Page 62 of Impawssible Magic

“Were you mated?”

“I marked her. We lived as mates for three years.” I stare at the ceiling. The memories are distant now—still painful, but softer around the edges. “But she wasn’t... she wasn’t my true mate. Not the way shifters mean it. We loved each other, built a life, but the pull—it wasn’t like this.” My hand tightens on her shoulder. “What I feel for you is different. Stronger.”

Leire is silent for a moment. Processing.

“So you can mark someone, live with them as mates, but they’re not necessarily your fated mate?”

“Some shifters never find their true mate. They choose someone they love, mark them, build a life. It’s real love—it counts. It matters.” I close my eyes. “Dorothea and I were happy. But when she died... the grief was devastating, but I survived it. Broken, but whole. If you—” I stop. Can’t say it.

“If I died?”

“I wouldn’t survive it.” The admission costs everything. “You’re it, Leire.”

She props herself up to look at me. Her eyes are wet but steady.

“She sounds like someone worth loving.”

“She was.”

“And you’ve been punishing yourself ever since. Refusing to let anyone else in.”

I don’t have an answer for that. It’s not quite right—not punishment, exactly. More like protection. If I never loved again, I could never lose again.

But that’s not living. That’s just waiting to die.

“Dorothea would have liked you.” The realization settles into place. “She would have loved your sarcasm. Your stubbornness. The way you talk to rocks like they’re people.”

“They are people. Crystal people.” Leire’s mouth curves. “She sounds like someone I would have liked too.”

“You would have been trouble. The two of you ganging up on me.”

“Probably.” She settles back against my chest.

“Do you think they had anything to do with it?” Her voice is quiet. Careful. “The Preservers. Dorothea.”

The question has been sitting in the back of my own mind since Elio’s office. I hadn’t wanted to look at it.

“I don’t know.” The words come slowly. “The timeline could fit. She died in what looked like an accident—a weather working that went wrong. They filed it as an occupational hazard and no one looked twice.” I go quiet. “Weather workings don’t go wrong the way that one did. I know that. I knew it then and I buried the question because I couldn’t stand to have another thing that didn’t make sense. I never questioned it.” A pause that takes longer than it should. “I’m going to look into it.”

“We’re going to look into it.”

Her hand finds mine in the darkness. I don’t say anything else. Neither does she. Some questions are too large for the same night as everything else. But the fact that we’re going to ask them—together—settles something I didn’t know was still unsettled.

“Thank you. For telling me all of it.”

“Thank you for asking.”

We lie in silence. The shop is quiet around us—just the hum of crystals and the soft rhythm of Shadow’s breathing. Outside, Mistvale sleeps beneath its blanket of mist.

SEVENTEEN

LEIRE

Shadow speaks my name.

Not out loud—he can’t manage that yet, the control magic still wrapped too tightly around his throat. But through the remnants of our familiar bond, through the thread that was never fully severed no matter how hard they tried, I hear him.

I’m on my knees beside Anouk’s worktable, where Shadow lies surrounded by crystals and herbs and the detritus of an all-night ritual. The apothecary smells like smoke and sage and something sharper underneath—the acrid scent of magic being forcibly unwound. Candles flicker at the cardinal points, their flames burning colors that don’t exist in nature. Purple. Gold. A blue so deep it burns.