"What the hell did you do?!" Cora shouted.

How could he do it? How could he set a home on fire and stand there, watching it burn, not feeling any remorse?

"I didn't do anything." He diverted his gaze from the fire and calmed down the mare with a soothing stroke and whispered words.

Cora scoffed. "You asked for an address and I gave it to you, and now that house is going up in flames!" She clenched her fists. She wanted to scream, she wanted to curl up in a ball and cry.

Harry gave her a hard look. "It isn't my fault," he said, sharply but lowly. "I didn't do it."

Cora hesitated. "You didn't set it on fire?" She wanted to believe him, she wanted to find the lie in his voice. But there was none she could hear, nothing but tamed anger that would not break free.

"I didn't."

She glanced back at Beilyn. Wind spread through the trees and streets below, making the fire rise higher towards the stars. It would not stop. She felt lost. She wanted to exonerate him, she wanted to find fault in him, she wanted both and neither because she wanted to think he wasn't behind it, but needed to find a culprit. Fires didn't rise that high on accident—someone had started it. But what if Harry wasn't to blame? What if she was being like every other human out there and pinning what was only a terrible, but very human, event on the only fay around? She refused to be like them. It was wrong.

She frowned. "Do you promise?"

Harry seemed to relax. "I promise."

Cora searched his eyes for a shadow, but found none. "Okay." She was nodding, now, the fire in her heart put out. "I believe you." He would not lie to her. He'd never lied to her.

The reassurance was short-lived, though, because the fire was still raging beneath them and she could still feel its heat through the cold of the autumnal night. Cora still felt responsible, though she could not tell why. It was the address she'd found, Harry had been there. It was a miracle he hadn't been swept away by the flames as well.

She remembered the voices, the gasping woman on the ground, her scream when the building collapsed. "Who lived there?" she whispered. "What did you want from them?" Was it the woman, or whoever was trapped inside?

Harry's gaze fell to the grass at their feet. "It was an old friend," he shared through clenched teeth. He let out a long breath, that didn't ease the tension in his muscles.

"An old friend?" Cora mused, side-glancing at him. "You don't seem to be old enough to be classifying people as old friends, you know?"

"We crossed paths more than a decade ago. I'll call it an old friend."

"How old were you then?"

"That's none of your concern." Harry turned around and ran his fingers through the mare's black mane, dismissing the conversation. "I can't bring you back to the city tonight, it wouldn't be safe."

Cora crossed her arms when a new breeze scattered the red flowers in her hair. "Are we sleeping here?" Under the stars, in front of the very greenwood she was terrified of?

"Not here." He took off his coat and put it on her shoulders. She hadn't even realised she was shivering. He clasped his hands on her arms and swiftly turned her around. "There."

Cora looked down. Her back to the flaming house, she could now see the light of a fire in a large clearing nestled in the hills, in the depths of the greenwood. The wagons she'd seen time and time again were parked in a circle, and Cora's eye could catch the flutter of movement down below.

"Yesterday you asked why I wasn't already gone with my Fair," Harry stated behind her. "We never leave right away. We stay there for a few days to get ready to travel."

They got on the horse again and clopped down the dirt road that brought deeper into the woods. With Harry's coat on her shoulders, Cora couldn't feel the cold as sharply as before. It was a warm cocoon that made her eyelids heavy and her movements slow, but the path was bumpy enough to jerk her awake every time she nodded off. The fabric was heavy and expensive, designed to protect against the winter winds, and its scent was fresh and misty, so characteristically Harry.

She wondered if it was his natural smell and shook her head when she took in the kind of thoughts that were running through her head.

He kept playing with her mind without even trying; Cora didn't know what to think anymore. She didn't trust herself when she was around him—it was like she hardly had any control over herself.

The trees around them were tall and dark, and ferns were brushing against the legs of the horse. The moon could no longer be seen inside the thicket, only some rays of moonlight managed to get through the branches above their heads, illuminating the night just enough to see where they were going.

Cora could hear the clearing before seeing it. The fire crackled away, barely drowning the low rumble of voices and exclamations that dotted the silence of the woods. There were shouts and chirps and rustles and laughs, running and clattering and humming and joking.

Life in the clearing grew quiet in the instant they arrived.

The children that had been running around until that moment suddenly stopped, looking at them curiously as Harry got off the horse and helped Cora to do the same before handing the reins to the tall, red-haired man she'd given her name to at the Pavilion one night of a week before.

"Hey!" A boy ran towards them with a smile on his face.

Cora smiled as well when she recognised him. "Hey, Oden."

"Take this, it's good." He put a glassy, shiny red fruit in her hand, the sugar covering on top of it sticking to her fingers.

