Thrice Blessed Witches Of Rykerwood

The first time Marco Ricco saw Rykerwood’s witch hunters up close, they were already bleeding magic into the gutters-thin ribbons of light seeping from broken wards like smoke from a struck match. The rain didn’t fall so much as it scented the air, ozone and jasmine riding every gust off the stone alleys, and the cold slicked his boots as he followed the trail with his nose more than his eyes. Magic had a taste when it was being stolen. It left a metallic emptiness behind, like biting down on paper.

He crouched beside a drain where the siphon had burrowed into the city’s bones. A chalk line-human-made, crude-had been drawn around the wound in the warding circle. The hunters had tried to anchor their extraction to something stable. Marco’s jaw tightened as he touched the chalk with the back of his knuckles. Heat flared and immediately died, like the ward rejected him.

“Shadow Hunters don’t like being used as a service,” he muttered, then lifted his hand to scent the residue. Jasmine clung to it, mixed with the sweet rot of stolen power. Someone had been here long enough to get comfortable.

A step behind him. Heavy. Controlled. The kind of footfall that didn’t ask permission.

Orion Hastings didn’t announce himself. He just slid into the edge of Marco’s vision like a secret that had decided it was tired of hiding. His uniform-Fort Kenyon’s perimeter kit, dark and practical-was damp at the shoulders, water beading and running off as if his skin refused to hold onto the weather. The air around him carried an undertow of pine and lily, faint under the rain, and something else too-suppressed sweetness, carefully managed.

Marco didn’t turn his head, but his body registered Orion in a way it always did. A slight shift in temperature along his spine. A subtle tightening behind his ribs that didn’t belong to the cold.

Orion’s voice came low. “They’ve been siphoning for weeks. Not from the wards people see. From the ones under the streets.”

Marco finally looked up. Orion’s eyes were sharp, almost amused, but his mouth was set like he’d swallowed something bitter. Around his throat, the edges of a concealment patch were visible if you knew where to look-thin film, pale against skin, designed to dampen scent. Designed to hide a truth.

Marco’s fingers flexed once, slow. “You’ve been close enough to learn their pattern.”

Orion’s gaze flicked to the drain, then back to Marco. “I’ve been assigned to observe Fort Kenyon’s border anomalies. This is within the perimeter.”

“You’re not assigned to Rykerwood’s underways,” Marco said, and the words came out clean. Too clean. Like a blade laid on a table.

Orion’s expression didn’t change, but the air between them did-thicker, charged by proximity and the memory of all the times they’d pretended they were only friends while the world kept insisting they were something else. Weeks of distance had not cooled anything. It had only made the ache sharper.

Marco stood, rain sliding off his coat. “Then tell me why the hunters left a route that leads straight to our families.”

Orion’s shoulders rose and fell once, controlled. “Because they want a reaction. Witch hunters don’t just steal magic. They weaponize it. They’re testing how quickly Rykerwood’s defenders bleed back.”

Marco stepped closer, boots splashing through a shallow puddle. He could smell the ozone in the rain, the jasmine in the air-then Orion’s scent, muted but still unmistakable beneath the blockers. Sweet and floral, like a promise held under cloth.

Orion didn’t back away.

Instead, he lifted his hand, palm out, fingers spread as if offering proof. “Look at the chalk. It’s keyed to a witch’s binding sigil. That means they’ve got someone who knows what they’re doing. Either a traitor or a captured witch.”

Marco’s eyes narrowed. “You’re saying witch hunters are learning our language.”

“I’m saying they’ve found a way to translate it.” Orion’s gaze held Marco’s. “And they’re running out of patience. They’ll move tonight.”

A distant crack-gunfire, metallic and sharp-cut through the rain. The sound traveled wrong, too muffled for where the squad would be. Marco’s blood went hot with urgency.

Orion’s chin tipped toward the alley mouth. “We should move.”

Marco took one step, then stopped. The thought came with a physical certainty, like a thread pulled taut: touch would change everything. It always did, with him. His Bonded Vision-rare, stubborn, impossible to trigger without skin-had been absent for weeks, because they’d been kept apart by duty and family arrangements and the kind of obligations that tasted like iron.

But it wasn’t gone.

It waited.

Orion turned his head slightly, as if he’d felt Marco’s restraint tighten. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

Marco’s mouth went dry. “Harder for who?”

Orion’s eyes flickered, and for a heartbeat his control slipped. Something flashed there-heat, fear, and the thin edge of need he’d been trying to bury under suppressants....