had felt its power when he had helped Fox to cast it—but they could not tarry. The sooner they were away from this place, the better. He hoped Dana was resting well. 

He chanced another peek outside and then turned back to the room, not sure where to place his restlessness. Maren, her eyes sleepy, but her mouth curving up in a friendly smile, caught his own. 

“Tell me about your witch,” she said curiously. “She must have been formidable to do what she did. To pass her power on to you. When my mother died, I had hoped she could do the same for me, but the magic is not written in my blood.”

The Overseer leaned on his staff, as though the memory carried weight.

“She was of the Dark,” he said, and Maren nodded at him, her brow creasing slightly, but offering no judgement. “But as loving and kind as she was powerful. I served her for many years.”

“As her familiar?” Maren asked, a quizzical look on her face. 

The Overseer nodded. 

“In what shape?” The woman wanted to know. “Surely not this one.”

He looked down at his human hands, remembering the feel of soft moss beneath his feet as he ran fleetly through the forest to do his witch’s bidding. 

“A fox,” he said, looking up at Maren with a rueful expression. 

Maren’s brows rose and she nodded toward the back room. “Is he—”

“That boy is no more a fox than I am truly a man,” the Overseer interjected. “Bewitched is he,” he went on, “in a cruel and calculated spell. One my witch tried to stop.”

He had never spoken this out loud and the words felt stiff on his tongue. 

Maren looked at him with open curiosity, clearly hoping he would elaborate, but this was a story that he owed to Fox first, and Fox wasn’t ready to hear it. Not yet. 

“I’m sorry you’ve lost her,” Maren said after a long silence. “Your witch. My mother had a familiar when I was very young. A seal, he was. Though he grew jealous of the attention she paid me.”

The Overseer nodded in recognition. “The relationship between a witch and her familiar is complex,” he said, an understatement. 

Maren nodded knowingly, and, he turned from her to look at the curtain which separated the back room from the front of the shop. It had been quiet for some time, and the Overseer hoped Dana was getting the rest she would need to make their escape when the morning came. 

Which wouldn’t be long now. The darkness outside was shifting, the blackness turning purple. Dawn was on its way. 

He almost felt bad for the young lovers. It would be one of their harder mornings, when Fox turned. 

“Once we’re gone,” the Overseer said, turning back to the apothecary’s wife. “Will you be safe here? The spell Fox cast will turn eyes of all kinds away from this place while we are here and it holds. But once we’re gone, people will remember the young woman that escaped and that you helped and spoke for her.”

Maren drew herself up to her full height. “We’ll not be run out of our own village,” she said. “The magic Silas has may be small, and unable to casts spells such as this one, but he has helped far more people than just your young witch. They’ll remember that.”

The Overseer hoped she was right. Silas, roused by the sound of his name, blinked sleepily up at his wife, and looked around the shop. 

“All is well?” he asked. 

“So far,” the Overseer said. 

And as the words left his lips there was a sharp knock on the apothecary’s door. 

[slippinmickeys]

Familiar (43/?)

Fox felt the stirring in his blood, though it felt capped by something, held back. A lid thrown over a pot. Still. It was there. The truth of the Overseer’s words was like a fault line under his feet—quiet now but ready to crack open. 

His thoughts were a swirling mass of wonder, disbelief, denial, fear, but he pushed all of that down. He needed to be strong for Dana. He needed to have a clear head. Protect, came that undeniable instinct in his chest. He was determined to listen to it. 

He had been crouching next to the work table upon which Dana lay, but now, he stood, the Overseer’s hand still on his shoulder. 

“This spell,” Fox asked. “What is it for? What are we protecting ourselves from? That thing in the tower? The thing that did this to Dana?” He looked down at her and ran his fingers lightly through the hair at her brow. 

“That,” the Overseer answered, his voice tight. “And more.”

“Come. Now,” he went on, squeezing Fox’s shoulder. 

Fox rose, reluctantly stepping away from Dana’s side. 