Cora took a bite of the candied apple. Its glossy surface gave in like a sliver of broken glass, splitting in sweet shards on her tongue. "It's so good," she moaned, taking another bite and wiping her fingers on the flower-patterned towel Oden had handed her together with the fruit.

Harry glanced down at her, and Cora tried her best to refrain herself from smiling, not being used to seeing him wearing his blue hat and no coat. "I'd like to talk to you, Cora."

She followed him towards a wagon with a blue door, but he walked past it and into the darkness of the woods, only stopping when they were completely shielded from view.

Harry snapped his fingers, and a few beads of fire appeared all around them as she reached him, enlightening them with their soft glow. "My offer wasn't a one-time thing, you know," he said, the glint of his fireflies reflecting into his forest green eyes. "I'd like it if you came with us."

Cora frowned. "With you?"

"I could use your help while we're travelling." His fingers curled around one of his flames, but it escaped from his hold before he could trap it. "Humans don't trust us, so they don't like to deal with us. But I also can't hire a human, because we don't trust them. You, on the other hand, work perfectly."

"I... I don't know." Cora felt lost. She'd never thought about the possibility of leaving her city and the hostel behind and going to places she'd never seen before. She didn't even know if she would like it. She'd grown so used to the familiarity of her home—but could she still call it that way, knowing all she knew?

The apple was still in her hand, forgotten, the sugar sticking to her fingers, its sweet smell in the air.

"I don't expect a reply now," Harry told her, a surprisingly sincere look in his eyes, "but I will need one in the next four days." He glanced at the fireflies for a second, and they all disappeared. "You can sleep in my caravan tonight."

Cora shook her head. "Oh no, I don't want to bother—"

"You won't be bothering anyone, I'm busy anyway." He walked around the wagon and opened the blue door in the back. "The blankets are clean, so you don't need to worry about that."

The short man called him and he went towards the fire in the middle of the clearing, leaving her in front of the door.

Cora stepped inside. She couldn't shake away the feeling she was entering a private space in Harry's life she had no right to be in, and it made her feel more uncomfortable than she'd felt when she'd found her way into the secret library at the Lilac Sun.

She blinked a few times as her eyes adapted to the obscurity inside and pulled open the little curtain on the side to allow the light of the fire to peek inside and give her a clearer idea of what was around her.

The space she was in was small, only big enough to fit a mattress on the floor on the right and a small desk as large as a medium-sized book under the small window on the left, with barely enough space to walk between the two. Right behind the door there were a few shelves that were just as thin, some books on them. Hanging from the ceiling in one corner there were some dried up plants she couldn't recognise, but that spread a rich aroma inside the wagon.

She took off the coat and put it on the chair that was at the left of the entrance, attempting to close the door and jolting when a silvery cat ran inside. Cora shook her head and closed it before hesitantly walking towards the mattress.

The blankets on top of it were perfectly made up, and it was clear that nobody had slept in there for quite a while. She sighed and sat on it, crossing her legs and glancing at Skat, that was hiding under the shelf, trying to decide what to do. She couldn't sleep after the latest events. She wondered if Naomi was worried. What would her aunt say when she wouldn't be back that night?

The door of the wagon was opened and Harry stepped inside, putting his feathered hat on the small table.

"Your cat is here," Cora told him, and he glanced at the bookshelf.

"Skat doesn't belong to me, we're merely travel companions."

He walked out again as soon as he'd spoken, leaving her even more confused than she was before.

Skat got out from under the shelf and jumped on the line of wood right under the window, a focused look in her deep amber eyes as she stared out of the glass.

Cora stood up and opened the window for her, leaning her elbows on the desk and glancing at the way the whiskers of the cat trembled at the change of air. "Are you looking for a home too?" she asked, putting her chin on her hand.

Skat jumped out of the window with a flick of her fluffy tail, and she raised her eyebrows.

"I guess not."

She followed her with her gaze as she circled the fire and disappeared somewhere in the obscurity of the greenwood.

It was getting late and the fire was dying out, since there were less people around and nobody cared enough to bring it back to life.

The children had gone to sleep and only some of the adults remained, either reading old-looking books or talking to each other, or even sculpting something out of wood, playing with their animals, making themselves something to eat. Everyone seemed to be busy doing something around the dying fire, or to be part of something. The voices were lower and no longer hiding the crackling of the fire and the chirping of the crickets in the bushes around them. It was a peaceful nightly scene, that seemed out of place compared to the energy and activity she'd witnessed only the evening before.

It was then that she noticed him.

Harry was sitting in the distance, away from everyone else. He was in the darkness, and Cora wouldn't have recognised him if it hadn't been for the brightness of the fire reflecting on his white shirt.

