The afternoon bled into evening without Navira noticing. She’d stayed in the guest room for hours after the coffee, lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling, replaying the morning in fragments—the way Reyen had sat across from her, the softness in his shoulders, the way he’d watched the garden like he didn’t know what to do with peace.
She pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes and sighed.
This was dangerous. This wanting to stay.
A soft knock came at the door, and Nami’s voice followed before she could answer. “I’m coming in.”
The door swung open, and Nami stood there in a soft cream sweater, her blond hair loose, her hands carrying a small tray with two mugs. She smiled, warm and knowing, and crossed to the small table by the window without waiting for permission.
“You’ve been up here for hours,” Nami said, setting the tray down. “I brought tea.”
Navira sat up, her hair a mess of curls she hadn’t bothered to tame. “I didn’t realize it was that late.”
“It’s almost six.” Nami settled into the chair by the window, tucking one leg beneath her. “You missed lunch.”
“I wasn’t hungry.”
“That’s not true.” Nami’s voice was gentle. “You just weren’t hungry enough to come downstairs.”
Navira opened her mouth to argue, but the words died. Nami knew her too well.
“I was thinking,” Navira said slowly, wrapping her fingers around the warm mug. “I should probably go home tonight. I’ve been here four days. Grams will start worrying if I don’t show up for dinner.”
Nami’s expression flickered—something between understanding and reluctance—but she nodded. “You’re always welcome here. You know that.”
“I know.” Navira looked down into the amber liquid. “But I can’t hide forever.”
“You’re not hiding.” Nami’s voice was soft but firm. “You’re healing. There’s a difference.”
Navira didn’t answer. She just let the warmth of the mug seep into her palms and thought about Michael’s face at the front door, the way she’d slammed it without letting him speak. That had felt good. Necessary. But it hadn’t fixed anything.
Nami watched her for a long moment, then leaned forward. “Are you coming to the ball?”
“I said I would.”
“I know. But I want to hear you say it like you mean it.”
Navira met her eyes. Nami’s amber gaze held steady, patient, waiting for the truth.
“Yes,” Navira said, and this time she felt it settle in her chest like a decision. “I’ll be there.”
Nami smiled, a real one, and reached across to squeeze her hand. “Good. I already have a dress picked out for you.”
“You what?”
“It’s hanging in the closet.” Nami gestured with her chin toward the wardrobe. “Black. It’s going to look incredible on you.”
Navira blinked. “You bought me a dress?”
“I had it made, actually. The seamstress owes me a favor.” Nami stood, brushing imaginary dust from her sweater. “You’re not backing out now, Moretti. I have a reputation to maintain.”
Navira laughed, the sound surprising her. It felt rusty, unused, but genuine. “You’re impossible.”
“I prefer ‘thoughtful.’” Nami headed for the door, pausing with her hand on the frame. “Dinner’s in an hour. Nic’s making pasta. And Reyen’s been hovering near the kitchen all afternoon, trying to look casual.”
She said it lightly, but the words landed in Navira’s stomach like a stone dropped into still water.
“I don’t know what that means,” Navira said, too quickly.
Nami’s smile turned knowing. “I think you do.”
The door clicked shut behind her.
Navira sat in the silence, staring at the closed door, her tea cooling in her hands. She thought about Reyen’s voice in the kitchen, low and rough, telling her he saw her now. The way he’d looked at her like she was someone worth looking at.
She set the mug down and crossed to the closet. The black dress hung there, wrapped in white garment bag, catching the light through the window. She unzipped it slowly, letting the fabric fall open.
It was beautiful. Deep black, with a sweetheart neckline and a slit that would run up her thigh. Simple. Elegant. The kind of dress a woman wore when she wanted to be remembered.
Navira ran her fingers over the fabric, and something in her chest tightened.
She was going to that ball. And she was going to save him a dance.
Dinner was loud in the best way.
Nic had made spaghetti with homemade sauce, the kitchen warm and fragrant with garlic and basil. Nami set the table with mismatched plates and candles that flickered without a draft. Reyen sat across from Navira, and for the first time, he didn’t watch her like she was a question he was trying to solve.
He just… existed in the same space. Easy. Almost normal.
“So,” Nic said, twirling pasta onto his fork, “are you staying for the ball?”
The question was directed at her, but his dark eyes flickered briefly toward Reyen before landing back on her face.
“I am,” Navira said. “Nami already has me fitted for armor.”
“Armor?” Reyen raised an eyebrow. “It’s a masquerade ball, not a battlefield.”
