Chapter 3 Crownsdale Community Watch: protecting our town since 1787

Evi's POV

REMINDER: The registration and monitoring of identified magical persons remains active under Community Ordinance 14. Unregistered practitioners, particularly female practitioners of hereditary magic are subject to immediate reporting. They will be hunted.

If you suspect a witch in your community: Report. Do not engage. Do not protect.

"That board has been there my whole life," Damian said, his voice flat but quiet. "They update it every season."

I couldn't look away from the words. HEREDITARY MAGIC. REPORT. DO NOT ENGAGE. My father’s blood ran through my veins, living in my palms whether I wanted it there or not.

"Still curious?" he asked.

I said nothing. Damian studied my face, something subtle shifting in his expression—a question forming that he chose not to ask. He pulled back onto the road, and we finished the drive in total silence.

I pressed my shaking hands flat against my thighs and stared straight ahead. Tonight. It has to be tonight. I refused to let the world hunt me.

Damian pulled into the crowded school lot and cut the engine. Crownsdale High was a sprawling, historic red-brick building filled with expensive-looking students who clearly belonged. As I opened the passenger door, a ripple of attention shifted toward us. Eyes found Damian first, then slid to me with immediate, silent questions. Who is she? Why is she with him?

Damian didn't look at me. He slung his bag over his shoulder and walked toward the entrance, the crowd parting effortlessly for him. I followed at a distance.

Halfway up the steps, a sharp voice cut through the noise. "Damian-honey."

A beautiful, glamorous girl cut through the crowd like she owned the place. She reached Damian in three strides, cupped his jaw, and kissed him deeply. He let her.

I quickly looked away, suddenly finding a crack in the concrete step fascinating. When I looked back up, she was staring directly at me with unfriendly green eyes, sizing me up with pure judgment.

"Who is this?" she asked him.

Damian glanced at me for a single, cold second. "I don't know her."

With those four words, he vanished into the corridor. The girl offered me one last icy smile. "Lost?" she purred.

I held her gaze, refusing to flinch, then pushed past her through the double doors. Firescrawn had taught me exactly how to walk through a room that didn't want me. Besides, after tonight, none of this would matter.

The hallway was loud and chaotic. I was scanning the room numbers for the main office when someone grabbed my arm.

I spun around. A short girl with chaotic curly hair was breathing fast, staring down at my hands in a mix of fascination and terror.

I pulled my arm back. "Can I help you?"

"Are you a witch?" she whispered, her voice trembling.

My blood turned to ice. "What?"

"Your hands," she swallowed. "When I touched you... they went so warm. Like a—"

"I don't know what you're talking about," I interrupted, backing away. "I need to find the office."

The fascination drained from her face, replaced by something malicious. She took a deep breath, turned to the crowded hallway, and screamed, "SHE'S A WITCH!"

The hallway died. Every conversation stopped instantly. Dozens of eyes locked onto me, the silence deafening. People near me took a collective step back. I stood perfectly still, my heart in my throat, feeling the familiar, terrifying heat beginning to climb into my palms in response to the fear. Not here. Not now.

Then the crowd snapped. A rolled-up tissue struck my cheek. A plastic bottle cap flicked past my head.

"Witch!" someone shouted. "Get out of our school!"

I backed against the cold metal lockers, raising my hands to shield my face as the first shove landed, spinning me sideways. Someone yanked my bag, sending me stumbling to the floor.

"Burn her!"

Panicking, I folded into myself. The heat in my chest ignited like a match in dry grass, surging completely out of my control. I looked down at my hands. A faint, unmistakable shimmer of orange light was crawling across my fingers.

Someone grabbed my hair, and the pain made the magic spike. My palms began to glow. The girl closest to me shrieked in terror.

"ENOUGH!"

The absolute authority in the voice froze the entire hallway. I looked up through blurred vision to see my mother standing ten feet away, her eyes burning with an icy fury. She looked less like my mom and more like an impending reckoning.

The crowd parted instantly. She reached me in a few strides, checked my face with terrified but hidden concern, and pulled me tightly against her side.

"Who touched her?" she demanded. Silence followed. "I am the new principal of this school, and this is my daughter. Do not touch her again."

A bold girl near the back tilted her chin. "She's a witch. We were just protecting—"

"You were assaulting a student in my hallway," my mother cut her off, her voice dangerously quiet. "Would you like to finish that sentence in my office?"

The girl shut her mouth. My mother guided me down the hall as the crowd reluctantly dispersed. We rounded the corner, and she finally let out a sharp breath, gripping my face in her hands. "Are you hurt? I'm so sorry, baby."

I shook my head, trying to force a reassuring smile. But my hands were still burning, and all I could think was: Just survive a few more hours. Late that night, I waited until the house fell completely silent before I moved.

I unwrapped the leather book and set it open on my bedroom floor, arranging the ingredients from my tin box: salt for severance, ground ash for surrender, and a dried sprig of nightshade. Finally, I placed seven black candles in the shape of the crescent-and-circle symbol and lit them. The room transformed, cast in dancing, eerie shadows.

