The windows are fogged to confession-glass, soft crescents where our breath scrawled I was here and so were you. My shirt is crooked, her ponytail is a war crime, and the car smells like leather warmed by winter sun and Cassie—frosted citrus, white camellia, that cool vanilla musk that sits in my ribs like it’s paid rent.

I try to hammer my heartbeat back into something civilized. Useless. Heat thrums under my skin, an ember-line tracing every pulse. I brace a palm to the dash, count five in, seven out, the way Tharion drilled into me like other kids got bike lessons. My magic doesn’t care. It paces the bars anyway.

Cassie’s knee presses against mine, casual as a sigh, claiming all the same.

“Okay,” she whispers, voice roughened by the last fifteen minutes. “Before I decide we don’t need a spa and just need… more of that.”

I choke a laugh. “We do need a spa. For cover. And because my shoulders are a crime scene from cheer.”

“And because my girlfriend has rich-princess perks I intend to exploit?” She tips her head, temple bumping mine, lazy and lethal at once. My lip gloss is smeared on her mouth. I want to lick it back like proof.

“Wife,” I say, before my brain can catch up. The word lands heavy in the small space, a dropped ring. The tether hums in answer, low against my sternum. Cassie’s sapphire eyes flick to mine. One heartbeat. Two. No mockery. She just laces our fingers, steadying, and nods toward the phone in my lap.

“Call them, Firefly.”

I hate that she reads my chaos and makes it sound simple.

The glamour holds on my screen reflection: freckles dulled, hair autumn-ginger safe, eyes rounded green. Ravenrest’s overlook sprawls below—lamp-islands molten in the dark, the lake a vein of cut metal. Teenagers have been kissing up here since cars were invented. We’re just continuing the tradition. Nothing to see here. Ignore the two rings on our hands humming like tuning forks that found each other.

I dial the number Naomi sent. Two rings.

“Silverrow Lake Wellness, good evening! This is Avery speaking. How can I curate your calm tonight?”

The voice is bright, polished to a gloss, each syllable set like tiles. Music under it—flutes, fake water. And beneath that, thinner: a hum that prickles the back of my teeth like aluminum foil.

“Hi,” I say, letting the schoolgirl mask do the talking. Softer consonants, careful smile sewn into the voice. “We were hoping to book a package for, ah, tonight? Couple’s something?”

“A couple’s experience—what a perfect idea,” Avery sings back. The perfect catches on the way out, a hair too sharp. “May I have your names?”

Half a beat of hesitation, then I lie: “Emma Elwood and Gwenth Greenspace.”

Cassie squeezes my fingers, approval or amusement—I can’t tell which.

“Lovely,” Avery hums. “We do have an opening for a Couple’s Indulgence at seven-thirty. Side-by-side massage, aromatic steam, refreshments, and your choice of mani/pedi or scalp ritual. Would you like to add on a private mineral soak?”

Mineral soak. My skin tightens. I do not look at Cassie.

She mouths, exaggerated, We’d love it. Eyes bright. Mimes melting. I roll mine back at her, already memorizing the face for later.

“Yes,” I say, while my better judgment scratches a warning into the fogged glass. “Let’s add the soak.”

“Wonderful. To secure your reservation, I’ll just need a card on file.”

The cadence clicks—cheerful, efficient, wrong. Not the words. The mouthfeel. A glamour ripple that doesn’t match the water it pretends to be.

I slide my hand from Cassie’s to dig my wallet out. She makes an aggrieved little sound and steals my warmth back by pressing her palm to my thigh, just below my skirt hem. Nails ghosting there—helpful, distracting, criminal.

“Card number when you’re ready,” Avery chimes.

I read it out—Court credit, Emma Elwood. Seara hates that I have it, which is why I use it. Venom from the system’s own fangs.

“Thank you, Ms. Elwood,” Avery says. “Arrive fifteen minutes early to complete your wellness profile. Attire is provided. Hydration is encouraged. We look forward to caring for you tonight.”

The line clicks off too clean. The hum stays in my teeth like it didn’t come from the call at all.

Cassie’s eyebrows hike. “A wellness profile? Do I get to list that my only allergy is you being bossy?”

I pocket the card. “You can put that under preferences, and they’ll assign you a top-shelf domme.”

Her laugh breaks bright and unbothered. It loosens something in my chest I hadn’t realized was clenched. She leans back in her seat, head tilted, one hand steady on the wheel. The streetlights catch the arc of her cheekbone. She looks expensive. Impossible. Mine.

“So,” she drawls, lazy as a cat stretching, “you’re paying?”

“Obviously.”

“With your fake royal play-money?”

“It’s a credit card, not a dragon hoard.”

“Mmm.” She pats my thigh like I’ve just said something cute. “My wife is a spoiled princess, and I, tragically, must suffer the consequences.”

“You don’t seem to suffer very hard. Especially when the consequences come with heated towels and someone else rubbing your shoulders while I watch.”

Her eyes glitter, dangerous and amused. “You watching is half the point.”

Heat spikes. I bite the inside of my cheek until sense returns. Outside, the world spins on. Inside this car, every breath feels like a decision. I drum my fingers against my thigh—a three-beat rhythm, a stim to keep from setting the upholstery on fire—and force myself back onto the track we came here to lay.

