Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Amity chews her lip nervously. She’s a sore thumb out here, the treasured Blight daughter hanging around the ramshackle slums at the east edge of Bonesborough. Every inch of her body screams at her: she’s stiff, she’s uncomfortable, she’s standing awkwardly—she tries to switch her position but realizes that there’s nowhere to shift that isn’t slimy with mud and— is that blood?  

Ugh. She crosses her arms and scowls. All in all, she’s not having the best time out here. Of course, it’s her own fault that she’s been standing out here for… what, twenty minutes? Yesterday, she did say to meet here at three, but then what if she got attacked on the way here, or needed extra time to slip by her parents, so then she had to be ready by one, but then she overestimated how long it would take her to do her eyeliner and shave and put on her pink pants and moon pendant choker and the most rebellious shirt she owned with its fishnet sleeves and low V neck and all black flowy material cinched tight at the waist oh no it’s too much isn’t it? Do I look ridiculous? 

So she got up at nine, because she also had to have enough time to break into school and commit larceny, and now it’s barely two, and she’s early for her... Well. 

For her… well, all of this. It’s all in anticipation of her… excursion with… the human. She bites her lip to stop herself from smiling. No. Not just an excursion. And not just a human. 

Her date with Luz.

Well, she really can’t stop herself from smiling at that, and when some sort of insecure rat-creature takes that as a sign of aggression and jumps out at her, baring its teeth in a violent mirror of her grin, Amity blasts it a little harder than she has to. Just to get the energy out. 

It’s rather surprising that she still has this much energy. She hasn’t felt this excited, or nervous, or alive for a while. Luz is definitely not like her past dalliances. Not like the mysterious, stocky girl with glasses who was researching plant-based poisons in the library, the one with whom Amity had flirted (and then made out with) for a single day. And then she had the nerve to never text even after Amity gave her her scroll number, and Amity obviously couldn’t text first because she was a Blight and couldn’t be the desperate one. And—and Luz is also not like her friend. The one she kissed and… more. The one she doesn’t talk to now. Yes. She knows both of those girls go to Hexside, are in her graduating class, but she won’t… she can’t approach them. At this point, she doesn’t even notice them anymore.

She probably shouldn’t have approached Luz either. Not that she approached Luz! Luz approached her. Luz has been preying upon her all week. Well… no. She approached Luz because of her violation of school rules. Luz was the one who first made a move. Actually… Amity is frustratingly good at lying to herself, and she knows this, and she also knows that she will never fully know the truth when all her memories are tainted by her own perception. She cringes to think of how stupid she must have looked to everyone—and to Luz.

No! No more thinking.

She shouldn’t have begged Luz to screw her in the closet yesterday.

But then again, as her cheeks warm, she thinks, Maybe that was the best experience I’ve ever had so far.

She decides to relive it as accurately as her memory allows. This is hard, because when she daydreams, she starts to lose her balance, and it’s hard to balance in her usual dressy black heeled boots. It’s not like she can lean on the dirty fence either. (She would totally lean on the dirty fence if Luz told her to, though. Hopefully followed up by Luz dropping to her knees and looking up at her with that same almost predatory expression as she wore yesterday. Hell, the things she would let Luz do—)

A flash of movement catches her eye. It’s a bigger rat-creature, stomping out of a broken-down shack to confront her. Amity’s jaw tightens as it starts to speak. “Lady, I don’t know who you are, but if you’re gonna come into our neighborhood all aggro, keep showing your teeth and biting your lip like that, then a fight is what you’re gonna—”

Amity blasts it, trying to ignore the lip biting comment ( was I really?! ) and it goes tumbling back, screeching. “Not much of a fight,” she calls. She doesn’t bother to watch it go.

She mulls over the other thing the creature said. I don’t know who you are. It’s weird for others to… not know her, but it’s good to witness vindication for her rationale of choosing to meet here. The denizens of this… delightful part of town clearly don’t recognize her, which means news of her date with Luz won’t spread to her parents before she musters up the courage to tell them. 

Tomorrow, she promises herself. I’ll tell them tomorrow. Sunday. Luz and I can just be a secret for one more day. And then, on Monday, I’ll tell the whole school if that’s what she wants.

It would be nice if she could wait for Luz for the next hour uninterrupted, though. Damned creatures with their local customs that she can’t understand.

This is fine. No one will find out before we’re ready. 

It’s a Saturday. No one will be up on the Knee today.

Amity worriedly feels for the satchel purse by her side. The promising clink of the vials inside reassures her that her stolen goods have not been damaged. The irony of pilfering the Homeostasis Potion she never turned in is not lost on her. It’s a shame about the grade, because it was out of fifty points, but the project has been entirely excused for Reliable Top Student Amity Blight, and her average for the class is still resting at a pretty, perfect 100.

