GRETCHEN

Gretchen dug into the soil as if she was seizing its nutrients with both hands, head snapping back in ecstasy as power coursed through her veins, surging up her jugular, vaulting through her veins like lightning! Every drop of energy she spent on the spell was replenished in an instant, but why stop there? She had only dipped her toes into a lake of power, and there was so, so much more to spare.

Please!

A scream from years past rang in her head, and the witch's eyes snapped open. She recoiled from the unspoken spell, wincing at the blackened tips of her fingers.

Once rich and loamy, the soil was now dry and crumbling in her hands, along with everything else within a twelve foot radius. The trees were blackened, skeletal husks, and the animals who'd lived in them littered the ground at her feet, all the moisture sucked out of their bodies.

Her eyes watered —partially from the stench of burning hair — as she surveyed the damage. All their little days had come to a violent end, and for what? The hillside had collapsed without warning and Gretchen had strained to keep it up, fearing that Sebastian might be caught underneath it. She'd sensed pinpricks of life beneath all that rock, but the lycan's aura had always been elusive, as if he wasn't truly of this world.

Some of the pinpricks made it out, dispersing across the terrain. The rest were snuffed out when the agony of leeching life from the land had become too much. Gretchen retched as every death — every last, miserable thought — caught up with her all at once. Bile mixed with dirt as she hunched over, shuddering like the last dying leaf on the tree branch overhead.

"Is it safe?" Rana called out, still swinging from said branch with Eddy under one arm. The iron gauntlets she wore had interrupted the conduit of power, sparing her from the pull that had drained everything else.

Gretchen was incapable of speaking. Everything about her existence had turned sour in an instant; the sweat drenching her clothes, the taste in her mouth, the turn of her stomach. She could only shake and stare at the petrified squirrel two yards ahead, a contorted testament to the agony of its final moments.

Gretchen heard a thud, but didn't process what it meant until a hand came down on her shoulder.

"Are you mad?" she exclaimed, pulling away from the foolish wyvern. "I could kill you!"

"You could try," Rana said wryly, dropping Eddy, who started nosing at the corpses. Not even she wanted to eat them; she must have sensed that there were no nutrients to be gained, that everything good had already been sucked out.

She dropped off the gauntlets next. They hit the ground like boulders, making dents in the earth.

Gretchen snatched them at once, feeling the weight of the iron upon her soul. She was so, so tired of carrying this burden, but the price of letting go was too high. The evidence of it was all around her.

A hand stretched out between them, calloused and lean. The nails were lilac, the skin almond-brown, threaded with faint white scars that attested to battles lost and won. Gretchen longed to take it, to feel that reassuring warmth of skin on skin, but only shook her head.

"I can't," she croaked, shuddering as a sob threatened to rip through her chest. "It's too hard to control after a spell like that. I don't want you to get hurt."

Rana crouched down to the witch's level, cocking her head. "Surely you'll be fine. Didn't you just top up your reserves?"

"Not really. I topped up what I used, but I was running on empty to begin with," she said, looking at the hillside beyond. The air was still clogged with dust from the rocky avalanche.

Rana huffed a laugh. "No wonder you look like shit."

The words felt like a punch to the gut. Gretchen ducked her head behind the reddish-blonde curtain of her hair. Like Red's, she thought, but not as vibrant. Instead of gleaming like rose-gold, the witch's hair was more like the warm glow of sunlight through a ruddy fall leaf.

She wasn't sure when she'd started comparing herself to the other girl. It was slow and insidious, but as Red had grown into herself over the weeks, waxing more beautiful with each night that sleep restored what poison had taken from her, Gretchen had stayed exactly the same.

Even Rana had noticed and started paying more attention, looking at Rya's Chosen in an entirely new light. Between the wyvern and the lycan, there was always a set of eyes upon Red at any given moment. Gretchen felt like she was fading into the background, sinking silently into quicksand — only nobody was looking to see her flailing for help.

Why it irked her so much was beyond her understanding, and she hated herself for the futility of the wish it implied. Gretchen was starved for intimacy, but Sebastian was cold and aloof as a winter's night, and Rana...

There was something mesmerising about her. The raucous way she laughed; the effortless, almost lazy grace with which she moved, like an apex predator languishing in the grass. After decades of quiet solitude, filled with humming bees and rustling trees, Rana was an assault on the senses: a whirlwind of blue and bronze that tore through the world without apology. Gretchen was always watching to see what she would do next, learning a little more about her thought process every time she spoke or moved.

Apparently she thought Gretchen looked like shit.

"Not like that," Rana back-pedalled, noting her sour look. "I mean you look tired. Worn out."

"Thanks," she snapped, but she was angry with herself for caring. Rana's heart was something she could never hold safely — assuming she could even catch it in the first place.

"Here," the wyvern said abruptly, grabbing her hands and holding them fast. "Your body is trying to tell you it needs something. Of course it'll be harder to control if you deny it."

Gretchen's heart thundered in her chest. Her magic was already reaching, snaking up her arms like roots in search of nutrients, but she curled her blackened fingers into fists. "I don't want to hurt you."

Rana's fierce eyes softened. "This is why you were living in that iron cottage, huh?"

Warm skin on skin. The faint pressure of her grasp, the flutter of her pulse, the blazing of her soul— "You need to let go," Gretchen gasped. "I'll take too much."