“We go in like normal. We act like spoiled teenagers with too much allowance and zero survival instincts,” I say. “We watch. We don’t drink anything we didn’t uncap ourselves. We don’t—”

“—split up,” Cassie finishes smoothly, already in captain-mode without losing an ounce of pretty-girl. “We don’t let staff steer us into any room not on the menu. We smile, we gossip, we act obsessed with exfoliation. You glare only a little.”

“I don’t glare.”

She makes a face. “You glare in cursive.”

“I have resting plotting face.”

“You have resting arson face, Firefly.”

I try not to smile. Fail. The tension in my neck slips another notch. “Fine. I’ll keep my arson face to a PG rating.”

She taps the fogged window with one red-lacquered nail, traces a heart, then smears it away with the heel of her hand. “You realize the rings are still glamoured as mood rings, right? We aren’t fooling anyone with subtle.”

“Let them speculate,” I murmur, twisting the band, feeling the thrum pulse through my skin. “Half the school already thinks we’re sneaking around. Easier cover. And it keeps some eyes on us instead of the wrong hallways.”

The missing girl’s name ghosts through the car like a draft. Riley Hart. Locker untouched since before winter break. Flyers that shouldn’t exist plastered on Ravenrest’s boards—Silverrow Lake Wellness, promising serenity. Reset.

Cassie sees my jaw go tight. I see the way she softens. She leans across the console at a red light and presses her mouth to my cheek. Her cool perfume floods my lungs until breathing is all I remember how to do.

“We’ll be careful,” she says against my skin. “Naomi and Kess will shred the paper trail at the other schools. We’ll do our piece. Together.”

A hundred arguments line up in my mouth like cards ready to fall. I don’t play any of them. Instead, I reach for the necklace that usually anchors me and find bare skin—right, I left the Moonlit Clasp at home. I’m not enough of an idiot to wear a Veil-bright beacon into a probable trap. My fingers reroute to the ring, spinning it against the soft inside of my knuckle. Anchor. Focus. Do not set the car on fire.

Cassie downshifts as we hit the bottom of the overlook road, the coupe humming steady under her hands. She doesn’t look over—just smirks like she can feel every thought I’m failing to leash.

“You’re doing the thing,” she says gently. “Stacking worst-case scenarios like Jenga blocks.”

“I prefer to call it planning.”

“And I prefer to call it you forgetting to breathe unless someone makes you.” She hooks two fingers into the waistband of my skirt and tugs until our knees press again. The tether steadies from anxious static to a lower, calmer hum. “Breathe, Firefly.”

I do. Five in. Seven out. Her eyes never leave mine. The city keeps glittering.

For a moment—just a moment—it almost feels like we could let it be ordinary. Like two girls could book a couple’s massage because they want to be spoiled and touched and seen. Not because girls are vanishing like threads pulled from a seam.

“After this,” I say abruptly—because if I don’t say something, I’m going to say something I can’t take back—“I’m taking you to the Summer Court springs. The real ones.”

Her eyebrows lift. “A field trip to your world? You do realize your mother will deploy a phalanx of aunties.”

“Let her try.” The thought warms me in a way the vents can’t. Memory rises in my ribs—the true heat, the kind that climbs from the bones of the world and reveres nothing but itself. “Those springs make this place look like a school bathroom sink. The water sings. It—” I bite down on loves us before it slips. “It works.”

Cassie’s smile curves, small and sharp. “Is that a promise?”

“Yes.” The word comes too fast. I don’t fix it. “A real date. Not… whatever this is, where half the time I’m pretending not to guard the exits.”

“Romance with a side of strategy. My favorite.” She tips forward, presses our foreheads together for a heartbeat, then pulls away. “Okay, wife,” she says softly, deliberate. “Let’s go get mani-pedis and commit no crimes.”

“Yet,” I add, because I’m not a liar.

We pull ourselves together in the practiced choreography of girls who’ve been seen too many times. Ponytail fixed. Shirt straight. Lip gloss repaired. The rings hum once like they’re laughing at us. Cassie keeps her hands steady on the wheel, guiding the coupe toward Silverrow, the engine purring like it knows too much.

The spa looks like someone Googled serenity and panic-bought everything beige.

Cassie steers us into the lot, headlights washing over frosted glass doors stenciled with Silverrow Lake Wellness in a font so clean it hurts. The building is all sharp angles and mirrored windows, a box pretending to be sanctuary. No carved stone. No singing water. No heat rising from the bones of the earth like in the Summer Court springs. Just polished concrete, fluorescent uplighting, and an emptiness that hums too loud against my skin.

She kills the engine and unclips her seatbelt like she’s walking into her own birthday party. “Finally. I’ve wanted someone else to rub my shoulders since football season started.”

“Just your shoulders?” It comes out more nervous than teasing. The tether in my chest feels stretched already.

Inside, the air hits too fast—lavender, rosewater, eucalyptus—but beneath it: acrid metal, like rust scrubbed under perfume. My tongue prickles.

A wall-length fountain trickles across the lobby tiles, symmetry perfect down to the droplet. Too perfect. Water is supposed to stumble, to catch on itself. This pours evenly, like a looped recording given liquid shape.

