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Chapter Text

Morning came slow to Hogsmeade. The kind of gray morning that never truly woke, only lingered between sleep and light, like a held breath that refused to release.

Briar Williams sat at the small kitchen table near the window, watching frost melt along the glass. Outside, the street was still. Just the faint shiver of mist over the cobblestones, and the occasional creak of a cart wheel somewhere far off. The air had that dull chill of autumn outstaying its welcome. Wet, metallic, patient.

She stirred her tea absently, though it had gone cold some time ago. The spoon made a quiet, metallic circle in the cup, steady and rhythmic, as if by sound alone she could keep herself tethered to the world. The scent of bergamot had faded, replaced by something faintly mineral from the water. Like stone or rust.

It was always this way after Poppy left early for the woods. The house too quiet, the silence thick enough to touch. Briar tried to read sometimes, or to write in the journal she never touched, but lately her concentration had fled her. Everything seemed dulled, flattened by routine. Even the sunlight felt thin, a weak imitation of something once bright.

She had thought, once, that Hogsmeade would feel like freedom.

Now it only felt like waiting.

The kettle clicked faintly as it cooled. Somewhere in the walls, the wood creaked. Old beams shifting as though they, too, were restless. The little cottage had its moods. Some mornings, it felt almost alive. Others, like this one, it seemed to be holding its breath.

Briar reached for her journal, the leather soft from years of sitting useless, and opened it to a half-filled page. The ink in her quill had gone slightly dry; she had to press harder than usual to make it flow.

Restless she wrote, then stopped.

The word looked too clinical, like she was diagnosing herself. It wasn't even restlessness, not exactly. It was more like hunger. The kind that lived in the bones, not in the stomach.

She had everything she was supposed to want: a home, a friend who adored her, safety, purpose. Poppy had thrown herself into their rescue work with a kind of holy devotion, tracking poachers through the wild hills, nursing injured creatures back from the brink. Briar admired her for it. And so she helped, however she could.

But each day felt like another stitch in a life that didn't quite fit.

The beasts they saved looked at her with wide, dark eyes—half afraid, half trusting—as she pulled that slumbering ancient power from herself and conjured safe habitats for them. It was always easy to use her power that way. To flatten a poacher camp, to form a wall of rock around the beasts, to whirl flowing water and endless abundance around them. But she wondered sometimes if the beasts could see through her. If they sensed that though she healed and protected and saved, she did not believe in salvation.

It was a moral use of her power, and that was what she wanted. Though she was not passionate about it like Poppy was.

Poppy's voice broke the quiet.

"Briar?"

The sound of boots on the floorboards, a door swinging open, the sharp scent of morning air flooding the cottage. Poppy always brought the outside in with her: dirt under her nails, wind in her hair, the faint smell of pine and smoke clinging to her coat.

"You're up early," Briar said, closing the journal.

"I could say the same about you." Poppy grinned, brushing a strand of dark hair from her face. "I swear, you hardly sleep these days."

Briar smiled faintly. "You say that as though there's something worth sleeping through."

Poppy frowned at her tone but did not comment. She was used to Briar's moods. Used to the way her mind wandered into places conversation could not always follow.

"Just stopped by Brood and Peck. I'm heading out toward the woods. Ellie said there's been word of poachers near the edge of the forest. Wolves acting strangely, too. I was going to check it out before noon."

That drew Briar's attention. "Wolves?"

"Yes. Someone said they were seen circling the same stretch of trees for hours, not hunting. Just pacing. Almost like they were keeping an eye on something."

Briar's thoughts flickered briefly. Wolves, pacing the forest edge like sentinels. "I think I might've seen them, too," she said slowly. "Two nights ago, on the ridge near the old well path. I didn't think much of it at the time."

"That's likely the place." Poppy pulled on her gloves, already half turned toward the door. "If you can mark it on the map, I'll start there."

"I'll draw it for you." Briar rose and crossed to the desk, where a faded map of the Highlands was pinned to the wall. Her fingers traced the forest's outline, so familiar it might as well have been part of her own body. The parchment smelled faintly of dust and ink. "Here," she said, marking a small circle with her quill. "You'll pass the ridge just before dusk if you leave now. The wolves were restless, but not aggressive."

Poppy nodded. "I'll go see what's going on."

"Be careful, though. Promise me. Wolves are . . . well, wolves."

"Of course," Poppy said, smiling. "I always am."

That was not true, and they both knew it. Poppy had a streak of recklessness when it came to beasts that even kindness could not temper. But Briar did not press. She just watched her friend gather her things. The satchel of potions, the wand tucked into her sleeve, the glimmer of resolve in her eyes.

For a moment, envy struck her. Not of Poppy's bravery, but of her purpose. To believe so wholly in something. To know, without question, that your work meant more than yourself.

After Poppy left, the house fell silent again.

Briar lingered at the doorway long after her friend's figure vanished down the fog-lined road. The air outside smelled faintly of woodsmoke. Across the lane, the villagers were beginning to stir: shopkeepers sweeping their stoops, a child chasing a cat through the slush, a baker setting out loaves to cool.

She could almost admire their simplicity. The way their lives revolved around such small, tender things. Bread and warmth, gossip, weather.

And yet, when she looked at them, something in her recoiled.

They smiled too easily, she thought. As if the world were not full of ghosts.

She shut the door.

The cottage seemed larger when empty. Every room felt like an echo chamber of its own memories. Briar moved through it quietly, touching the edges of familiar things: the shelf of books lined with dust, the cracked teacup by the window, the dried flowers hanging from the rafters. Each carried a faint reside of another life.

She paused before a too-small Ravenclaw jumper thrown carelessly over the back of a chair—Ominis had given it to her in their sixth year. Yes, it was small, though she slid it over herself on chilly nights. It was worn. Familiar.

Ominis.

Her eyes darted to the sofa where they had collapsed together the day before, skin to skin. It was a nice distraction, the warmth of another body. At least just for a moment. Though the whole encounter had been thick with concern from Ominis. You seem bored to death, he'd remarked. And Briar was. Her life was endlessly monotonous, but that was not worth saying. Instead, she just kissed him to silence him.

It wasn't that she did not love him. She did, in her way. He was devoted after all their years together. But lately, his love had begun to feel less like safety and more like a promise she had not made.

Still, Ominis of all people, knew what it was to escape the shadow of family. It was what drew her to him back in Hogwarts. They had banded together after the fallout of those fifth-year shadows. A younger Ominis once told her, You're not your parents. You're not doomed to repeat their mistakes.

And she had desperately wanted to believe him.

So they clung to one another.

She suddenly felt cold.

Briar lit the hearth, though it did not help the chill. The fire cracked softly, its light breathing against the walls. She crouched before it, watching the embers shift and sigh. She stood, catching her reflection in the mirror above. Half shadow, half flame.

The longer she looked, the less she recognized herself.

She took a book from the shelf. A worn volume of magical theory, but the words blurred after a few lines. Her thoughts wandered, circling the edges of memory like wolves themselves. Faces, voices, fragments of the past rising unbidden: the echo of a duel, a cry in the dark, the rush of power that had once burned like light behind her eyes.

She pressed her hands to her eyes until the memories quieted.

Outside, the wind had picked up, scraping along the walls. Somewhere in the distance, she swore she could hear those wolves howling. Long and low and mournful. The sound raised the hairs along her arms.

Briar stood abruptly, tossing the book aside. She snatched her cloak off the hook and fastened it tightly around her throat. The cottage seemed to watch her as she turned the key in the lock, as though it, too, knew she wasn't coming back anytime soon.

She hesitated at the door, then stepped out into the gray.

The fog was thicker now, the kind that blurred edges and swallowed sound. Her boots started down the village road. Her breath came in pale clouds. Somewhere beyond the village stones, the wolves were still pacing.

But somewhere within the village stones, Ominis waited.

She did not know if she went to find him for comfort or for distraction. Perhaps both. Perhaps neither.

But she walked faster all the same.

Chapter Text

Ominis came with a muffled grunt and collapsed into the crook of Briar's neck.

The village bustled on outside the windows, a low hum beneath the quiet of their shared breath. The fog had been thick all morning, the kind that clung to everything it touched, as if trying to hold the world still. Even now, the air that drifted in through the cracked window was damp, heavy with that peculiar scent of wet wood and chimney smoke. It clung to Ominis's skin wherever he went, the faint, ghostly humidity that always seemed to follow fog-born mornings in Hogsmeade.

The outside fuss was muted by the walls of his house. Though the quiet did not soothe him. It never did.

He had grown too accustomed to listening for trouble—the scrape of boots on cobblestones, the faint metallic tang of spellfire in the air, the wet crack of a hex gone wrong—to ever rest easily when silence fell. To anyone else, it would have been peace. To him, it was the pause before a curse was cast.

Briar's voice had broken that silence an hour ago when she appeared unannounced at his office. It had not been her usual voice. The low, easy one she used when laughing with Poppy over tea or coaxing frightened creatures out of their cages. No, this had been the other voice. The one that sounded like it came from someone walking on the edge of exhaustion, brittle but steady, like a cracked cup that somehow still held water.

She had not said why she came. She never did. And he never asked.

Ominis steadied his breathing. Slow. Even. Trained.

He pressed a soft kiss to her collarbone before sliding out, wordlessly reaching for his wand on the bedside table. With a flick, he vanished the mess between her thighs. The faint tang of their closeness lingered anyway, something raw and human and vulnerable that magic could never quite erase.

Briar lay with her back to him, hair sprawled across the pillow like a spill of silk. The scent of her—wildgrass, smoke, something sharp beneath—filled the air. He reached for her hand, found it half-hidden in the folds of the blanket, and felt her tense before she forced herself to relax.

He knew that tension. It was not fear. It was distance.

"Why'd you come to me this time?" he asked quietly

She gave a sound between a sigh and a laugh. "Why do you always assume I come for a reason?"

"Am I wrong?"

The air shifted as she turned toward him, the whisper of her hair brushing his bare chest. "Maybe I just missed you," she said.

"Maybe," he echoed, though her pulse betrayed her. It beat fast beneath his fingers. Restless. Guarded.

He wanted to tell her he could always tell when she was running. From something, from herself, from him. He could hear it in her breathing, in the way her words slowed like she was choosing which truths not to say. But he did not. He had learned that Briar's secrets did not want discovering. They just needed to be left alone long enough to exhale.

He leaned back against the headboard, wrapping the blanket loosely around her shoulders. She did not thank him—she never did—but she rested her head against him, and for a time, the world was narrowed to the sound of the wind scraping against the shutters.

It should have been a peace. But the silence pressed too close, too aware. Ominis felt the unease curl beneath his ribs, that quiet fear that even when she was in his arms, she was already halfway gone.

"Marry me," he said, barely above a whisper.

Briar went still. The kind of still that made his heart stutter.

It was not the first time he had asked, and yet the weight of it hung between them as if it were. She did not move. Did not breath. The silence stretched thin.

Finally she lifted her head. "Ominis . . ."

"I'm not joking," he said. Too evenly. Too controlled. "I mean it. I've meant it every time."

"I know," she said softly. "That's the problem."

He turned slightly toward her, hoping his sightless eyes gave nothing away. "It's been five years, Briar. You know me. You trust me."

"I do trust you."

"Then why not?"

She exhaled slowly. "Because marriage isn't what you think it is. It's not safety. It's not love. It's . . . a cage, if you're not careful."

He flinched before he could stop himself. "You think I would ever—"

"No," she cut in gently. "I think you mean well. But so did my father. So did my mother, before she didn't."

That landed like a blow. The air between them turned heavy, thick with all the ghosts neither had named.

He wanted to tell her he was not them, that he would never let her feel trapped again. But he knew words would not reach her. Briar did not believe in promises. She believed in patterns. And patterns had never failed her.

"I expected you to understand," she murmured. "Because of our families."

"I do."

"Then why do you still want that?"

"Because I want you," he said simply. "And because this is a chance for us to do it right."

"I know you want me, but you can have me without marriage trapping us," she whispered.

"I know you're scared—"

"Yes, I am." Her voice cracked, just slightly. "I need you to understand that I don't want marriage after seeing what my parents' marriage was like. We survived our families, Ominis. But that doesn't mean we're free of them. I have no intention of ever stepping in that same direction."

He felt her heartbeat—uneven, quick—and knew she was telling the truth. It sank into him like cold rain. He stayed there, fingers brushing over the curve of her shoulder, feeling the tremor in her breath.

He had spent years learning her rhythms. The soft intake she made before refusing something, the way she fell silent when she was lying to herself, the way she could vanish even while standing right beside him. He had loved her through every silence. Every retreat. Every time she came back only to leave again.

Poppy once told Ominis that Briar was beautiful in the kind of way that made people look twice. Chestnut hair, hazel eyes that veered toward green or brown depending on the day, full and soft lips, cheekbones that were just stark enough to sharpen her face perfectly. . . as if Ominis could even understand what any of that meant.

To him, she had always been sound before sight.

He thought patience would be enough. That love, steady and unyielding, could outlast her fear. But now, something in him twisted. Something darker, something dangerous.

He swallowed it down.

"Marry me, Briar," he said again, quieter this time. "I'm not trying to trap you."

"I think you want something stable," she said. "And I'm not that. You know I'm not."

"You could be," he said, voice tightening. "If you'd just stop fighting everything."

Her pause cut the air like glass. "That," she said softly, "is exactly what my father used to say."

He drew a slow breath through his teeth. "That's not fair."

"Maybe not. But it's what I heard."

And that was the end of it. The moment split between them like a wound that refused to close.

Briar rose, the sound of fabric sliding over her skin whispering finality. She pulled her shirt over her shoulders, fastened the buttons with quiet, deliberate movements. Every sound was a goodbye.

"I should go," she murmured.

"Stay," he said, too quickly.

"I don't want Poppy to worry if she returns and I'm not home. Besides, you've been gone from your post for nearly an hour. Natty's probably inventing excuses for you again."

He did not argue. Could not. Because it was true.

So he sat there, listening as she moved around the room, her steps measured, sure. The small sounds she made—her boots brushing the floor, the faint click of her wand being pocketed—were all he had left of her.

At the door, she hesitated. "Ominis . . . I don't want to fight. And I'm not trying to hurt you."

He almost laughed. "Then stop leaving."

"I just . . . You deserve someone who wants what you do."

"And you deserve someone who doesn't ask for anything at all," he replied, tired and bitter.

"That's not what I said."

"No," he murmured. "But it's what you mean."

The door shut softly.

He stayed there long after she was gone. The air still smelled like her, wildgrass and something that burned. The warmth she had left in the sheets bled away into cold.

Outside, laughter drifted up from the tavern. Ordinary laughter. Ordinary lives. He hated how much he envied them.

For all his status in Hogsmeade—the uniform, the authority, the grateful voices of the shopkeepers—none of it touched the hollowness spreading inside him. Safety, respect, order . . . they meant nothing when the person he wanted most treated him like refuge, not home.

He clenched his fists until his nails bit into his palms. The pain grounded him. Reminded him who he was: an officer, a protector, a man whose restraint was his armor.

Five years, he thought. And still she will not say yes.

He rose slowly, pulling on his uniform, every button fastened with mechanical precision. When he picked up his wand, it vibrated faintly. Alive, sensing the tension beneath his skin. He almost wanted to lash out, to feel something shatter. But he didn't.

Duty came first. It always did.

He stepped outside. The fog swallowed him whole. The damp pressed against his skin like memory. The cobblestones slicked beneath his boots as he walked toward the square.

The world went on. Hogsmeade breathed, unaware that a man who kept it safe was quietly unraveling inside his own calm.

He passed The Three Broomsticks, where voices rose in laughter. He nodded to a villager who greeted him by name. His face arranged itself into something composed, distant. The perfect officer.

Inside, though, his thoughts pulsed like an open wound.

He told himself it did not matter. That he could live with this. That patience was a virtue.

But as the fog coiled around him, he realized something that chilled him more than the cold ever could:

He was not patient anymore.

He was waiting.

Waiting for her to come back. Waiting for her to break. Waiting for the moment he would not be able to let her leave again.

The wind rattled the leaves from trees somewhere above him, carrying her name through the mist like a ghost.

Ominis kept walking. Back into the heart of the village. Back into his duty. Back into the silence.

Alone.

Chapter Text

The air outside Hogsmeade begun to clear as the day wore on, no longer suffocating with humid fog clouds every time she drew a breath. Still, Briar pulled her cloak tighter as she crossed the stone bridge toward the pens, the faint scent of wet hay and dirt pressing against her nose. The world was dim, suspended between the gray of day and the first tint of twilight. That hour when everything felt half-real, when nothing could quite be trusted to remain what it was.