“Tell that to the heels I’ll be wearing.”
He snorted, a genuine almost-laugh that softened the sharp lines of his face. “Fair point.”
Nami beamed, clearly delighted by the exchange. Nic’s expression remained neutral, but there was something approving in the way he watched his brother.
“I should head home tonight,” Navira said, the words coming out before she could second-guess them. The table went quiet. “I need to check on Grams, and I have to figure out what I’m doing for the ball. Hair, makeup, all of it.”
Nami’s smile tightened, but she nodded. “I’ll miss having you here.”
“I’ll be back in a day.” Navira reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “Promise.”
“You better be.” Nami’s voice was soft, but her eyes glistened.
Reyen said nothing. He just reached for his glass and took a long drink, his dark eyes fixed on the table in front of him.
The rest of dinner passed in lighter conversation—Nic asking about the apothecary, Nami recounting a story about a client who’d tried to return a burnt candle, claiming it was defective when she’d clearly left it burning overnight. Navira laughed, real and full, and for a moment she forgot about Michael, about Reyen’s past, about the weight she carried.
Then dinner ended, and it was time to go.
Navira stood in the foyer, her bag slung over one shoulder, the cool night air seeping through the crack beneath the front door. Nami wrapped her arms around her in a hug that lingered, fierce and warm.
“Thank you,” Navira whispered into her hair. “For everything.”
“You don’t have to thank me.” Nami pulled back, her amber eyes bright. “But you do have to text me when you get home. And call me tomorrow. And—”
“I know.” Navira smiled. “I will.”
She pressed a kiss to Nami’s forehead, soft and quick, the way she used to when they were sixteen and Nami had cried over a boy who didn’t deserve her tears.
Then she turned to Nic.
He stood by the archway, hands in his pockets, his expression unreadable. But when she met his eyes, something shifted—a flicker of warmth, of acknowledgment.
“Thank you for having me,” she said.
“You’re always welcome here, Navira.” His voice was low, sincere. “That’s not an empty offer.”
She nodded, then looked past him, toward the stairs.
Reyen leaned against the banister, arms crossed, his dark hair falling across his forehead. He wasn’t smirking. He wasn’t teasing. He was just watching her, his expression guarded but his eyes soft in a way she hadn’t seen before.
She walked over to him, stopping a few feet away. The foyer felt smaller suddenly, the space between them charged with something she couldn’t name.
“I’ll see you at the ball,” she said.
“You promised me a dance.” His voice was quiet, without its usual edge.
“I remember.”
He held her gaze for a moment longer, then nodded once. “Good.”
Navira turned and walked out the door, the night air hitting her face, cool and clean. She heard the door click shut behind her, and she stood on the porch for a long moment, staring up at the stars scattered across the dark sky.
Her car sat in the driveway, waiting. She fished the keys from her pocket and unlocked it, the chirp breaking the silence.
As she pulled away from the Voss Estate, the headlights cutting through the dark, she saw a figure in the upstairs window. Standing still. Watching her go.
She didn’t have to guess who it was.
She drove home with the window down and the cold air on her face, and for the first time in six months, she let herself look forward to something.
The drive home passed in a blur of dark trees and empty roads. Navira kept the window down the whole way, cold air biting at her cheeks, her curls whipping across her face. She didn't turn on the radio. She just let the wind fill the silence and thought about the figure in the upstairs window, standing still, watching her go.
Her house sat quiet at the end of the gravel path, warm light spilling from the kitchen window. Grams always left the porch light on. Always. Even when Navira was nineteen and coming home past midnight from Nami's house, that light had been waiting.
She parked, killed the engine, and sat for a moment in the sudden stillness. The familiar creak of the gate. The smell of dried herbs drifting from the cracked window above the kitchen sink. Home.
The front door opened before she reached it. Grams stood there in her worn flannel robe, silver hair loose around her shoulders instead of braided, pale blue eyes sharp despite the late hour.
"You're later than I expected." Her voice was rough with sleep, but there was no reproach in it.
"I know. Sorry." Navira stepped inside, letting the warmth wrap around her. "I should have called."
"You should have." Grams closed the door behind her and locked it, a habit so automatic she probably did it in her sleep. "But you're here now. That's what matters."
She shuffled toward the kitchen, and Navira followed, dropping her bag by the stairs. The kettle was already on the stove, steam rising in a thin curl. Grams had been waiting up.
"Tea?"
"Please."
