LAYLA
The sleet ticked at the window slow and irregular. Gray light pooled on the warped floorboards, catching on dust and cracked varnish. The heat hadn’t come up yet.
I sat at the kitchen table in my slip, Daniel’s old trench coat thrown over my shoulders. My toes curled against the boards, trying to stay off the cold knots where the runework under the floor had gone weak again.
The drink in my cup had turned bitter. I hadn’t touched it in over an hour. It sat there, oil skimming the surface, the steam long gone.
A cigarette burned down to the halfway mark in a chipped saucer beside it. I wasn’t really smoking — just watching it fade. Like it might know something I didn’t.
The apartment creaked.
Pipes hissed behind the walls — old dwarven runes struggling to keep up with the cold. They’d promised ten winters on the installation, but this was year twelve. I could hear them groaning with the effort, the same way I did when I moved too fast lately.
Down in the alley, the butcher’s cart clattered past — iron wheels rattling on stone, the horse snorting as it slipped in the slush. Somewhere nearby, the milk delivery creaked to a stop. A pause. A metal lid clinked. Hooves stamped once. Then nothing.
I rubbed my eyes. My fingers smelled of lemon oil and ash.
I hadn’t slept.
My body wouldn’t let me. Every time I closed my eyes, he was there — Khurzog. Not in dreams. Not even memory. Just present. Too present. Like a second heartbeat tucked under my skin.
My magic wouldn’t settle. It flickered in me, sparking at the edges of my breath. Every nerve hummed. Even blinking felt loud.
The teaspoon in my cup stirred once — lazy, wobbly — then dropped with a soft clink. I didn’t notice until after it stopped.
I pressed my hand flat against the table. It was warm, faintly buzzing with leftover magic.
Everything in me felt pulled thin.
Frayed.
Wired.
I got up to pour more coffee I wouldn’t drink. My knees cracked. The coat slid half off my shoulder as I crossed the hallway to the tiny counter where we kept the enamel kettle.
I passed the mirror on the way.
Stopped.
My reflection looked worse than I felt — and that was saying something.
Eyes bloodshot. Lips chewed raw. Hair still pinned, mostly, but pieces had slipped loose in the night and stuck to my neck. I looked like someone who’d run through a fire without getting burned — just smoked out.
My eyes drifted down.
There — just above the nipple.
A mark.
Half a year old. Still visible, though only barely. A crescent-shaped scar, like a bite that hadn’t fully healed. Faint. White. But warm, somehow.
I touched it with two fingers.
It hummed.
“What did you do to me?” I whispered to the empty air. My voice cracked.
The lemon oil I’d used yesterday still lingered in the corners of the room — that soft, sharp scent meant to cut through everything else. It was supposed to cover the things that clung too long.
But beneath it — his scent still held.
Not strong. Not real. Not anything anyone else would notice.
But I could feel it. Smell it.
Orc sweat. Spellfire. The heat that clings to skin even after three baths and a bar of coal soap that stripped everything else away.
I pressed my palm flat to the mirror.
It felt cool.
I didn’t.
The slam of a door cracked through the quiet like a gunshot.
“Mornin’, sweetheart!” Maggie’s voice — all smoke and sunlight — rolled down the hallway before she did.
A moment later she appeared, half-dressed and wholly alive, scarf clenched between her teeth, one heel dangling from her fingers, the other already on. She was trying to pin her curls up with one hand and button her blouse with the other, and somehow doing both.
Her skin caught the gray light pouring through the window — warm bronze, all glow against the cold. Her curls, slick with the damp air, had a mind of their own, springing loose no matter how many silver pins she fought them with. A streak of lipstick marked the edge of her thumb.
She stopped when she saw me.
“God, woman,” she said around the scarf, tugging it free and tossing it onto a chair. “Is that your third cigarette?”
“Second,” I said, voice rough from disuse.
She raised an eyebrow. “Sure. And I’m the Queen of the Bronx.”
The shoe hit the floor with a thud as she slipped it on and reached for her handbag. It landed on the sideboard with a sigh, spilling papers and a half-eaten pastry. She looked me over — hair, eyes, coffee, everything I hadn’t fixed.
“You look like shit,” she said.
I managed a weak smile. “Just didn’t sleep.”
“Uh-huh.” She looped one of her earrings through, her reflection catching mine in the window. “Sweetheart, your eyes got more red in them than my nail polish.”
The air between us hummed — faint, nervous. I could see it in the way her curls lifted just slightly, static catching the ends, as if my magic was brushing through the room, restless.
She frowned. “You been practicing spells again?”
“No.”
“Lying again?”
“Maybe.”
Her laugh was quick — that warm, honey-deep sound that always made the room feel bigger. But it died halfway. Something in it faltered when she glanced at the half-stirred coffee cup and saw the spoon lying wrong.
The air buzzed harder. My heartbeat followed it.
The kitchen was too small for two women trying to pretend they didn’t notice each other falling apart.
A galley barely wide enough to breathe in, ceiling slanted low so we both had to tilt our heads when we talked.
The rune-hotplate sat in the corner, sulking — a replacement for the gas stove the landlord never fixed after the fire. It sparked when I got emotional. Lately, that meant it sparked often.
