Smoke was the only thing in their house that still had life.
It curled from the meager fire in the hearth, a gray wraith twisting through the suffocating silence of Ashbend Cottage. It was a silence born of grief and held in place by fear. Aisling watched the smoke cling to the damp, weeping stones of the chimney, her hands clenched in her lap.
Silence was a currency in their house, and they were bankrupt of everything else.
From the room down the narrow hall came the sound that shattered the quiet a dozen times a day: a wet, rattling cough. Eireen. The sound was a shard of glass in Aisling's heart. Each one a fresh cut.
Her father, Tavien, flinched from his seat by the window, the movement sloshing the cheap wine in his cup. He stared into the dregs as if they held the answers to the debt that was strangling them, the debt that had cost them everything. He didn't look at Aisling. He rarely did anymore.
"She's worse," Aisling said, her voice a low murmur, sharp enough to slice through the stillness. It was an accusation.
Her mother, Elenya, didn't look up from the worn shirt she was mending. Her needle moved with a grim, steady rhythm. "The apothecary's draught does what it can."
"It does nothing," Aisling shot back, the fire in her belly beginning to smolder. "It's watered-down herbs and false hope. We need a physician."
"We need to eat," Elenya said, her voice flat, devoid of emotion. She bit the thread with her teeth. "Physicians do not trade in hope, Aisling. They trade in coin we do not have."
Aisling's gaze flickered to her father. His fault. All of it. His ambition, his failed deals with nobles who were more monster than man, his hollow promises that had paved their road to ruin. He'd wanted to elevate their name, and instead, he had buried it.
He finally looked up, his eyes bloodshot and full of a sorrow so deep it seemed to have drowned the man he once was. "I'll speak with someone at the market tomorrow, Aisling. I'll make it right."
The words were ash in her mouth. The same words he'd spoken two months ago, right before Cian went to the market and never came back. Taken in a witch raid, they said. Snatched up by the Enforcers. Aisling knew better. The woods that pressed against their cottage didn't give back what they took, and neither did the men who enforced the Council's laws. Grief was a phantom limb, an ache for a brother whose laughter used to fill the silence.
"Don't," she whispered, the word trembling with a fury she could barely contain. "Don't make another promise you can't keep."
Before her father could offer another useless platitude, a sound from outside ripped through the cottage.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
It wasn't a knock. It was an assault. The heavy oak door shuddered in its frame, the iron latch rattling. It was the sound of authority, of violence cloaked in law.
Tavien scrambled to his feet, wine splashing onto the floorboards. "Gods above," he breathed, his face ashen.
Elenya was already moving. She placed her mending aside with unnerving calm, her face a mask of stone. "Aisling, go to your sister. Stay with her."
"Who is it?" Aisling asked, though she already knew. The air had turned frigid with the special kind of dread reserved for the Enforcers.
BOOM! The wood of the door splintered.
"Now, Aisling," her mother commanded, her voice low and dangerous.
But Aisling was rooted to the spot, a storm of defiance brewing within her. She was not a damsel to be hidden away. She was the daughter of this broken house, and she would face whatever came through that door.
"Open this door!" a voice roared from outside, muffled but drenched in menace. "Open in the name of the Council!"
Her father fumbled toward the door, his hands shaking. "A moment, sirs! A moment, please! A misunderstanding, I'm sure!"
"Don't, Tavien," Elenya warned, her hand grabbing his arm. "Don't grovel."
The door exploded inward, torn from its hinges with a scream of tortured metal and splintering wood. Three figures filled the doorway, blocking out the twilight. They were broad, clad in black leather and steel, the silver sigil of the Vampire Council gleaming on their chests. Their faces were grim, their eyes sweeping the room with cold disdain.
The lead Enforcer, a man with a scarred jaw and dead eyes, stepped inside. His gaze landed on Tavien, then flicked to Elenya, and finally, settled on Aisling. A flicker of something—appreciation, perhaps, or assessment—crossed his face before it was gone.
"Tavien Rutherford," the Enforcer rumbled. His voice was like grinding stones.