The reception desk gleams. Behind it, a woman in pale-gray scrubs smiles. Her eyelids don’t flicker the entire time she speaks. “Welcome to Silverrow Lake Wellness. You must be our seven-thirty Couple’s Indulgence.”

Her tone is perfectly warm. Perfectly wrong.

Cassie beams back, sliding her hand into mine like she’s leaning into the role. “That’s us. Emma Elwood and Gwenth Greenspace.” She says it like she’s worn the name her whole life.

I scrawl Emma Elwood across the tablet, my mother’s favorite mask. For once, I’m grateful for it.

The receptionist’s smile doesn’t move as she hands us slim folders. “Wellness profiles. Please fill them out while we prepare your experience.”

The forms are too detailed—name, birthdate, allergies, fears, sleeping habits. I circle at random, neat lies in rounded schoolgirl script while the hum in the walls presses into my teeth.

Cassie props hers on her knee, cheer-captain confidence in every stroke. “I’m putting that I’m allergic to bossy wives,” she murmurs, just for me.

I shoot her a glare that only sharpens her smirk.

The receptionist tilts her head like a bird, eyes skating over our pages too long before she takes them back. Nails click against the folders. Click. Click. Too measured.

“Wonderful. We’ll begin with your massage.”

Cassie squeezes my hand as we follow, excitement humming down the tether. She sees indulgence. I see red flags.

They lead us through a hallway the exact color of a dentist’s good intentions. Soft-edged pale wood, frosted glass, silence so curated it feels installed. Cassie squeezes once—steady, eager—and I catalog the lights overhead, each hum a half-step too bright.

“Emma? Gwenth?” The attendant smiles, badge reading MARA in delicate serif. She gestures to a door that sighs open on command. “We’ll begin with your massage.”

Inside: two heated tables, sheets tucked so sharply Seara would approve. A tray of bottles lined like soldiers. A diffuser hissing eucalyptus pretending at bravery. We’re handed robes the color of expensive clouds. I shrug out of blazer and blouse, slip into the robe, and try not to notice how the thread count wants to lull me into letting go.

“Jewelry can stay on if it’s comfortable,” Mara says, which earns that wrong hum another notch. At other spas they insist on rings off, safety this and hygiene that. Here, her smile never reaches her eyelids. “Face down to start.”

Cassie catches my eyes over the tables, a flash of wicked. “You heard her, Ms. Elwood. Face down. Try to behave.”

“Try not to narrate,” I shoot back, but my mouth tilts up, traitor.

We keep the rings on. Glamoured as mood rings: hers a deep, amused blue; mine pretending at calm green. The tether hums under my skin as I settle onto the table. The face cradle cups me, the sheet slides over my hips like a secret, and the heat rising from below seeps into bone. My ribs answer with their own smaller, older fire.

Hands start at my neck. Mara’s pressure is precise—surgical. No wasted motion. She finds the knots that have become my personal brand and introduces them to their own mortality. My breath leaks out on a shaky laugh I don’t mean to give her.

Across from me, Cassie makes a soft sound—filthy, unapologetic. “Gods, yes. There. Mira, are you listening? This is how we treat tense wives.”

“Stop teaching the spa how to handle me,” I manage, dignity dripping through the cradle.

Her voice lilts, captain’s tease. “Stop twitching, Quinveil.”

“We’re under aliases,” I mutter into the cushion.

“Then stop twitching, Elwood,” she corrects sweetly, and the sweet does things to my spine that should be illegal in three realms.

Mara’s thumbs travel lower, pressing muscle the way a prayer presses into cathedral stone. The warmth of the table seeps further, too even, too steady. My magic stirs in answering pulses, prowling the cage I keep around it. I count—five in, seven out—and let myself fall a little. Not far. Never far.

On the other table, Cassie is providing commentary like she’s reviewing Michelin stars. “If anyone wants to write a letter to the editor, it should say Gwenth Greenspace has found religion and it lives between T5 and T7 vertebrae.”

“Gwenth Greenspace is a menace,” I mutter, consonants softened by treachery. “And I’m writing her up for insubordination.”

“You can write me up later,” she purrs. “Right now, you’re going to admit you like this.”

“I’m enduring it for the mission.”

“Mm-hm.” Her tone says liar like it’s a kiss.

I try to scowl into the headrest. Difficult, when someone is dismantling every knot in my shoulders like they owe me money. My right shoulder gives with a quiet pop. Stars scatter behind my eyelids.

“Pressure okay?” Mara asks, warmth practiced into efficiency.

“Perfect,” I breathe. Too unguarded. I hate that Cassie hears it more than I hate the sound itself.

Across the gulf, she hums a satisfied mm. “You heard her. Perfect. In case anyone wanted that on the record.”

“I will set your towel on fire.”

“Threats in a spa? Bold choice.”

“I am a bold girl,” I counter, pretending it’s a joke so it won’t feel like confession.

Her laugh is soft, delighted sin.

We flip when told. Cassie manages it like a cheer stretch, all elegant lines, and I forget to breathe. Mara drapes the sheet to my collarbone. The air kisses the inch of skin left open, and I feel every molecule of it. Cassie catches me watching, mouth curved. She blinks once—slow, claiming—and then shuts her eyes like she didn’t say anything at all.

