MistNovel - Read Web Novel Stories & Fiction Online

The dying plant did not beg. It simply surrendered, pale leaves curling inward like a prayer that would never be answered. Cressa wiped the golden residue from her fingers and tucked the vial into the hidden pocket beneath her workbench. Illegal. Dangerous. Necessary.

Three in the afternoon meant the Guard rotations would be changing. She had fifteen minutes before the patrols doubled.

Her shop smelled of earth and old magic, the kind that settled into wood and stone after years of quiet work. Shelves lined every wall, crowded with jars and bundles of dried herbs. Shadowbloom. Moonpetal. Starwort. Each one labeled in her careful script, each one perfectly legal and perfectly harmless.

The useful plants, the ones with real power, she kept hidden.

Cressa moved through the familiar routine of closing. She checked the locks twice, extinguished the lanterns, and pulled the curtains across the front window. The fabric was heavy enough to block prying eyes but thin enough to let her see the street beyond.

The Elven Guard marched past at precisely three fifteen.

Silver armor gleamed in the afternoon sun, polished to a mirror shine that could blind at fifty paces. The formation moved like a single organism, each step synchronized, each breath controlled. At the center of it all, riding a black horse that looked more shadow than flesh, was the new Captain.

Lord Riven.

Even from this distance, she could feel the weight of his presence. He sat straight in the saddle, his silver hair pulled back in a severe braid that emphasized the sharp angles of his face. His gray eyes swept the street with methodical precision, cataloging every door, every window, every potential threat.

Her pulse jumped traitorously when his gaze lingered on her shop.

He could not see her. The curtains were drawn. She was safe behind fabric and shadow and the carefully constructed lie of her human appearance. Still, her heart hammered against her ribs as if he had already found her, already knew exactly what she was hiding.

The Guard passed. The street fell silent again.

Cressa released a breath she had not realized she was holding.

A knock at the back door sent her spinning toward the sound. She crossed the shop in four quick steps, checked the peephole, and relaxed when she saw familiar brown eyes and ink-stained fingers.

Calix.

She opened the door, and he slipped inside with the easy grace of someone who had made this journey a hundred times before. He smelled like old paper and chamomile tea, comforting in a way that made her chest ache.

"You are late," she said.

"The university lecture ran long." He set a wrapped bundle on her counter and pushed his spectacles up his nose. "I brought the texts you requested. The ones about Heartwood growth patterns."

"Thank you."

He watched her unwrap the books with the quiet intensity that meant he had something difficult to say. Cressa had learned to read him over the past three years of friendship. The way he chewed the inside of his cheek when he was thinking. The way his shoulders tensed when he was worried.

He was worried now.

"What is it?" she asked.

"The new Captain." Calix moved to the window and peered through a gap in the curtains. "He arrested six people this week. All fairies. All on suspicion of magical contamination."

Cold dread pooled in her stomach.

"Were they guilty?"

"Does it matter?" He turned to face her, and the anger in his voice surprised her. Calix was gentle by nature, slow to fury, but something about this had ignited a spark. "He does not need proof. He needs suspicion and a convenient target."

"The Guard has always been this way."

"Not like this." Calix crossed to her, and his hand settled on her shoulder with careful weight. "Lord Riven is not like the others. He is brilliant, ruthless, and utterly convinced of elven superiority. He believes fairies are inherently corrupt. That your kind is responsible for the blight destroying the city."

Your kind.

Calix had never said it like that before. As if he saw the truth beneath her human disguise. As if he had always known and was only now brave enough to acknowledge it.

Cressa stepped back, and his hand fell away.

"I am just an herbalist," she said quietly.

"You are my friend." His voice was soft but firm. "Whatever you are, whoever you are, that has not changed. But please, Cressa. Be careful. Stay out of his way."

She nodded, though they both knew it was a lie. In a city like Atheria, where magic flowed from the Heartwood and every citizen depended on its power, there was no staying out of the way. Sooner or later, everyone came under the Guard's scrutiny.

Sooner or later, they would come for her too.

Calix left through the back door as quietly as he had arrived. Cressa locked it behind him, checked the street one more time, and climbed the narrow stairs to her living quarters above the shop.

The small room was sparse. A bed. A table. A single chair. The only luxury was the window that overlooked the fairy district, where paper lanterns glowed in the gathering dusk and music drifted up from the streets below.

She pressed her palm against the glass and felt the familiar ache in her shoulders. The place where wings should have been. The place where something vital had been stolen.

Cressa turned away from the window and moved to the corner where she kept her most precious plants. The moonvine she had been cultivating for two years. The starwort that bloomed only at midnight. The shadowbloom cutting Calix had brought her last month.

She checked each one with careful hands, whispering to them the way her mother had taught her before everything had been taken away.

The moonvine was healthy. The starwort thrived.

The shadowbloom was dead.

Not dying. Dead.

Black veins spider-webbed across its leaves, and the stem had collapsed into itself like rotted wood. She touched it with trembling fingers and felt nothing. No life. No magic. Just the cold emptiness of corruption.

The blight had found her sanctuary.