Her thoughts drifted, as they often did, but this time toward Ominis. To the feel of his hand at her throat earlier, the warmth and weight of it, the way his voice had softened when he asked her again—marry me. She tried not to dwell on the look at crossed his face when she refused once again: not anger exactly, but something quieter, more dangerous. Disappointment given form.

She shook it off and focused on the pens.

The moonclaves blinked up at her sleepily from their enclosure, their pale eyes reflecting slivers of the sunset as she checked the wards. Poppy had reinforced the barriers only the day before, and Briar had transfigured the crumbling stone wall around them with her Ancient Magic, but she still traced the pens with the tip of her wand, murmuring the protective incantations under her breath. The spellight cast her face in dull gold, dancing faintly against the last wisps of the chill fog.

She checked the food and water. Then the creatures themselves.

Everything appeared in order, yet the silence gnawed. Normally Poppy would hum to herself while tending the pens, an old habit from school. The lilting tune that always carried from one habitat to the next. Tonight there was only the soft crumble of stone and the distant sigh of wind through the trees.

She forced herself through the rest of her rounds, stopping at Brood and Peck to check on supplies. Ellie behind the counter tried to draw her into idle talk: about her and Ominis (which she very much did not want to discuss), about the rumored increase in poacher sightings near the southern forest edge, and those peculiar wolves Poppy was tracking down. But Briar heard very little. She smiled where she was meant to, nodded where politeness required, but her mind stayed caught on the tension in Ominis's voice. And that flicker of unease she couldn't name.

By the time she returned home, dusk had deepened to night. The cottage she shared with Poppy stood dark except for the faint glow from the hearth, which had burned low to embers. The air was cold, unmoving. Briar hung her cloak on its hook and called out for Poppy, softly at first, then louder.

No answer.

Her chest tightened. Poppy was always home before nightfall. Always. And if she wasn't, it was because she was planning on raiding a poacher camp. Which in that case, Briar was always right beside her. She told herself not to worry, that her friend had likely gone farther than planned, maybe chasing a trail or freeing some creature caught in poacher traps. But the house felt wrong without her. Empty, like a cage missing its bird.

She made tea to keep her hands busy. By the time the kettle hissed, her nerves were raw from silence. She sat the small table near the window—the small table where she'd once watched frost melt that gray morning—and tried to lose herself in the mundane rhythm of sipping, breathing, waiting. But the air had changed. The hills beyond the village edge seemed to pulse with something unseen.

Then the light in the room shifted.

A silver shape coalesced out of nothing and appeared to seemingly float through the walls of their house. A Patronus, bright and trembling, its edges fraying like smoke. For a heartbeat Briar couldn't breath. She recognized the creature instantly: a small, but fierce-looking doe. Poppy's.

Something was wrong.

The Patronus flickered erratically, its eyes wide, frantic. It didn't speak, not in words. It only looked at her, then turned sharply toward the window and vanished through the glass like a drop sugar dissolving into water.

Briar was on her feet before her chair hit the floor.

-----

The night outside was deep and wet and cold. Briar ran, wand in hand, her boots skidding on the slick cobblestones as she followed the faint afterglow the Patronus had left behind. It led her out of Hogsmeade and turned toward the tree line, the forest rising like a wall of black teeth ahead.

"Poppy?" she called, though the word died before it left her lips. The forest swallowed sound here.

She pressed on, deeper. The mist thickened, carrying the smell of damp leaves and rot. Her wandlight barely pierced the dark, and still she followed the faint shimmer ahead, that ghostly silver thread that tugged her forward.

She walked. Endlessly. Deeper and deeper into the forest she went. So deep that she knew she would never be able to find her way out again. Yet the glowing doe went on. Her only option would be to Apparate home, not navigate back through the endless sea of trees and darkness.

Somewhere between the eighth or ninth ridge of trees, she felt the change.

It was subtle at first. A coolness against her skin, a distortion in the air, like stepping through a veil of oil. The forest sounds dimmed. She watched as the silver doe warped, then steadied again. Briar's senses sharpened to pain. Her heart pounded. Every instinct screamed wrong.

She narrowed her eyes, scanning the space the doe had just walked through. There—the faint pulse of a ward, woven into the very soil and trees of the forest itself. A ward that the Patronus wanted her to walk into . . .

She reached a hand out. It rippled under her touch like a heartbeat.

A glamour.

A complex once, layered over time by many hands. She could feel the overlapping threads. Shielding Charms, Disillusionments, Repelling enchantments, even ancient hexwork. No single witch or wizard could have crafted something so intricate. It was a network, a deliberate concealment built to hide something vast.

No ordinary person would have been able to to recognize it, much less step into it as Briar was about to. She knew it was only because Poppy's Patronus held led her straight to it. And that meant Poppy had to be in there.

She hesitated. Then, bracing herself, she pushed forward.

The world fractured. For a dizzying instant, the trees melted and reformed, and Briar stumbled through the shimmer. And found herself standing at the edge of something impossible.

A city of tents and wood and shadow sprawled before her.

A dark wizard camp.

The sight rooted her to the spot. Dozens—no, hundreds—of canvas structures clustered around a central tent large enough to house a dragon. It was the largest dark wizard encampment she'd ever seen, and Briar had seen many. It sprawled endlessly, so monstrously large that it resembled a small city. Smoke rose in serpentine curls from fire pits, diffusing through the veil of enchantments. Spelllight glowed faintly in the darkness, illuminating figures moving through the haze. Men and women robed in black, some faces half-hidden by masks and hoods.

Briar's breath caught as she remembered herself. She quickly crouched behind a crate instead of standing foolishly in plain sight. This wasn't some ragged encampment of outlaws. It was an organized force. Built, fortified, hidden.

How has no one found this? she thought, stomach twisting. How have Ominis and Natty not—

Her pulse stuttered. The answer came before she finished the thought: because no one was meant to. The glamour was too elaborate, too anciently knotted. This wasn't new. It had been here for years, perhaps even since before Rookwood's fall.

Movement to her left caught her attention. Low, graceful shapes pacing between tents. For a heartbeat, her brain refused to register them, but when it did, a chill rushed through her.

Mongrels.

But not wild ones. Their eyes glowed faintly green, their posture eerily composed. Dark Mongrels, enchanted and obedient, padding silently like guards around the perimeter. The same "wolves" she'd warned Poppy about.

And Poppy had come here because of her.

Briar moved as quietly as she could, the grass slick beneath her boots. The camp was alive with low voices, laughter in the distance, the hum of magical wards whispering overhead. She crept between the shadows, each step measured, breath shallow. The smell of smoke and potion-brew hung heavy in the air.

The Patronus's fading light drew her onward until she reached a clearing near the camp's center. There—the faint glint of metal.

A cage.

Poppy sat within it, her hair tangled, dirt streaking her face. She had a black eye and a few gashes on her legs, but her eyes were bright and clear. When she saw Briar, she startled. Then shook her head violently. A warning.

Briar ignored it. Now was her chance. The nearest dark wizard was nearly fifty paces away, most of them being gathered around a distant fire filled with rowdy laughs. Hoping shadows would help conceal her, she crept forward.

"Poppy," Briar whispered, rushing forward.

Her friend pressed her hand against the bars.

"Briar, get out of here. Now," Poppy rasped, shaking her head again.

"Poppy, look at you," Briar reached into the cage, quickly healing the gashes on her leg so she could run. She had no idea if they could Apparate out of here. Likely not, considering how extensive the ward seemed. "What happened?"

"The wolves. They—" Poppy rambled, jittery. "They're dark mongrels. Controlled by these people. I got too close and they—they started attacking me. This place . . ." Poppy drew a shaking breath. "I would've never found it, but the—the wolves dragged me here themselves."

The gashes on her leg.

Briar turned her attention to the lock on the cage. Surely a simple Alohomora would not break it. Poppy reached through the bars, seizing her wrist.

"Briar," Poppy commanded, voice suddenly strong. "You need to leave me and bring others. Tell Ominis. Tell the Aurors. I saw him. It's—"

Voices arose behind them.

They both whirled.

"Go! Now!" Poppy pleaded.

Briar ignored her again, and instead started fumbling with the lock. Alohomora did not work. More fumbling.

But through her panic was when Briar realized it. The path she had taken, the ease with which she'd reached her friend, the silence of the wolf guards. There were eyes on her. There had been, all along.

A twig snapped behind her.

Briar spun, wand raised, a curse queued on her lips. But it died before it ever formed. The camp had gone utterly still. Even the mist seemed to hold its breath.

From between the skeletal trees and city of tents, figures emerged. Three of them. Each deliberate, each too composed for simple guards. They moved like predators who had already chosen their prey, gliding through the haze with unnerving precision.

Her heart thrummed against her ribs. They had seen her. They'd seen her the moment she crossed the ward. She could feel it now. The prickling on the back of her neck, the faint, electric hum of magic closing in. A trap. It had always been a trap.

She pressed closer to the cage where Poppy huddled, her wand steady despite the tremor running through her fingers. "Stay back or I'll cast," she warned, though the words came out hoarse, thin against the dark.

The figures didn't stop.

They parted.

And through the narrow gap between them, another figure stepped forward.

Briar immediately knew she was hallucinating.

He moved with an easy confidence. Stubborn locks of hair fell onto his forehead, though his features were sharp: cheekbones like carved stone, a faint scar cutting through the corner of his brow, and his eyes—Merlin, those eyes—burned gold-brown like old brandy lit from within.

He stopped a few paces away, studying her as though she were a particularly interesting ghost. A small smile touched his lips, slow and deliberate, curling into that familiar smirk she'd once thought charming and now found cruel.

Yes, she was certainly hallucinating.

Because standing in front of her was the very boy she helped send to Azakaban.

Sebastian Sallow.

"Well, if it isn't my favorite little traitor."

Chapter Text

For a heartbeat, Briar thought her eyes were lying to her.

The shape before her could not be real. Not after all these years. Not after Azakban.

But there he was.

Sebastian Sallow.

The fog around him seemed to breath. Coiling through the folds of his black coat, catching on the shimmer of a dozen unseen wards that pulsed faintly against the dark. The air itself bent toward him, like the night recognized its own. She might have gone mad, but she was certain it was him. His hair was the same as she remembered. Dark and unruly, a few damp strands falling across his forehead. And his eyes—those sharp, ruinous eyes—found hers instantly, and remained fixed on her as if she had stepped out of a dream he had once tried to forget.

"Briar Williams," he said, his voice hoarse and low, roughened by time and something far darker. He tasted her name like an incantation. "Of course it would be you."

Her pulse stuttered, each beat a shard of ice. He should have been rotting behind iron walls, with the sea screaming through the cracks in his cell. She had seen the Aurors drag him away. Had stood beside Ominis and heard him whisper, We did the right thing.

But he was here. Alive. Breathing. More alive, somehow, than anyone she had ever known.

She blinked. Once. Twice. He didn't vanish.

Behind him, the three figures solidified from the haze. One was a tan-skinned man built like a solider, with chocolate hair and eyes, though his gaze seemed entirely too warm for a criminal. Next to him stood another. Slimmer, with slanted eyes the color of ink and hair to match. His expression was all edge, no mercy. The sight of him made something instinctive in her recoil.

And next to him—

Imelda Reyes?

For a moment, Briar's mind refused to arrange the image correctly. The same girl who had once raced her broom over the Black Lake, laughing and teasing, hair streaming in the wind—who had flown straight from graduation to try out for the Holyhead Harpies—was now standing among poachers and dark wizards. Her Quidditch leathers replaced by black armor threaded with sigils that drank the light around them.

Briar's throat tightened. Yes, I'm hallucinating. That had to be it. The air shimmered with protective enchantments and the acrid tang of burnt spells. Behind her, Poppy's breathing was quick, uneven. Around them, others began to step from the shadows. Faces half-lit by firelight, eyes bright with suspicion.

"She's the one," someone spat, jabbing a finger at Poppy. "That beast-lover who's been freeing our catches."

"Kill them both," another hissed.

The crowd's voices swelled. Layered, mocking, hungry. Fragments reached her ears. Poacher's bane. Beast-sympathizer. What if the Ministry sent her?

Sebastian did not turn. He only tilted his head, listening. The movement was measured, deliberate.

When he finally spoke, the camp fell silent.

"Poppy Sweeting," he said, gaze drifting to the cage where Poppy clung to the bars. "You've been a thorn in our sides for months."

Poppy lifted her chin. "Then I must be doing something right."

Sebastian's mouth curved, though it wasn't quite a smile. "Perhaps." His eyes flicked to Briar. "But it seems you've brought something far more interesting with you tonight."

Briar's voice came out rough. "You should still be in Azkaban."

He raised a brow, almost amused. "And yet, here I stand. Isn't that curious?"

Her wand felt heavier than it ever had. She didn't remember drawing it, but there it was, trembling in her grip. Against this many, it wouldn't even matter. Still, she couldn't lower it. "How?"

Sebastian took a step closer. He did not answer.

The ground felt unsteady beneath her. She had told herself, over and over, that turning him in had been necessary. That justice was not betrayal. That mercy had been part of it. But looking at him now, his eyes alive with something feral and human all at once, she wasn't sure mercy had anything to do with it.

Briar had never been so frightened, standing face-to-face with him: the ghost of boy she had once called friend, now a man who could commit such horrible acts with a mocking smirk on his face all the while.

"You're a monster," she whispered. "I watched you murder your uncle and feel no remorse for it."

"And I watched you destroy my life."

The words hung in the air between them. Simple. Final.

Behind him, the tan-skinned man shifted. "Boss," he murmured, "what should we do with them?"

The camp stirred again. Voices rose in ugly unison, demanding blood.

Sebastian's gaze swept sideways, cold and certain. "Seems a death is being demanded."

"And the other?" the man asked.

Sebastian tilted his head, considering. His tone was commanding when it came, steel underneath it. An order from their ringleader. "Too suspicious if two go missing. Obliviate her. Send her back into the woods."

The pale man with the cruel eyes nodded. "Yes, sir. I'll handle it."

That was it. Final. No hesitation.

Briar's stomach twisted. Poppy was going to die.

Poppy let out a shaky breath behind the bars of her cage.

"No! Leave her out of this!" Briar shouted before she could stop herself. "I'm the one who sent her here! It's me you want!"

"Briar, stop—" Poppy's voice cracked.

But Briar's rose higher, desperate. "She's done nothing to deserve this! She didn't even—"

"Briar," Poppy cut in, her tone trembling but resigned, "enough."

Briar turned. Poppy's eyes were wet, shining in the firelight. She looked heartbreakingly calm. Acceptance had settled over her like frost. She could see it in her eyes.

"No," Briar breathed. "No, no, no."

Poppy's lips trembled into something like a smile. "I'll be okay, Briar."

But she wouldn't. She had too much good left in her, too much light. The world needed her. Her gentleness, her courage, the way she believed that even monsters deserved mercy. It wasn't fair. It was all so cruelly unfair when Briar, on the other hand—had nothing left to give. Nothing to live for. And yet she would be the one to walk away from this alive.

"I'll take her place," she heard herself say.

Poppy's head snapped toward her. "Briar—no."

"I—I'll take her place," Briar repeated, louder now after realizing what had escaped her lips. Her gaze locked on Sebastian. "She doesn't deserve this. And I know you'd rather have me."

Far be it from Sebastian Sallow to give up the chance to exact revenge on the very person that tried sending him to Azkaban all those year ago. She knew, with absolute certainty, that he'd agree.

Something flickered behind his eyes. Surprise, maybe, or consideration. Then nothing. Just that same terrifying calm.

Poppy's sobs broke the stillness. She reached for Briar through the bars, fingers trembling. "Don't do this. Please."

Briar's jaw set. "Trust me."

"I won't let you!" Poppy screamed, turning toward Sebastian. "Don't listen to her!"

He took another step forward. The air between them seemed to tremble. "You always were self-sacrificing, weren't you?" he murmured. "Tell me, is this for your friend—or your guilt?"

The question struck like a blow. Briar could not breath.

"Release the girl," he said finally.

The cage groaned open. Poppy stumbled forward, only to be seized by two guards. "No! Briar!"

Briar forced a steadiness she didn't feel. "Go."

"Briar—"

"Go!" Her voice cracked like a spell.

Poppy froze. Then, trembling, she was dragged away into the mist, her cries echoing until the trees swallowed them. Briar silently layered a shield around her mind, a small act of rebellion while she still held her wand. They would not take Poppy's memories. Not if she could help it.

But she did not watch her go beyond that. If she did, she would break.

