Page 3 of Roaring Spell

Easy. Stay calm. Ground yourself.

But the ground feels shaky today. Has felt shaky since I walked through Mistvale’s border and the magic here pressed against my skin in a way I’ve never felt. Heavier. More aware. More responsive to every shift in my emotional state.

Millicent is spiraling. I feel it—the cascade of what-ifs tumbling through her mind like dominoes. What if she made an error? What if they find out? What if they come for her in the night with their tiny accounting ledgers and their ancient grudges and their generational curses?

My power surges in response. Reaching for the sky without permission.

No, no, no⁠—

Thunder crashes directly overhead.

Millicent screams and sits bolt upright just as rain begins pelting the glass ceiling with enough force to sound like artillery fire. Water streams down the walls of my beautiful greenhouse studio, obscuring the view of the square, trapping us in a cage of my own making.

“What—” She stares up at the deluge, then at me, then at the tiny lightning bolt that crackles between my fingers before I can shove my hands behind my back. “Did you just—was that⁠—”

“Sometimes storms come up suddenly around here!” My voice pitches too high. Too bright. Too obviously lying. “The weather in Mistvale is very unpredictable! Let me just⁠—”

I breathe. I ground. I do everything I’m supposed to do, and the storm keeps building anyway because my body has apparently decided that matching my client’s anxiety with apocalyptic weather is an appropriate therapeutic response.

The wind chimes outside are screaming. Not jingling—screaming, a discordant shriek of metal on metal that makes my teeth ache.

“I should go.” Millicent scrambles off the table, backing toward the door. “I’ll reschedule when—when the weather clears.”

“Please, let me⁠—”

But she’s gone. Fleeing into the downpour I created, her umbrella whipping inside out before she makes it three steps from my door.

I stand in my beautiful studio with rain hammering the glass and lightning flickering in clouds that weren’t there ten minutes ago, and I feel everything I’ve been holding at bay come crashing down.

Not again.

Not again, not again, not again.

I’m not going to cry. I’m definitely not going to cry. Crying will only make it worse. Crying will⁠—

A sob tears out of my throat. Thunder booms in response. The rain intensifies, sheets of water turning the world beyond my windows into an impressionist blur.

A small puddle is forming under my improperly sealed back door. Water dripping onto my carefully arranged crystals. My rose quartz—the crooked one, the stubborn one—topples over with a soft clink.

Mistvale was supposed to be different.

I sink down behind my reception desk, pull my knees to my chest, and let myself fall apart while my storm rages overhead.

I’m still on the floor half an hour later, eating peach cobbler directly from the dish because shame is a luxury I can no longer afford, when the door chimes again.

“Heard you were having weather.”

Leire Firesinger stands in my doorway, soaking wet and grinning like she just won a prize. She’s carrying two cups of coffee and a paper bag that smells like pastries, and she’s looking at me—a grown woman stress-eating on the floor surrounded by puddles and emotional wreckage—like this is the most normal thing in the world.

“I created a thunderstorm.” I gesture vaguely at the ceiling, where rain is still sheeting down despite my best efforts to calm it. “During a client session. On opening day.”

“I noticed.” She steps inside, shaking water from her dark hair. Her claiming mark on her shoulder, visible where her damp collar has slipped—catches the light, dark against her brown skin. “Pretty impressive, actually. The lightning was a nice touch.”

“I almost electrocuted an accountant.”

“Brownies are assholes about their taxes. You probably did her a favor.” Leire settles onto the floor beside me, completely unbothered by wet tiles or the disaster surrounding us. She hands me a coffee. “Here. Emergency intervention.”

The coffee is exactly how I take it—oat milk, two sugars, extra hot. I have no idea how she knows that. We’ve only been friends a short time. We’ve had coffee a couple times. She helped me move a bookshelf. She came to check on me once when the mist turned an ominous shade of purple.