Flora sat quietly, listening to what she must do to banish Sylvia. It was complicated, different from every other spell she had heard of or performed, but Madrigal explained it with pained accuracy before giving the book itself to Flora to carry with her.

"Let's," Madrigal said.

Flora didn't notice the walk home. She was reciting the incantation under her breath, relying on Madrigal's gentle redirections over roots, rocks, and brambles. Madrigal kept silent pace beside her, and she uttered the phrase over and over, holding it in her thoughts as a talisman against the evil she was about to face. The light melted around them until Flora could barely see the page before she closed the book.

As they approached her cottage, she slowed. Her heart beat painfully, squeezed by the knowledge of what she was about to do.

"Tell Felix to bring her outside," Madrigal instructed.

Felix, I have Madrigal, Flora called. We'll be okay, but you need to leave the house, and bring Sylvia with you.

They picked their way carefully through the bushes and trees, struggling to move with nothing but small shards of moonlight to guide them. Felix didn't answer.

Felix, she called again. He didn't reply. This is urgent; you need to leave for your own safety.

I can't find her! his voice replied suddenly. The barrier was complete, I decided to take a nap, just for a moment, and she's gone!

Flora's heart jerked into her throat, gaze snapping to Madrigal. She could see it. They began moving faster. They crashed through branches, pushing and tripping. Twigs stung at their faces, their boots scuffed, the clearing pulled into view. They burst through the brush.

She was there.

Sylvia stood in front of the cottage, arms crossed over her chest. In the full face of the moon, light cutting across her features, she was ghoulish.

"Where have you been?" she demanded loudly, her voice strained. "I have been here all day, waiting for you . Now here you are, well after dark, gallivanting with this old hag. Look at me! I'm wasted and small, and it is entirely your fault!"

Sylvia's clothes were ripped and torn into rags, hair matted and grizzled. Her skin was papery and dry, sucked into the skeletal hollows of her features. Her eyes had sunken in their sockets, round and bulging. She was a corpse walking.

Flora dropped the book from her trembling hands.

"Who is this?" Sylvia demanded, gesturing angrily at Madrigal. "What do you have to say for yourself?"

Flora tried to speak, but the words stuck in her throat as she stared at Sylvia's form.

Where are you? Felix cried frantically, I'm halfway to Madrigal's and still no sign of Sylvia.

"Answer me right now!" Sylvia yelled at her shrilly, "I said answer me!"

The words slapped her, and she stepped back towards the woods.

"You stupid, stupid girl!" the creature howled, eyes blazing. The sound was so grating it no longer sounded human, and suddenly Flora saw what she'd created.

Sylvia looked at Flora with what she must have thought was sternness, but it was clear now what lay beneath. Her expression was only a parody of human emotion, a manipulative mask donned to hide how she was empty. The only thing standing before her was her own guilt: an ugly, twisted, raging monster that would leach away all of the good things she still had inside her. There was nothing of Sylvia there at all.

Flora clenched her hands into fists.

"Tell me!" Sylvia shrieked.

Flora stepped back forwards.

"I will not," she said gently, looking Sylvia squarely in her withered face.

Sylvia's facade flickered, confused.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I don't answer to you," Flora replied evenly. "I won't help you any more."

The words dropped a silence between them. Sylvia was blank and unmoving as she processed Flora's refusal. Flora knew she wasn't confused, that was a human emotion. She was recalibrating. If she was going to get Flora's magic, she was going to have to try harder.

Flora's heart thumped thickly. She didn't have to see the shift in Sylvia's eyes to know what her next course of action would be.

As Sylvia's eyes hardened, her spine started lengthening.

"How dare you!" she shouted. Her voice scraped like metal. Her arms stretched towards the grounds, her fingers sharpened into claws. "How dare you deny what is owed to me! What was taken from me by your very hand!"

Her skin shrank into her bones. Her teeth bared like a dog's. Her eyes burned brighter.