The massage moves to arms and hands. Mara’s grip is as precise on my fingers as it was on my shoulders, pressing along tendons I’ve abused for years. The oils smell like a forest bought for Instagram—lavender, cedar—but underneath it is a faint metallic tang, copper threaded through green. Wrong. Not enough to sound the alarm, just enough to make my skin itch.

“Hydrate after your treatment,” Mara murmurs. “Your bodies will release what they’re holding.”

My body considers releasing sanity. Across from me, Cassie decides to test God. She lets out a sigh that registers on seismographs.

I make a strangled noise and turn it into a cough. “We are in public.”

“We’re in a room with a door,” she says, eyes still closed, smile downright criminal. “Besides, you’re the one who likes to watch.”

Mara’s hands pause a fraction too long and then resume as if a stopwatch came out somewhere behind her eyes.

“Gwenth,” I warn, all scandal and very little bite.

“Emma,” she sings back, victorious.

By the time they finish—hot towels wrapping my calves, careful circles along the arch of my foot that almost make me apologize to every god I’ve ever ignored—I’m boneless. I could file for a legal name change to Puddle. Cassie looks smug enough to write a thesis about it.

“Tea?” Mara offers, materializing a tray like a conjuror: clear glasses, pale gold liquid, a slice of lemon floating like a coin in a wishing well.

“We brought water,” I say quickly. “But thank you.” We didn’t. I don’t care. Cassie doesn’t argue, which means she felt the off-note too, even if she’s letting the pampering win this round.

The moment Mara slips out, Cassie digs in her oversized purse like it’s a survival kit. A bottle of water thuds into my lap, followed by a packet of trail mix.

“Eat,” she orders, soft but unyielding.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re vibrating,” she counters, tilting her head at me. “And not in the fun way. Magic eats calories, Firefly. You run hotter than the rest of us. You don’t fuel, you crash.”

My protest shrivels under the way she says it—not teasing, not captain-smooth, but worried. I crack the bottle and gulp because she’s right, because she always is about this. The water tastes sharp, real, grounding. She peels the corner of the trail mix and tips a handful into my palm before I can argue.

“Bossy,” I mutter, chewing anyway. Salt and almonds. Not nectar, but it keeps the embers from scraping my ribs raw.

Her smirk curves wicked. “Allergy noted.”

We’re ushered next into a wide, glowing room lined with pedicure chairs. The basins glow a gentle blue, steam curling from the surface like it wants to be comforting. Warm water laps over my ankles, and for a second, I let my head fall back and pretend this is just a date. The leather cradles me, the massage function kneads into my shoulders, and the tether steady-hums like a cat in a sunbeam. Cassie’s thigh presses against mine where the chairs neighbor.

A tech with the name tag VI crouches at Cassie’s basin. “Color?”

Cassie flings her robe open like she’s making an entrance on a runway, sticks out her foot with the entitlement of a queen. “I want red that gets me arrested.”

“Ruby,” Vi says, already nodding. “Gel?”

“Double,” Cassie answers without hesitation, then shoots me a look. “What about you, wife? Are you brave enough for color or are you staying on brand with—what did you call it? Mournful neutrals?”

“Mournful neutrals match everything,” I say, prim. “Including funerals.”

“You’re not allowed to be this hot and this boring,” she says, and Vi definitely doesn’t smile.

Water burbles around my calves, warmth seeping in as Iris—the other tech, cat-eye sharp—starts scrubbing and buffing. Cassie hums as Vi files her nails, flaunting her foot like it’s about to be put on a billboard.

“You’re going to have to worship these later,” she says smugly, wiggling toes lacquered into a dare.

“I’ll build an altar,” I say dryly. “Sacrifice a topcoat.”

“See?” She beams, triumphant. “Admitting you like worship is the first step.”

Iris pats my ankle when she finishes. “All set, Ms. Elwood.”

Cassie examines her foot like she’s unveiling a masterpiece. “If these don’t get me out of at least three detentions, fashion is dead.”

“You don’t even get detentions.”

“I could start,” she says, then tilts her head at me, wicked again. “If you ask very nicely.”

“I will arrest your feet for indecency,” I inform her.

“Officer, I have a permit,” she says, obscene toe-wiggle included.

When our toes are drying under tiny fans, we’re guided to manicure stations. The room is glossy tile and twinkling playlists engineered to keep rich wives docile. Iris takes my hands like she’s about to propose.

“Color?” she asks. Her voice has that same serene cadence, but her gaze snags a micromoment longer on the rings.

“Something that says ‘I don’t know what sleep is, but I pay my taxes,’” I say. “Neutral. With violence.”

“Barely-there mauve,” Iris pronounces. “Square-oval, short.”

Cassie slides into the chair beside me, still smug from her pedicure victory. She leans over, robe slipping scandalously off one shoulder. “You closed your eyes and made a sound when she did the cuticle oil.”

“I blinked.”

“You purr when anyone touches your hands.”

“I am a dangerous apex predator. I don’t purr.”

She leans closer, mouth grazing the edge of my ear. “You purr for me.”

Something traitorous happens to my throat. The tether hums hard enough to rattle the polish bottles. Iris glances up, head tilted, then files with surgical devotion.