Silence returned, brittle as glass. The fires crackled. Leaves whispered under the weight of the wards enclosing the camp.

Sebastian studied her for a long, unbearable moment, until she felt skinned under his gaze. "You always did think you could fix everything," he murmured. "Take her wand."

She did not answer.

The tan-skinned man stepped closer, voice low. "You heard him. Wand."

Briar hesitated. For half a breath, she considered fighting. Unleashing the raw magic that burned in her veins, the ancient kind that could split stone. But the man moved faster. He ripped the wand from her hand so violently the wood splintered her palm.

Somehow, that humiliation—the ease with which he disarmed her without any spell—cut deeper than fear.

Their eyes met briefly—that warm chocolate brown that was so out of place—before he turned away.

The dark-eye man seized her arm, his grip iron. "Get in."

The crowd watched as he dragged her toward the open cage, their whispers following like smoke. They knew. They all knew who she was now. The girl who had betrayed Sebastian Sallow to Azkaban.

She stumbled as he dragged her to the threshold. The cage loomed like rusted jaws, waiting to swallow her whole. Smaller cages ringed the camp, faint shapes shifting within. Beasts, other captives, ghosts with no names left.

Sebastian did not move. He stood where he was, carved from darkness and pride.

The man shoved her harder, and she hit the far wall. Pain jolted up her arm.

"Should've killed you," the man muttered, spitting into the dirt.

Briar did not respond. She sank to the ground, back against the bars, breath trembling in and out.

The door clanged shut. The sound of the lock sliding home rang like a verdict.

One by one, the crowd dispersed until only Sebastian remained, framed in the shifting firelight.

He looked at her. Not with mercy, not even with hatred, but something colder. Possession. Triumph.

A cruel, knowing smile ghost across his face before he turned way, disappearing into the heart of his camp. His voice carried, low and commanding, the camp already moving to his rhythm.

Briar pressed her palm against the bars. The iron bit into her skin.

It was cold. Stiff. Unyielding.

Like touching a corpse.

And for the first time, she realized that she would die in this place.

Chapter Text

The day had a strange, brittle quiet about it. The kind that pressed too tightly against the eardrums, as if the air itself was waiting for something to shatter. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.

Ominis stood just outside his office in the Hogsmeade square, the butt of his wand resting loosely in his palm. Beneath the gentle hum of morning life—the chime of shop doors, the faint laughter drifting from Honeydukes, the rhythmic thump of the delivery cart—there was another sound. A murmur. Furtive. Directionless at first, like the rustling of something alive beneath the calm surface of the village.

People whispering someone's name.

Not in the usual way.

He turned his head slightly, attuning his senses to the undercurrent. The whispers sharpened, splintering into words.

"Gone mad, she has . . . "

"Running about screaming of dark wizards—"

"Poor girl, perhaps she saw a ghost and lost her wits—"

"Briar Williams, she said. Taken."

Ominis's spine straightened, the syllables hitting him with a jolt that seemed to reverberate down his bones.

Briar.

The air changed temperature. The sound of his own pulse seemed to grow loud in the stillness.

He pivoted toward the voice, his wand hand steady though every muscle beneath his coat had gone rigid. The cobblestones beneath his boots were slick with the morning's rain. Somewhere nearby, a cart wheel creaked. He could smell sugar and ink and the faint, metallic tang of unease.

"Excuse me," he said, his voice cool and level. Trained authority cloaked in civility. It was the tone of a man used to obedience before fear even set in. The chatter ceased immediately.

He stopped beside one of the gossips, a young man whose heart he could practically hear hammering. Honeydukes assistant, by the cloying scent of sugar that clung to him.

"Who," Ominis asked, "has gone mad?"

"P—Poppy Sweeting, Officer," the boy stammered. "She's been running around the square saying Miss Williams was taken. By dark wizards, she said."

Ominis's grip on his wand tightened imperceptibly. "Taken," he repeated, his tone tasting the word, rolling it over like something rancid on his tongue.

"Yes, sir. Claims they've got her caged." A nervous swallow. "Said some man escaped from Azkaban and is leading them."

For a moment, Ominis thought the boy was jesting. Some cruel rumor spun from village boredom. But there was no mockery in the assistant's tone, only fear.

He gave a short nod of dismissal and strode toward the sound of commotion. His boots clicked sharply against the wet stone, each step measured, deliberate.

The crowd parted around him as he neared the center of the square. The noise coalesced into a single frantic voice. One that trembled with exhaustion and hysteria in equal measure.

"—I saw him, I swear it! Sebastian Sallow. He's escaped Azkaban somehow!"

"Who?" someone asked, half laughing, half horrified.

"He's leading them! Please. Someone has to help her! They've got Briar!"

The voice cracked on the last word, brittle and wild. Ominis could hear the ripple that went through the crowd. The uncomfortable shuffling, the pitying murmurs. The name Sebastian Sallow hung heavy in the air like a curse, a ghost summoned and made flesh again.

He didn't need his sight to know every eye was turned toward Poppy Sweeting.

He could hear her sobbing breath, the stifled cries of a young woman unmoored by terror.

She had, indeed, gone mad.

Ominis pushed through the onlookers until he was close enough that his voice could cut through the noise.

"Poppy."

Her gasp broke through the din. "Ominis!" she cried, and he heard the scuffle of her boots as she rushed toward him. "Thank Merlin. Where have you been? I've been looking for you and Natty!"

"Natty's on assignment," he said, tone steady, clipped. "And I was completing my rounds. What's all this about?"

"Ominis, you have to listen to me!" Her voice shook. "She took my place. Briar's been taken. By Sebastian Sallow. He's escaped Azkaban, I swear it!"

He reached for her before she could say another word, catching her shoulders with firm but measured hands. Her body trembled beneath his touch. She was damp, cold, and smelled of mud and fear.

"Let's take this inside," he murmured, gentling his tone. "Before you frighten the entire village."

His grip never wavered, even as he steered her through the murmuring crowd. He didn't need to see their faces to know what they were thinking. Poor Poppy, gone the way of all those who stare too long into the forest.

Inside his office, the door shut behind them with a decisive thud. The air within was close and still, steeped in the familiar scents of parchment, ink and lamp oil. Files lined the walls, stacked in careful order. Everything here was control. Logic. The only space that truly belonged to him.

He guided her to the chair opposite his desk. "Sit."

She obeyed, though her breaths came fast and uneven.

He circled the desk, setting his wand down beside a neat pile of reports. "Now," he said, his voice measured but not unkind, "tell me exactly what you think you saw."

"Not think, Ominis. I did see it." Her words came in a torrent. "Briar and I—I was in the forest, checking on the wolves that had been sighted near the ridge. They attacked. Dragged me to this place. A camp. A dark wizard camp. There were dozens of tents, maybe hundreds. A whole city of them."

She paused, a shudder running through her breath. "I sent my Patronus to Briar. It led her straight there. But they took her. They wanted to kill me, but she—she offered herself instead."

Her voice cracked apart on the last syllable.

Ominis said nothing at first. The only sound in the room was the clock ticking, slow and inexorable. He let the silence stretch, a deliberate space into which her panic echoed back at her.

"And who," he said finally, his tone almost too soft, "did you say these dark wizards were following?"

"Sebastian Sallow."

Something in the air seemed to harden.

For an instant, Ominis went utterly still. The sound of his own breathing seemed too loud in his ears.

Her voice trembled on. "He looked different—older, of course. But it was him. I swear it."

He exhaled quietly through his nose, the sound so faint it barely stirred the air. "Poppy," he said gently, "Sebastian Sallow is not loitering about the Forest. He is far, far away. Briar and I both made certain of that. You remember—Azkaban. Years ago."

"I know that," she whispered. "I know the story. But I saw him. He took her. He caged her."

"Cage," he repeated, tilting his head slightly, as though listening to the word itself. "Do you realize how that sounds?"

He leaned forward, voice a razor sheathed in velvet. "You're suggesting a prisoner escaped Azkaban, built a massive camp in the woods, and captured you and Briar—all without a single trace? Without the Ministry, without me, noticing? If even one prisoner escaped, it would be in every paper because no one escapes Azkaban."

"Look, I don't know how, Ominis," she said, desperation thick in her throat. "But I swear on Merlin's—"

"Enough."

The word landed like a spell. The air in the room changed again, went thin, crystalline.

Ominis leaned forward, fingers laced loosely on the desk. "Do you know what happens when people start spreading tales like that? Panic. Doubt. And the poor fool who begins them is branded unwell. Do you want that reputation, Poppy? Do you want to be known as the mad girl who cried dark wizard?"

"I'm not lying. Please. You have to help her. She's in danger—"

"I'm sure Briar's fine." The softness in his tone disappeared, leaving something cool and deliberate in its place. "She often vanishes for days when she needs space. You, of all people, know that."

"She wouldn't just disappear without a word."

"Wouldn't she?" His mouth twitched, the faintest edge of bitterness bleeding through. "She's been avoiding me since yesterday."

That made Poppy falter.

Ominis tapped a rhythm on the desk with two fingers, a precise, irritated sound. "We argued," he said simply. "About marriage. Again."

He exhaled, almost as if confessing. "I don't understand it. Why she doesn't want to marry me. After everything, after years together, we're good for each other."

"Ominis," Poppy said slowly, confusion rippling through her voice. "What does that have to do with any of this?"

"Everything. Maybe that's why she's run off." His lips twisted. "You're her closest friend. Surely she's told you why she doesn't want to marry me."

"Bloody hell, Ominis," she whispered. "Your partner, Briar, has been taken and caged by dark wizards. And you're asking why she won't marry you?"

"Because your story simply isn't plausible," he said evenly.

Her frustration spilled over. "Fine. She loves you," she said quickly, as though the words might placate him. "You know she does. She's just not ready. She's been through too much. Her family, her—"

"Yes," he murmured. "Her family." The tone turned dangerous, silk drawn over steel. "As if I, of all people, wouldn't understand what that means. Tell me, has she ever said she doesn't want me?

"Ominis—"

"Answer the question."

"I don't know, okay?" Poppy shot back. "But you're not listening to me. None of this matters when Briar is—"

He rose abruptly. The chair scraped sharply against the floor, startling her own chair backwards.

"Do you hear yourself?" His voice was quiet now, but the edge in it cut like a blade. "You're chasing ghosts in the forest, frightening half of Hogsmeade, and for what? A fantasy? A delusion?"

"I know what I saw." Her voice trembled, but she didn't yield.

"I think," he said carefully, "that you're exhausted. Frightened. Perhaps confused after too much time in the woods."

"You sound just like the rest of them," she said bitterly. "You think I've lost my mind."

He didn't answer.

"Where's Natty?" she asked suddenly. "I'll speak with her instead."

"Natty won't be back until tomorrow."

Silence pooled again. Thick, suffocating.

Ominis exhaled, the faintest trace of weariness in the motion, and went to the cabinet. The quiet clink of glass echoed as he poured water into a cup. "I think you need rest," he said, setting it gently before her. "Go home. Sleep. I'll send someone to check the ridge tomorrow. Just in case."

Poppy took it. "If you find anything—"

"I'll inform you immediately."

The words were smooth, practiced. Too smooth.

She lingered in the doorway, voice barely above a whisper. "You really won't believe she's in danger?"

He smiled faintly. "Briar is many things, Poppy. Fragile is not one of them."

"I hope you don't regret saying that," she murmured. "When you realize you've wasted all this time—only to find it's too late."

When the door closed behind her, the faint smile vanished like mist.

The silence in the office deepened, thick enough to choke on. The air was warm, but Ominis's hands were cold and slick against the wand.

He stood for a long time, listening to the world beyond the window. The steady rhythm of village life carrying on as though nothing had cracked open in its midst.

And yet, something had.

Sebastian Sallow.

The name pulsed through his mind like a remembered curse. He hadn't thought of him in years. Not truly. But now, spoken aloud, it was as if an old wound had begun to bleed again.

Once, Sebastian had been everything. A brother. A reprieve from the rot of the Gaunt name.

Ominis had been a boy when they met, all brittle bones and haunted silences, learning to navigate the world through sound and scent instead of sight. Hogwarts had been a refuge. A place where he might become someone other than the heir to cruelty. Sebastian and Anne had been his light then, their laughter a language of warmth he could almost believe in.

Until fifth year.

That was when the light went out.

Anne had been cursed, Sebastian had grown desperate, and the boy Ominis once called brother had turned toward darkness in pursuit of salvation.

Briar and Ominis had been left to pick through the wreckage. To hold the line where Sebastian would not.

The friend, the brother, the savior. He had become the thing Ominis had spent his whole life fleeing. A monster wearing love like a disguise. All for Anne to disappear into the world and pass away without a word. None of it mattered in the end.

When they turned him in, Ominis had told himself it was justice. That sending him to Azkaban was a mercy the world required.

And yet, even now, the echo of it burned.

People saw what they wished to see. Perhaps Sebastian had always been that monster, waiting behind the boyish swagger. Perhaps Ominis had simply refused to hear the rot in his laughter.

In the years that followed, Ominis and Briar had learned to fill the absence Sebastian left behind. Sixth year had been quieter, lonelier, but became bearable. Time passed. Wounds scabbed over. And Sebastian Sallow became little more than a name locked away with the ghosts of their youth.

Until today.

Now, Briar's closest friend was shouting his name in the square, trembling like a prophet no one believed.

Ominis's fingers curled against the window frame until his knuckles ached.

No. Sebastian was gone. Rotting in Azkaban where he belonged.

Poppy Sweeting had simply lost her mind.

He stood very still, listening to the distant hum of the town, the faint thrum of rain beginning to beat once more against the glass.

He drew a deep breath, straightened his collar, and reached for the next report.

Chapter Text

The night had teeth.

It gnawed at Briar's skin through the iron bars of the cage, chewed through her breath, burrowed into her marrow until every shiver felt like it might rattle her bones apart. The dampness was relentless. An animal of its own, clinging to her hair and clothes, seeping into every seam. Even her heartbeat felt wet, sluggish, half-frozen in her chest. Each exhale escaped as a thin white ghost, vanishing before her eyes.

She drew her knees tight to her chest, pressing her chin against them. The ground beneath her was frozen mud, uneven and sharp. When she shifted, the hinges of her cage moaned. A hoarse, metallic complaint that carried through the sleeping camp.

The sound made her still instantly.

If she was lucky, she thought, she would die from the cold before something worse found her.

From where she sat, she could see the camp sprawling outward in rings of dying embers and faint golden light. Despite not thinking it was possible, the camp was far larger than she had realized when she had crept here in search of Poppy. Now, from the heart of it, she saw dozens more tents—scores, even—stretching back into the woods like a sickness that had spread through the tress. Each canvas skin glowed faintly from within, lit by spells that pulsed in unnatural hues of red and ochre.

Shadows moved across them. Too many for the space they occupied.

She had counted once, just to stay sane. One tent, no bigger than a broom shed on the outside, had swallowed twelve figures in minutes. None came out again.

They were enchanted then. Stretched from within by magic. Whole armies could hide inside them. Or graveyards.

Laughter drifted from somewhere deep in the camp—a low, drunken ripple—followed by the heavy, wet thud of something striking earth. Briar did not let her mind fill in the blanks.

No one had given her food. Or water. Or even a word.

The only sound that tethered her to the living world was the shifting of the two guards who flanked her cage, dark silhouettes muttering in the kind of underbelly slang only a criminal would know. She did not look at them anymore. Looking meant being seen. Being seen meant the predatory smiles.

She could still feel those smiles under her skin. Oily, invasive, a residue she could not scrub out.

So she watched instead. Quietly. Always quietly.

There was a rhythm to the camp, a cruel kind of order that unnerved her. Fires died with the night and rekindled with the first hint of dawn. Shifts changed like clockwork. Wandfire hummed faintly in the air, the residue of spells cast without care for consequence. Metal clanged in what sounded like practiced sparring, no doubt ensuring they were killers with or without their wands. These were not the wild, chaotic dark wizards she had once imagined. They were soldiers. Disciplined. Methodical. Dangerous.

And at their center, Sebastian Sallow.

Her stomach turned at the name. The memory of him lived like a splinter lodged too deep to dig out.

He had passed through the camp earlier that evening, and his presence had drawn silence the way fire draws air. Even masked, she had known it was him. The confident stride, the faint limp in his left leg that had not been there at Hogwarts, the way people shifted around him without needing to be told. He had grown broader, more deliberate in every motion. Every step carried weight.

When he passed her cage, he always turned his head. Not to glance. To glare.

And every time, she felt it. The invisible current between them, thrumming tight as a wire. A cruel reminder that she was here for his amusement. And that whatever sadistic ideas for revenge he'd built up in that warped mind of his were awaiting her one day.