"Yes," her father stammered, holding his hands up in a useless gesture of peace. "I am he. But there is a mistake. We are loyal subjects—"
"Silence," the Enforcer snapped. He took another step into the room, his heavy boots echoing on the floor. "We have a report. A credible report that this household has been consorting with witches."
The word hung in the air, thick and poisonous. Witch. The word that got girls like her dragged into the street and burned. The word that had stolen her brother.
Elenya stepped forward, placing herself between the Enforcer and her husband. "My husband is a fool, but he is no traitor. And we have no traffic with magic-users. We are a god-fearing family."
The Enforcer let out a low, humorless chuckle. "The desperate often find faith in forbidden things. Your debt is known throughout Cinderglen, Rutherford. The kind of debt that drives men to seek… alternative solutions."
From the hall, Eireen let out another terrible, wet cough, followed by a soft whimper.
The Enforcer's head tilted, a predator hearing prey. "What was that?"
"My youngest is ill," Elenya said, her voice rigid. "A winter sickness."
"Is she?" The Enforcer gestured to one of his men. "Check the other rooms."
"No!" Aisling cried out, moving before she could think. "She's just a child. She's sick. Leave her be!"
The lead Enforcer's eyes locked onto hers. A slow, cruel smile spread across his lips. "The fiery one. There's always a fiery one." He took a deliberate step toward her. "Where is the witch you've been hiding? The one who promised to cure your dying whelp and settle your accounts?"
"There is no one," Tavien pleaded, his voice cracking. "I swear on my name."
"Your name is worthless," the Enforcer spat. He was in front of Aisling now, his shadow falling over her. He smelled of old leather and stale sweat. "Perhaps she knows. Girls like this, they see things. They hear whispers."
He reached for her.
Instinct, pure and primal, took over. Aisling slapped his hand away. "Don't touch me."
The man's smile vanished. His eyes hardened into chips of flint. "Insolent bitch." He lunged, his thick fingers grabbing her arm in a bruising grip.
"Get your hands off my daughter!" Elenya screamed, her composure finally breaking. She lunged at him, clawing at his arm.
The Enforcer shoved her mother, hard. Elenya stumbled back, crashing into the small table by the wall. A clay pot holding a single, wilted flower fell and shattered.
Something inside Aisling snapped.
It was a cord that had been stretched taut for years—by the debt, by her father's weakness, by her mother's silence, by Cian's absence, by Eireen's every pained breath. It snapped with the sound of her mother's cry.
A heat she had never known, a pressure that felt older than the stones of the house, coiled in her stomach. It wasn't thought. It was instinct. It was rage given form. It surged up her throat, down her arms, into her palms.
"I said," she growled, her voice a low, guttural sound she didn't recognize, "don't touch her."
The Enforcer holding her laughed. "Or what, little girl? You'll cast a spell on me?"
He tightened his grip, and the world seemed to slow. She could see the sneer on his face, the fear in her father's eyes, her mother struggling to rise. She could hear Eireen begin to cry softly from her room.
And she could feel the fire.
It erupted from her hands.
It wasn't the orange flame of the hearth. This was a searing, white-hot light, roaring into existence with a sound like a thunderclap. It wasn't from a torch. It wasn't from any earthly source. It was from her.
The Enforcer screamed. It was a high, shrill sound of agony and disbelief. He let go of her, stumbling back, his leather gauntlet smoking, the flesh beneath it blistering and blackening. The smell of burned meat and terror filled the room.
The other two Enforcers stared, frozen in shock, their hands on the hilts of their swords.
Her father looked at her, his mouth agape, a new kind of horror dawning on his face, worse than any fear of debt or punishment.
Her mother's eyes were wide, but in them, beneath the terror, was something else. A flicker of awful, ancient recognition.
Aisling looked down at her own hands. They were glowing with a faint, residual heat, tendrils of smoke rising from her fingertips. Her hands. They had done that. She had done that.
The screaming of the burned man, the sudden, ringing silence from her family, the smell of the fire she had made—it all crashed down on her at once. The world tilted, the edges of her vision blurring, turning dark.
The strength fled her limbs. The roar in her ears faded to a dull hum.
She saw her mother mouth her name, a silent, horrified prayer.
Then, the world went black, and she fell into a silence deeper than any she had ever known.