I pretend to check my phone. It has no messages. It will never save me.

“Emma?” Iris says, the name like porcelain. “Hands under the lamp, please.”

I tuck them in, palms tingling as the light warms the gel. Cassie studies me with the look of someone who knows they’ve won.

We’re ridiculous. We’re happy. For the length of a manicure timer and the last two songs on a spa playlist, we look like girls who chose this night for no reason beyond pleasure and the thrill of an appointment booked under names that don’t fit yet feel oddly safe.

The tether hums in agreement, low and sure, a soft engine idling under everything.

Almost enough to make me forget that the water in the lobby poured too evenly, that the receptionist blinked on a schedule, that the air tastes like lavender spun over coin.

Almost.

The salt room hums like a throat holding back a cough.

Steam coils off a sunken rectangle of water tiled in white so clean it looks theoretical. Battery candles wink in little wall niches, trying to be ambiance. Lavender and eucalyptus saturate the air, sweet enough to sting. A tiny fountain whispers in the corner, pouring too evenly—like sound on a loop, the pool just mouthing along.

“Salt mineral soak,” says the attendant in soft gray, smile set to serene. Her name tag reads ANARA. “Fifteen to twenty minutes is ideal. Hydrate after. I’ll be right outside if you need anything, Ms. Elwood, Ms. Greenspace.”

She bows her head—precisely the same angle she used at reception—then glides out. The door sighs shut. The room exhales a hush that isn’t quite silence.

Cassie doesn’t wait. She peels out of the provided wrap like a woman born to break dress codes and dips a toe. “Hot,” she declares, pleased, and eases in with a breath that starts as a hiss and melts into a moan designed to turn me into a public safety hazard. “Oh my gods. Emma. If this is damnation, bring me more sin.”

“Careful,” I mutter, sliding in after her. The water climbs over my ribs in a silky, insistent way that feels less like welcome and more like persuasion. “They’ll put that on a brochure.”

She laughs, head tipping back against the lip, throat long, eyes half-lidded. The ring on her left hand—glamoured down to a moody blue stone—catches a thread of steam and looks like it’s breathing. For a heartbeat, the tether hums with her contentment and I almost let myself believe in the neutral safety of tile and towels.

Then the wrongness slides along my tongue—metallic, coin-sharp, threaded through the steam. It prickles the back of my teeth like aluminum foil. I press my palm under the surface until it meets tile and feel it there too: a faint thrum in the grout, like a string plucked far away. Not water. Not natural.

“Paranoid princess,” Cassie murmurs without opening her eyes. “You’re tense even when you’re soup.”

“I do not become soup,” I say. “At worst, I’m a very controlled consommé.”

She giggles. Actually giggles. Cassie Fairborn does not giggle. She flicks water at me, careless and delighted. “You can’t just… relax? For once? Let the water do what it’s supposed to do?”

Her pupils are blown wide, swallowing the icy blue until they’re nearly black. The candlelight doubles there, reflections floating. For a second she looks painted—art, not flesh.

“Relaxation isn’t supposed to hum at me,” I answer, too flat.

She rolls lazily toward me. “Gods, Mira, you’re glaring at the bath like it insulted your mother. Enjoy it.”

I try. For thirty seconds I try—counting five in, seven out, letting the heat climb my spine. The glamour over my skin holds steady: eyes green, hair autumn-ginger, ears rounded. The water brushes the edges of that magic, curious, then slides off like oil meeting glass. It can’t quite touch me. But the suggestion in the steam doesn’t need me to say yes; it just needs someone.

Cassie hums. Her lashes flutter, slow. She rests her cheek on her forearm along the rim, smiling at nothing. Too sweet. Too unguarded. The expression she gives babies and old women, never anyone else—and it doesn’t belong here.

“Hey,” I say, softer. “Look at me.”

She does—for a beat, and there she is, my sharp girl. Then her gaze drifts past my shoulder to the glass door where a shadow moves—the outline of Anara checking a tray. Cassie’s eyes follow dreamily, a little tilt of the head like she might wave the woman in.

Panic claws my ribs. Before I can think, I reach under the water and catch Cassie’s wrist. Not hard. Enough to anchor. The tether vibrates like a plucked wire.

“Stay with me,” I whisper.

She blinks, unfocused. A beat. Two. Then she tugs her hand back—not cruel, not even irritated yet, just… slippery, like something inside her has given up friction. Water slaps the tile.

“Mira.” My name is an exhale and a complaint. “You can’t stop, can you? Always worrying. Always watching. Just—stop.” She laughs again, too bright. “Stop worrying about me.”

There it is. The edge dropping out of her voice like a step she didn’t see. A tiny slide that, anywhere else, would be nothing. In this room, with the coin-taste in the steam and the tile thrumming under my palm, it feels like the last note of a spell settling.

“Cass.” I hear the steel in my own tone and try to file it down. “They’ve laced the salt.” I curl my free hand and press my thumb into the ball of her palm the way Selene taught me when I was nine and too wild for human teachers. “Look at me, not the door. Breathe with me. Five—”

She pulls her hand away again, sharper. “You don’t know that.”

The rasp in her voice is new. A shadow passes the glass—attendant-shaped—and her head tilts toward it like a flower chasing light.