“What’s ‘more?’” he asked as he walked to the old grimoire. 

Up in the rafters, the raven flapped her wings. 

“I’ll tell you,” the Overseer said. “After.”

A snarl curled his lip, but then the crystal atop the Overseer’s staff throbbed—green light flashing like a racing heartbeat. The room shifted. Something heavy pressed on the air.

Fox cursed, giving Dana one last look before he turned to the book. The old grimoire lay open on the altar, its pages rippling slightly though there was no wind. Strange symbols moved faintly beneath the words, as if inked in something half-alive.

He reached toward it—and the page pulsed beneath his fingertips.

Not in welcome. Not in warning.

Recognition. Magic recognizing magic. 

A tremor ran through him, the hairs on his arms rising as his pulse quickened.

Fox stared at the open grimoire. The ink shimmered faintly, like the spell was waiting to be cast, and something inside him—long buried—rose to meet it.

His eyes tracked the lines. The words were plain, but they resonated with familiarity and weight,  as if each one struck a chord that had always been waiting to sound.

He read them aloud.

“Let ward be drawn where harm might fall. Let bone and breath and will make wall. By root and ash, let power bend— Hold fast. Protect. Defend.”

As he spoke, the room shifted. Not visibly, but he could feel it in his bones—the way the spell settled into him, the way it answered.

One hand stayed braced on the page. The other lifted, palm forward, fingers trembling slightly. Threads of light began to rise from the grimoire, curling upward like seafoam drawn into wind.

Behind him, he could hear Maren and Silas at work—glass clinking, herbs ground to dust. Dana’s breath, soft and fragile. But he couldn’t look. The spell was wending its way inside him now, threading itself through his limbs, cold and sharp and clear. His skin prickled.

The crystal in the Overseer’s staff pulsed again, brighter this time—urgent. The air thickened. The walls around them seemed to ripple, and a verging, penultimate tension drew tight across the room, like a bowstring pulled to the chin. 

Fox gritted his teeth and spoke the final line again, louder this time.

“Hold fast. Protect. Defend!”

The magic surged, fast and forceful, like floodwaters battering a dam. But something inside him held it back. Whatever had blocked his power—memory or something else—rose again now, trying to seal him off, to shut the door just as it opened.

The spell faltered.

He clenched his jaw. No. If that thing was coming after Dana, he wouldn’t let it finish her off. 

He pushed—but the barrier clamped down harder, and pain flared behind his ribs. He gasped, wincing, as fear surged up to meet it. If he failed, it wouldn’t just cost him. It could cost Dana her life.

Then—a spark. Not in the air. In his wrist. The bond-mark flared with warmth. The magic shifted, flowing freely now. Whatever was blocking it had slackened. He took a deep breath, about to repeat the incantation, but there was a cry of alarm from behind him. 

Dana groaned, a harrowing, desperate sound. The urge to turn around was overwhelming, but he didn’t dare, not when the magic was finally coursing through him, unbound.

“Stop!” Silas called out. 

“Don’t stop!” instructed the Overseer, staring at the crystal atop his staff. 

Fox’s instincts screamed to stop—but then the Overseer’s hand rose, steadying his.

A rush of magic flowed through him, but not his own. He could feel it purling off of the Overseer in a steady flow. The texture of it was different, old and gentle and achingly familiar.

Before he could contemplate the feeling, the warmth in his bond-brand cooled and the sigils in front of him flared, rising like a constellation from the page. The floor beneath his boots hummed—low, then louder, until the stone itself seemed to sing. A breath of wind moved through the room, lifting the edges of cloth and parchment. At the doors, the wood groaned. Then—

BOOM.

A shockwave rippled outward.

Wards bloomed across the windows and doorframes—pale green and flickering, like fireflies suspended midair. Where the light gathered, it looked woven, like threads of energy threaded into a tight lattice. The magic formed a barrier—not solid, but living—drawn from spellwork older than words, meant to keep danger out. 

The pressure in the room lifted.

