Page 31 of Board Games and Broomsticks

‘No, you’re right. I …’ Nyssa let out a loud sigh. Nyx climbed off the letter to jump into her lap, and Nyssa focused on the soft, soothing sensation of her familiar’s fur as she tried to put her feelings into words. ‘Being head mage is all I can remember ever truly wanting, so I want to go back. I want to prove to them I’m more than a few stupid mistakes. But …’

Images of the memories she’d already made in Nighthaven ran through Nyssa’s mind. Returning to the cottage for the first time and working tirelessly to turn it into a place that felt like her own. Meeting Liora, and Elowen and Alaric, and the rest of Nighthaven’s residents. Opening the café and finally, for the first time in so long, feeling a sense of something she hadn’t even known she’d been missing. A sense of home.

‘But?’ Liora prodded.

‘But I feel more myself here than I ever did in the coven.’

Admitting it left Nyssa feeling both ashamed and relieved. For most of her life, she’d known, without any doubts, what she wanted. There had never been anything pulling her in another direction. Now it was as if there were two Nyssa’s inside of her. One, the ambitious young witch she recognized, who would do anything to reclaim her title as head mage, and the other … someone new. Someone softer, yes, but also someone happier. Someone who was starting to realize that she was worth more than her achievements.

Liora placed a hand atop of Nyssa’s, which had unconsciously been fiddling with the corner of the letter. Her touch was as gentle and reassuring as the smile on her face. ‘Well, you don’t have to decide right now. Besides, I’m sure that once you imprison Morven for good, every coven in Britain will be begging to have you lead them and The Briar Council will probably do anything to have you join them.’ Liora glanced over the multiple tomes and scribbled notes on the table before finally landing on the board game in question. Nyssa hadn’t dared to open it since that night at the café, and it was currently sat on her kitchen countertop surrounded by three crystals that had been enchanted centuries ago by a Hawthorne witch to contain and suppress dark magic. ‘Alaric said he’d brought some tomes round. Did you find anything in them that might help?’

Nyssa let out what felt like her hundredth sigh of the day. She needed a long bubble bath. And perhaps a few Spicy Gnomes, too.

‘Not really. I’ve been searching through my grandma’s grimoire, trying to find anything that could be used to create a spell Morven won’t eventually be able to break, and I do have a few working theories. I just need some more time to test them out.’

‘Maybe these can help.’ Liora began smoothing out the bits of parchment, scroll by scroll. ‘They’re all the ledgers from the merchant who sold my great-great-grandma the lyre, as well as their current inventory.’

‘Wait, how did you convince the merchant to give you his ledgers?’ Nyssa asked, narrowing her gaze at Liora’s look of perfect innocence.

‘I have my ways,’ the bard replied mischievously, wiggling her eyebrows until Nyssa cracked, letting out a small chuckle. ‘Anyways, if there’s an enchanted object that could help, it’ll probably be somewhere in all of this.’

Nyssa nodded her agreement. ‘Great. Let me tell you about my theories first – maybe an item on one of those lists could be the missing piece.’

Nyssa sorted through her notes, firstly pulling out the ones she’d made on a particular binding ritual in one of Alaric’s tomes. ‘I think something like this could work if I combined it with a high-level confinement spell, but it’d need to be one that can’t be broken by anyone but the caster. That way, even if Morven or whoever he might be allied with is theoretically powerful enough to unweave the spell, they won’t be able to. Can you help me search those ledgers for anything that might have that sort of enchantment?’

Liora was already reaching for the nearest scroll. ‘Absolutely.’

The two worked in companionable silence as they trawled through pages upon pages of incantations and bewitched objects, Liora occasionally asking Nyssa if she could explain the magic behind an enchantment or whether Nyssa thought certain objects might be useful. It was surprisingly easy to slip back into a role of leadership, so much so that by the time the sky had started to darken, Nyssa was starting to feel like perhaps she would one day be worthy of leading her coven again.

It was a powerful feeling. One that coaxed out in her the sort of inspired excitement she’d had as a young witch, eager not just to discover new magics for the sake of recognition, but for the pure joy of it. And so when she came across a particular entry in one of the tomes Alaric had given her that mentioned a ‘binding elven artefact used in imprisonment spells’, she actually let out a yes loud enough to cause both Liora and Nyx to jump.

‘Bleeding gnomes, Nys!’ Liora placed one hand on her chest and the other on Nyx’s head. ‘You scared the hell out of us!’

‘Sorry, sorry, but I think this could be it! Centuries ago, the elves hid an artefact of immense power, one believed to offer great protection to any who knew how to activate it … Dammit, the rest of the text is in ancient druidic.’

Nyssa had learned some of the language during her studies, but not enough to translate more than a word here and there. She glanced at the clock hanging on her kitchen wall. ‘Do you think Elowen and Alaric will mind if I ask them to come over? I’d wait until tomorrow, but the sooner we figure this out, the safer we’ll all be.’

‘Nah, Alaric will probably just be at the tavern – I think Amelia’s visiting again – and Elowen doesn’t have a shift tonight. Besides,’ the bard added, a mischievous twinkle in her eyes, ‘Elowen would take literally any excuse to spend time with you.’

Nyssa’s cheeks heated. ‘Really? Because I feel like she’s been avoiding me since the night I trapped Morven.’ The night the elf had healed her, her soft fingers dancing along Nyssa’s skin in a way that had plagued her dreams most nights since.

‘… Elowen is pretty reserved. I’d never seen her show interest in anyone before you arrived. Whatever happened in her past … I think it hurt her pretty badly. If she’s pulling away from you, it’s not because she wants to, necessarily. It’s probably because she’s scared.’

I won’t hurt her.

The words clogged in the back of Nyssa’s throat. She would never intentionally hurt Elowen (in fact, she’d hurt anyone who ever did), but, like Nyssa, the elf had been cast out by the people she’d expected to always be there for her. Considering Nyssa had been pretty vocal about her intention to move on from Nighthaven someday, it wasn’t much of a surprise Elowen was scared of getting close to her, knowing Nyssa was planning to up and leave.

As much as Nyssa wanted to see where things could go with Elowen, she was still so unsure of her future. Right now, dealing with Morven and regaining control of her magic had to be her priorities. And as painful as it was, it was only fair to Elowen that Nyssa put up a boundary between them until she knew whether or not she was planning to stay.

‘Actually, it is getting pretty late.’ Nyssa closed her notebook and feigned a yawn. ‘I’ll message and ask them to meet at the café tomorrow. Shall we say eleven in the morning?’

Liora’s eyebrows lowered suspiciously. ‘You’re not planning on opening that notebook the second I leave and working on it by yourself all night, are you?’

‘No.’ It wasn’t a lie – she couldn’t make much more progress without Alaric and Elowen’s help, anyway. But there was something else she could do. ‘It’s been a long day. I’m just tired, and I don’t want to risk making any mistakes.’

‘… All right, then. I’ll see you tomorrow. Nyx, make sure she sleeps!’

Nyx sat up straight and gave a loud, affirming meow, and the second Liora left and Nyssa went to reach for Edith’s latest letter, the familiar began to claw gently at her hand.