He was never alone, of course. The two men she had come to recognize as his Second and Third trailed him everywhere, the same two who had taken her wand and thrown her into this cage. One with startlingly warm eyes that did not match his cruelty, the other sharp and silent, like a blade drawn halfway from its sheath.

And there was Imelda Reyes, of course. The sight of her still baffling Briar every time.

Imelda was not quite in command, but not quite apart from it either. A sentinel more than a subordinate. Watching him. Watching everyone. Some sort of bodyguard then, Briar concluded.

They would disappear each night toward the eastern edge of camp, masks glinting under the torchlight. When they returned, the forest seemed to hold its breath.

Tonight was no different.

The sky had only just begun to pale when the raiding party came back. Torches flared to life in a chorus of sparks. Sebastian led them, his mask streaked with something dark, his gloves dripping with something darker.

Behind him stumbled three prisoners.

Two men. One woman. Their clothes were torn, faces blindfolded with rags, wrists bound tight with spell-rope that hissed when they moved. Muggles, perhaps. No, she caught sight of three wands strapped to the belt of Sebastian's Second. Wizards, then.

The camp gathered in a ripple of motion.

Briar pressed herself back against the bars, the metal biting through the thin fabric of her sleeves. Bile scorched her throat. She wanted to look away, but not seeing was worse. Imagination was always crueler than truth.

Sebastian spoke then. She could not make out the words, only the cadence. Measured, persuasive. The kind of voice that could once have made her believe in miracles.

Now it was the sound of ruin.

Whatever he said, it made the onlookers laugh.

And then the screaming began.

Magic flared across the clearing. Red, violet, white-hot arcs that seared her retinas. The prisoners convulsed, their shadows thrashing across the trees. The laughter deepened into something ugly, rhythmic. Half chant, half cheer.

Briar clamped her hands over her ears, but the noise lived inside her now. It crawled through her skull, lodged behind her eyes.

Sebastian did not move.

He watched his curse unfold, motionless. The firelight kissed the curve of his mask, and for one impossible second she remembered him as he had been. Young, furious, brilliant, desperate to save his sister. That same look of righteousness carved his features even now.

Detached. Justified.

It broke something in her.

She hated him.

Hated the boy who had once laughed with her in the Undercroft, who had promised to burn the world if that meant it would bend to his will. Hated the man who had made good on that promise.

But if he despised her just as much, why not kill her?

He had killed before. Uncle. Strangers. Villagers. Why not her?

The question wormed its way through her mind and refused to leave.

Perhaps he wanted her alive, to prove something. To make her watch. To make her suffer. An act of revenge for her betrayal.

Her palms tingled with faint warmth at the thought. Magic. Ancient and unyielding, stirring deep beneath her skin.

She could use it.

She would.

If she could just bend the bars . . .

She waited until the camp had gone quiet again. The fires burned lower, smoldering in pits. Smoke drifted thick through the trees. Briar steadied her breath, forcing her mind inward, to the place where magic coiled and waited.

Her wand was gone, but wandless magic was not impossible. Just . . . different. Natty had told her once, magic was thought before it was word. Focus, intent, will.

Briar fixed her gaze on one of the bars, rusted at the base, faintly vibrating in the cold.

Move.

A flicker. A tremor. The faintest response.

Her pulse stuttered. She pushed harder, drawing the power upward like pulling thread through a needle. Sweat slicked her palms despite the chill.

Move.

The bar gave a fraction. A groan of strained metal. Barely a finger's width, but it was working.

A breath caught in her chest, half laugh, half sob—

"Oi!"

The word snapped through the night like a whip.

Before she could look up, a shadow fell across her. A hand shot through the bars, seizing a fistful of her hair.

"What do you think you're doing, you filthy little bitch?"

He yanked her forward so hard her forehead cracked against iron. Pain detonated behind her eyes. She gasped, twisting, but his grip only tightened.

"I—I wasn't—"

Her voice broke apart.

"Trying to escape, were you?"

Her head hit the bars again. The world flashed white.

Laughter followed, low and damp. She could smell the rot of his breath.

And then he whispered it. Softly, almost tenderly:

"Crucio."

The world shattered.

Pain flooded her, pure and bright, a torrent that consumed her body and mind alike. It felt like being flayed alive by light. Her scream clawed its way out of her throat and vanished into the night.

Somewhere, distantly, she thought she heard the sound of her own soul breaking.

Then everything dissolved. Into red, into silence, into nothing.

Chapter Text

Pain found her first.

It did not strike all at once; it bloomed. A slow, ruinous tide breaking against the sharp stones of her skull. Each wave retreated only to come crashing back, leaving behind the ghost of its violence. When Briar's eyes fluttered open, the world lurched into existence. Gray, close, suffocating. The cage pressed around her like the inside of a coffin. Iron bars slick with condensation loomed inches from her face, each droplet of moisture trembling in the half-light before falling to the dirt below. Her own breath rasped shallowly, the air tasting of rust and blood.

She tried to move.

Agony struck like lightning, shuddering through her muscles and curling her stomach into a knot. Her body remembered what her mind had not yet caught up to. The curse, the screaming, the violent crack of a skull against metal. Memory flared, fragmented and cruel. She pressed her palm to the ground to steady herself and felt only damp earth and the dull throb of her pulse beneath her skin.

For a while, there was only the sound of her breathing. Then—voices.

" . . . I don't care what you thought would happen."

The words cut through the haze. A man's voice, sharp and low, familiar in its control. Smooth at the edges but honed with something dangerous.

Sebastian.

Her chest tightened. She went still, letting her lashes veil her half-open eyes as her senses reached outward. Beyond the bars, the blurred shapes of men moved like ghosts through the mist. Sebastian stood near the dying embers of the campfire, his dark coat hanging open, its hem stirring faintly in the wind.

Across from him stood his Second.

The man was tall, loose in posture, his stance deceptively easy. He carried himself like someone who never truly believed danger applied to him. Briar always thought he had an odd warmth about him ever since she first laid eyes on him. The bronzed features, the open eyes . . . but his expression now—the furrow in his brow, the tight line of his jaw—did not resemble his usual easy mask.

"Well, you could've warned the guards. You knew she wasn't some common prisoner."

Sebastian's reply came clipped, sharp as flint. "Our men should've paid closer attention before letting her bend the bars of her own fucking cage, Luc."

Bend the bars. Briar's heart stuttered. The attempt was a blur in her memory. The pulse of Ancient Magic burning through her veins, the flash of strength that had not lasted. Then pain. Always pain.

The Second—Luc, Sebastian had called him—tilted his head.

"Still. A warning about the Ancient Magic would've been nice."

Ancient Magic.

The words fell heavy, sinking into her like a blade. Her greatest secret, the one only a handful of people knew, was now a campfire conversation. She had guarded that truth with everything she had, the way one guards a wound that never fully heals. Now, thanks to him, it was public knowledge among his inner circle of killers.

Luc's jaw flexed as he pressed again. "Well, we can't just keep her locked up like a stray hound if she can do that. We'll need some additional measures in place."

Sebastian exhaled sharply, though not quite in anger. "I've reinforced the cage," he said, his voice quieter now, almost too steady. "But if you want to take extra measures, do it. And make sure the guards know what she is."

What she is.

Not who.

The phrasing scraped raw against her. Her fingers curled into the dirt. It was strange, how you could feel the shape of a secret leaving your body. Like something being torn out of you, leaving you hollow and raw in its wake. He had not just betrayed her privacy; he had defined her by it.

Luc nodded once. "I'll handle it."

"Good," Sebastian murmured. Then, after a pause: "And keep it quiet. Only those who need to know. The rest will only get ideas. You start whispering about Ancient Magic in a place like this, and half these men will want to cut her open to see what it can do."

"Why? What can it do?" Luc asked.

Sebastian's silence lingered long enough that even the fire seemed to hesitate.

"Doesn't matter."

The quiet that followed was not empty. It was dense, oppressive. Even Luc didn't press further.

Sebastian had not told Luc about her ability to take pain away. Not that she would ever do such a thing.

But it didn't matter. He still exposed her. And in doing so, condemned her.

-----

Hours passed in a throbbing blur. The ache in her head sharpened to a point that made her vision swim. The iron cage radiated cold; she could feel it in her bones. Her muscles trembled when she tried to move. Every nerve felt raw.

When the clang of metal startled her, she flinched hard enough to rattle the bars.

A shadow fell across her. One of the lesser wizards—a man she did not recognize—knelt beside the cage, a dented tin cup in one hand and a small wooden bowl in the other. His boots sank into the mud, and his breath fogged the air between them.

"Your lucky day," he muttered, shoving the cup and bowl through the narrow gap. "Mister Sallow says you're to be fed."

Mister Sallow.

The words twisted in her gut. She almost laughed. Fed, as though this were some small kindness. Perhaps he felt guilty that one of his cronies hurt her, she thought. Perhaps the boy she once knew still stirred beneath the man giving orders. But no. It was too naive a thought. The more likely reason was far simpler: he wanted her alive. He wanted her coherent. The cruelty of a man who preferred his victims lucid.

Still, hunger gnawed at her resolve. She waited until the guard walked away before reaching for the cup. Her hands trembled violently as she lifted it. The water smelled faintly metallic, and when it hit her tongue, it tasted of iron and something cloyingly sweet. She was probably drinking their dirty dish water, but she did not care. She drank until her throat burned. The porridge was a dull gray sludge, flavorless, but it filled her stomach, and that was enough.

It was not until several minutes later when her arms began to feel too heavy that she realized something was wrong.

Her fingers lagged behind her thoughts, as though there were a distance between command and motion. A fog crept through her veins. The air seemed thicker. Quieter. And something else, something vital, was missing.

She reached inward. For the current that always hummed beneath her ribs, for the familiar ache and pull of the ancient power she carried. Nothing.

Her magic was silent.

Panic jolted her awake in a way the pain never could. She pressed a trembling hand to her sternum and tried again. Grasping, pleading, searching for that hum, the thread that had always answered when she called.

It did not answer.

She felt only the echo of it. And then, even that was gone.

Her breath came faster. She pushed herself upright, heart slamming against her ribs. The movement made her dizzy, but she did not stop. She tried again, reaching inward, whispering a half-formed spell through cracked lips. The air around her did not stir. The world stayed still.

Her magic was gone.

Not gone. Suppressed.

The realization hit like a blow. Her stomach lurched. The water. The food. The faint sweetness. The heaviness.

They had poisoned her magic.

"Bastards," she breathed, but the sound barely escaped her throat. Her voice was just another ghost trapped in the cage.

The bars blurred. Her vision dimmed at the edges. Somewhere outside, the camp went on. Boots sinking into mud, the scrape of shovels, the bark of laughter. Life moving on without her. Briar pressed her forehead to the cold iron, the chill biting into her skin until it grounded her.

So that was it. They had not fed her out of mercy. They had fed her to make sure she stayed harmless.

Time folded into itself after that. Minutes, hours. She could not tell. The forest light shifted, pale gold bleeding into gray, and mist began to gather again around the camp. She drifted in and out of useless attempts at sleep, feeling her pulse slow, her magic trapped under the weight of whatever they had dosed her with.

At one point, Luc passed by. His eyes flicked toward her, unreadable, his mouth drawn into a hard line. He did not speak. Later, she saw Sebastian again.

He stood at the edge of the clearing, giving quiet orders to his men. The firelight caught on his features. The sharpness of his cheekbones, the hollows beneath his eyes. He looked older, carved out by the years. The boy who once chased knowledge like salvation had become a man who wore control like armor. His expression didn't waver as he adjusted his gloves, but there was something so ordinary in the motion. Something almost human.

He no longer glared at her when he passed. And somehow, that frightened her worse than when he had.

By evening, her body still felt like lead. The suppressant pulsed through her blood, thick and smothering. The hum of magic that had once been part of her heartbeat was gone, leaving behind only silence. A silence that felt too large, too permanent.

Her thoughts drifted. To Ominis, whose voice still lingered like a ghost at the edge of memory. His promises. His insistence that she could always be safe with him. To Poppy, bright and unflinching, whose courage had once been contagious. Who was probably scouring the forest for her even now, heart breaking a little more with every dead end.

And to Sebastian. To the figure standing in shadow, his name now passed between his men like a weapon, his cruelty wrapping around him like a dark monarch.

He had taken everything. Her freedom. Her magic. Her secret. And still, some terrible, traitorous part of her wanted to ask him why.

Why he hadn't simply killed her.

Her eyelids grew heavy. The fog thickened. The camp's distant murmurs faded into quiet.

And then, nothing at all.

Chapter Text

The office had gone still again.

It was not the kind of stillness that brought peace, but the kind that lingered too long, heavy and sentient, pressing into the lungs until breath itself felt like an intrusion. The air held the faint hum of lamplight and the restless whisper of parchment shifting in a draft that was not really there.

Ominis sat at his desk, motionless but for the restless movement of his fingertips. They traced the edge of an open report he had long since stopped pretending to read—the coarse fibers, the tiny imperfections in the parchment's grain—each one a small, tangible relief from the thoughts clawing at his mind.

He could feel the silence watching him.

Poppy had been here earlier. He could still smell the faint scent of moss and rain on her cloak. She had come back from the forest still raving. Her voice a tremor of panic and conviction, insisting she was telling the truth. Camps. Fires. Dark wizards.

Ridiculous.

He had sent her home that first morning. Or rather, ordered her to rest. His tone had been firm, but she did not obey. She swept in and out of his office at a near-constant rate, always freshly returned from the woods. Searching, pleading, demanding updates. Poppy's nerves often tangled themselves around nonsense, and he had long ago learned to meet her hysteria with calm dismissal.

But still . . . the echo of her voice had stayed. Trembling, urgent, and startling. All because one particular name was attached to Poppy's hysteria this time.

Briar.

He leaned back in his chair, pressing his finger against his temple as if he could erase the tightening there.

Briar Williams.

Briar alone was a contradiction. She had always been wildness dressed as composure. Her laughter bright and somehow distant, her silence loud with things unsaid. Ominis had never been certain whether they had fallen together by accident or intention, only that he had not been able to let go since.

He tried to think when he had last seen her. Two days ago? No. Three, perhaps. The memory came fractured, colored with irritation and yearning. She had sought him out. Nothing more than a distraction of the flesh, Ominis knew. They had argued. Again. About marriage, as they did. He had offered her stability; she had answered with a sigh that sounded like pity.

Afterward, she had left, as she always did. Vanishing into the woods where creatures listened better than he ever could.

And yet . . . she should have come back by now.

Even when she was angry with him, she always came back.

He exhaled through his nose and stood, the movement deliberate, the sound of his chair scraping faintly against the wood. His wand rested on the desk, waiting. When his fingers closed around it, the faint hum of the wood through his skin was grounding. Each pulse mapping the room, a rhythm of familiar spaces.

The rug's soft give beneath his shoes. The carved lip of the table. The door's cold handle beneath his palm.

He pushed it open.

A breath of air rushed in. Cool and sharp, carrying the scent of smoke and wet stone. Evening in Hogsmeade always came with that thin edge of melancholy. Beyond the walls, the streets had quieted; the villagers had gone home to their supper fires. The world seemed to hold its breath.

Too quiet.

Ominis listened.

He had learned long ago that silence was never truly empty. There were graduations to it. The hush of still air, the faint vibration of something waiting to move, the hidden pulse of distant footsteps that never quite reached the door.

This silence was wrong.

He could feel it settling over the village like a shroud.

She is fine, he told himself. She is always fine.

But the thought felt brittle, like a promise already broken.

He admired that about Briar once. Her independence, her fearlessness, her insistence that she needed no one's help. But admiration, he had found, had a way of curdling with time. The very thing he loved about her now burned like rejection.

She needed no one.

Least of all him.

He clenched the wand tighter. A dull ache crept through his fingers, spreading up his wrist. The pain steadied him, drew the lines of his thoughts into focus.

And then—inevitably—came the thought he had been circling all evening, cautious as a predator:

What if something has truly happened to her?

The question unfurled in him like a spell with no counter-curse. Slow, invasive, intoxicating. Beneath the fear was something darker. Not grief, not yet, but purpose. The kind that woke when there was something—or someone—to be claimed, protected, proven.

He had always been good at purpose.

Her voice drifted back to him now, quiet and alive with memory. Her words soft and strained the last time she had said his name. The way she'd tensed at his touch. The way pity had sounded when it came from her lips.

He had wanted her affection. What he'd received was patience. And patience, he had realized, was the politest form of distance.

He told himself he would wait. That she only needed time.