Fox gasped, reeling back from the book. The Overseer’s hand dropped from where it had been touching his own.

“It’s done,” the Overseer panted. He sounded relieved, though he seemed to wilt slightly under his hat.

Fox wheeled around, his eyes landing on Dana, his heart in his throat. 

“Is she—?” 

“She’s all right.” Silas nodded at him, a little breathless. “I think… I think you were drawing magic from her,” he said. “Magic she doesn’t have to give.” 

Fox felt his stomach lurch in horror. 

“It stopped,” the apothecary assured him. “When he…”

Fox then turned on the Overseer. 

“What was that?” he asked. “What did you do? I thought you said you weren’t a mage!”

“I am not,” the Overseer said simply, pulling off his hat to wipe sweat off of his bald pate. 

“Then what did I feel coming off of you?” Fox demanded. 

“Magic given to me by my own witch. Passed to me when she died.” 

“And you can wield her power?”

The Overseer shook his head sadly. “Only to help other familiars. You are both mage and familiar. A unique combination.”

Fox had other pressing questions, but as he spoke, the raven swooped down from the rafters to land next to the Overseer, her feathers ruffling in agitation. The viper slithered over as well, darting her tongue out to taste at the air near his hand, as if checking for injury or imbalance. The moth, still riding on his shoulder, flitted her wings and flew over to land on Fox’s.

“It is finite, this magic she imparted to him, ” Moth explained. “ He cannot draw on the magic from the land like living mages and witches. What he has lives in him. When he gives it away to help our kind, his stores grow lighter. What he gave you was a gift that cannot be restored. Or repaid.”

Fox swallowed thickly. Opened his mouth to say something—to apologize maybe or give his thanks, but at that moment, Dana stirred. 

A breath caught in her throat. Her eyes fluttered. Her lips parted as though surfacing from deep water.

“Fox?” she rasped.

He was beside her in an instant, the moth flitting back to the Overseer.

“I’m here,” he whispered, leaning down and pressing his forehead to hers. “You made it.”

She blinked up at him, dazed. “What happened?”

In his mind’s eye, he saw her stumble out of the old scullery door behind the town’s prison, weak as a newborn fawn—pale and frightened. The sight had cleaved him in two. 

“What do you remember?” 

She swallowed with difficulty, and tried to sit up. Fox and Maren rushed to help her. 

“Alexander,” she said, bringing a hand to her head as if it was in pain. “He was here, in this village. There was a stone, like the one I dropped behind the waterfall.” Fox reached up and tugged on the cord around his neck, pulling it off and holding it up. 

“Yes,” she winced. “But it didn’t have the etching on it. There was a flash. A bright flash. Nessa was there. Saw it. And accused me of being a witch. Publicly.” At this she looked to Silas and Maren, who looked alternately aghast and furious. “The constable took me to the jail and…” For a moment, it looked as though she might vomit, but she shook her head slightly and swallowed. “There was a man there. He…” 

She looked a little lost and the raven hopped forward, flapped once until she was sitting on the work table next to her. 

“Fed on your power, he did,” said the raven. 

Silas’s eyes widened. “What could do such a thing?”

No one in the room had an answer, though everyone’s eyes drifted to the Overseer, who, looking a little pale, replaced his hat upon his head. 

“Something new,” he said with finality. 

Fox’s voice was quiet. Shameful. “I just drew from her, too.”

“That,” said the Overseer, “was the spell. Your mark. The bond.”

“I stole her power?” Fox asked. 

“No,” the Overseer said. “Borrowed. You weren’t feeding on her. Her power was supplementing yours. Your powers… They are tangled, now.”

Dana’s brow furrowed. “How do you know?” she asked. “How do you know so much about my spell?” 

“Because,” the Overseer said. “Before the spell was yours, it was hers. My witch. She created it.”

Dana blinked several times. The room was quiet for a moment. 

“You said there was something else after us?” said Fox. 

“Someone,” the Overseer clarified. 

Fox watched the light fade from Dana’s expression, her face turning ashen.

