Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 575: Wendy’s Expectation

The rain had stopped in the night.

When Wendy pushed the window open, the garden smell came in first — wet soil, that particular sweetness that only exists in the hour after a storm has passed. The olive tree near the sill was still dripping. The morning sunlight, thin and clear, caught each falling drop and briefly set it alight before it disappeared into the grass below.

She dressed and went to wake Nightingale.

Nightingale was face-down in the pillow, a comma of silver hair across the back of her neck, completely inert in the particular way of a person who has decided that consciousness is optional. Wendy patted her cheek. An obscure sound emerged. The ears moved slightly — that small involuntary twitch that meant she had registered everything and chosen to ignore it.

“I’m going to breakfast,” Wendy said.

She closed the door gently and went down.

The kitchen ran on firewood that banked low through the night, keeping everything warm past dawn. His Majesty called it a buffet — the first time she heard the word she hadn’t known what to make of it. The concept that one could simply walk to a kitchen and take however much one wanted, of whatever was available, still produced in her a small shock of gratitude she couldn’t entirely suppress. Three or four items every morning: porridge, toast, dried fish, fried eggs. In the Witch Cooperation Association, sufficiency itself had been a luxury. Taste had been unimaginable.

She had been living in this castle for nearly a year. The gratitude had not diminished.

The dining room was empty of people but not of plates — the early risers had already come and gone. Lightning and Maggie were always out before sunrise. Anna, Agatha, and Lucia left in the next wave. Wendy occupied her usual place between those two groups, pouring porridge into a bowl with the unhurried ease of someone who has learned to trust that the pot will be full.

Nightingale was always last. This was His Majesty’s influence — he slept until noon when nothing urgent required him, and Nightingale, who had once been the sharpest, most alert member of the old Cooperation Association, had gradually synchronized herself to his schedule. Wendy did not think this was a bad thing. She had never seen Nightingale sleep deeply before Neverwinter. The alertness that never quite switched off had been a kind of damage. It was good to watch it heal.

The first floor of the Witch Building had become the Union’s office over the past months. Wendy arrived to find Ring already at the front desk, and beside her two young women from the City Hall — Pearl, the older one, and Grayrabbit, the younger — who had graduated from Karl Van Bate’s original institute and carried none of the reflex aversion to witches that the older generation still showed. Along with Ring, they were the Union’s first clerical staff.

Ring was technically underage for the post, but the work was manageable and Wendy considered it extended education. She showed more initiative than most adults.

“Sister Wendy!” Ring was already on her feet. “Good morning.”

“Good morning.” Wendy settled behind the desk. “Sales figures for volume one of The Witch Diaries?”

Pearl had a sheet ready. “Very popular. Close to sixty copies a day this week, mostly from soldiers in the First Army — they come in groups, sometimes. At this rate, the first print run of a thousand copies will sell out within two weeks.”

The number was still strange to Wendy. Sixty copies a day of a book that was purely recreational, sold at five silver royals each — not food, not medicine, not study material. The idea that people would spend half a month’s wages on illustrated stories about witches seemed improbable. But the numbers were in front of her.

The project had been His Majesty’s suggestion. After the drama trilogy about the Witch Union had found such traction with Neverwinter’s population, he had proposed continuing the format in print: illustrated volumes, each one focused on a single witch from the Union, with designed dialogue, the feel of a drama on paper. The first volume featured Nana Pine. This was the obvious choice — fifteen years old, a healer whose ability read to any ordinary person as pure miracle, with a natural warmth that made even skeptics lower their guard. The First Army adored her. The first set of stories, illustrated by Soraya and arranged by Wendy, had moved from the boutique shelf faster than anyone had projected.

Now volume two needed a subject.

“His Majesty suggested Echo for the next one,” Wendy said, picking up her pen. Ring’s eyes went wide with eager anticipation. “He proposed a title as well: The Silver Moon Princess from the Southernmost Region, the Land of Swirling Sand and Volcanoes.”

Ring’s mouth dropped open. “That’s amazing.”

“When His Majesty takes the Southern Territory, you can visit her homeland yourself.”

“Can I really?”

“Someday.” Wendy smiled at the girl’s enthusiasm and began to write.

This was her work, in the broadest sense. Not just the books — all of it. Echo had found her place with the Star Flower Troupe, and the actors had received her without reservation. Evelyn had opened a tavern beside the Holy Mountain Hotel, offering liquor blended with that unmistakable depth her ability produced. Hummingbird had joined the City Hall as deputy minister of the Ministry of Construction — the second witch officer in the administration, after Scroll. Every witch in the Union was building something in this city, and every act of building was also an act of introduction. The people who worked alongside them, bought from their shops, watched them perform — those people stopped being afraid.

That was the real project. Not the books, not the tavern, not the ministry post.

The day His Majesty had promised was the day when no witch needed a sponsor or a protector or an argument made on their behalf. When they were simply people doing work that needed doing.

Wendy thought, looking at Ring’s shining face across the desk, that it was getting close.

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