Maggie reached for a butter knife from the counter.
It jumped.
Just a little — but enough to make her hiss and pull back.
“You know,” she said, shaking out her hand, “not to be rude, but if your aura gets any spikier, I’m gonna need gloves to get my underwear out the wash.”
I let out a breath through my nose. “I’m handling it.”
“Are you?” She picked the knife up carefully, using a folded napkin this time, eyes narrowing just a little. “Because your toothbrush started singing last night. In Cantonese.”
“It was humming,” I said.
“In Cantonese, Layla. Do you even know Cantonese?”
Her voice wasn’t sharp, just worried. That was worse somehow. Maggie didn’t do fear well — it made her go too quiet, and quiet wasn’t her natural state. Normally she filled every inch of air she walked into: all perfume, fast words, bright laughter that made men turn twice and women roll their eyes.
Next to her, I always felt faded — like a shadow of something steadier.
She tugged on her stockings, foot balanced on the edge of the kitchen chair like she was halfway through a dance routine. The radiator behind her sputtered and hissed, finally remembering it was supposed to be heating something.
“You remember you’ve got dinner with Daniel tonight, right?” she said, voice casual. “He said you don’t call him back half the time. I told him you’re just shy.”
I didn’t answer right away. The spoon clinked again in my cup — once, sharp — then went still.
“Been busy,” I said.
She glanced over her shoulder at me. Didn’t press.
The silence that followed was thin, stretched. I could feel the heat crawling up my neck. Not from the radiator.
Daniel was good. Steady. Polite. The man who waited before touching, who offered tea before kisses.
He smelled of starch and sandalwood. He held doors and apologized when he sneezed.
When he visited, the neighbors assumed he was there for Maggie. Her brother. A lawyer. Clean-cut. Clean-souled.
It kept everyone comfortable.
That was the whole point.
It was neat. Respectable. Quiet.
And dead.
Every time his hand brushed mine, I felt… wrong. Like he was something I’d borrowed — or worse, something I’d been told I should want.
He kissed soft. Asked first.
But his mouth didn’t set me on fire. It didn’t burn like —
No.
I dug my fingernail into the side of my cup, forcing the thought away. My magic twitched in my palm. The teaspoon gave a warning shimmy.
I pushed it down.
Daniel was good. And human.
Very human.
Like dry toast after a feast you didn’t want to leave.
I’d chosen him to quiet the hunger.
It hadn’t worked.
Maggie hooked her second earring in, still watching herself in the window instead of the mirror. Her reflection shifted in the wavery glass. She adjusted the lipstick with her thumb, then tilted her head just slightly.
“So…” she said, slow, casual.
Too casual.
“So… the new detective? The orc,” she said, turning. “You met him yet?”
I froze.
She kept going, still half-posed at the window.
“He got tusks like a shipwreck? Arms like a boxing ring?” Her grin crept in like a cat through a cracked door. “You think he’d look twice at a girl like me?”
The cup rattled in my hand.
I didn’t look down. Didn’t breathe. A hot pulse moved through the room.
Maggie probably didn’t feel it, or maybe she ignored it. She was good at pretending not to notice when I got like this. Better than anyone else.
She found her gloves at last, half-buried under the latest copy of the Evening Oracle and a half-written letter she’d never send. She pulled them on with the speed of someone who was always late and always forgiven for it.
She threw her coat over one arm, adjusting the collar with a flick of her wrist.
“Don’t forget dinner!” she said, walking backwards toward the front door like the apartment was a stage and she couldn’t leave without a final line. “He’s taking you to the Oyster House, so wear something pretty and not —” her eyes dragged pointedly down to the gray slip barely held up by the coat’s collar “— that.”
I didn’t answer.
She paused long enough to soften it. Her voice gentled.
“And don’t be late to work, you know how Vance is.”
I nodded, just enough to make it count. “I’ll be there.”
She smiled — bright, but brief — and turned.
The door shut behind her. The lock clicked.
A moment later, the stairwell echoed with the staccato tap of her heels disappearing into the morning.
Then nothing.
I dropped back into the chair, too fast. It creaked under me, loud in the sudden silence.
The cigarette in the saucer had burned to ash, thin and collapsing. I hadn’t touched it, but it smoked anyway.
The spoon in my brew had stilled. The cup was cold. My hands weren’t.
A crack split across the glass tabletop with a sound like ice breaking on a lake — slow and sharp. It traced out in a fine, pale arc, from edge to center, delicate as spider silk. I hadn’t moved. I hadn’t touched it.
I stared at it.
The apartment felt too big now. Too quiet without Maggie’s voice filling it like warmth in the bones of the walls. Without her perfume fighting the cold. Without her laughter softening the corners of the morning.
My chest ached.
Outside, sleet whispered against the glass, soft as static. Inside, I felt my own pulse against my teeth. Too close to the surface.
Daniel was waiting for me tonight.
Polite. Predictable. Safe.
He’d take my coat. Order wine. Compliment my dress.
He’d touch my hand gently, and I wouldn’t feel anything.
And still —
Still —
Khurzog.
And my magic —
My magic was bleeding out through my skin like it didn’t want to stay quiet anymore. Like it missed him too.