“The flash you saw from the stone held by your Alexander,” the Overseer said. 

“He’s not my Alexander,” Dana hissed, weak though she was. Silas, coming over from a nearby table, pressed a freshly made tonic into her hand and urged her to drink. 

The Overseer nodded to her deferentially. 

“I believe he held a calling stone,” the man went on. 

“Like this?” Fox asked, lifting the stone on the thong once more. 

“Not quite,” the Overseer said. “The one you carry has been altered. By me.”

Fox tilted his head, vulpine-like. 

“The Dark Mage has left them all over the land beyond the veil. I have found and altered as many as I can.”

“The Dark Mage?” Fox asked. 

“There are two kinds of magic in this world. Dark. And Light.”

Fox looked at Dana. She was pure Light. He’d known since the moment the moth had mentioned the two schools of magic to him as he limped his way back to his witch. There was something about her magic—something steady, radiant and whole. He didn’t have a name for it, but he’d felt it. When her spell reached him in the woods. When the bond took hold. Even now, faintly, in the air between them. It was like standing in sunlight after too long in shadow. 

“And this mage,” Dana asked. “He’s of the Dark? And he’s coming here?”

The Overseer nodded gravely. 

“What does he want with me?” she asked. 

“Your end,” said the Overseer. 

Fox’s hands curled into tight fists, but Maren put up a gentling hand, calling everyone’s attention to her. 

“Silas needs to perform a small healing spell,” she said. “And then Dana needs rest. You’ve bought her some time,” Maren said, nodding toward the wards that shimmered over the doorways. “Let her use it to regain her strength.”

There seemed to be a collective agreement, all of the beings in the room falling silent. Fox lifted Dana’s hand to his lips, pressing a long kiss there, unable to help himself after almost losing her. 

Where their skin met, there was a feeling of the barest rush of sparks. Their eyes connected and tension of a different sort filled the air. It seemed to tighten, the reality of their reunion blazing with promise—with the ache of nearness. His breath caught, and hers shivered out, shallow and slow. The world fell away, all of it, until there was only the place where their skin touched. 

Maren cleared her throat. “We’ll give you two some time,” she said. “But first, Silas needs to heal her.” She turned to the rest of their odd collective: “Let us give him some space to work,” she said, spreading her arms wide and ushering everyone but Fox and the apothecary into the outer room of the shop, the viper threading her way loosely up the Overseer’s wrist, the raven hopping up to swoop over their heads and through the flap that separated the workshop from the front room. 

Silas moved to the table above Dana’s head and closed his eyes, raising his hands as if in prayer. He recited a short incantation and Fox could feel the magic he’d summoned flow into the room and surround Dana. 

The apothecary nodded toward the tonic he’d pressed into her free hand. “Finish it,” he said. “And then,” he went on, holding a packet of herbs out to her. “I want you to breathe in the smoke of this. You’ll set the mixture aflame, extinguish it and then waft the smoke over you. Now that we know more about what happened to you, I can better target your treatment. The smoke will help restore your magic.”

Fox reluctantly let go of her hand so that she could reach out and take the packet from Silas. 

The older man smiled at her gently. “Let us make you more comfortable, shall we?” he said, and moved to a low cupboard, pulling out a narrow bedroll, which he unrolled along the wall near the back door, where the wards still glowed upon the wood. 

“When you’re finished,” he said, nodding toward the bedding. “Rest.” 

He then nodded at Fox and disappeared through the curtain and into the shop. 

Dana caught his eye and they exchanged a look–a flicker of knowing, of want. A confirmation of everything unspoken. 

He wanted nothing more in that moment than to sweep Dana into his arms, but restoring her health was paramount. 

When she moved to gingerly swing her legs over the side of the worktable, Fox took the packet from her hands and looped his arm around her. 

“Let me help you,” he said, and she gave him a smile, weak, but grateful. Her color had improved since Silas spoke his spell over her, and Fox walked with her over to the altar, his hand on her elbow. 