And Luz apparently has the same grade. 

It’s not like Amity was intending to spy on the class rankings when she broke in—well, visited —the school that morning. It just sort of… happened. She had to make sure to nab a potion that actually worked and that was already graded (What? She wasn’t going to jeopardize someone’s grade like that, or worse, get them a higher grade or a pass where they didn’t deserve one). As a result, she had to check the individual grades until she could take the potion with the highest grade so far (a 96) and shatter the vial on the ground, framing it to look like an accident. If she just happened to see the parchment with the overall rankings, well, that wasn’t her intention.

Her first instinct is to be uncomfortable. To be slightly jealous of Luz. Like, no one can be as academically excellent as Amity Blight. It’s especially weird because of her initial… misconceptions about Luz. It’s so damn difficult to tamp that down, her condescension about it, the sheer superiority she felt over Luz in the beginning, the rising terror of being surpassed, the fury she felt as she fought, and the utter humiliation she felt as she lost. Oh, the sheer helplessness of it, her body and will going weak and shy as she once again let things happen to her instead of taking control like the Blight she is, the Blight she was supposed to be. 

Luz is more of a wild card than a wild card ever was. She’s the perfect wrench in Amity’s life, the crack in her carefully cultivated cage, the epiphany that has made Amity feel alive. And if that’s the case, then Amity will probably just have to deal with academically competing with her. It’s worth it. And, after all, Amity will still be the valedictorian of her class. It’ll be fine.

She swallows. Her parents. Luz. The wrench in her life. Her plans. The future. Today. Their date. The Knee. The Homeostasis Potion. Herself. Luz. It’s all blurring together in her mind, slipping out of control, spiralling into a haze of dread and vague concern that she can’t even organize into actual thoughts, much less address. 

Amity’s throat is dry, her vision swimming. There’s a distinct moment when she thinks very clearly to herself— oh, I’m fainting —before she falls.

“Amity!” 

There’s the voice, and then the sensation of collision, her path of falling broken by a warm body that lets out an oof when it catches her, arms wrapping around her back. When she gasps, a faint, musky, citrusy—human—scent fills her nose. Luz .

“L-luz,” she says, struggling to regain her balance. What an embarrassing way for us to meet today.

Luz opens her mouth, no doubt to check on her, but she’s interrupted by the diminutive rat creature that stomps over to her, fur singed and bedraggled.

“ Ohhh, human, so this rude little witch is your lady friend, huh?”

Amity’s mouth falls open, partly because how dare it accuse her of being rude and also how does it know Luz? and also lady friend?

Luz laughs as she wraps her arm around Amity’s waist, settling her back onto her feet. “Yeah, she’s my lady friend.”

“ Ohhh ,” the creature says again, sing-song and mocking. “Never thought Eda’s apprentice would be such a hit with the witches.”

“Me neither,” Luz grins. Amity’s stomach does a flip. Watching Luz interact with the creature, Amity is suddenly seized with the impression that Luz is worlds removed from her, endowed with foreign experiences and mannerisms she might never understand.

“Sorry if she gave you any trouble,” Luz continues. “We’ll be off now, sir.”

She executes this strange little… bobbing, weaving motion with her head, which the creature replicates reluctantly, clearly still annoyed. Before Amity has the time to be bewildered or even take a good look at Luz, long, warm fingers close around her wrist and tug her down the street. 

Some of the thoughts flailing in Amity’s mind include: She’s touching me! Wow. She smells nice. I am stumbling. Oh no. This is a very roughshod street. Wow. Her legs are so long. I must do well to keep up. I am so nervous! I think I might be sick. I have forgotten how to talk to people. Oh, Titan. How does one say things? What things am I supposed to say? I have just realized that I have never been on an actual date before. I am so anxious. I wish I had never met Luz. I wish I had never been born! I almost fell again. Oh no.

That all stops when Luz finally slows and whirls around to face her without dropping her wrist, grinning broadly. 

“Hey!”

Amity stands there unintelligently, feeling very stupid and frustrated with herself. Oh, so I can talk to her if I think I hate her, but not if I like her?

“G-good afternoon,” Amity manages, looking her date (her date!) up and down. 

Luz is attired in what must be human garb: long black pants with large square pouches attached to the legs, a stick-like instrument protruding from a pocket on her thigh; a white tank top with an image of a human woman’s face and the word “PVRIS”, whatever that might mean, tucked in loosely; a familiar red flannel hanging half off her shoulders; and, of course, her signature accessories of stompy black boots and dumb cool hat. 