But time had never been kind to them.

A faint sound cut through the stillness. A heartbeat from the past, wrapped in Poppy's voice, echoing from two days ago:

"Ominis, you need to listen to me."

"He's out there."

"Sebastian Sallow."

"I saw him. He has Briar. Caged."

He had dismissed her then, of course. He'd called it nonsense, hysteria, the echo of nightmares she'd never truly left behind in the forest.

Sebastian Sallow was a ghost, a curse Ominis had spent half his life outliving.

And yet now, the name returned like a knife sliding between the ribs of his composure.

Sebastian.

He could almost hear the boy's voice again. Smooth and infuriating, the kind that could turn a confession into a charm. That voice had once filled the spaces between their lives, and when it left, it hadn't truly gone. It had simply gone quiet.

For years, Ominis had dreamed of silence. He had never realized how cruel it could be when it finally arrived.

He shut the door and turned toward the window, guided by instinct more than sight. The faint thrum of energy beyond—the living pulse of the village, the breath of trees past the fields—rose to meet him. Somewhere out there, the world was moving. And somewhere in that motion was her.

And perhaps something pretending to be Sebastian Sallow.

Perhaps Poppy had been right. Entirely wrong, but right. Perhaps it was someone who resembled Sebastian by coincidence, or a phantom drawn by her fear. But even if she was mistaken, if someone had Briar, then he could not stay.

He returned to his desk, lowering himself into the chair with deliberate calm. Control was a fragile illusion, but he still clung to it, the way others clung to faith. He folded his hands, forced his breathing to steady.

She had stayed overnight in the glen before. On rescue missions. Sleeping under the stars with those wretched beasts she saved. The forest made her feel alive, though Ominis never understood why anyone would seek comfort in the company of mud and creatures rather than people.

But that was Briar.

Always closer to the wild than to the civilized.

Still, unease crawled through him, curling around his gut like smoke. He began tapping his fingers against the wood, counting out the rhythm of it.

He'd always been methodical in his worry. It started with concern for her safety, then slid into suspicion. Her judgement, her priorities, her heart. She could vanish for days and return with the scent of moss and moonlight clinging to her, softly speaking like she'd never left.

It made him feel unnecessary. Replaceable.

And he could not bear to be replaceable.

He was tired of asking her to marry him. Tired of being told gently, endlessly, no.

Sometimes she'd be kind when she said it. Other times she would only sigh his name as though even refusing had become an act of mercy.

He could still hear the softness of it now. The pity.

It burned worse than rejection ever could.

He dragged a hand through his hair, the motion slow, deliberate. The silence pressed closer, too dense to ignore. Beneath it, something shifted. A realization forming, sharp as a blade drawn too near to the skin.

Perhaps this was not tragedy. Perhaps this was opportunity.

If he found her—if he saved her—from whatever shadow Poppy had glimpsed in those woods . . . perhaps she would finally see what she had refused to before.

That she needed him.

That he was the only one who could keep her safe from the darkness she insisted on courting.

A faint smile touched his lips. Measured, deliberate. Not joy. A wonderful calculation whose answer rang true.

He had always been a man of logic and order, of precision. But sometimes, fate arranged itself with uncanny symmetry.

And tonight, it seemed, fate had set the stage.

The door creaked open.

"Ominis?"

Poppy's voice, thin and trembling.

He did not startle, he rarely did, but his muscles tightened all the same. He turned his head toward her voice, composed. "Poppy. Still not resting, I see."

"I can't." Her steps were hesitant. He could hear the drag of exhaustion in her voice. "I've been searching all day, near the ridges. The patrol you sent—they didn't find anything, did they?"

He hesitated just long enough to sound honest. "No," he said evenly. "Nothing yet."

The lie slid off his tongue with practiced ease. There had been no patrol. He had not believed her enough to send one.

But now, the omission served him well.

Poppy's breath caught. "Then we'll have to look again. I think I'm close, Ominis. I found signs. Footprints, the smell of fire, wolves in the tree line. The camp's out there somewhere."

He raised a hand, silencing her. "I believe you."

The words surprised even him. They tasted strange in his mouth, heavier than he expected.

"You do?" she asked, small and uncertain.

"I believe something has happened," he said carefully. "Which is why I'll be taking the search upon myself from now on."

She faltered. "But—"

"We'll find her," he said softly. The tone was one he used rarely. Steady, persuasive, disarming. "You've done enough, Poppy. You've risked yourself running through those woods all day and night. Go home. Actually rest this time. I'll send for you once I find something. Let me do what I should have done from the beginning."

She hesitated. "You'll really look for her?"

"Yes."

Too quick. Too certain.

Poppy made a faint sound, relief laced with doubt. "All right. I'll come back tomorrow. But if you find anything, anything at all, you'll tell me?"

"Of course."

Another lie.

He waited until her footsteps faded toward the door, the air cooling in her absence. Only then did he rise.

The stillness returned, but it no longer pressed. It hummed. The pulse of purpose filling its emptiness.

He moved to the wall where his coat hung. His hand skimmed the rough weave of the fabric, grounding him. The world beyond his office was calling.

Not with light, but with vibration. With the trembling pulse of the land and the faint, distant rhythm of lives still moving through the night. The forest would hum differently than the village. The air would shift. The ground would change beneath his feet.

He would find her.

He would bring her back.

And this time, she would see.

He whispered her name. Softly, reverently, dangerously.

"Briar."

The name hung in the air like a vow.

He could almost feel the echo of her heartbeat in it.

He fastened his coat, the leather creaking faintly beneath his touch. Each motion was ritual, sharpening him back into the man the world thought he'd forgotten how to be.

Ominis Gaunt, calm and noble, precise and restrained.

They never saw what roiled beneath that surface.

He opened the door, the wand in his hand pulsing a low, steady rhythm against the wood. Each pulse against the floorboards was measured, deliberate, echoing into the night beyond.

Whatever darkness waited beyond Hogsmeade's edge would find that Ominis Gaunt did not falter.

And if some Sebastian Sallow imposter truly stood between him and Briar, then the forest would bear witness to what became of those who tried.

The night answered with silence.

And he stepped into it like a man walking toward his fate.

Chapter Text

The days bled together like bruises, each one deepening until she could not tell where one hurt ended and the next began.

Morning, if it could be called that, arrived not with light but with a gray seep through the fog that strangled the camp. There was no dawn here, only the slow reanimation of misery. The damp clung to everything. The bars, the earth, the folds of her ruined cloak. It slicked her hair to her neck and made every breath taste of iron and smoke.

She had begun refusing their food. And the water. The first day, and the next, and the one after that. She told herself it was defiance, a quiet resistance. But really, it was fear. Fear of the drugged stupor that had followed the last meal, when the world had folded in on itself in the sickening absence of her magic, something so intrinsically part of herself that it felt like a lost limb.

After one empty day, the hum beneath her skin—the familiar pulse of magic—had eventually returned like an old ache. But she was watched too closely now to even attempt performing wandless magic again. Every time she so much as shifted, eyes followed. She had begun to learn the cadence of those eyes. Their weight, their indifference.

And when hunger finally stopped being hollow and began to gnaw, when her head swam and her hands trembled too much to lift them, she stopped arguing with her body.

So when they brought her food again—thin broth, porridge the color of rot—she ate. Quietly. Mechanically. Every mouthful a betrayal. The taste of surrender sat heavier than the food itself.

Her cage had been set near the main tent, close enough for her to always see the soft movements behind its canvas walls. Shadows bent and shifted there, men and women whose lives still moved in rhythm while hers had gone still. Footsteps passed. Voices murmured. Sometimes the faintest trace of laughter.

And always, Sebastian.

He moved through the camp like a disturbance in the air. The others seemed to arrange themselves around him. Luc, with his impossible warmth that made the cruelty worse by contrast; the Third, whose name was James she had overheard, silent as a wolf in the dark; and Imelda Reyes, whose gaze was so flat it might have been carved from glass.

Sebastian belonged to none of them. He had burned too hot for that. He carried no warmth, but he was not cold either. He was the heat before a blade was tempered. Alive, unyielding, stripped of everything human that might have made him kind.

The first few days after they drugged her, he had not looked at her at all. She had been more frightened by that, the absence of his glare. But then his gaze returned, sharper now, emptied of recognition. When it fell on her, she felt flayed. And she instantly regretted her thoughts.

The camp quieted when he passed. Conversations thinned. Laughter died in throats. His silence carried a gravity that warped the air around it. Once, that silence might have intrigued her. Now it only meant danger.

Nights were the worst of all.

There was no true darkness here. Only the low orange haze of the watchfires, their glow catching on the bars like veins of molten iron. The smell of smoke soaked her hair, her skin, until she could no longer tell where the camp ended and she began.

Sleep refused her. Her body ached from stillness, her mind wandered, and she was forced to remember things she did not want to. She waited until the camp fell to its hushed rhythm before she moved, knees drawn to her chest, forcing herself to relieve the body she no longer wanted. The humiliation of it—the sound, the stench, the visibility—scoured something in her. But her bladder and gut ached with searing pains when she held it in all day.

She kept the mess contained to one corner, doing her best to cover it with dirt, but it still clung to her. The scent. The shame.

But she told herself that shame was a form of control. If she could still feel it, she had not lost everything.

Sometimes, when the night dragged too long, she thought of Ominis. Of his careful voice and its endless persistence, the way his hand hovered near her back as if constantly afraid someone would swipe her away from him. He had once promised her safety. A foolish, beautiful promise.

Ominis believed in order. In law. In right and wrong drawn as cleanly as ink on parchment. She had believed it too, once. Until her father's hand cracked that illusion open. Until the world's neat edges dissolved in blood and breath and the soft sound of her mother's weeping.

It was on her fifth, or maybe sixth day, that Sebastian finally spoke to her properly.

The sound of boots on earth, the low creak of the tent flap. His shadow fell across her cage, long and severe. He did not step too close. An arm's length from the bars. Close enough to see her, far enough to remind her that she probably appeared like a repugnant animal to him.

She caught his scent before his voice. Smoke and leather, and something woodsy underneath.

"Enjoying the hospitality?" His tone was casual, as if he were asking about the weather.

Briar's throat rasped from disuse. "Do you ever tire of cruelty, Sebastian?"

"Cruelty?" He repeated it softly, tasting the word. "I wonder if you even know what that means anymore."

"You've turned yourself into a monster."

A breath of sound escaped him. Half laughter, half sigh. "Or perhaps," he murmured, "I simply became what the world made of me."

She gripped the bars beneath her until her knuckles burned. "Then I should be the same. The world wasn't kind to me either. But I didn't become you. You chose this."

His gaze flicked up then, and the sharpness in it made her flinch. "No," he said. "You became something worse. Righteous."

The word struck harder than she wanted it to.

He crouched, bringing himself level with her. The firelight caught in his eyes, dark and impossible. "Tell me," he said. "Was it righteousness when you betrayed me? When you stood there and let them drag me to Azkaban, knowing I was only trying to save her?"

Her mouth went dry. "You killed him," she whispered. "You killed your uncle."

"And you condemned me for it." His voice stayed even, but the vein at his temple fluttered, visible even in the half-light. "Do you know what happens to a man in Azkaban, Briar? The way it unthreads you from the inside? I wonder if you would have lasted a week."

She wanted to tell him she would have. That she would have endured anything rather than become what he had. But the words died somewhere between her lungs and her teeth.

He stood, smooth and deliberate. "It doesn't matter now," he said. "Here we are."

Her voice wavered. "How are you even here? Everyone thinks you're imprisoned. No one escapes Azkaban."

He tilted his head, studying her as though she had asked something naive. The pause stretched long enough that the camp's sounds receded. A crow called once from the forest edge, then nothing.

"You're not going to answer?"

"No." A faint smile ghosted across his mouth. "I'm not."

Before she could speak again, he lifted his wand. The gesture was so fluid it barely seemed to move the air.

A sudden heat grazed her arm, sharp and slicing. She gasped, clutching it, and her fingers came away wet. The cut was thin but deep, the blood pooling dark.

The bastard cut her.

Sebastian watched her reaction with detached curiosity. "Since you're so determined to test the limits of my patience," he said, "we'll try something new."

The blood rose from her arm, a single drop suspended in air, turning lazily like a planet caught in orbit. She watched as he guided it toward the edge of the camp. The wards.

Sebastian stopped before the barrier.

The wards flared red, a shimmer like stone over heat, and a pulse rippled through the ground. The air sang for a moment. Low, resonant, wrong.

When it faded, the silence was heavier.

Sebastian stalked back to her cage and lowered his wand. "There," he said. "You belong to this place now. Even if you crawl free of that cage, the wards will not let you leave."

Her voice trembled as she huffed a laugh. "Another cage. All this effort. For me. Why not just kill me?"

He looked at her as if she had asked something absurd. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

She said nothing. Yes, she thought. Kill me. You hate me enough. I hate you enough. Let it end.

But he turned without another word, walking back toward the tent. Luc's voice met him halfway, low and urgent, but neither man looked in her direction again.

And then he was gone.

The night closed in around her.

Briar pressed her sleeve to the wound, feeling the pulse beneath her skin. Stubborn, unwilling. The air inside the cage still thrummed with the residual hum of blood-bound magic. It whispered against her bones, a reminder than even her veins now obeyed him.

The night dragged on, Briar hoping it would drag her with it. But something started stirring. Through the bars, she watched the camp transform. Crates shifted closer to the main tent. Cloaks traded hands. Someone murmured about maps, coordinates. The air vibrated with unspoken promise.

Luc's silhouette moved from sentry to sentry, calm and practiced. Imelda stalked the perimeter, wand tip glowing faintly as she inspected the new wards. James remained near the fire, sharpening a blade that caught the light like liquid.

Something was happening.

They were planning something.

She could feel it in the rhythm of the place, the collective inhale before conflict. Perhaps that was why Sebastian had bound her, to keep her from fleeing while they went off on whatever dark crusade they had planned.

When at last the camp darkened, a faint rumble drifted from somewhere far off. Thunder, maybe. Or something worse. The wards pulsed again, faintly red, syncing with her heartbeat until she could not tell where her pulse ended and the magic began.

She drew her knees to her chest and rested her forehead against the iron. Sleep would not come. The world was too alive with dread.

Beyond the bars, the night was full of motion. The slow, invisible turning of a storm. She could feel it pressing at the edges of her mind, promising ruin at the hands of these criminals.

Somewhere inside the tent, Sebastian's voice rose once, sharp, commanding. Then silence.

The hush that came afterward was the kind that only existed before blood was spilled, the silence of men preparing to make themselves god.

Briar stared through the lattice of bars until her eyes burned.

She no longer cared what they planned, or what empire Sebastian thought he was building. The war outside her cage meant nothing when she had already lost her own.

She was trapped—endlessly, thoroughly, humiliatingly—in a world that had decided her suffering was amusing.

Chapter Text

Briar had been right.

The following day was taut with anticipation. The air itself seemed to wait. Thick, brimming with the weight of something poised to happen. Her senses prickled with awareness long before the first sound came: low voices murmuring outside her cage, bootsteps in the wet dirt, the faint click of metal as wands were checked and holstered.

Whatever they were planning, it was tonight.

When darkness fell, torches flared to life with a hiss. Shadows converged outside the main tent. Masked, hooded, their cloaks rippling like sheets of ink in the wind. And at their center stood Sebastian.

He wore that mask again. That bone-white, eyeless shell that erased his humanity. Torchlight caught on it in brief, cold flashes. A ghost of the man she'd known.

The group was smaller than she'd expected. Not the whole camp, just a chosen few. His inner circle—Luc, James, Imelda—remained behind. Left to keep order, no doubt. Left to keep her.

They departed without ceremony, slipping soundlessly into the trees beyond the wards. The forest swallowed them whole, and the air seemed to go with them—stretched thin, pulled taut—until even the wind stopped.

Briar stayed curled in her cage long after they were gone. The quiet had weight to it, pressing against her ribs. She should have felt relief at his absence. Instead, the silence he left behind felt unfinished, like a held breath. She began to worry what might come crawling out of the dark now that Sebastian was no longer here to contain it.

Her fears spiraled so completely that she almost didn't notice when someone approached.

"Evening, sweetheart."

Her pulse leapt. The voice was smooth, lilting, disturbingly casual. One she recognized.

Luc.

He crouched before the cage, torchlight flickering over the glint of his rings. His sleeves were rolled up, revealing forearms dusted with blood. Yet his expression—all chocolate warmth and easy charm—was that of a man delivering flowers, not the second in command of a dark wizard camp.

Briar stiffened. "What do you want?"