As she approached the raised table, she gave a small sound of startled appreciation, running her hand along the sea witch’s grimoire. The words on the page seemed to rise up to meet her touch and then sink back to the page like the very swell of the sea. 

“This,” she said. “Is beautiful.” 

“It is,” Fox agreed, and then handed her the packet of herbs Silas had given them. 

Dana closed the book and pushed it aside, pulling a small wooden bowl toward herself. It was a pretty thing, carved with ivy and sunbursts and hardened with tallow. 

She shook out the herb mixture that the apothecary had given her and grabbed a stubby candle, blowing gently on the blackened wick until it caught flame. 

Wonder bloomed inside him. Despite being drained by the creature in the jail, in the short amount of time they’d been separated, Dana had grown into her magic by leaps and bounds. Even her movements, which had been clumsy and self-conscious before, now flowed with a confident precision conveying a new and evolving strength. He was struck dumb. 

He took a small step back, giving her room to work, and watched in quiet awe as she lowered the flame to the bowl, set the herbs to smolder, and then gently extinguished the flame. The smoke that rose up smelled of acrid pine and winter, and she fanned the smoke gently toward herself and let it waft over her shoulders to sink unnaturally to the ground behind her. 

When the smoke began to dissipate, Dana stood taller, inhaled deeply and then turned to him. 

There was a brightness to her now, a pale glow that hadn’t been there before that seemed to shimmer around her like an aura. And her eyes, blue and liquid as a shallow sea, held a shine he had never before seen. 

The urge to kneel before her in awe was almost overwhelming. 

“You’re coming into your own,” he whispered, for the first time wondering if he’d be left behind. 

She offered him a faint smile and then reached out and took his hand, turning them so that the bonded mark on their wrists was pointing up. Where their skin touched, a tingling warmth began to stir, and their marks began to glow under their skin. 

“Not without you,” she whispered back, as if she heard his thoughts, stepping up to him, their hands still linked. When she looked up at him, there was a brief moment of shyness that passed between them, and then…

And then.

She lifted herself up onto her toes and pressed her lips into his.

[slippinmickeys]

Familiar (42/?)

Fox barely felt the cold stone beneath his knees, the cobbles slick with mist. She was in his arms—real, breathing. Finally. After everything. The distance. The fear. The longing he had felt in the marrow of his bones. The bond between them pulsed, alive and electric—but there was something more, something deeper than magic. A pull from the very core of him, raw and unnameable. Her head sagged against his shoulder, breath thin and shaky. Her skin was far too pale. Her body, limp.

“Dana? Dana!” His voice cracked open, hoarse with fear.

She didn’t stir. Panic surged—hot and blinding—but he forced it down. He cursed, clutching her even tighter to him. 

Her body was warm in his arms, but far too still. Her head had dropped against his shoulder, breath still shallow, skin chilled. He pressed his cheek to her hair and let out a low, quavering breath.

“You found me,” he whispered. “Now don’t you dare leave.”

He cradled her close, instinct overriding everything else. Her wrist brushed his chest—and he saw it.

The mark.

The soft, curling shape of the bonded brand, glowing faintly even through the grime on her skin.

His breath caught. A thousand questions bottlenecked in his throat, but none of them mattered now. She’d found him. She’d come back.

He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You’re safe, now,” he whispered into her skin, trying to convince them both. “I swear it.”

A sharp beat of wings broke the silence. The raven landed lightly on the edge of a rain barrel just feet away, feathers sleek with mist and fury radiating off her in waves.

“She made it,” the Raven said. “A lucky thing, with whatever that creature is still in the tower.”

Fox’s eyes snapped to hers. “It did this to her?”

The raven gave a grim nod. “It could do it to any of us, I think.”

Fox looked sharply toward the building. A window on the upper level still glowed faintly with the dying light. Cold crept down his spine like melting snow.

The wind shifted.

From the open doorway behind them, he felt it—a wrongness in the air. The trace of something that made his skin crawl, made his instincts bristle like a wild animal’s.