Navira sank into one of the wooden chairs at the small kitchen table, the same table she'd eaten breakfast at her entire life—scratched surface, mismatched salt and pepper shakers shaped like cats, a candle stub burned down to a nub. Everything familiar. Everything safe.
Grams moved slowly, deliberately, pouring hot water into two mugs and dropping tea bags in with the casual precision of someone who had done this ten thousand times. She set one in front of Navira, then lowered herself into the chair across from her with a soft grunt.
"So," Grams said, wrapping her hands around her mug, "tell me."
Navira stared into the darkening water, watching the tea bleed through the bag in amber swirls. "I stayed at Nami's for four days."
"I know. She called me. Said you needed the space."
Of course she had. Nami thought of everything.
"It was good," Navira said slowly. "Being there. Nami and Nic—they were good to me."
Grams hummed, a noncommittal sound that meant she was waiting for the real answer.
Navira took a breath. "There's something about them, Grams. About Nic and his brother, Reyen." She paused, searching for the right words. "Every time I'm around them, I feel this… charge. Like static in the air. Like the way I feel when I'm near another witch, but stronger. Deeper."
Grams's hands went still around her mug.
"I don't understand it," Navira continued, frowning at the table. "They're not witches—I can tell. But there's something there. Something I can't name."
The silence stretched. Navira looked up.
Grams was watching her, pale blue eyes unreadable, her face carved into lines that said she was deciding what to say. Or what not to say.
"Are you going to look into it?" Grams asked finally, her voice quiet.
Navira's frown deepened. That wasn't the answer she'd expected. Not a denial. Not a reassurance. A question.
"You know something," Navira said. It wasn't a question.
Grams's jaw tightened. She looked down at her tea, then back up at Navira, and something flickered in her eyes—old and heavy and careful.
"This," she said slowly, "is something you must find out on your own, my love."
Navira stared at her. "Grams—"
"I can't give you the answer." Grams's voice was gentle but final. "Some truths lose their weight if they're handed to you. You need to see it. To feel it. To decide what it means for yourself."
"That's not fair."
"No." Grams reached across the table and covered Navira's hand with her own, her knobby knuckles warm and dry. "But it's necessary."
Navira opened her mouth to argue, then closed it. Grams had never lied to her. Not once. If she said this was something Navira had to find on her own, there was a reason.
"Okay," Navira said, and the word felt heavier than it should have.
Grams squeezed her hand, then let go and picked up her tea. "Now drink. You look like you haven't slept in a week."
Navira laughed, a tired, broken sound. "I've slept more in the last four days than I have in months."
"Then you've been catching up on what you owed yourself." Grams took a sip, then pointed at her with the mug. "The ball's tomorrow night?"
"Tonight. I mean—today. It's tonight." Navira glanced at the clock on the wall. Past midnight. "I should sleep. I have things I need to do before I go."
"Then go to bed." Grams stood, taking her mug to the sink. "I'll wake you before noon."
Navira finished her tea in the quiet kitchen, listening to the familiar creak of the house settling around her. When she finally climbed the stairs to her room, she paused at the window at the end of the hall, the one that faced the road leading out of town.
She thought about the Voss Estate. About the ruined ballroom. About Reyen's voice in the dark, low and rough, telling her he saw her now.
She pulled the curtain closed and went to bed.
Morning came too fast.
Navira woke with the pale gray light filtering through her curtains, her body heavy with sleep but her mind already spinning. She lay still for a moment, staring at the cracks in the ceiling she'd memorized as a child, and let the previous night settle into place.
Grams knew something. And she'd told Navira to find it herself.
She got up, dressed in jeans and a soft sweater, and moved quietly through the house. Grams's door was still closed, soft snoring drifting through the wood. The kitchen was empty, the kettle cold.
Navira grabbed her keys and slipped out the front door.
The town centre was quiet at this hour—a few shops opening their doors, an old man sweeping the sidewalk in front of the bakery, the distant hum of a delivery truck. The air smelled like rain that hadn't fallen yet, thick and waiting.
The founders' memorial stood in the center of the square, a weathered stone monument surrounded by a low iron fence. Names carved into bronze plaques, arranged by generation. The first families of Ashwood Falls.
Navira had walked past this monument a hundred times without really looking at it. It was just part of the town—old and ignored and taken for granted.
Today, she read every name.
She found the Voss plaque near the top, the bronze tarnished green with age. Reyen Voss. Nicodemus Voss. Dated 1842.
Her stomach twisted.
That couldn't be right. Reyen and Nic weren't that old. They couldn't be. They looked—she did the math in her head—they looked like they were in their early twenties. Late twenties at most.