"Funny," he murmured, tapping his wand against one knee, "I was about to ask you the same thing." He smiled. "You look miserable in there. How about we change that?"

Before she could reply, he flicked his wrist.

The cage door unlocked with a soft, deliberate click.

Briar stared.

And didn't move.

Several heartbeats passed before she realized he truly had opened the door and she didn't just imagine it. Another few before she remembered to breath. A trap, surely. There had to be a catch.

Luc's gaze flicked to the open door. "Well?"

She pressed herself harder against the far wall. "You can't just let me out. Sebastian—"

"—isn't here." He stood, brushing the dirt from his trousers. "While he's gone, I'm in charge. So unless you'd prefer to sit there and stew in your own filth, I'd say this is your chance for a walk."

Her pulse tripped. "You're not worried I'll try to escape?"

He laughed softly, an indulgent sound. "You think you could? The wards know your blood now. You could try to push past them until your lungs collapse, but you'd still find yourself right back here. Like a fly in a bottle."

The image hollowed her stomach.

Luc gestured toward the camp, tone casual. "Come on, then."

He turned and began to walk, hands tucked into his pockets, as if leading her on a lazy stroll. Briar hesitated, bewildered, half-expecting him to turn back and laugh at her gullibility. But he didn't. So she stepped out.

Her legs shook with the effort, muscles unsteady after days of stillness. The ground was cold and wet beneath her boots.

Luc walked beside her, companionable as a longtime friend. "Mind your footing," he said. "Mud here likes to keep what it takes."

She kept a deliberate distance. "You're remarkably chatty for someone who helps run a camp full of murderers."

He tilted his head. "Seems you've still got some bite. Good."

They walked in silence for a while. Until Luc suddenly stopped, brows knitting. His hand fiddled where it was shoved in his pocket, rummaging, and pulled out something between two fingers.

A severed thumb.

He blinked at it, almost curious. Then sighed, strode to what looked like a nearby fire pit, and tossed it in. The dull, wet thud it made as it hit the pile was unmistakeable. Meat against meat. Briar glimpsed pale shapes in the heap as they passed: fingers, a shoulder blade, the curve of a jaw.

Luc dusted his hands. "Sorry about that. Occupational hazard."

Briar's voice was thin. "You're all monsters."

He gave a small smile. "You say that like you aren't living among them now."

He resumed walking. She followed, unwillingly tethered to him by confusion and necessity.

"So, you're free to go anywhere you like," he said at last. "Except the far west tent. Off-limits. Boss's orders."

"Why?"

He glanced at her, his tone light but eyes unreadable. "Let's just say it's not much of a view."

Her curiosity pricked, but she swallowed the question that rose next.

Luc's expression softened into something disarmingly kind. "Come on, then. Let's find you somewhere to sleep."

The tent he led her to was small, unenchanted, unremarkable. But after days in the cage, it looked holy. A small dresser. A cot. A blanket. A dented basin of water. A towel that smelled faintly of soap.

Briar touched the blanket like it might dissolve under her fingers.

Luc lingered near the flap, watching her. "Better, yeah?"

She turned to him warily. "Why are you doing this?"

He shrugged. "Because someone has to. Sebastian's been . . . volatile lately. Not in his right mind."

Her stomach twisted. "He meant to punish me."

"Yes."

"Then why stop him?"

Luc's eyes softened further, and somehow that was worse. "Because you're trapped here for good now. Might as well get comfortable." His tone brightened, deceptively light. "And because I dislike seeing pretty things get caged."

He winked. She glared.

Luc drew the flap half-closed. "Wash up. Clothes are in the drawer. I guessed your size, but they should fit. Food'll be served soon. I'll wait outside."

Then he was gone.

For a long time, she simply stood there, uncertain whether to trust the moment. But the tent held. The water shimmered faintly. The blanket stayed real beneath her touch.

So she undressed and scrubbed herself raw. The basin darkened with grim, the physical evidence of her captivity swirling away. But as the dirt came off, something inside her began to crack. She pressed her face into the towel and wept until her throat burned. It was the first time she'd allowed herself to cry.

No one could hear her. No one cared. And that, somehow, made it worse.

When the tears ran dry, she sat on the edge of the cot and stared at her hands. Pale, clean, unrecognizable. They looked like someone else's.

She dressed in the clothes he'd left in the drawer: leather trousers, a white undershirt, a black wool jacket. She braided her hair neatly down her back, and caught her reflection in a weathered mirror.

She almost didn't recognize the girl staring back.

Not the girl who'd wandered Hogsmeade with Poppy Sweeting, rescuing beasts and pretending the world was kind. This Briar had been caged, starved, stripped of every illusion. And now, clean again, she only resembled herself.

When she finally stepped outside, night had settled deep over the camp.

Luc was waiting, exactly where he'd promised. He grinned when he saw her. "Well, look at you. Come on."

He led her straight into the central tent at the heart of the camp. Inside, it opened into what passed for a mess hall. Dozens of dark wizards crowded around long tables, the air thick with the smell of roasted meat and smoke. Laughter, curses, the clatter of cutlery.

When Briar entered, conversation faltered. Dozens of eyes turned toward her.

Luc, unfazed, guided her toward an upper platform. A smaller table set apart from the others. A place for those who mattered.

"Everyone," Luc announced with infuriating cheer, "our guest of honor has joined us."

Briar flushed. "I'm not—"

"Luc," camp a sharp voice. "You took her out?"

Briar turned. Imelda Reyes.

Up close, she looked older, harder. But still unmistakably herself. She had the same fire in her eyes, now tempered by something darker.

"Oh, come on," Luc said, sliding into his seat. "Boss is gone. Don't act like you wouldn't have done the same."

Imelda scowled and stabbed her fork into a slab of meat. Luc gestured for Briar to sit across from her.

She did, stiffly.

"Briar," Imelda said, tone unreadable.

"Imelda."

Luc filled Briar's plate himself. Roasted vegetables, a slab of meat, a ladle of stew. She didn't touch it. Imelda glared at her all the while, until Briar couldn't take it any longer. She had so many questions.

"So," Briar said, trying to steady her voice, "what are you doing here?"

"Same as everyone else," Imelda muttered. "Trying to survive."

Not the answer Briar wanted.

"Come on, Imelda," Luc teased. "Loosen up. You're scaring her."

Imelda rolled her eyes. "Fine. Briar, this is Charlie. My partner."

The sandy-haired man beside her gave a small nod. Briar blinked. Imelda Reyes—former Quidditch hopeful—had not only turned into a dark wizard, but had managed to find love in the process.

But sure enough, she watched as they passed food between them like an ordinary couple. The sight made something in Briar ache.

Luc clapped his hands once. "Good. Introductions done. Now eat before James comes to glare at us."

As if summoned, James suddenly appeared out of thin air. His gaze was a blade. "Luc, what the bloody hell is she doing here?"

"That's what I said," Imelda muttered through a mouth full of meat.

"He'll flay you alive," James snarled.

Luc's grin was unbothered. "Then I'll be the one flayed, not you."

James sat down anyway, scowling. "You're bold, seating her here. Enjoy your title while it lasts."

Luc's voice stayed smooth. "I plan to. Now can we all just enjoy a nice meal together?"

And with that, the dinner resumed. The tension loosened, bit by bit, until the hum of conversation returned. The stew was rich, spiced. Better than Briar had expected. Someone strummed a lute below, the melody weaving through laughter and murmurs.

They were monsters, she reminded herself. But they laughed. They argued. They fell in love.

They lived.

It unsettled her more than their cruelty ever had.

At some point, Luc leaned close. "So, what was he like back then?"

Her spoon stilled. "Who?"

"The boss. I know you two were close at one point."

Briar hesitated. "He was—"

How could she possibly ever begin to explain the Sebastian Sallow of her youth?

Imelda interrupted with a quiet, humorless laugh. "Clever. Reckless. Constantly in detention. Thought he could outsmart the world."

James snorted. "Hasn't changed, then."

Briar stared into her bowl.

"Nope," Imelda muttered. "He hasn't."

Briar disagreed. She wanted to say that he had turned monstrous, cold, inhuman—but she held her tongue. Easy conversation followed. Light, companionable in a strange, fractured way.

And now that it seemed like James and Imelda were no longer about to kill her and Luc, she figured she would trying making sense of it all one more time.

When she spoke again, her voice was cautious. "Imelda . . . I thought you were trying out for the Holyhead Harpies."

Imelda's expression tightened. Charlie glanced at her, protective.

"Didn't work out," she said flatly. "Life had other plans, it seems."

It sounded like both an admission and a warning.

It was all so ridiculously absurd. Imelda Reyes failed her attempt to join the Holyhead Harpies . . . and became a dark wizard because of it?

Though on second thought, it was all so very Imelda. She always did operate in extremes.

"Oh," was all Briar said.

Easy discussion resumed. Briar stayed quiet through the rest of dinner, her thoughts crawling. When her bowl was empty, she pushed back her chair.

"Remember the way to your tent?" Luc asked.

James scowled. "You gave her a tent?"

Luc blinked. "Yes?"

Imelda even groaned. "Merlin save us all."

Still, Briar managed a faint nod.

"Go straight there," James warned. "Nowhere else, or you'll regret it."

She nodded again and slipped away.

She wound her way down the platform, avoiding the stares of everyone on the main floor. Everything about her screamed wrong. She was a prisoner, eating their food, wearing their clothes, and roaming free in their camp. She was entirely out of place, and everyone knew it.

Her cheeks burned as she fixed her gaze on the ground before her and pushed the tent flap open.

Outside, the wind had turned colder. Lanterns shivered on their poles. The camp stretched before her like a village born of nightmares. Tents in tidy rows, fires burning low, laughter echoing faintly through smoke.

For the first time since her capture, she wasn't confined. She could walk. She could breathe.

And yet, every breath tasted wrong.

If this was punishment, why make it bearable? If she was a prisoner, why give her freedom?

She stopped at the edge of the path, arms crossed tight against her ribs. The night pressed close.

Her gaze drifted, unbidden, toward the far west side of the camp.

The forbidden tent loomed there, darker than the rest, its fabric swallowing light. No guards. No movement. Yet the air around it felt heavy, watchful.

Luc's voice echoed in her mind. Not much of a view.

Her fingers tightened against her sleeves.

She turned away. Then glanced back once more.

Her breath left her in a pale ghost.

And she took a step toward the tent.

Chapter Text

She took another step.

The camp had gone quiet.

Another.

It wasn't fully silent—never that—but the kind of quiet that hummed beneath the skin, like the world was holding its breath.

Another few steps.

Nearby, the fires still crackled, embers whispering their slow death. Laughter had dwindled to smoke. The smell of iron and wet leather lingered in the night air, clinging to the back of her throat.

More steps.

Briar's stomach twisted as she moved further and further from the mess tent. Sebastian's inner circle—if that was what they were—had been oddly civil in their strange, rough-edged way. But the others, the ones lower down, the nameless faces who stared too long and leered too easily, made her skin crawl. She could feel their attention on her even when they pretended not to look.

Sebastian's prisoner. Out of her cage.

Her footsteps quickened. It was safer not to meet anyone's eyes. But she could feel what they were thinking, even in their silence. The shape of it pressing on her like invisible hands.

The night wind stirred, and she felt its cold fingers beneath her jacket as she strode further toward the west side of camp. The path was little more than a track of churned mud, half-swallowed by shadow. And somewhere in that darkness lay the tent Luc had warned her against.

Do not go there, Briar.

But of course, she would. She always did.

Warnings were sparks; she was the tinder. Curiosity had always been her undoing.

The canvas rows gave way to darker ground. The noise of the camp fell away until only the distant bark of a dog broke the stillness. She heard someone cough behind her. A quick, sharp sound that froze her in place. She turned, pulse lurching, only to see one of the sentries lighting his pipe, the flare of flame briefly painting his face in orange relief.

She exhaled and turned back.

The western edge of the camp was hushed, shunned even. The torches here were dead, their brackets empty. The darkness seemed thicker, like the air itself resisted light.

And there it was.

The forbidden tent.

It loomed larger than she had realized, a hulking shape of midnight canvas, the seams drawn tight. No guards. No lights. No wards flickering along its edges.

Nothing to keep her out.

Which somehow made it worse.

Briar hesitated, breath clouding faintly in the cold.

You are being foolish.

But curiosity was hunger, and hunger was stronger than fear. It had driven her into catacombs and tunnels beneath Hogwarts once, into Sebastian's orbit even, and into every ruin and moral graveyard she had ever known.

Her fingers brushed the flap.

She slipped inside.

The air changed immediately. Still, heavy, warm with the faint breath of candle smoke. The first thing that struck her was the size. From the outside, the tent had been broad but ordinary; inside, it unfolded endlessly, the space stretching with magic.

Canvas walls, yes, but reinforced by beams and platforms, the bones of an impossible structure. Shelves lined the interior like ribs. Bookshelves. Dozens of them, some stacked to the ceiling.

The scent of parchment hit first, sharp and clean. Beneath it lay something darker: smoke, leather, and the faint, earthy musk of something woodsy.

It was not the dungeon she had imagined.

It was lived in. Human, almost.

Her steps were soundless as she moved deeper. The bookshelves rose like sentinels on either side, their spines cracked and ink-faded. Tomes on curse theory, Dark incantations, ritual anatomy. She knew the look of such things. But beside them sat a jumble of stories: travelogues, epic adventures, even fairy tales softened by age.

Her hand hovered over one. The Tales of Beedle the Bard. The leather was worn smooth from years of handling.

She swallowed hard, and realized with a jolt—this was Sebastian's personal tent. Everything in here carried his brand.

It was him. This space breathed him. His scent, his order, his chaos.

She shoved the book back too quickly, like it burned.

But she did not leave.

Of course she did not.

Sebastian was gone, out leading some mission, and her curiosity had already crossed the threshold. There was no turning back now.

The stairs creaked faintly as she climbed to the upper platform. The air grew warmer, closer. Here, the space felt different. Private. There was a four-poster bed draped in dark linens, a sofa half-hidden behind stacks of books, and a desk that looked like a battlefield.

Maps unfurled across it like torn skin. Ink-stained notes, half-written curses, sketches of ward structures, fragments of half-formed ideas. Madness rendered in ink. Several bottles had toppled over, bleeding black stains across the parchment.

And in the corner, something glimmered faintly.

A ward shimmered in the air, enclosing a small pyramid-shaped object no larger than her fist. Dull gray, etched with runes that caught the candlelight.

She leaned closer. The air hummed faintly but did not repel her.

At first, she thought it might the Relic. Her pulse stuttered. The Relic had once consumed Sebastian. Its promise, its corruption, its ruin. But it had been destroyed. And this one looked different. This thing gave off no hum, no whisper of sinister magic.

It was dead.

A relic of a relic.

Nothing more than a paperweight, now.

Of course he would have such a thing. A mausoleum to obsession.

Her mouth twisted. "Pathetic," she whispered.

The word fell too loud in the stillness, and she flinched at her own voice.

Her eyes roved again, taking in the rest: a row of leather armor, still damp with polish; muddy boots lined up in perfect order; a rack of masks, their hollow eyes reflecting candlelight; and beside them—

Wands.

Dozens.

Each arranged neatly.

Her throat constricted as the truth settled, cold and absolute.

Trophies.

Every one of them taken from someone who had fallen to him.

Her gaze drifted back toward the desk, where a small slip of parchment peeked out from beneath a folded shirt. A letter.

Her fingers trembled a she unfolded it.

The handwriting was looping, elegant. A woman's.

Sebastian,
The nights are too cold without you. I don't want to be alone anymore. You said you would visit soon, but you never do. Please—come back before I forget the sound of your voice. I love you.

No signature.

Briar stared at the ink.

He had someone.

A mistress.

Of course he did.

A hollow laugh scraped its way up her throat. Of course the monster had someone to whisper him home. Someone to write love letters to a murderer.

The sound of boots shattered the stillness.

Briar froze.

Too late—

A hand seized the collar of her jacket, yanking her around. Her shoulder struck the wall, pain blooming with a dull throb.

She gasped as her feet slipped, the world spinning, and then—

Sebastian.

He stood before her, mask dangling from his other hand, candlelight carving sharp planes into his face. His eyes, once brown and human, now gleamed darkly, too deep, too fathomless.

They stared at one another. The air between them pulsed.

"What," he said softly, dangerously, "are you doing in here?"

Her mouth opened, then closed. "I—"

He leaned closer, and the air shifted. The temperature itself seemed to drop.

"I asked," he said, voice a low snarl, "what you were doing in my tent."

Her breath hitched. "Luc said I could go anywhere—"

"Luc," he spat, the name warped by disgust. "Luc doesn't give orders here."

