Page 59 of Mane Brew

“Here, being the Registry.” Realization sharpens Leire’s words. “This building. It’s built on⁠—”

“The original ritual site. Where the Severing was cast. Where it can be broken.” Peach’s gaze sweeps the circle again. “I’ve been waiting. Watching. Hoping that someday, enough mated pairs would form that they could undo what was done.”

“If the Preservers have known about this site for decades,” Caius says carefully, “why haven’t they simply destroyed it?”

“Because destroying it accomplishes nothing until there are mated pairs to use it.” Peach’s tone carries patience. “The ritual site requires the combined magic of bonded pairs to activate. Two hundred fifty years ago, the Preservers’ ancestors understood this—there was no point striking until the conditions existed. They have been watching us. Waiting for exactly what is happening now. The moment pairs formed, the site became a threat worth destroying.”

“Three pairs.” Caius leans forward. “Is that enough?”

“Three pairs can attempt it, but not without risk.” Peach’s attention shifts to Rhodes and me. Holds. “Four would give us the balance the working needs. Transformation and foundation together.”

My brewing power responds to the words—the resonance between what I am and what he is, the way we’ve been circling the same truth for weeks. Energy crackles along my skin, restless and aware.

“We’re not—” I start, but Peach is already smiling.

“The potential is there. I’ve seen it for years. The Registry bell stirred the day you sent him that Humble Pie Ale. I had to have a very stern conversation with it about timing and dramatic appropriateness.” She sighs. “Bells have no sense of narrative pacing.”

Rhodes makes a strangled sound. His hand tightens on my knee.

“You knew.” His voice cracks on the word. “This whole time. You knew about my family.”

“I’ve watched your line for ten generations, Rhodes. Watched the affinity for witch-magic manifest in ways none of you understood.” Peach moves closer. Her hand reaches out, hovers near his cheek without touching. “Your sensitivity to magical disruption. Your compulsion to catalog supernatural events. Your inexplicable draw to a chaos witch whose magic should have driven you away.”

“You could have told me.”

“Would you have believed me? A year ago? Two years ago? Before you let yourself feel what you feel?” Her hand drops. “Some truths can only be heard when the heart is ready to listen.”

The candles flicker. The filing cabinets resume their quiet hum. And in the stillness that follows Peach’s revelation, I feel Rhodes’s hand trembling against my knee.

“There’s more.” Peach returns to the center of the circle. Her exhaustion seems deeper now, as if the telling has cost her something vital.

“Because the two-hundred-fifty-year-old trauma wasn’t enough,” Leire mutters. Aslan’s arm tightens around her shoulders.

“The Severing wasn’t just erasure. The magical energy of a thousand severed matings—the bonds that were ripped apart, the love that was destroyed—it had to go somewhere.” Peach’s words grow quieter, heavier. “It was trapped. Beneath Mistvale. In a pocket dimension created by the ritual itself.”

“The Withering,” I say, not knowing where the word came from.

“Yes.” Peach’s eyes lock onto mine. “You’ve seen it. Your magic is alive in ways that let it perceive things others can’t.”

Cold washes through me. The shadows. The wrongness I couldn’t name during the explosion. The sense of being watched that I dismissed as trauma.

“What’s in the Withering?” Sakura’s hand presses protectively against her belly, her voice gone small. “What’s been watching?”

“Grief. Rage. The echo of everything that was lost.” Peach’s words fall like stones into still water. “For two hundred fifty years, the trapped energy has transformed. Grown. Become aware in ways I don’t fully understand.”

“The Withering Ones.” Anouk’s composure cracks for the first time. “Chione mentioned them—the dragon Caius and I consulted.”

“Chione knows fragments. I know the whole truth.” Peach’s laugh is hollow. “I’ve been guarding two things for two hundred fifty years: the ritual site that could break the Severing, and the seal that keeps the Withering contained.”

“Two things.” Caius’s attention sharpens. “You said ‘two things.’ That implies they’re separate concerns.”

“They are. And they’re not.” Peach sinks into an empty chair—the first time I’ve ever seen her sit during a revelation. It makes her look small. Mortal. Tired in ways that have nothing to do with sleep. “Breaking the Severing will weaken the seal on the Withering. The magic is intertwined. Undoing one damages the other.”

The silence that follows is the kind that happens when people realize they’re standing at the edge of a cliff they didn’t know existed.

“So we can’t break the Severing.” Torin’s rumble is gentle. Resigned. “If it releases whatever is trapped beneath⁠—”

“You have to break the Severing.” Sudden urgency overtakes Peach’s exhaustion. “Everything the witch told Rhodes during interrogation was true. Vespera’s plan is to recast the ritual and destroy the Registry before you can undo it. If they succeed, the Severing becomes permanent. Unbreakable. No more matings. Ever.”