Page 33 of Little Witch

"Tell me the bakery's still standing," he said, a small, watery smile finding its way back onto his face. "Please tell me nobody's touched the cinnamon roll recipe."

"Untouched," I said, my own voice wobbling into something closer to a laugh. "I'd disown anyone who tried."

"Good girl." He squeezed my hand again, some of the color returning to his face.

We stayed there a few minutes longer, trading small pieces of the years apart — the festival, the town, nothing heavier than what any of us could carry right then. But it didn't last. Cian's jaw had stayed tight the whole time, like he'd been waiting for a gap to say what he actually needed to say, and eventually he took it.

"There's something you all need to understand," he said, voice dropping, all the warmth draining back out of it. "This place. It's not what we thought when we first found it."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

Cian's eyes darkened, jaw setting hard as he looked between me and Rowan. "I mean once you're in here, you don't get back out."

A cold chill dropped straight down my spine.

"We've been trying to leave since the day we arrived," he said, low and grim. "It's impossible. We're trapped down here. All of us. And now, so are you."

Chapter Eighteen

It had been hours now. Time felt wrong down here, stretched thin in a way that made it hard to track how long we'd actually been sitting in this room. Amber, Cian, Yakob, Rowan and I had gone over everything — the whispers, the shadows, the tree, every scrap of magic that had led us here. Then we'd talked about our lives, the town, everything that needed catching up. But the longer we sat with it, the heavier the actual situation got.

Cian and Yakob had been stuck here for years. Trapped in this strange place that felt like a living memory of home and wasn't. The Sanctum, they called it. It gave them what they needed — books, food, rooms that appeared when asked for. It just wouldn't let them leave.

A safe place. A perfect home.

Also, unmistakably, a prison.

"The moment we stepped through that door, it closed behind us," Yakob said, voice heavy. "We've tried everything to get it open again. Nothing's worked."

"It's not just the door," Cian added, shaking his head. "We've searched every inch of this place. The Sanctum doesn't behave like a normal building. It's like it's alive. Keeping us here on purpose."

I sat back, the weight of it settling into my chest. The room around us was lined floor to ceiling with books, leather-bound volumes on everything from spell theory to magical history, most of them clearly well-thumbed by two men with nothing but time to fill.

"We've tried every spell we could find in these," Cian said, fingers tracing the spine of a book on the table in front of him. "It's like the answer's always just out of reach. Like we're missing something important."

Amber sat beside me, her hand resting in mine, her eyes wide and thoughtful as she listened. I could feel the tension running through her, the weight of everything we'd learned today pressing down the same way it was pressing on the rest of us.

We'd just trapped ourselves in a place we might never get out of.

Rowan broke a long silence eventually. "I told you about the journal I found. I never asked how it actually got there. I swore I felt your magic in the house."

Cian's eyes lit with something almost proud. "That's because I was there. Sort of."

"How?"

"There's a spell — found it in one of these." A small, tired smile. "Let me project myself into the real world for a while. Invisible. I couldn't interact with much, but I could move small things. That's how the journal got to you. Figured if anyone could piece it together, it'd be you."

"How'd you manage magic like that from in here?" I asked.

"I did it," Yakob said. "A transportation spell, of a kind. If I'd had more training, or a coven behind me, I could've done more with it. Even that small amount cost me most of a week's strength."

Amber offered to get drinks a while later, her dad following her to the far side of the room, the two of them talking low, sharing something that felt too private for the rest of us to intrude on.

Cian watched them go, something quiet and thoughtful crossing his face. "It's good, seeing him have that with her. Some kind of family left, after everything."

"Yeah," I said. "Glad you had him too, down here. Glad you had someone looking out for you good enough that you call him Dad."

"I wouldn't have survived without him." Cian's voice went quieter. "Hate that he was kept from Amber and his wife this whole time. But I'm grateful every day I had him with me instead of going through this alone."