His grip tightened. The world shrank to where he had her pinned against the wall. The pressure of his body, the rough drag of fabric, the smell of blood and ash and sweat. His coat was torn at the sleeve. Dried flecks of something—mud, or worse—darkened his jaw.

His face stopped inches from hers.

"You think because I haven't killed you, you have rights here?" His voice fractured, rising just enough to expose the fury underneath. "You think you can wander?"

Briar's pulse thrashed. Her chest constricted under his weight. "If you're going to terrify me," she rasped, "at least be honest about why I'm here. Why haven't you killed me?"

Something flickered behind his eyes. Fury, or something else she could not name. Then it snapped.

He dropped the mask, its hollow face clattering to the floor, and his free hand came up to seize the other side of her jacket collar.

He yanked her forward only to slam her back into the wall. The impact rattled her bones. Her breath hitched as her ribcage struck wood, air abandoning her.

"Don't you dare talk to me about honesty," he hissed, shaking her once. Hard enough that her teeth clicked together. His breath was hot against her cheek, his voice fractured glass. "You and Ominis turned me in. You betrayed me. And now you stand in my tent, demanding honesty?"

She couldn't even draw a breath.

Her fingers clawed at his wrists. "Let me go—"

And he did.

Abruptly.

As if the contact burned.

She stumbled, catching herself on the desk, the world reeling. Her heartbeat thundered in her throat.

Sebastian stood there, chest heaving, one hand pressed to his temple as though trying to cage something violent inside his skull.

"Get out," he said, voice raw.

She hesitated, still panting.

"Now!"

The shout cracked through the air like a spell.

Briar bolted. Down the stairs, through the shadows, her boots splashing through mud. The night air slammed into her lungs like a blow.

She did not stop running until the camp blurred, until fires became nothing but smears of gold and smoke.

Fear clawed up her throat, sour and electric. She did not know where she was going, only that she had to keep moving.

The world spun around her, dark and endless.

And for the first time since arriving at the camp, Briar let the fear in.

She wanted to go home.

She wanted Poppy, or Ominis, or anyone who wasn't a monster with a room full of wands and masks of death.

She wished she could escape.

She wished it would end.

Chapter Text

Briar ran and ran and ran.

The forest blurred. Black and breathing, swallowing sound. The camp around her dissolved into the dark too, its distant fires pulsing like dying stars. Every noise was too sharp: the rasp of wind through bare trees, the clatter of canvas snapping in its ties, her own pulse drumming in her throat.

She ran anyway.

She didn't look back. Didn't care if they saw her bolt from Sebastian's tent. Her lungs were on fire; her heart was an animal in a cage. The night split open before her like a wound, and she plunged straight through it.

She wanted to leave. She wanted to go home. She wanted it to be done.

The perimeter watchfires guttered low, little more than sullen embers. No sentries loitered in boredom, no guards smoking their pipes. The camp dawdled on unaware, unworried of their fly in a bottle. Briar's steps made no sound on the wet earth as she slipped past the last row of tents, past a chained cauldron with ash, past a pile of pelts that still stank faintly of blood.

Her mind clung to one word, over and over: out.

Out out out—

But the word had begun to lose meaning.

And then she saw it.

The wards shimmered faintly at the edge of the camp, a thin veil of light pulsing between the trees. Invisible unless one knew where to look. But she knew: knew to look for the faint flicker of crimson pulsing through it occasionally. She remembered the day Sebastian had cut her. The way he'd dissolved her blood into the invisible barrier, watched it hiss and sink into nothing. He'd keyed her to the wards like a lock.

A prison branded by blood.

But maybe, maybe, there was a weakness. Some flaw, some tear she could pry open. There had to be.

Her fingers brushed the air.

Pain lanced up her arm like lightning. The wards flared, then snapped back, throwing her onto the ground. The smell of burned skin rose sharp and acrid.

Briar gasped, clutching her hand. The world tilted, light swimming in her vision.

Still, she staggered upright. "Please," she whispered, not sure to whom. Let me through. Her magic stirred. Faint and feral, like something half-starved but still alive. She'd had food that wasn't drugged for the first time in days; she could feel her power again, raw and unruly.

She pressed forward once more.

The wards blazed. Power surged through her, too vast to contain, and she was flung backward into the mud once more. Her breath tore from her lungs in a ragged cry.

She groaned, pushing up on trembling arms—but froze.

A low growl rippled from the tree line.

At first, she thought it was her imagination, the delirium of exhaustion conjuring punishment. But then another sound joined it. And another. A chorus of throats, deep and alive and close.

The trees shuddered. Eyes gleamed green between the branches.

Her blood went cold.

Dark Mongrels.

Three, maybe four. Slick black fur clotted with filth, their shoulders rippling with unnatural strength. She recognized them. The same beasts that had dragged Poppy to this infernal camp in the first place. The same beasts that stalked the perimeter like chained nightmares.

"Stay back," she said, though her voice was barely a whisper.

She had no wand. No weapon. Just one un-drugged meal in her stomach, her will, and the remnants of a short-lived attempt at practicing wandless magic.

The first Mongrel lunged.

She dropped to her knees, flinging up her hand in sheer reflex. Blue light sparked. Wild, unshaped. It burst between them like a sheet of glass, and the creature's jaws collided with it, teeth scraping and sparking before it recoiled with a snarl.

Briar stared at her hand, heart hammering. I did that. Wandless.

The second Mongrel pounced before she could breathe. It struck her shoulder, claws raking flesh. Pain bloomed white-hot. She screamed, flinging raw magic outward in blind defense. The beast flew back, crashed into a tree, and slumped, dazed.

But two more took its place.

They circled her now, eyes catching the faint light, snarling low and deliberate. Their breath steamed. The air reeked of copper and rot.

Her blood was in the dirt.

She tried to gather power again, to conjure some defense. But her magic guttered like a candle drowning in wax. She was too weak. Too hollow. Days of sedatives and sleepless nights had bled her dry.

The beasts lunged again. One bit her calf; another tore through her sleeve, shredding skin. Her vision tunneled. The world shrank to pain and breath and mud.

She pressed her palm to her leg, tried to heal it. Tried to remember the way she'd once mended a wounded Graphorn, the way she'd healed Poppy's torn hands all those nights together. The wounds sealed, briefly. But the next bite opened them again.

It was pointless. She was only healing herself enough to keep bleeding longer.

Something inside her gave way. Not in defiance, in surrender.

Let it end.

She stopped fighting. The growls grew nearer, but she barely heard them. The world moved like it was underwater. Her body felt distant. Unimportant.

She sank to her knees in the mud and tilted her head back to the black sprawl of the sky.

She thought of Poppy's laughter, bright and small. Of Ominis's steady hands, his voice hopeful as he offered her a ring he thought might protect her. Of the ridiculous books stacked on Sebastian's shelves. Stories of knights and happy endings, pages softened by too many reads. Briar hoped there might be light left in the world somewhere, perhaps in her next life.

The first Mongrel clamped down on her arm. She barely felt it.

And then—

A voice, sharp and cutting, split the dark.

"Enough."

The air changed.

Briar's eyes fluttered open.

The Mongrels froze mid-snarl. Their eyes flickered, once, twice. Then blazed a brilliant, unnatural green.

She turned.

There he was.

Sebastian stood just before the wards, breath fogging the cold air, wand raised. He looked almost spectral, the green light carving hollows into his face. The beasts trembled, whining softly, their bodies straining against invisible command.

"Down," he said, low and inhumanly calm.

The Mongrels collapsed.

Briar's limbs refused to move. She was aware of the sound of his boots in the mud, of the way the air thickened when he crossed the distance to crouch before her. His hand caught her arm—firm, inspecting—and turned it to the light.

"You're bleeding," he said, as though annoyed by the inconvenience when his hand pulled away red. His tone was surgical. Cold.

She wanted to laugh. "You don't say."

His jaw tightened. The blood smeared across his cheek wasn't his own.

He looked at her for a long moment—something unreadable in his eyes—then, with a rough exhale, yanked her upright.

"You shouldn't have come this far," he said. "You know you can't pass the wards. And the beasts will kill you before you can even properly try."

She swayed against him. "Maybe that wouldn't have been so bad."

His expression didn't change.

He aligned the bone in her arm with a quick, brutal motion. There was a sickening pop. She gasped, biting back a cry, and he was already casting healing charms. Efficient, precise, almost clinical in the way he worked.

When the world began to right itself again, she realized his arm had been around her waist, propping her upright. His other hand was raised toward the Mongrels, who stood like statues now. Breathing in eerie, perfect unison.

"Come on," he muttered.

The words were not gentle. In fact, they sounded more like a sneer than anything. But his grip was steady. He half-dragged her back toward the glow of the campfires. The world swirled so violently that Briar could only focus on the ground before her. Her boots left shallow prints in the mud, already filling with water.

The forest closed behind them. The beasts melted back into the dark.

By the time they reached the thick of the camp once more, Briar's entire body was drained of warmth and she could scarcely sense anything. Too much blood lost. He dropped her onto a bench beside one of the fires and began mending the rest of her wounds.

Each charm burned.

Pain stitched her back into herself, but a part of Briar wished he'd chosen to leave her broken.

When hot blood finally coursed through her and she could finally move with clarity, she shoved him square in the chest. "Enough. I know how to heal myself."

He didn't flinch. "With wandless magic? I doubt that's effective." His voice dripped disdain.

She glared up at him, lifting a trembling hand to her leg. The smallest gash first. The next. Her magic sparked faintly, raw and messy, but it worked.

Sebastian crossed his arms and watched in silence, his shadow flickering with the firelight.

After a while, her breath slowed. The pain dulled to a hum beneath her skin. And still, he stared.

"Why?" she murmured finally. The word barely left her lips.

He didn't answer.

"Are you good enough to walk?" was all he said.

She huffed. "Apparently."

They crossed the clearing together. Tents stirred as people took notice. Low voices, the shuffle of boots. The camp was alive again, as if it had felt the disruption at the wards ripple through its veins.

The firelight caught his face just as Sebastian's body faltered.

It was so sudden she almost didn't see it. One moment he was upright, focused, composed. The next, his eyes rolled back, and he crumpled.

The sound of him hitting the ground was small. His wand slipped from his hand and landed softly in the dirt.

Briar blinked.

What in the bloody hell—?

"Sebastian?"

Briar dropped to her knees beside him. His chest rose once, shallowly. His eyes were open but unfocused, glazed with something she didn't recognize.

"Sebastian." She grabbed his shoulder, shook him lightly. Nothing.

Her first thoughts were of panic.

If they find him like this—if they think I killed him—what kind of punishment would that earn me?

A shout tore through the night.

Luc appeared first, hair disheveled, eyes sharp and assessing. James and Imelda followed close behind, their faces set like stone.

"Bloody hell," Luc muttered, crouching beside Sebastian. He pressed fingers to his throat, then to his temple. "He's out again."

"Again?" Briar repeated. The word caught in her mouth.

James shot her a glare, dark and accusing as he catalogued her torn clothes. "What did you do?"

"Nothing!" she snapped. "He just—he collapsed!"

Luc raised a hand. "Enough." His voice carried authority that silenced them both. "Get him inside."

They moved in sync, practiced and wordless. Luc slid his arms beneath Sebastian's shoulders, James took his legs, and Imelda pulled the tent flap aside.

Briar followed on unsteady feet, half from pain, half from something colder. She wasn't sure if she was supposed to trail after them, but she did. Dreadful. Curious. Bewildered.

They didn't take him to his own tent. They carried him through the central clearing and toward the largest structure in camp. The one that hummed with constant activity, that she'd only glimpsed through the bars of her cage.

Inside, light and noise collided. As were most the tents in the camp, it was enormous on the inside. A massive chandelier swung from the center beam, casting a warm golden glow. Men and woman talked over drinks at a makeshift bar; dogs slept by the hearth; someone laughed—laughed. There were even children darting between tables, their shadows long and thin against the walls. She had never seen children in the camp before, but she supposed even criminals had urges they needed to answer.

It felt obscene, this warmth.

Briar stopped at the entrance, frozen by the sight.

Luc and James carried Sebastian through it all without a word. A few heads turned, curiosity flickering, but no one seemed alarmed. This, it seemed, was routine.

Routine.

What kind of place was this, where their leader fainted and no one even blinked?

She stumbled after them, through the clatter and chatter and flickering firelight. Up a narrow staircase, then another, until the sound of the hall below softened to a hum.

They reached a long corridor that smelled of herbs and iron. Shelves lined with vials and bandages. Rows of empty cots.

A healer's ward.

Luc and James lowered Sebastian onto one of the beds. His body looked almost peaceful, and though his breathing was shallow, his skin held warm color under the flickering lamplight. He looked entirely intact, save for the fact that he was unconscious.

Briar hovered by the doorway, unsure whether she was allowed inside or even allowed to be witnessing this. Her own blood had dried on her clothes, her skin sticky with it.

"What's happening to him?" she asked.

Neither man answered.

Luc murmured something low, checking Sebastian's pulse again. James went to lock the door with a quiet click.

Briar stared.

Sebastian looked human now. Fragile, even. Not the man who had tamed beasts with a single word. Not the monster who had burned her blood into a prison.

Just—human.

Outside, the night throbbed with residual magic. The Mongrels now silent. She could almost feel the wards pulsing faintly somewhere in the dark, invisible and endless. But still, none of it made sense.

Briar stood for a long while, unable to move. The air smelled of healing potions and smoke. Her body ached with new skin and old skin that would never quite close.

She looked at Sebastian again, his face slack in unconsciousness.

She wanted to feel nothing.

But the questions took root and would not die:

Why did the monster save her?

And what kind of sickness could bring a man like that to his knees?

What in the world was wrong with Sebastian Sallow?

Chapter Text

The tent smelled of crisp canvas and crushed herbs. Sharp, medicinal, and clean. Lanterns hung from the beams in uneven rows, their low light shivering across the stained fabric walls. The air pressed close, heavy with quiet. Every shadow felt too deliberate, every sound too carefully contained.

It felt like a room that expected death more than it hoped for life.

Sebastian lay at the center of it all. Motionless like a statue: still bronzed and golden, but incapable of answering back.

A healer slipped inside, her expression unreadable. She glanced over Sebastian too quickly and frowned. Then Luc spoke quietly with her, something low and clipped that Briar couldn't catch. And then, to Briar's disbelief, the healer did nothing. No spell. No potion. She simply nodded once and disappeared back into the noise beyond the room.

Leaving Briar alone with Luc, James, and Imelda. And the unconscious monster who wasn't quite dead, at least not yet.

Whatever was happening to him, it clearly wasn't something that could be healed.

His face still held warmth. Freckles still peppered the lines of his cheekbones, a feature from his youth that even years of crimes hadn't yet erased. Stray locks brushed his temple, and his chest rose and fell in a rhythm too shallow to be reassuring. Yet behind all that life, something essential was gone. Hollowed out. Briar couldn't stop staring. How could someone so alive one moment be so unreachable the next?

Luc's boots scraped against the floorboards as he turned. His movements were a study in precision. Sharp, contained, angry in the way control always is. And Briar was suddenly reminded why he was Sebastian's second-in-command. When he finally spoke, his voice cut like glass. "So what the hell happened?"

Briar startled at the sound. Her pulse jumped. Her hands—filthy, trembling, streaked with dried blood and dirt—felt suddenly visible. "I don't—" She swallowed. "I don't know. I was—"

James cut her off. "You were what, exactly? Taking a leisurely stroll through the camp?" His voice carried a cruel sort of curiosity. His gaze flicked over her. The torn hem, the bruises, the blood crusted along her jaw. "You look like you've been mauled. The wolves don't just randomly attack for no reason at all."

Briar's throat tightened. "I didn't mean for this to happen. If that's what you're implying." Her voice rasped, cracked open from too much screaming. "I was just . . . exploring the camp. I didn't know it was his tent. He—he startled me. I panicked. And when I ran, the wolves—"

She stopped. Their stares were knives. "I'm sorry," she whispered, though she wasn't sure who she was apologizing to.

Luc's jaw flexed. "I told you not to go into that tent."

"Well, there was nothing keeping me out," she snapped. "If it was so damn forbidden, maybe should've warded it off or something."

Imelda laughed. Short, dry, and sharp as bone. "You really do have a death wish, don't you?"

James muttered something under his breath. It didn't sound forgiving.

Briar forced herself to look at Sebastian again. He looked peaceful, but it was the kind of peace that belonged to graves. "So what's happening to him?" she asked, her voice quieter now, too cautious. "He wasn't attacked. He just . . . collapsed."

