You are irreplaceable.That was what Nes Deivana had been told. It was meant as a compliment. A lure to make her feel special, to make her feel like she had a home in this Goddess-forsaken city.
But she knew better. Nes might not always know what she was, but she did know what she wasn’t. And that was irreplaceable. She intended to prove it. It had taken months, but, at last, she’d done it.
Marnie Sorphel didn’t look like much, but to Nes, the timid, wide-eyed girl meant everything.
Nes strolled through the Valley, the main market in the Ditch, with one hand tight around Marnie’s wrist and the other against the silver flask at her hip. Despite the hour, the oil lamps lining the street lit the way for shoppers, criminals, guards, and wanderers alike.
The Ditch was one of six city sectors in Gadore. Though it had the same ocean-blue rooftops as other sectors, the Ditch gave the impression of an overflowing mouth. Ramshackle hovels, beams dark with the wood of the Foxvin Forest and splattered with the blood of forgotten fights, were squeezed between the once white buildings like food stuck between teeth.
Beside her, Marnie gawked at the tables lining the market. But Nes knew it wasn’t the vendors selling crystals on gold chains, thumb-sized bottles of tonics, and ornate pocket watches who caught Marnie’s eye.
Scattered among the tables of typical wares were the vendors selling far more fantastical goods. Things imbued with magic.
To their right, a man showed his customer how a silver thread, finer than a single strand of hair, would not break no matter how hard he yanked on the ends. On a table to their left, a crate full of snakes—snakes that had been fed a steady diet of diluted magic—hissed and coiled and slithered over one another, flickering in and out of visibility. And, laid out on a table ahead, a woman sold rows of extra fingers, claiming they would seamlessly attach to a person’s hand in place of any they’d lost.
“What pretty young girls,” the woman called out. “I sell pearls that’ll weave into your ears, too. Make you look like the rich folk up in the Ring.”
Nes gritted her teeth. Just because her face spoke of innocence didn’t mean her heart answered in turn.
She grabbed the edge of Marnie’s hood and yanked it down over the girl’s face. Turning to the vendor, she spat, “Keep your junk and your assumptions to yourself.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed to slits. “No need to be rude, girly.”
Nes tilted her hip so the flask sitting there caught the light enough for the woman to see the snarling dog etched on the metal. “Careful,” she hissed. “Or Phineas might find a reason to remove more than your table from this street.”
Jaw tight with unspoken rage, the woman lowered her head and stepped away. Nes lifted her chin. She’d learned years ago never to walk the Ditch with her head down.
But Marnie—it was best if Marnie kept her head down.
As part of a large family, Marnie was desperate to earn a few extra gadots. And if there was one thing you didn’t show in the Ditch, it was desperation. Pure luck had allowed Nes to find Marnie before some other rapacious soul.
“This way,” Nes said, ushering Marnie far from the conniving vendors. The sooner she got the girl to Phineas, the sooner she could be free of this place.
As always, the smell of death, decay, and fornication lingered like overcooked stew. But there was something else. A scent that did not belong. Winter had snuck under Gadore’s door last week, curling up like an unwelcome cat. Yet it was a spring breeze—the budding of new blooms coupled with the promise of warmth—that drowned out the usual Ditch smells.
Nes dug her feet into the dirt and craned her neck, searching for the source of the pleasant spring scent. But it was Marnie who found it first.
“Oh no.”
The words fell from the girl’s mouth as if she hadn’t meant to let them out. Barely a few feet away, cupped in a limp hand, was the magic.
Pure magic.
Bright green, with hundreds of tiny threads twisting together like moss, it could have only come from one place. The forest beyond the city wall, torn straight off the bark of a tree.
Nes’s heart stumbled at the face of the dead. The boy was young. No more than fifteen. In death, only the whites of his eyes were visible. A waterfall of dried blood ran from the boy’s lips, covering his chin and neck. The dark of the new moon allowed Nes to just barely make out the soft green glow of pure magic inside the boy’s mouth.
The dead boy’s shirt had been torn open, revealing what looked like claw marks marring the skin over where his heart had beat. The boy had made them himself, a last desperate attempt to get the magic out. But once magic took hold of your heart, there was no hope.
The residents of the Ditch could dabble with the stars, but the magic never let them forget they were playing with fire. For pure magic killed. Every time.
Nes did not shy from the body. She couldn’t stop the evil of the world, but she could stare it down. To her surprise, Marnie did not look away, either. Maybe the girl was stronger than she thought.
“For magic’s end,” Nes whispered. The phrase was both a curse and a prayer. For her, the prayer always won out.
Marnie stepped closer to the corpse, her mouth hollow. In one hand, the boy still held the green threads of the pure magic, and in the other, the pulping, bloody mass that was once his tongue. Marnie bent down, a hand reaching for the magic.
“Don’t touch it.” Nes grabbed Marnie and yanked her upright. “Do you want to die? If the guards find you with that, you’ll be drowned as the Witch for sure.”
There had been three Witch drownings this week alone. An unusually high number, even for a country as paranoid about the Witch as Orlonea. Neither Nes nor Marnie could give the King’s Guard reason to suspect them.
Marnie gnawed on her chapped bottom lip. “But shouldn’t we—”
“No,” Nes said. “Leave him.”
The boy wasn’t magic’s first victim. Nor would he be its last.
Copyright © 2026 by Lindsey Olsson. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