And Dana had been in there alone.

His hands curled into fists around her. The fury that rose was different than anything he remembered feeling before. This was deeper. Protective. Vicious.

Whoever had touched her—hurt her—he would end them.

But not now. Not yet. She needed help first.

Footsteps approached. 

He turned sharply toward the alley’s mouth, relaxing only when the silhouette resolved into the Overseer, robes sweeping through the mist, the moth resting on his shoulder.

“She’s alive,” Fox said, his voice hoarse.

The Overseer knelt beside them, eyes scanning Dana with quiet intensity. “And you,” he said, tone gentler now, “have returned.”

Fox didn’t answer. He looked down at her face, still slack with exhaustion. His thumb brushed the line of her jaw.

The Overseer turned, scanning the shadows, his hand gripping his staff. Above them, there were dull shouts from inside the tower, and the sharp click of hoofbeats coming up the lane on the tower’s other side. The crystal at the top of the Overseer’s staff glowed faintly green, its light beginning to slowly pulse. 

“Come,” he said. “Quickly. There is more danger here than you know.”

Fox nodded tightly. He rose with Dana in his arms, cradling her as if she were made of glass. She didn’t stir.

“She needs help,” he said, falling in beside the Overseer who was walking quickly through the alley, looking furtively around them, his expression hard. 

“Yes,” the man said grimly. 

They moved swiftly down a narrow back lane, long strides devouring the distance. At a sharp left turn, the Overseer reached the apothecary’s back door and shoved it open without pause, Fox close on his heels.

Silas and his wife jumped, looking at Fox with startled expressions. When their eyes fell to Dana, the apothecary let out a low, harsh curse. 

“Who are you?” he asked sharply. “What have you done to her?”

“This is Fox, her familiar,” the Overseer explained. “Her injuries were not his doing.”

Silas blinked. Once. Twice. “Her… familiar?”

“Please,” Fox said hoarsely, barely able to get the word out. “Help her.”

That snapped them both into motion.

“Gods,” Silas muttered. “Here. Lay her here.” He swept the contents of a long worktable onto the floor with one quick motion, jars and vials clattering and rolling as he cleared the space.

Fox lowered Dana gently to the tabletop, carefully laying her head, which lolled unsteadily.

Behind them, the raven swooped into the room and perched on a beam overhead. The Overseer moved to the door and closed it firmly, throwing the latch. He turned to the apothecary, who had stepped up to the table upon which Dana lay and was gently peeling up her eyelids, examining her pupils. Fox could see they were blown black, her sclera shot through with red. 

“What protective charms have you?” the Overseer said urgently, turning from the door. “What spells? Any that could shield this building from magical eyes?”

Silas’s mouth dropped open a little and he looked helplessly toward his wife, who was busily trying to tidy up the items that had crashed to the floor. 

“I am but a hedge mage, sir,” the apothecary said. “I make healing draughts and can perform small magicks. I think I can help Dana. But I have nothing in my repertoire so powerful as what you’re asking for.”

The Overseer turned to the altar upon which the apothecary’s spell book sat, Dana’s nestled up beside it. He began riffling through them both. 

“You may not be able to cast a charm like that, but do you have one? A spell passed down?”

“I have nothing, sir,” Silas said, turning his attention back to Dana, who looked paler than she had when they entered. Fox could see beads of sweat forming along her brow. “Maren, fetch me the Valerian tonic. Quickly.” 

But Maren merely stood where she was, several bottles clutched in her arms from where she had been cleaning up the mess on the floor, a scroll hanging limply from her hand. 

“Maren?” Silas said, his brow creasing. 

“My mother’s grimoire,” Maren said softly. 

“What?” asked her husband. 

Maren cleared her throat and spoke with more force. “My mother’s grimoire.”

The Overseer took a step towards her, and she looked up at him. 

“My mother was a sea witch,” she said. “I have her grimoire. There are powerful spells in it. Several protective ones.”