“Gwenth.” I drop the alias like a stone into a well.

Her eyes snap back at the sound—magic recognizing a name, even a false one. The tether steadies for a breath. She smiles, soft and unbothered. “You’re cute when you try to be in charge at bath time.”

“I’m not trying,” I say, all teeth. “I am.”

She dissolves into laughter, throwing an arm over her eyes like the candlelight is too much, like I am. “Paranoid princess,” she sings, with a schoolyard lilt. “You hover and you glare and you build walls out of worry. It’s boring, Firefly. Let go.”

Every part of me wants to. Sit back. Sink down. Let her laughter scrub me clean. I could—if it were just us. If the water didn’t taste like coins. If the grout seam two tiles down didn’t hold a hair-thin etching that glints when the steam thins—lines nested within lines, a whisper of a rune. I’ve seen bolder versions carved under Summer Court tables, traced on bracelets worn by men whose polite questions were knives.

My skin crawls. The hum threads my teeth. The suggestion licks at the seams my glamour doesn’t cover. It slides off me and into the nearest conduit between us—the tether—reaching for her through the path where I keep her. Of course it does.

She sits up in a sudden glide, water glittering on her shoulders like mercury silk. Her gaze drifts toward the door again. “I’m going to ask for more salts,” she announces, cheerful as a beauty vlogger, as if she hasn’t moved like a sleepwalker.

I block her without leaving the water, palm braced against her collarbone. “No. Sit. With me.”

She startles—not with fear, but impatience. Like I’ve interrupted a reasonable errand. “Mira—”

“Cassie, stay.”

The word rips out of me too raw. It hits the tether and makes it sing. She flinches like I tugged a leash—indignation sparking in her face, blessedly familiar.

“There she is,” I breathe, relief and terror tangled. “Hi.”

She glares. Loose around the edges, but it’s a glare. “You are such a—” Her mouth curves, searching, finds the old insult like a toy in the attic. “—princess.”

The corner of my mouth betrays me. “You like when I’m a princess.”

“I like when you’re not trying to control the bathtub.”

“I’m trying to keep the bathtub from controlling you.”

She throws her hands up, water arcing. “Gods, Mira. You can’t control everything. You have to stop.” Her voice spikes sharp, then bubbles with laughter again—as if the argument itself is delicious, as if nothing bad could happen in a room with towels folded into swans.

“Stop what?” I ask, though I know. I want her to say it, brick by brick, so I can’t pretend not to see the tower rising.

“Stop worrying about me,” she says, rolling her eyes like it’s the simplest thing in the world. Like I’m the one making it complicated.

I dig my nails into tile, because the alternative is tearing the whole room down around us. “I can’t stop.”

Cassie tilts her head, lashes heavy. Too heavy. “Why not?”

My chest seizes. My pulse stutters into fire. “I just… can’t.”

“That’s not an answer.” Her tone sharpens, sing-song edging toward command. “Come on, Firefly. You always have a reason. So what is it?”

The steam claws at me, humming wrong through the grout. My mouth is dry. I want to shake her, to scream, to burn the spell out of her veins. Instead I grit: “Cass, drop it.”

Her eyes flash, icy and molten all at once. “No.” She leans closer, silver water sliding off her shoulders. “You tell me everything, even when I don’t want to hear it. Why not this?”

“I said it’s complicated.” My laugh snaps, brittle. “And if I say it out loud, it’s real.”

“Maybe I want real.” Her voice spikes. Too loud, too eager. A hook, not a choice. “So stop hiding behind complicated and say it.”

My magic claws the bars of its cage. The tether thrums too hard, teeth-rattling. “You don’t understand—”

“Then make me.” She cuts in, urgent now, sharp as a dare. “You fight me on everything else, Mira. Fight me on this. Tell me why you can’t stop.”

The steam thickens. Her gaze keeps flicking toward the door. I block her, palm firm at her collarbone, anchoring her to me. My throat burns. “Because it doesn’t matter—”

“It matters to me!” she snaps. The words bite through the spell’s syrup, raw enough to sting. “So gods damn it, tell me!”

The tether screams like wire about to break. My control fractures. My fear detonates. Anger does the rest.

“Because you’re my wife,” I roar, the words molten iron, “and I fucking love you!”

The air rips open. Steam explodes upward. Candle flames choke out. The etched rune in the grout flashes white-hot, then dies. The water itself jerks, heat spiking honest instead of false.

And there it is. Not strategy. Not cover. Said. Solid. Irrevocable.

Under my palm, the tether seizes—not pain, but anchor. It yanks Cassie back like I’ve grabbed her by the belt of the world and hauled. Her pupils jerk, contract; icy blue floods back in.

She inhales like she’s breaking the surface of a lake.

“Mira,” she whispers. Not a complaint now. A hand on my wrist in the dark.

Every bit of me wants to collapse or set something on fire or both. Because I didn’t just confess—I detonated. My magic lashed outward the second the words tore free, boiling the water in a violent rush. Steam geysered, glyphs in the grout cracked and guttered out.

It should have scalded her. It would have. But instinct snapped faster than thought—my shields wrapped her even as the blast ripped free. The water blistered around her body, but not against her skin.