No one answered.

"Well?" she pressed, heat rising behind her ribs. "Aren't any of you going to explain this? Your leader has just collapsed for no apparent reason at all."

Luc stopped pacing. For a moment, the mask slipped. Grief, fleeting and human, glinted beneath his control. "Yes," he said finally, exasperated. "He's collapsed. We're well aware, Briar."

"Why does this not shock you?" Briar demanded. "Has this—has this happened before?"

A pause stretched between them. Luc's eyes flicked to Imelda, then to James. When he finally spoke again, his voice was careful. "It's not the first time."

Imelda looked away. James's jaw tightened. No one elaborated.

Briar's heart began to hammer, fast and useless. "And what? You're all just pretending you don't know why? Or do you know, and you're just not telling me?"

James's tone was a blade. "We don't owe you anything."

"Fine." Her laugh came out brittle. "Trap me here forever, make my life a living hell, and keep your secrets. That's worked out beautifully so far."

Imelda's voice sliced through the tension. "Enough. This isn't helping." Her glare silenced the room.

The quiet that followed was suffocating. The only proof of life was the faint rise and fall of Sebastian's chest, the sound of breath fighting to stay inside a body.

Briar's hands curled. She thought of how he had tamed those wolves, how their eyes had burned green to match his. The way he'd healed her with an eerie calm and mended her flesh like it meant nothing. And then, the way his eyes had rolled back. The sound of his body hitting the mud. The stillness that followed.

Guilt pressed cold fingers to her spine. Sebastian had saved her. And she hadn't listened to Luc's warning. She hated herself for it, but the thought stayed.

"Can I look at him?" she asked suddenly.

Three heads turned at once.

Luc's brows arched. "Look at him?"

"I've worked with Poppy for years. Beast rescue, healing, restorative magic." Her voice steadied as she spoke. "Maybe I can help."

James's laugh was harsh. "Fix him? What do you think he is, a Kneazle with a broken leg?"

Briar ignored him. "You don't seem to have any better ideas."

Luc hesitated. For the first time since she'd entered the tent, his composure faltered. A ripple of calculation, of something like hope. Then he gave a slow nod. "Fine."

James snapped toward him. "You're letting her—"

"Yes," Luc said. "Perhaps this is a chance for her to be useful."

The word useful landed like a curse.

Imelda's hand closed around James's arm before he could argue further. "Come on," she muttered. "Let her try."

When their footsteps faded, the silence that followed was almost ridiculous. Only Briar, Luc, and the faint rhythm of Sebastian's breathing remained.

She looked at Luc. "Can I have my wand for this?" Her voice was small, but firm. "I know you have it."

He studied her. Too long, too quietly. Then, with a flick of his wrist, the wand appeared, materializing before them like a memory. "Don't make me regret this," he murmured as he pressed it into her palm.

The wood was cool against her skin, familiar and foreign at once. She wanted to weep from the sheer relief of it. Instead, she nodded and turned toward the cot.

Sebastian didn't stir as she knelt beside him. His pulse was faint, but steady. She raised her wand and closed her eyes. Ancient Magic stirred. Not cast, but summoned. It was something older than words, more instinct than art. She let it unspool through her, threadlike, searching for the source of wrongness.

It found her before she found it.

Something inside him pulsed. Slow, deliberate, alien. Dark. Coiled. Alive. It wasn't a curse she recognized, but it behaved like one. Parasitic, feeding on him from the inside out. The moment she pressed deeper, it lashed back, searing up her arm like frostbite.

Briar gasped and drew back, her wand clattering against the cot.

Luc was at her side instantly, crouched, sharp-eyed. "What did you see?"

She swallowed hard. "Something's . . . eating at him."

"And?"

"I . . . think it's the toll of the Dark Arts," she managed. "The Unforgivables carve pieces off the soul. He's been using them like second nature. Maybe this is the cost."

Luc's gaze darkened. "So that's your verdict?"

"I—I don't know. I've never experienced what the toll of the Dark Arts feels like. Maybe that's what it is, maybe it isn't. But it feels alive," she whispered. "Too alive to just be decay."

His voice dropped. "Well regardless, can you fix it?"

"I don't think so. It's not a wound." Her brow furrowed. "Let me try again."

Ancient Magic surged once more. Thick, viscous, resistant. She pressed deeper, wrapping her senses around the disturbance. It shifted under her like something aware. But her Ancient Magic had it surrounded, like a fist closing around something. A fist waiting to pull something . . .

Luc's voice came low, almost taunting. "Go on. Take his pain. I dare you."

Her eyes flew open. "What?"

He gestured toward her wand, lazy, lethal. "You have that gift, don't you? Pulling pain from others. Absorbing it."

Her blood ran cold. "He told you about that?"

Luc smiled thinly. "He told me everything."

Briar's stomach turned. Isidora Morganach's story flickered in her mind. The woman who'd tried to heal the world by stealing its pain, and had instead drowned in it. "If I take it," she said slowly, "it'll change me. That's not healing. That's corruption."

Luc's expression softened to something almost pitying. "Only if you overdo it."

Her grip tightened on her wand. "He should've never told you about that."

"Maybe he thought I'd need to know."

The mockery in his tone burned through her patience. She turned back to Sebastian, forcing herself to breath. The dark thing inside him was still there. Ancient, waiting, watching her from beneath his ribs.

At last she lowered her wand. "There's nothing I can do."

Luc exhaled sharply, disappointment curdled in the sound. "Then I suppose that's it."

She hesitated, the weight of more questions thick on her tongue. When Luc extended his hand for her wand, she didn't fight it. The moment it left her palm, the world felt smaller again.

The wand vanished. She stayed kneeling beside the cot, numb, watching the fragile rise and fall of his chest.

He didn't look like a monster now. He just looked like a man. Younger than she remembered, stripped of anger and artifice. It unsettled her.

Luc's gaze stayed fixed on her. Too precise. Too knowing. He watched her expression, the flick of her eyes. Cataloging, dissecting, understanding too much. She felt the way prey must feel when it realizes the predator is not hungry, just curious.

"What?" she asked finally, unable to bear the silence.

"You're quiet," he said.

"Should I be loud?"

A shadow of a smile. "You're difficult to read."

"Good."

"Sebastian always thought so too."

Her breath caught. "You talk like you admire him."

"I do."

"Even though he's a monster?" she asked softly. "Even though he does . . . this?" She gestured to the body on the cot.

Luc's gaze flicked toward Sebastian, reverent. "Especially because of this."

That didn't make sense. Something inside her recoiled. There was devotion in his tone, the kind that replaced faith with true loyalty. She looked at Sebastian again and tried not to imagine what Luc saw when he looked at him, what he believed in despite all that ruin.

Take his pain, I dare you. The words echoed through her skull, tempting, poisonous. It would be so easy. One pull, and she could see. She could know what was inside him. But knowledge had always come with a cost. And she wasn't ready to pay it.

She rose slowly, blood rushing back to her legs. "When does he wake up?"

Luc leaned against the cot's frame, watching her. "Depends. Sometimes a few hours. Sometimes a day."

"And how often does this happen?"

"The first few times, it was months apart. Now . . . it's more often." His tone softened, almost defeated.

"Then maybe you should tell your beloved leader to stop using so much Dark Magic," she snapped. "It's clearly destroying him."

Luc's eyes gleamed in the dim light, slick and unreadable. "And maybe you should stop being afraid of your Ancient Magic." He tilted his head. "You could do far more than you realize."

The words were soft, coaxing. Too soft.

Briar turned to face him, heart hammering. His expression was careful. Too careful. Every flicker of emotion looked intentional, every glance measured.

And then it hit her. Luc hadn't released her from her cage out of mercy. He'd done it because he thought she was useful.

Useful—he'd said that word earlier. Useful for what?

Her eyes flicked toward Sebastian's motionless body. Then back to Luc.

His focus had returned to Sebastian, his face unreadable. But the truth pulsed through her with terrifying clarity.

Luc knew what she could do: knew she could bend the bars of her cage, knew she could remove pain, knew she could use it to strengthen herself. Sebastian had told him. Luc had let her "try to heal" him because he wanted to see it. To test her, to see what precisely she'd be willing to use her magic for.

You could do far more than you realize.

Luc thought they could weaponize her Ancient Magic for whatever dark purposes they had in mind. Not just for healing, but for perhaps something more. The only issue was making her willing, compliant.

Luc's kindness had not been out of the goodness of his heart. It was a ploy. A way to get her to warm up to them, to make her cooperate. And she had proven him right. She'd willingly offered to try healing Sebastian.

She'd played right into his hand.

Briar's pulse thrummed painfully in her throat. The air in the room felt thicker now, heavy and intimate, as if it, too, had turned against her.

She said nothing. Only stood there, still as prey, heart beating like a trapped bird.

Luc's mercy had never been mercy. And as the candles guttered low, their light faltering against the fabric walls, Briar finally understood—

She was not safe here. Not with Luc. Not with any of them.

Chapter Text

Before Briar could spiral any further into what she had just realized, Sebastian stirred. Like something waking from a curse.

It began as nothing, a flicker of movement. The faintest tremor ghosted across his fingers where they lay slack against the blanket. Briar froze.

Luc did not move either. He stood beside her with that peculiar stillness that reminded her of a soldier poised for orders. Waiting, loyal. His face betrayed nothing, though relief wrestled quietly behind his eyes. When Sebastian's breath hitched and his lashes fluttered, the air itself seemed to tighten.

For a long, delicate moment, the only sound was the rasp of his breathing. Then his eyes opened. They found Luc. Then her. And darkened.

"Luc," he rasped, his voice rough as gravel. "You're lucky I don't flay you alive for letting her out."

The words landed like a lash. Quiet. Deliberate. Cruel in their precision. Briar felt them before she even processed them, a jolt that shot through her chest and made her jaw lock.

Luc's expression flickered—something sharp, reprimanded—but he did not flinch. He smiled instead, the kind of smile that meant nothing at all. "Good to see you too, Sallow. I'll tell the others you're still among the living."

He cast Briar a brief look, unreadable and gone too fast, then slipped soundlessly from the room. Leaving her alone with the devil who had just woken.

Sebastian pushed himself upright, slow and steady, a soft grunt escaping him. When his gaze finally met hers, it was heavy with suspicion. And something hollower underneath.

"What," he said, each word edged and measured, "do you think you're doing in here?"

Briar swallowed. Her pulse jumped at the weight of his stare, but she forced her voice steady. "I was trying to help. You collapsed. Luc let me try to—"

"I didn't ask for your help." The interruption was knife-sharp, a clean, practiced cruelty.

Her spine stiffened. "Why is no one in this gods-forsaken camp the slightest bit curious why you keep collapsing?"

"It appears," he said dully, "we've grown used to it."

"Yes," she snapped. "Luc filled me in on all the particulars."

Sebastian's eyes narrowed. "He shouldn't have."

"And you shouldn't have told him about my Ancient Magic."

A muscle jumped in his jaw. The two of them stood there—glowering, breathing the same tense air—until he exhaled through his nose, a sound halfway between anger and exhaustion.

"You shouldn't be in here," he said finally. "You shouldn't be anywhere."

Because she was his prisoner. Because she was meant to be caged. The words cuts deeper than they should have. She hated how they did. "Hm, well you shouldn't collapse like that," she muttered, her temper slipping its leash. "It's a shame you didn't just die instead."

His gaze flickered. The corner of his mouth curved, slow and mirthless, into that half-smile she had learned to dread. "You should have never been let out of your cage," he murmured. "Never allowed to wander into my tent, my affairs. You're lucky you're still breathing, since you insist on proving how much of a worthless issue you are."

Briar's stomach turned. "You're awful," she said quietly. "You know that?"

"Undoubtedly."

The simplicity of it made her blink. He didn't even flinch, didn't even deny it. "You know, none of this would've happened if you hadn't terrified me in the first place."

That earned her his full attention. His eyes, dark and gleaming, fixed on her like a hawk pinning a mouse. "Terrified you?" he asked softly. "You've seen nothing worth fearing, Williams."

The words were cold and flat, but under the edge, she heard it. The fatigue. The decay. He was a man held together by vengeance and habit, and both were wearing thin. For all his venom, he seemed hollowed out by it. By the rage.

And that realization struck her harder than the cruelty itself. He did not want her free because it was inconvenient to him. He wanted her contained because he was too tired to care what happened next. He would rather keep her locked away like a relic, one more thing he did not have the strength to destroy. He was a monster simply because he was reduced and resigned to the fact that he was labeled as such.

"Look," she said, her voice fraying. "I didn't ask to be let out. I didn't ask for any of this."

"No," he murmured. "You didn't. But it's what you get."

She gave a brittle laugh, shaking her head. "Fine. Lock me up again, then. I'd expect nothing less from you."

He leaned back against the tent post, eyes falling shut. For a moment she thought he had fallen asleep sitting upright. But then he spoke again, quieter this time.

"You can stay out," he said. "For now. So long as you keep quiet. Do as you're told."

It took her a beat to register it. "What?"

"I'm not repeating myself." His eyes opened, unfocused. "It's not as though you could leave the camp anyway."

The words sank heavy. He was not wrong. The wards crackled like invisible teeth around the camp's edges. Deadly, absolute. She had tested them herself now and still bore the bruises for it. No wand, no allies. Even the wolves seemed to growl her name when they sank their teeth into her.

And yet—relief flickered through her chest, small and shameful. Freedom, even a cruel imitation of it, still felt like air.

"Fine," she said tightly. "But why keep me at all, then? If you hate me so much, if you think I'm worthless—why not just kill me and be done with it?"

His head tilted. The faintest shadow of a smirk. "Who knows, Williams. You might be useful to me one day."

The word useful made her blood run cold. Luc had said the same thing. But hearing it from Sebastian, hearing the truth of it behind the languid cruelty, turned her stomach to ice. Sebastian had just confirmed her suspicions.

They only kept her alive because they wanted what she could do.

She clenched her fists until her nails bit into her palms. She wanted to strike him, to curse him, to make him feel something other than this terrible, impassive calm. But she only manage to say, flatly, "Don't expect me to thank you for your mercy."

He gave a soft, humorless laugh. "I wouldn't expect you to bother."

The lantern light wavered, cutting his face in half. One side drowned in shadow, the other feverish gold. He looked almost split between two worlds. Between man and monster. Between how she used to remember him and whatever ruin he had chosen to become.

Briar's eyes lingered on him despite herself. The darkness in him was obvious to her now, like a second pulse beneath his skin. Something coiled and waiting, patient as hunger.

She hated that curiosity still stirred in her. That she still wanted to know what lived inside him.

"Fine," she muttered. "I'll leave you to it."

He did not answer. His head tilted back, breath shallow, lashes low. A corpse pretending to breathe.

Briar turned and left.

The air outside the healer's ward was thick with smoke and damp earth. Flaps rustled, murmured conversations carried low through the dim corridors, the main floor of the tent, and then beyond the canvas walls and into the firelight outside. The camp pulsed with its strange, restless life. Too alive, too human for what it really was. She passed faces that did not look at her, hands that did not reach out, shadows that did not linger long enough to care.

She caught Luc's voice somewhere in the dark, steady and quiet, as though nothing had happened. She did not stop to listen.

Her own tent sat at the far edge of camp. Small. Contained. Still warmer than the cage had ever been.

She ducked inside, the air heavy with the faint scent of soap from her bath earlier and candle wax.

Merlin, that bath felt like a lifetime ago.

But she still had her cot. The threadbare blanket. That single candle sputtering low beside the chipped basin of now-cooled water. It was not comfort—but it mimicked it, and that mimicry was almost worse.

She sat on the cot, her body aching in ways that went beyond the physical. Her hands still smelled faintly of herbs and blood. When she closed her eyes, she saw Sebastian's face again. The flash of green that mirrored the wolves', the exhaustion lurking beneath the malice.

The night pressed in close, thick as breath. She should have been terrified. Of him, of Luc, of whatever plans they whispered when they thought she was not listening. But she wasn't. Not anymore.

She was too tired for fear. Too emptied out for anything but stillness.

It struck her how long it had been since she had truly slept. Since before Ominis's last plea to marry him. Before the capture. Before everything. Maybe months. Maybe years. Poppy always did say she never seemed to sleep these days.

Her body felt foreign again, suddenly fragile, suddenly human. She lay down without undressing, the rough blanket rasping against her cheek.

Outside, a wolf howled beyond the wards. The sound should have pierced her. Instead, it dulled her edges. It felt far away, mercifully distant.

Briar's eyes closed. For the first time in years, she let herself fall.

And this time, she did not dream.