The Overseer looked at the crystal atop his staff which was pulsing more quickly now, the glow growing brighter. 

“Fetch it,” he said. “Now.” 

While Maren hurried to the other end of the room to get what the Overseer asked for, Fox looked down at Dana and gently wiped the sweat forming on her brow, tenderly tucking the curls of hair that had escaped her braid behind the seashell curve of her ear. Her skin was hot to the touch. 

The apothecary had gone to a shelf and was coming back with a small vial. 

“Lift up her head for me,” he said to Fox, “this should help cool her.”

Fox put his arm around the back of Dana’s neck and lifted it gently. “Can she swallow?” he asked Silas. 

The man put the vial to Dana’s lips and tipped it in. “Let us see,” he said softly.

Dana’s eyelids fluttered and her throat moved in a slow, instinctive swallow. 

“Good,” Silas said, giving Fox a tight smile as he lowered her head tenderly back onto the table. 

Everyone’s attention was pulled when Maren set her mother’s grimoire onto the altar with a loud thump. The book was thick and salt-warped, its cover the deep green of kelp after a storm. Damp-stained leather clung to its spine, and its edges were uneven like sea grass tugged by tides. A length of twine, knotted with shells and bits of coral, kept it bound shut. Even now, long dry, it carried the faint tang of brine.

The Overseer wasted no time, opening up the tome and flipping quickly through the pages. The black viper slithered her way out of his sleeve and curled up next to the book, her tongue darting out to taste the air. 

A moment later, her body rose up higher off the table and Fox heard her say, “There!”

The Overseer stopped flipping and laid the book open flat. 

“Can you cast it?” He turned to look at Maren. 

Maren shook her head sadly. “I did not inherit her power.”

The Overseer turned his attention to Silas. 

The apothecary looked grim. “I have never been able to cast a single spell from that book,” he said. His eyes narrowed. “Can’t you?” he asked. 

The Overseer’s already stern face frowned. “Despite appearances,” he said. “I am no mage.”

The man then turned in his direction, but Fox barely noticed. He had Dana’s hand in his own, the mark on her wrist catching the light—his mark, too. He ran his thumb over it, as if he could anchor her with touch alone. His world had narrowed to this: her skin, too pale; her breathing, too shallow. Nothing else mattered.

The Overseer moved forward and put his hand on Fox’s shoulder. 

Fox looked up at him. The older man paused and seemed to consider something. 

“It’s all right,” the moth said from the Overseer’s shoulder. “Go on.”

The Overseer sighed and then spoke. His voice was calm, but there was no mistaking the weight behind it. 

“You’ll have to do it,” he said, his eyes looking into Fox’s with an intensity that could not be ignored. 

Fox blinked several times, dread spreading out from his stomach, bubbling through the veins of his chest until it forced the croaky voice from his throat: “What?”

The older man gestured to the grimoire lying open on the altar. Its pages shimmered faintly in the low light, ink shifting as if stirred by an unseen current.

“The spell,” the Overseer said. “It requires a mage’s hand.”

Fox stared at him. “I’m not—” He stopped. Shook his head. “I’m no mage.”

Above them, the raven trilled a string of dry clicks from the rafters, like bones tumbling in a wooden bowl.

“You are,” said the Overseer gently, as if saying it any louder might break a tenuous détente. “You’ve only forgotten.”

Fox recoiled in shock and disbelief. Actually recoiled, like he’d been slapped. 

“Come,” the Overseer instructed, his hand sweeping toward the sea witch’s grimoire. “We have little time.”

Fox felt the ground tilt beneath him.

“No,” he said, more forcefully this time. “I’m bonded. I’m a familiar. I belong to—”

He broke off, the words collapsing on his tongue.

The Overseer leaned closer. His voice was steady. Unyielding.

“That is not all you are.”

Fox stared at him, the truth of his words pressing into the cracks of his memory, into the hollow places long since sealed shut.

The candles flickered. The ink in the sea grimoire rippled.

And somewhere deep in his chest, something old and forgotten stirred.