I sat cross-legged in the center of the circle, pressing a pin into the pad of my thumb. Three drops of blood onto the ash. I didn't let myself think about the danger. I just wanted to be ordinary.

I began the incantation. The words were an ancient language, flowing rhythmically from my mouth. As I spoke, the seven black flames bent sharply inward, leaning toward me. A deep, heavy ache spread through my palms and crawled up my wrists, pulling out the magic.

Good, I thought, pushing through the pain. Go.

The air grew thick. The moonlight through the curtains pulsed like a heartbeat, and I felt myself right on the edge of the breakthrough.

The door exploded open, the handle slamming violently against the wall.

I screamed, the deep trance shattering instantly. The candle flames blew sideways, the circle broke, and the words died in my throat. The magic trapped inside me snapped like a taut cord, sending a violent spike of heat rushing to my hands.

Damian stood in the doorway, his chest heaving as he took in the scene; the blood, the candles, the ancient book. His expression shifted rapidly into pure horror.

"What are you doing?" he breathed.

"Get out!" I scrambled to my feet, but my hands were already blazing. Brilliant orange light poured between my fingers and raced up my forearms, leaking out of me like water from a burst pipe.

Damian didn't run or scream. He just stared at the fire in my palms, his jaw tight. But there was something else in his eyes, like a haunting look of recognition, as if he had seen this exact nightmare before.

Suddenly, the candles scattered across the floor. The painted symbols began to glow a deep, corrupted red, and the book's pages flipped wildly on their own. The pain hit me all at once, an agonizing, full-body burn. 

I heard a wrecked sound tear from my throat, and before I could even register hitting the floor, the world went entirely black.

Damian pov

For one full second, I didn't move.

I kept telling myself this wasn't real, that I was trapped in some twisted nightmare. But then Evi’s body jerked violently, her spine arching off the floor as if something were ripping her apart from the inside. Panic took over, clearing out every thought in my head.

"Evi!" I yelled.

I crossed the room before I even registered moving. She was convulsing, her pupils blown so wide the color had vanished from her eyes. Blood was trickling from her nose and the corner of her mouth.

I whipped out my phone. No signal. I turned toward the hallway to scream for help, but the bedroom door slammed shut on its own. The remaining candles flared, and the air filled with a suffocating chorus of overlapping, whispering voices. Underneath the noise, a dark, rhythmic chant began to echo: Die. Die. Die.

"No!" My voice cracked as I dropped to my knees.

"You don't get to touch her."

Desperate to anchor her, I crossed into the broken circle and pulled her deadweight body into my arms, resting her head against my lap.

The exact second my skin made contact with hers, a violent shockwave tore through me. It wasn't just heat, it was a raw, roaring force that slammed directly into my chest. Deep inside my consciousness, a voice I hadn't heard in years clawed its way to the surface. My inner wolf violently reared back, its instinct locking onto the dying girl in my arms with absolute, blinding certainty Mate.

The word echoed in my mind, sending a jolt of sheer panic through my veins. Mate? It didn't make sense. It was impossible. She was human—there was no scent, no pull, nothing until this exact second.

Before I could even process the confusion, the magic flooding out of her turned hostile. The orange fire crawling across her skin leapt onto my hands. It didn't just feel hot; it felt like acid pouring into my veins. The phantom magic began to burn me from the inside out, dragging our raw life forces together and violently stitching them into a permanent loop.

"What the hell..." I gasped, my chest heaving as the room began to spin.

I was burning, suffocating,

completely trapped by a force I couldn't fight. Through the blinding pain, I grabbed the ancient leather book off the floor with a trembling hand, trying to find anything to stop the flare. My eyes scrambled over the messy ink near the back page, catching on a scrawled paragraph:

“When the vessel begins to fail, there exists one final mercy. An absolute soul bond may be forged to anchor the fading spirit, though the cost to the protector is total, tethering two lives into one shared existence.”

I didn't fully understand it, and I didn't have time to care. I forced the heavy, foreign words out of my mouth. They dragged against my tongue like lead, the pressure building behind my eyes until I could taste copper.

The whispering voices in the room shifted, swelling into a deafening roar that sounded like a packed hockey arena—hundreds of overlapping screams, distant and cold. I pushed through the final line of the ritual, forcing our souls to lock together, and the noise cut to sudden, total silence.

Evi went completely still in my arms. Her skin felt like ice against mine, but the agonizing heat in my own chest didn't stop. The freshly forged bond was tearing through my system now, a chaotic storm of fire and confusion that my body couldn't sustain. My wolf howled in silent, panicked agony as the human magic overwhelmed us both.

Wake up, I fought to scream through our new connection, but the darkness was already pulling me under.

The room tilted completely sideways. The floor rushed up to meet me, and the last thing I felt was the crushing weight of the blackout swallowing me whole.