I can’t speak or move.
Mother is still visible through the slits between the planks, but I screw my eyes shut. I don’t want to watch. I know what comes next.
But I still see her through my closed lids, her red hair unfurling as her severed head rolls away, farther and farther, leaving an endless trail of blood on the white and seafoam tiles.
Heavy footsteps pound outside, strangely quiet after the thud of my mother’s head on the kitchen tiles.
Moments later, a man storms inside. He remains near the door, where the cracks between the boards are too narrow to peer through, but his looming shadow snuffs out what little hope I had left.
“Where is the little witch?” he barks at the women, who tighten their hold on their katanas.
“Sierra knew we were coming,” Pauline mutters. “The child is gone.”
“Well? What are you still doing in here? Search the woods. The girl can’t have gone far,” the man says.
His voice is powerful without being loud. I’ve heard it before, though it’s much, much angrier now.
“I don’t take orders from any man,” Pauline spits in response.
The man’s hand clamps around Lillivere’s elbow. “Remember what we agreed, Lilli. You got your traitor, but the child is mine.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll find her. Find the girl,” she orders her comrades.
Rivulets of cold, cold blood crawl like worms through the boards and under my skin, wiggling, writhing for a way in. I look down at my palms, stained scarlet. Frost-bitten.
Then the room shifts. The boarded kitchen falls silent, drenched in moonlight. A man stands where my mother had been. His face is hidden in shadow, but wings—vast and white as snow—unfurl behind him.
“Come to me, little Maxine. Don’t be afraid.”
I don’t know if he’s a guardian angel or if he’s come to take me to the heavens, too.
I wake up drenched in sweat, my heart pounding at my temples.
Nightmares were a constant part of my childhood, but it’s been years since I’ve relived my mother’s murder in such vivid detail. Memories I buried long ago are only now clawing their way back to the surface.
Gasping for breath, I hug my knees, waiting for the undertow of the dream to fade. Dreams aren’t just idle wanderings of the mind. Visiting the Dreaming while we sleep nourishes the well of magic in the Shadowlands. For an exiled witch like me, it’s the closest I ever come to going home—to Faerie, to the motherland where witches are hunted. Dreaming is like brushing against the life I might have lived, had the Red Priestesses not risen to power and scorched the heart of the Red Forest.
Exile didn’t just strip us of our homes. Witches can’t come into their full power away from our lands, not really. Our magic is rooted, bound to soil and stone as much as blood, and once we were driven out, that connection thins to a fragile thread. As long as we’re forced to survive on barren soil, we remain diminished, unable to reach the depths of our power.
Lady is curled against me, her soft purring steadying my heartbeat.
I scratch her sweet spot and whisper, “Thank you for last night, luv. You saved my life.”
She yawns and presses into my hand as I pull her into my lap, the warmth of her fur anchoring me back to this world.The happy chatter of birds and the blaring sunshine feel wrong drifting in through the curtains drawn wide on either side of the window. The last leaves of the rowan tree cradling the Victorian house tremble in the morning wind, ready to break from their stems at any moment.
The forest I painted as a teenager still spreads across the walls of my old bedroom—towering trees with mystical canopies that reach for a painted night sky, bathed in imaginary moonlight. It was never just decoration, but a well-thought-out haven I built for myself, a refuge from the reality outside these four walls, away from a world where my mother had been murdered. Every brushstroke was a wish for safety, a spell against grief.
It used to help lull me to sleep, but it never quite warded the nightmares away.
Whenever I visit as an adult, I can’t help but remember simpler days, when all I needed to escape the horrors of my past was the crinkle of paper and the soft glide of a book cover.
I rush down the staircase, careful not to step on the second-to-last creaky step. The front bay window frames the iron gates, but there’s no trace of mist or monsters. Nothing beyond the double French doors that open to the garden, either.
The wound in my leg burns, the deeper gash left by the creature's claws in my calf and hamstring bleeding through the gauze. I'm going to have to fix that, and soon.
My phone weighs heavy in my pocket. It’s still early, but I’ll have to call in my absence from work. I’m supposed to be in surgery all week, and my throat burns at the thought of letting my patients and mentors down. First my fiancé, now my career. I’m messing everything up.
The few friends I have—and my fiancé—are all unaware of Faerie, witches, and monsters. They’re oblivious to anything that doesn’t fit in their tidy mortal world. The coven only meets whenabsolutely necessary, keeping barriers between us on purpose in case someone falls to the enemy, which means no real socializing. It kept me pretty isolated growing up, but I’ve finally found a place where hard work made up for my quirks, and I’ve poured my heart into my career. To heal people and fix them as much as they can be fixed.
