As the Fates weave our destinies into the fabric of time, when we see the spool nearing the end of its thread, we’re faced with the possibility of everything unraveling before us. Some have extra spools on hand for the occasion, others know when it’s time for the finishing knot. For the longest time, I’d known I had Fate-bound thread to spare, but I never truly needed to find it until now—not for myself, but for Evelyn and Janine. Knowing their destinies were tied to me fueled my desperate grasp in the dark for the smallest strands of anything to hold everything together that night.

  In that desperation, I found something. Something small, but something nonetheless.

  A rush of energy welled within me, fueled by my desire to keep the Denholm girls safe from harm. In retrospect, I hated that it took something so dangerous to find this strength, but in the moment, I focused on protecting those I cared about. A green light erupted from me in all directions, sending waves of magic out past the window and into the street, where it struck the nearest Py’riel. The monster stumbled backward, caught off-guard as my viridian light outshone its purple hues.

  The Py’riel’s eyes focused on me, assessing the threat I posed to its pns. When I mentioned searching for the smallest strands earlier, I didn’t exaggerate. This power was real, I knew the magical being within its wooden shell could sense my presence, it could feel the sting of my magical energies cshing with its own. But my burst of magic was more a warning than anything, and I didn’t know that I could summon anything more from within if the Py’riel called my bluff.

  Before the monster outside the window pressed its luck with its approach, Janine scrambled closer to the window, holding me against the gss with one hand while the other pounded against it, trying to finish what I started. “Go away! Go! Get out!”

  The sting of my light sent the pack of Py’riel reeling once again, tripping over one anothers’ branches as they skittered backward in an effort to stay beyond the boundary of green hues reflecting off the snow. They looked at one another, as if conversing about a change of pns. For a moment, it seemed our gambit worked; the Py’riel abandoned their approach toward us. Relief washed over me in the aftermath of my successful first steps in harnessing my magic.

  But they didn’t turn around and leave the way they came. As the purple fmes spread from the bakery to the other shops across the street, the Py’riel decided to focus their efforts elsewhere in town, backtracking to take another road deeper toward the heart of Quinn’s Peak. The peril facing the town as a whole dwarfed our small success of keeping the Py’riel at bay.

  “No, no... no no no!” Janine pounded on the window again, tears running down her cheeks as we watched the Py’riel vanish from view. “Turn around! Turn around!” We both knew these creatures wouldn’t heed her words. Far from my magical barrier, nothing stood in the way of spreading their magic fire throughout Quinn’s Peak.

  Janine held me up in front of her, staring for a moment into the viridian energy swirling outward from me, knowing she held the one thing in the whole town that might frighten the Py’riel. She took a deep breath, affixing me to her neck as she marched toward the door. “Evelyn, stay here, I’m going to drive them—”

  Before she could finish, Evelyn tched onto her cousin, shaking her head and burying her face into Janine’s side. “Daddy said to stay inside! Don’t go... please don’t go!”

  The thought of leaving the rest of the town to its own grim fate tore me up inside, and I knew Janine felt the same. But without a better grasp of my magic, the Py’riel would question the limits of my strength, and I might not have the real answer. I feared Janine might try anyway, which would put her and Evelyn’s lives in jeopardy with a hasty pn.

  Janine gave in to Evelyn's pleas, realizing that she couldn’t confront these creatures and leave Evelyn unprotected. We just weren’t ready, at best we’d have deyed the inevitable. She slumped against the front window, holding her cousin in her p as the girls cried together. Janine wrapped my chain around her hand, keeping me close to the window in case the Py’riel made another pass at the magic shop.

  Bells rang in the distance, alerting the rest of Quinn’s Peak to the threat within its borders. Smoke billowed from the purple fmes creeping along the distant rooftops as the Py’riel’s magic consumed everything it touched. Our little magic shop remained unscathed, but Quinn’s Peak turned to ash around us. I felt almost certain that I couldn’t have done anything more for the town at the time with barely a grasp on my own magic.

  Still, that sliver of uncertainty ate at me.