That’s the cost. Not exhaustion. Not weakness. The cost is always who could burn if I lose control. And I almost burned her.

Cassie’s mouth is parted. The usual arsenal—quips, blades, smirks—doesn’t arrive. She’s bare-faced in a way I’ve maybe never seen. Stunned. Fragile. Present. And still fixed on what I said, not what I did.

Outside the door, soft steps hesitate. A polite knock follows, exactly three beats after the steam went wild, as if someone listened for the right cue. “Ms. Elwood? Ms. Greenspace? Is everything all right?”

“Yes,” I snap, too sharp. I clear my throat, grind the word down. “We’re fine. We’re… done.” My voice almost cracks on the last word, so I scald it flat. “We’ll dress.”

Silence. The shadow withdraws.

Inside the room, the steam is honest now, heavy and damp and free of coin. My magic crawls back to its cage one reluctant inch at a time. I realize I’m still touching Cassie—palm against her collarbone, fingers splayed where her pulse bangs, fast but hers. I start to pull away.

She catches my wrist.

Not hazy. Not careless. The press of her fingers is careful, almost reverent, as if the thing between us is a glass animal you can’t fix if you drop it.

Her eyes flick down to my mouth, up to my eyes, down again. For a second I think she’ll say it back. For a second I know she won’t. For a third, I’m grateful for both.

“Okay,” she says finally, voice ragged as a scraped knee. “Okay.”

It’s not a promise. It’s not a no. It’s a rope across a chasm. I wrap my hand around it.

We climb out in silence that isn’t empty. The provided wraps go back on, hands shaking in mirror choreography. The rings hum like they have opinions I am not prepared to hear. We don’t look at the water again. I can still taste the thin metal of what it tried to be. I can still feel the heat in my veins and the truth in my chest: I saved her. I could have hurt her. Both are true.

At the door, her fingers brush mine and hook—tiny, deliberate—like a stitch to keep a seam from splitting. We breathe together, once, twice. The tether steadies, low and sure.

I open the door.

The corridor beyond smells like eucalyptus and money. The building hum waits for us like a held note.

We step into it anyway.

Cassie’s shoulder brushes mine as we walk, our hands not quite linked, the aftershock of okay still breathing between our fingers. Her silence is different from mine: mine is guilt; hers is shock. The world looks brighter and too sharp, as if the steam stripped a layer off my eyes. The rings hum on our left hands like they heard everything and are drafting commentary.

We dress in a quiet changing alcove with towels folded into origami swans. The cotton is too clean. The mirrors don’t mist unless you breathe on them on purpose—like the glass is under orders not to fog. I tug my blouse smooth over my ribs, fasten my skirt, fix my tie with a precision that would make Seara clap. Cassie’s mouth is a firm line as she buttons her shirt; she misses one hole, then corrects it with a small swear. Her cheeks are still flushed from heat, her pupils normal again, icy blue edged. Present—but subdued. Still stuck on my words.

“Ready?” I ask, voice low.

She nods, the motion tiny. “Yeah.” Raw around the edges. Fragile in a way I never see. She touches her ring once, like checking the tether is real. It answers with a steady, private thrum.

We step into the main hall. The quiet here is the same as before—installed, curated. The air hums at a pitch most people would never notice. I do. It threads my teeth and tugs at the nerves in my wrists. I rub my thumb along the inside of my ring finger until the urge to set the wall sconces on fire recedes to a manageable scream.

“Emma? Ms. Greenspace?” The voice floats ahead before the woman appears, as if it was released on a timer. The receptionist—Avery—materializes at the end of the corridor in her pale-gray serenity like nothing in the last twenty minutes hissed or boiled. Her eyes find us first. They don’t blink. Then the smile follows, clicking into place like a piece of software. “How was your soak?”

I smile the way girls learn to smile to survive. “Relaxing,” I say, perfectly pleasant. “We’re heading out.”

“Of course.” Her gaze lingers half a second too long on Cassie, then slides back to me with the practised ineffability of customer service. “Please do stop at reception to confirm your profile preferences for future visits.”

Future visits. I taste metal again.

The lobby is a hush of beige and glass. The wall fountain pours its loop. The candles never waver. Two attendants stand by the smooth stone column that pretends to be an olive tree—statues waiting for their cue. My scalp prickles.

At the desk, a discreet dish of white salt sits beside a stack of branded pens. Not table-grain—fine, crystalline, gleaming with an iridescence that doesn’t belong to light. When Avery leans forward to retrieve something from beneath, the underside of the desk shows for a heartbeat: a shallow lip of wood where no one looks. A faint burn mark curls there, lines nested within lines, hair-thin, heat-kissed. Not a full rune. The bones of one. The kind you leave if you want to hum at a room without declaring your god.

My magic bares its teeth. I keep my face soft as buttercream.

“All set,” Avery chirps when I sign nothing of value on a glowing square of glass. “We hope to see you again very soon.”

“Mm,” I say, noncommittal. “Come on, Gwenth.” I angle my body so Cassie is between me and the exit, my hand firm at her back. She lets me. Her perfume—frosted citrus, white camellia—layers over the lavender, making it bearable.

We pass the column. One attendant tracks us with her chin, not her eyes, tilting a few degrees at a time like she’s measuring us against a grid only she can see. The other smiles with her teeth and not her cheeks.

