Seraphina had been sitting with Malachar for three weeks.
Not continuously, but every morning, before the council sessions and the ley line assessments and the daily inventory of Arvella's impossible parchment stack, Seraphina came to the healing circle. She brought her tea and book. She was not actually reading. She sat at the edge of the fae's geometric ward patterns and she was present. Her particular tradition had taught her presence was the most powerful thing a witch could offer a being in the slow, grinding work of healing.
The healing circle itself was the most beautiful thing she had seen in a very long time.
The fae had grown it from the earth — not built it, not constructed it, but grew it, the way they grew everything, the geometric patterns of their relational magic coaxing