The wyvern smiled, strands of blue hair falling between them as she lowered her head. "You can't take what I choose to give freely."

The Witch of the East gave in with a gasp. Energy flooded through their joined hands and she struggled to slow it, to control it —

"Relax," Rana whispered, pulling her closer. Gretchen fit snugly beneath her arm, melting against the warmth that radiated from her body, as if there truly was a fire burning in her breast at all hours of the day. "I've got plenty of energy to spare. Trust me."

She didn't at first, but the longer they sat there, the more Gretchen realised she was speaking the truth. Rana rubbed a hand up and down Gretchen's arm, chasing away the chill that had taken her.

"How?" Gretchen asked, surprised by how low her voice had dropped.

Rana shrugged beneath her, muscles rippling with exquisite strength. "I've always been a bit restless. Da used to say that Rya lit a fire under my ass for something I did in a past life."

"You believe in reincarnation?" Gretchen asked, surprised. She knew nothing of the soul; only the interconnected web of energy and life, which could only spring from death and decay.

"Of course," Rana said. "One lifetime is hardly long enough to learn anything important."

Coming from a wyvern, whose kind typically lived to five hundred years... Gretchen shook her head. "What about mate bonds? Are they recycled too?"

"Sometimes," Rana said, frowning slightly. "My people have a saying, that old flames always find each other. There's always someone you're going to be drawn to on first glance, but Rya is a merciful mistress and allows us the privilege of choice. A mate is found worthy by their actions, not by their luck."

"It sounds far nicer than the system the lycans have in place," she admitted, realising that she'd stopped shivering. The greedy pull of her magic had slowed down to a trickle, but she was reluctant to draw attention to the fact. It was pure selfishness, but she didn't want this to end.

Even so, her eyes landed on the clearing of corpses. It wasn't worth the risk.

"Thank you," Gretchen said softly, pulling away. The stiffness came back to her body as it became a dam of power again, locking her shoulders and cinching her jaw.

"Any time you need it," Rana promised — so freely, as if it was worth risking her life for. The evidence of danger was all around them, but she refused to see reason. "It's okay to let people in, you know. You'll be surprised what you can handle once you trust yourself enough."

An entire town lay in ruins in her mind. Gretchen shoved the memory aside, glancing down at her hands to reassure herself. Thankfully, the black stain wasn't lapping up her elbows — this time.

"Old flames always find each other," she said, stepping out of the circle and onto lush grass. The blades on the edge were just as lucky as Rana to have escaped her greed unscathed. "I'm sure yours will make you very happy."

The stars in Rana's eyes guttered, and for once she had nothing to say. Gretchen busied herself with the flap of her satchel, rummaging through an arsenal of tools and trinkets, not entirely sure what she was looking for beyond a distraction. When something soft yielded to her groping fingers, she pulled out a quill and leather-bound journal, the twin to the set she'd given Gordon.

"Is that what I think it is?" Rana asked, stepping in to look over Gretchen's shoulder.

"The tail-feather of a Phoenix," the witch confirmed, handing it over. "My sister and I were given one each, many moons ago. Rya's Messenger took pity on our circumstances and saw to it that we would always be able to write to one another."

"You didn't always hate each other?" Rana asked. It was no secret that there was no love lost between the Witches of the East and West now.

"No," Gretchen said, pausing on the knot that tied it all together. "Edith has always been a gifted smith; she's the one who built me that house. But it still wasn't enough to keep her safe from me."

Another memory, this time of a nightmare. A hand shaking her awake, her power reaching out, drowning somebody else in a desperate bid for air.

Edith had survived, but only barely. The strength that she had so lovingly developed to hone her craft had withered in an instant. Arthritis riddled her joints and cataracts her eyes.

They had gone to Rya's Messenger to beg the Sun Goddess's aid, but it was to no avail. The phoenix's strength was already dwindling as it neared the turn of a new millennium, though it had still plucked two feathers from its tail in a completely unwarranted act of kindness, so the two sisters could write and receive letters should they ever part ways. And part they had, for it was no longer safe for Edith by her sister's side.

Gretchen had thought it a temporary solution, until she walked into the iron cottage by herself for the first time and found Edith's quill on the bench, without so much as a note.

Rana edged around her, drawing Gretchen's thoughts to the present. "It was an accident," the wyvern said. "You didn't mean it."

The technicality didn't change the fact that it was still her fault. "Let's see if our spy has left us a note," Gretchen said with a thin smile, pulling away the string.

For the very first time, there were words on the page, written in a neat, boxy print.

The Hidden Vale is mustering an army. They will launch their attack come the new moon.

Gretchen held out a hand for the quill. Rana complied, cocking an eyebrow at the whisper of heat in the plumage. Once, Gretchen had been forced to wear oven mitts when handling the ancient relic.

Where? she scribbled back.

She wasn't expecting a reply, and was surprised when Gordon wrote back promptly. Everywhere.

Rana locked eyes with her over the page, only this time there was nothing sentimental about it. Even Eddy pushed her nose through Gretchen's arm, nibbling at the page.

By the order of the Night Goddess, Her army of mutts will feed on the light and leave only darkness in its wake. They will remake the world as Her Grace's Kingdom of Eternal Night.