She scanned further down the plaque and stopped at a name that made her breath catch.
Medora Devereux.
Same date. 1842.
Navira stared at the name, her pulse hammering in her throat. Medora. The woman Reyen had mentioned. The one from his past. She was listed among the founders of Ashwood Falls.
She ran her finger over the engraved letters, cold bronze under her touch. Founders. From the 1800s.
That meant they'd all been alive then. Which meant—
She pulled out her phone and started searching.
The town archive had digitized some of its records—old photographs, census data, newspaper clippings. She found the Voss family album first. Black-and-white images, sepia-toned, edges curling with age.
She clicked on one dated 1850.
Three people stood in front of the Voss Estate—the same estate she'd just spent four days in. A woman in a high-necked gown, dark hair pinned in an elaborate twist, her expression cool and distant. Medora. Beside her, two men stood tall and unsmiling, dressed in formal coats and stiff collars.
Nic. And Reyen.
They looked exactly the same.
Navira zoomed in on their faces, her hands trembling. The same sharp jawlines. The same dark eyes. The same presence, even captured in silver nitrate and shadow. No aging. No change.
She clicked through more photos. 1873. 1901. 1925. Every decade, the same faces. The same people, unchanged while the world shifted around them.
Her stomach dropped.
She thought about the animal attacks Nami had mentioned. The ones people whispered about in town—hikers found in the woods, drained of blood, bite marks on their necks. The authorities called it a wild animal. A bear. A mountain lion.
But bears didn't leave bite marks on necks. And mountain lions didn't drain bodies of blood.
Navira sat down on the cold stone bench beside the monument, her phone clutched in her hands, her mind racing. The charge she felt around them. The way they moved, too smooth, too controlled. The way Reyen's eyes had darkened in the kitchen that first night, like something had shifted behind them.
She thought about what Grams had said last night. You need to see it. To feel it. To decide what it means for yourself.
She knew. Grams had known all along.
Navira sat there for a long time, the morning growing brighter around her, the town waking up. A part of her wanted to call Nami. To demand answers. To march back to the Voss Estate and confront them.
But she didn't. She stood up, brushed the dust from her jeans, and walked home.
She had a ball to get ready for.
The afternoon passed in a blur of preparation. Navira showered, washed her hair, let it air-dry in soft waves while she did her makeup—smoky eyes, dark lips, a hint of shimmer on her cheekbones. She took her time, deliberate with every stroke, letting the ritual steady her nerves.
When she was ready, she stood in front of the full-length mirror in her room and looked at herself.
The dress was everything Nami had promised. Black halter-neck gown, plunging neckline that swept down to a structured corset bodice, cinching her waist before flowing into a full A-line skirt. The fabric caught the light with a subtle textured floral pattern, barely visible but present, depth in the darkness. A thigh-high slit on the right side exposed her leg with every shift of her weight, bold and unapologetic.
Black strappy heels. Intricate lace masquerade mask, the delicate filigree framing her eyes like a secret waiting to be uncovered.
She looked… powerful.
Navira turned, watching the skirt swirl around her ankles, and for a moment, she forgot about the photographs. Forgot about the weight of what she'd discovered. Forgot about everything except the woman in the mirror—the one with the steady hands and the fire behind her hazel eyes.
She grabbed her clutch, a small black thing that held only her phone, her lipstick, and her keys, and headed downstairs.
Grams was waiting in the living room, sitting in her armchair with a book in her lap. She looked up as Navira descended, and her face softened into something tender and proud.
"Well," Grams said, closing her book, "don't you look like you're about to change someone's life."
Navira smiled, but it wavered. "Grams—"
"I know." Grams stood and crossed to her, reaching up to adjust a strand of hair that had fallen out of place. "You found what you were looking for."
"I found enough." Navira's voice was quiet. "I don't know what to do with it."
"You don't have to know tonight." Grams cupped her face, her palms warm and rough. "Tonight, you go to that ball. You dance. You let yourself feel joy. Tomorrow, you decide what the truth means."
Navira's throat tightened. "What if I'm scared?"
"Good." Grams kissed her forehead. "Fear means you're paying attention."
She pulled back, her pale blue eyes holding Navira's with a weight that felt like a blessing.
"Now go. And save that dance."
Navira walked out the front door into the cool evening air, the sky painted in shades of violet and orange. Her car waited in the driveway. The Voss Estate waited at the end of the road.
And somewhere in that ballroom, Reyen Voss was waiting for her.
She got in the car and drove.