She couldn't tell what he was doing, but every once in a while she could see something shine in his hands, as bright as a star, just to disappear again right after.

The light shone one more time, and Cora got out of the wagon and walked down the perimeter of the clearing, going unnoticed by most of the people around her, that seemed to be lost in their own world.

When the source of light was behind her, she stopped and looked at Harry from afar, wondering if she was allowed to join him.

He wasn't facing her, so he didn't notice her. She could barely make out his side profile every time the light shone in his hands before disappearing like a dying star. Sometimes the colours were different, ranging from white-violet to red, from yellow to orange before going back to white.

She had no idea of what he was doing.

All of a sudden the spot of light glistened again, and she could barely make out the shape of a flower before it exploded in a thousand shiny shards, making her gasp.

"He tries every night."

Cora's heart skipped a beat at the voice and she turned around. A woman was standing behind her. She recognised her immediately—she was the one that had read her present. The one with a bat, the one that, if she wasn't mistaken, Harry called his enchantress.

"What do you mean?" Cora asked.

The enchantress tilted her head, studying his shape in the distance. "His magic is faulty," she stated. "It has become destructive."

"Destructive?"

"He can only do smaller spells safely. When it comes to bigger ones, the consequences can be catastrophic. Have you ever seen a house burn? It starts small, it isn't noticeable at first. But then the fire gets bigger and bigger, and then, before you have time to hide, all the windows explode and risk killing everyone around." She sighed. "He's the house, his magic is the fire."

"He risks exploding?"

The enchantress laughed. "Not literally," she explained, "but yes. If the magic he's attempting is too strong, he risks wreaking havoc all around him."

"Oh." Cora turned to look at Harry as he sat there, on a rock, in the distance, letting the light shine in his hand at irregular intervals. She wondered what he was thinking.

"We had to replace the Pavilion three times because he kept setting it on fire. He thought it was nothing at first, but it got worse with every passing year. Now, every night he sits there, away from everyone in case something happens, trying to fix it."

"Can he fix it?"

The other sent her a look. "I told you I don't read the future."

She frowned. "So does he just... not use powerful magic?"

"He doesn't anymore." She wrapped her dark shawl tighter around herself. Every other time Cora had seen her she'd worn glitzy dresses, but there no longer was the need for a performance in that clearing. "He used to do the shows in the Pavilion some years ago. He was our first performer. Now he can't anymore. He'd risk killing hundreds of people."

Cora remembered the night she'd kissed him in the Pavilion. It'd only been a day, yet it felt like a week had passed since then. She remembered his light, how mesmerised she'd been. Wasn't that powerful magic?

The enchantress sighed. "Strong magic is anything the effects of which would be seen on a large scale, and anything that bends nature. That's the most dangerous."

"Why?"

"To get something, you have to give something back. Some types of magic require a payment."

"What kind of payment?"

"A life." A smile curved her lips when she noticed the shocked look Cora gave her. "It isn't as dramatic. Think of it as, everything around us has some kind of inner energy. You can transform it, you can move it, but you can't create it. Nature is based on a very specific balance of it. Most of it doesn't require a payment."

A shiver ran down Cora's spine. "What kind of magic requires a payment?"

"As I said before, while we can manipulate the energy of nature, we cannot create it. If you want to create energy, you have to take it away from something else. Healing spells of each and every kind require someone's energy. The bigger the magic, the bigger the payment. If, for example, you wanted to bring someone back to life, you'd have to sacrifice a life."

"I don't think I'm following." Cora felt uneasy. When had the conversation taken such a dark turn?

"When we do a spell that requires a payment, we should stop whenever we feel like it's taking too much away from us. Imagine what would happen if someone's magic got out of hand and stronger and stronger, without being able to be stopped."

Cora's eyes widened. "They'd die."

"The spell would have unexpected and potentially disastrous results and yes, they'd die," the enchantress agreed, "and that is why they could be very dangerous to him."

Cora nodded, still looking at him as he kept trying, never getting any results. She wondered what it was like, to have such an important part of yourself betray you like that, become something you fear instead of the very symbol of your freedom.

At the same time, though, she felt scared. Not of him, but of what he could do inadvertently. To know that all she's seen him do was a minor example of magic worried her. What would Harry actually be able to do, if he didn't have to fear the eventual tragic results?

"You should go to sleep, he wouldn't appreciate you being here," the enchantress warned her, gripping her shawl when a gush of wind put out the last embers of the bonfire. "He doesn't like when people talk about it."

She left and Cora went back to the wagon. She closed the window and pulled the curtain, and then lay down on the mattress. It was so dark she couldn't even see the roof.

Even then, she only managed to fall asleep a couple of hours after.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter x
Miki