Outside, night drapes the parking lot in a clean sheet. The lake is a dark strip of glass, glitterless, windless. Streetlights carve bright circles in asphalt. The coupe waits at the far edge, glossy and black as a secret.

The doors sigh shut behind us. Sensors chirp a goodbye that sounds like a lullaby left on a stove. I keep my gait unhurried—the way you walk past a dog that hasn’t decided whether to bite. I catalog: three cars idling, one SUV door ajar, a man leaning against a rental sedan with a dead phone, a woman pretending to scroll by a planter full of white pebbles, a figure in a pale medical mask standing inside the glass, hands folded like they’re waiting for a hymn.

The masked one tilts its head first. Too far, past anatomy’s comfort. Then straight again. The posture is a question that already knows its answer.

Cassie inhales, sharp. She feels it too.

“Keys,” I murmur.

She doesn’t argue. Her fingers slip into my coat pocket, press the fob into my palm. Our hands overlap a beat longer than necessary. The rings hum steady, a private pulse against my sternum.

We walk. Not faster. Not slower. My eyes sweep without moving much at all. The woman by the planter looks up; her screen is black. She tucks hair behind her ear, and I see the faint dust of white crystals in her cuff. Salt. Not spa-pretty. Work residue.

The man by the sedan finishes his call-that-never-was, slides into the driver’s seat, never checking mirrors. The SUV door shuts soundlessly, rubber kissing frame without a thump. A security camera pivots as we pass—no click—tracking us like a fingertip across a map.

“Almost there,” Cassie whispers. Even whispered, it lands like command—captain steel, don’t touch what’s mine. The tether tightens in answer.

The masked figure tilts its head toward the sound. I meet its gaze—if there are eyes—and let my face go blank. No snarl. No teeth. Just the furnace in me standing tall, patient and banked.

They freeze. Stillness you can hear. Then they vanish. Not a step. Not a door. Just gone, sliding sideways in the world the way glamours do when they’re too shy for an answer.

“Shroud,” Cassie breathes.

“I know.” My words shiver. I lock them down.

We reach the coupe. The remote unlock chirps too loud. I open the passenger door first, guide her in with a touch gentled by will. She buckles without looking away from the spa. Her hands tremble once, then steady.

I circle the hood. My arms prickle again—eyes in the grass. Or in the glass. A reflection wrong by a fraction: a white sleeve, a face bent out of geometry. I pivot—nothing. Only lake, asphalt, my own glare.

I slide in. The leather is cold where no one sat tonight. The engine purrs to life, precise and eager. My hands settle on the wheel, steady as iron. This isn’t the time to feign human clumsiness. I am Fae. My sight is sharper, my reflexes faster, my control absolute. Cassie needs me to drive like exactly what I am.

“Seat belt,” I say, because I need to say something not prayer, not curse. She’s already clipped in.

We roll out smooth. The coupe glides like it knows its job. I don’t check mirrors until the driveway. When I do, the woman with salt-dusted cuffs is gone. The masked figure hasn’t reappeared. The fountain still pours its false loop. The sign glows tasteful white.

Cassie is quiet, staring at the black line of the lake like it owes her an answer.

I want to ask if she’s okay. The words choke in my throat. My grip on the wheel aches; the ring digs into the soft skin at my finger’s base. My magic prowls, tail lashing, singing my fault my fault my fault.

“They were waiting,” I say at last. My voice doesn’t sound like mine. “Not for me.”

“For me.” Her tone tastes it like iron. She turns toward me. No haze left. Only that dangerous calm she saves for game point. “They wanted me docile.”

My laugh is short, ugly. “They wanted you portable.”

The word hangs obscene in the dark.

She breathes, slow and deliberate. “You pulled me back.”

“You anchored,” I correct too fast, because if I let her give me credit I’ll break. “I just—”

“—loved me out loud,” she says. Simple. Undeniable. And I nearly put us into a hedge.

Silence folds thick as velvet. Streetlights strobe the car’s interior like a pulse I can’t regulate. Every nerve I own is still back there in the lot, burning.

I aim us toward Ravenrest, white-knuckle but flawless. Ten and two. Superhuman sight parsing every light, every tire squeal. Not one mistake for them to follow. Not tonight.

The vow arrives as temperature. My blood ticks hotter, degree by degree, until the whole world tastes like copper and promise. If the Shroud thinks they can touch her—if they believe they can hum at Cassie through the seams of the world while I breathe—then Dominveil can learn what burning means.

I don’t say it. I press it into the tether. It thunders back, steady and bright.

Cassie doesn’t speak for three blocks. Then: “Mira.”

I glance, only a beat. “Yeah.”

Her left hand finds the space between the seats, palm up. I take it with my own right, keeping my left on the wheel. Our fingers lace, the rings humming a quiet chorus between us.

We drive like that—two girls with fresh polish and borrowed names, sliding through a city that pretends not to see the magic under its skin. My shoulders shake once. I breathe five in, seven out, until the heat in my ribs paces instead of claws.

Behind us, Silverrow shrinks to a tasteful glow, then disappears. The hum in my teeth fades to something I can file under later.

Now is for getting her home alive.

Now is for not letting go.