Rewrite That Witch
CH218 · Rewrite
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Chapter 218: Lucia

Bell’s condition stabilized.

The arrangement on the sick ship followed the same logic as the boarding in King’s City: those closest to dying went first, then the children, then families, then everyone else. The armed men with wooden spears—mercenaries, they’d been told, though they moved with a precision that made that claim feel thin—divided the crowd into smaller groups and guided them forward.

Lucia and Bell were placed near the front. Lucia watched the process from where she stood—her sister had been blindfolded, two men holding her upright under the arms, carrying her in at a walk. Lucia was given a hood of her own and told to follow.

Inside, she could not see the room. Her hand was pressed flat against a surface, she felt something—a warmth, subtle and sourceless, the way the air near a hearth feels different from the air beside it. Then a small pill was placed in her palm. Slightly sweet. The men told her, without being asked, that they’d already given one to Bell, so she didn’t need to worry.

When her hood came off, Bell was still unconscious—but the color was coming back. Lucia stood watching it happen in real time, the fever breaking and the dark spots fading from Bell’s skin like ink diluted in water, and pressed her lips together until she was sure she wasn’t going to make a sound.

The crowd, once through, did what crowds do after being told they weren’t going to die: they became impossible to quiet. Lucia could see the man they were cheering for—grey-haired, standing back from the celebration with the expression of someone who had wanted a different outcome and was accepting this one. The mercenaries said he was the Lord of the Western Territory, Roland Wimbledon.

He had lit fires at the edge of the pier. There was meat porridge. He had said, through the men who spoke for him, that any refugee willing to work would receive food, housing, and wages. People around Lucia praised his name and called themselves fortunate.

Lucia stood apart from the praise, turning a single question over in her mind: How do I find them?

The message she had received—months ago, passed through multiple hands in Valencia, arrived fragmentary—had said only that a group of witches lived in Border Town. It had not said who they were, where they gathered, how to approach them without making a mistake that couldn’t be undone. That information, if it had ever existed in the original message, had been lost somewhere in the chain.

She was still working through this when a voice came from behind her.

“Were you looking for us?”

Lucia’s body made a decision independent of her mind and she was two steps away before she’d processed it, already calculating the distance to the edge of the crowd. Then she turned.

The woman behind her was—

Beautiful was not quite the right word, though she was that. It was something about the way she occupied the space around her: as if the orange light from the bonfires had decided to collaborate with her specifically, catching the curl of her hair, the brightness of her eyes. The smile was open. The posture was a noble’s without the performance of it—easy, assured, as if she had simply never needed to practice.

“My name is Nightingale,” the woman said. “I’m a witch. Welcome to Border Town.”

Lucia lowered her head. Her voice, when she found it, was smaller than she intended. “My name is Lucia White. I want to join you.”

“Then come with me.” Nightingale turned, unhurried. “I’ll take you home.”

They walked away from the pier as the last of the daylight settled behind the mountains. Lucia carried Bell, who had not yet woken.

“When was your awakening?” Nightingale asked.

“My—what?”

“Awakening. The moment you became a witch.” Nightingale’s tone was explanatory without being condescending—the voice of someone who has had this conversation before and still means every word. “From that point, your body begins to gather magic. We call the transformation an awakening.”

“Two years ago, I think.” Lucia adjusted Bell’s weight against her shoulder. “Is magic—is it the power of demons?”

“That’s the Church’s explanation for what they can’t control.” Nightingale shook her head. “Magic is an ability. It has no nature of its own—no alignment toward good or evil. The demonic bite is just what happens when magic accumulates without release. Preventable, with practice.”

Lucia thought about the bite—the pain she had learned to manage by not using her ability at all. “You’re saying I don’t have to endure it?”

“Not here. We use our magic freely. The Church’s suppression isn’t the only reason for the pain—it’s the main one.” Nightingale nodded behind her at Bell. “Is she your sister? What happened to the rest of your family?”

The silence that followed was a choice—Lucia was deciding how much to say to a woman she had met three minutes ago. Then she said: “A group attacked Valencia. Burning and looting. Father was one of the ones who tried to resist them—they ran him through with several swords. Mother told us to run and then—”

She stopped. The grief had spent a month packing itself down. Now, without warning, it had reached the limit of what she could pack. She had held it together for Bell, for the boats, for the chaos—but this woman was walking beside her in firelight asking a quiet question, and the question was the first person in thirty days who had asked simply because they cared about the answer.

The tears came without permission. Then the sobs. She was crying loudly, she knew it, it was not appropriate, it was exactly the wrong moment, she was meeting these people for the first time and she was soaking her face with tears and snot—

She felt arms around her. A solid hug, warm and unhurried, a hand at the back of her head. No flinch at the dirt, at the mess, at the sound. Just: here, take your time.

“Cry,” Nightingale said quietly. “Let it out. That’s all right.”

When Lucia finally stilled, she became aware that Nightingale’s shoulder was soaked through.

“I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be.” Nightingale produced a handkerchief and cleaned Lucia’s face with the matter-of-fact efficiency of someone who considers this a basic service. “Better now?”

Lucia nodded, too wrung out to say more.

Nightingale took Bell from her arms with one hand—Bell, who weighed more than she looked—and offered Lucia the other arm. They walked.

She had expected a warehouse, a basement, somewhere hidden at the edges of the town. She had not expected to be walking toward the castle. The guards at the gate didn’t stop them; they greeted Nightingale by name.

Is the whole town under the Association’s control?

Third floor. A lit room. The man sitting across from the entrance was the same grey-haired man she had been watching from the pier crowd, the one who had received the cheers without leaning into them.

“This is Roland Wimbledon,” Nightingale said, “leader of the Witch Union. He took in the survivors of the Witch Cooperation Association and sent word to other cities to bring more sisters home. The witches who treated everyone on the ships today—that was us.” She looked at Lucia. “You don’t have to doubt any of this.”

Lucia’s mind went briefly blank. A noble. Who took in witches not as tools, not as weapons—who called it a home. She had not allowed herself to actually expect this, even when she was spending her strength on getting here.

Her bow came out badly—posture wrong, timing off, the particular collapse of form that happens when the body is exhausted and the mind is elsewhere. Nightingale covered a laugh. “He doesn’t care about ceremony.”

“You came from the Eastern Territory?” Roland asked. His voice was calm—not the restrained calm of someone managing their impression, but the simpler calm of someone who wasn’t frightened of her. More like someone who was curious.

She answered. Nightingale supplied context where Lucia’s account had gaps. Slowly the conversation became less frightening and more like a conversation.

“You’re two years awakened, you said.” He was leaning slightly forward now, the posture of someone who has found a thread worth following. “What is your ability?”

“Restoring objects to their original form.” She hesitated. “But it doesn’t work on everything.”

“Show me.” He pushed a cup across the table toward her—fine work, enameled, the kind that cost more than her family’s workshop earned in a week. “It won’t matter if it’s damaged.”

She placed her hand on the cup.

A moment. Then the cup began to change—losing its shape, separating. Three distinct substances remained where the cup had been: a dark viscous pool on the left, a small cluster of fine black powder in the center, a thin rivulet of clear water running off the table’s edge.

Roland looked at the three results for a long time.

His expression was not the disappointed calculation she had braced herself for.

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