Flora sank her feet into the ground to keep from shaking.

"If you want my magic, you'll have to take it by force!" Flora declared even as her voice wavered.

Sylvia's eyes widened. She began to stalk unevenly across the yard. Flora tensed, squeezed her eyes shut.

"You arm!" Madrigal cried to her, beginning to trace a protection spell.

Sylvia stumbled and staggered, her hand outstretched, and Flora shuddered, stepping forward and holding out her arm. Her mind went blank with panic.

Then Sylvia's hand closed around her wrist. The connecting shock was violent. It ran through Flora's spine like Sylvia's clawed fingers and zapped wildly at the little magic she had left. Her stomach twisted in pain as she held onto it.

"Give it to me!" Sylvia screeched, pulling against it harder than ever.

"No!" Flora gasped. A wall of light grew around them. Madrigal's protection charm.

"Flora, remember the spell!" Madrigal cried.

The charm alleviated the pain, just enough. Flora took ragged gasps, feeling around frantically for what was left of her magic. For a moment, she did not think it would respond to her exhausted body. She forced herself to breathe slower, in and out. In and out...

It sparked. It started glowing and settling like embers from a fire. She clawed into it.

"Dea dona sua postulat!" she shouted.

Suddenly, she and Sylvia froze, stuck together by an invisible force. The forest went silent. The wind died. It was as though the two of them were suspended in glass, the white light of the protection spell glittering in slow motion.

Nothing happened. Then the wind shifted. It grew.

Sylvia's tug had become a push, a pressure building from Flora's gripped arm. Flora answered it hesitantly, with a small tug. It was all she needed. The magic began to cascade out of Sylvia and into her like water from a jug.

Flora's spells always gave magic away, only channeling what she could carry. But taking magic back, pulling it in. That was something else entirely.

"What have you done?" Sylvia quavered, pulling but unable to take her hand away. "What did you do to me?"

The wind whipped faster, the flow of magic growing stronger. Clouds began to darken the face of the moon, gathering unnaturally quick. The magic became a stream. A river. A waterfall.

Flora's knees shook and hit the ground. The magic she had poured into Sylvia was more than she had ever held at once. It filled her faster than she had ever allowed, crackling and frothing, so dense it began to make her skin glow.

"Stop this!" Sylvia yelled, panicking. But it was much too late for that.

The weight was crushing her, the last of the magic beginning to pool in Sylvia's hand as it struggled to escape.

"I can't..." Flora said faintly, mostly to herself.

Locked in this battle, the magic had nowhere to go, nowhere to escape. Her vision was blackening, her eyes were closing. The roaring of the wind was growing fuzzy and distant.

Something soft touched her leg. Then suddenly the pressure lifted, just enough.

Flora used the last of her strength to give the magic a final tug. With a burst, it slipped from Sylvia's grip. She screamed. Her body thinned, her skin grew limpid.

CRACK!

Flora was blinded by the light. She pitched backwards as the connection broke, staring straight up into the sky. The black clouds that gathered roared and writhed with thick ropes of electricity, so explosive it rumbled in her ribs and shook the trees to their roots. She closed her eyes and dug her fingers into the grass.

But with the same suddenness they had come, they began to dissipate. The moon returned, Flora was left on the forest floor, radiant with light, and Felix just the same beside her. His tiny paw was still pressed to her calf.

Sylvia was gone.

"Well done, Flora," Madrigal smiled. She had dropped to protection spell, settling down in the grass and reaching out to hold her hand.

Flora breathed heavily. Madrigal coaxed the magic out of her one hand, and Flora spread the fingers of the other against the earth. She released the magic little by little, letting it drain into the soil like drops of rain.

We did it, Felix said, his soft side rising and falling in heaves.

His body was still glowing, but she could feel him letting the magic leave him, too.

"Thank you," she said softly.

She closed her eyes. The magic still foamed behind her eyelids.