All this she registers in the span of a few seconds, before Luz slides her grip from Amity’s wrist to her hand, and then Amity forgets how to speak. She’s so very acutely aware of that hand in her own.

It’s lucky for her that Luz starts talking. “So, I’m like super sorry if Noods was rude to you back there or anything, he’s just kinda scared outsiders are gonna attack him. Man you should’ve seen his face when I first brought potions over to him, I nearly gave him a heart attack. So that’s why I had to drag you out of there, don’t wanna start unnecessary fights. Anyway, I thought I was gonna be early, but then I saw you here already, so I hope you weren’t waiting too long or anything?”

“Oh—no, not really,” Amity says, deciding not to mention the fact that she did, in fact, attack the creature. She suddenly remembers the questions she has about Luz and… Noods? And bringing potions? She’s also suddenly struck by the realization that she really doesn’t know that much about Luz. Before she can ask, though, Luz is already talking again, a bit quickly.

“Oh, fuck! I forgot to ask you if you were okay. You were kinda, uh, falling over back there.” A sly, crooked smile creeps up Luz’s lips. “In fact, you seem to have fallen for me again.”

Amity laughs, surprising herself with the ease of it. “I’m okay, don’t worry.”

Then, a clever thought occurs to her, and she adds: “I suppose you didn’t think that catching feelings for me would also entail having to catch me so often.”

It’s not a particularly good line, and she knows it, but Luz laughs uproariously like it’s the funniest thing she’s heard, and Amity no longer feels quite as nervous. 

“ So ,” she begins, “I have… some questions for you.”

“Me too,” Luz smiles. “How about let’s answer them for each other on the way to uh… wherever we’re going?”

“Oh,” Amity says as she remembers this. “Um, we’re walking to the Knee.”

“Not all the way up, right?” Luz arches an eyebrow. “‘Cause, fuck, that’s a steep climb. Believe me, I’ve seen it.”

“No, no,” Amity says. Although that is interesting. She didn’t know Luz had been there before. “We’re walking to the foot of the Knee.”

Luz bursts out laughing again, almost doubling over, and it takes Amity a moment to realize why. Oh. Foot. Knee. Right… I’m positive that comment of mine wasn’t too funny either. But Luz is so… lovely when she laughs.

“Oh, come on,” Luz says, and they begin walking, Luz’s palm radiating heat in Amity’s cool hand. 

* * *

As they completely leave town and head into the woods, Amity’s shoulders relax, and she sighs. It’s a relief to be alone with Luz, no threat of observers nearby. She looks over at Luz with a slightly begrudging fondness. 

In the middle of explaining about how she’s rooming with a witch and demon and doing side jobs running potions to various parts of town as rent, Luz breaks off and looks back at Amity curiously. “Do you really like the forest or something?”

“What?”

“Oh, just… you look a lot more… happy here.”

“Oh,” Amity says. I can’t tell Luz that I’m still keeping her a secret for now. “I just like being away from everyone, I guess. I don’t usually like for others to know things about me.”

And it’s true. Even about Luz, slightly. Luz seems so… carefree and easy. In contrast, Amity constantly worries about her self-presentation when she’s not defaulting to her scholastic image. It’s much easier—and it makes Amity happier—to just listen to Luz chatter on. 

It’s so much easier for Amity to yell at Luz, gay panic over her, physically fight her, or even have sex with her than it is for Amity to share with Luz what she has kept locked up in her heart for so long. 

“I see,” Luz replies. Amity can’t read her expression at all, but she switches the topic seemingly good-naturedly. “So! What’s the plan for today? Or is it a surprise?”

“No surprises here; only methodical plans with contingencies.”

“That’s so you,” Luz laughs. “Hit me.”

Amity furrows her brow. “Why… would I do that?”

“Oh, that’s just a human saying!” Luz laughs again. Titan, why is there laughter and joy in every word she speaks?

“Humans seem to be very… sexually and violently inclined.”

“Nah. Probably just me. Anywho, I meant, what’s the plan?”

Amity lets go of Luz’s hand and fumbles for the opening of her satchel. “So, you see, I thought we could have a day to uh, ourselves, simply to become more acquainted with each other, far from outside influence. And the, uh, the Knee is usually not very… in use on Saturdays. And I know it’s cold, which is why I brought these—”

She finally manages to extract two of the several vials she carries, cursing the clumsiness of her fingers as she holds one out to Luz. The translucent purple liquid catches the warm afternoon light canting through the trees, sending slight shimmers dancing across Luz’s face. 

Luz reaches out and takes it, examining its contents. “Wait a second… is this…?”

“Yes,” Amity says. “Yes. I, uh… I procured it through completely morally appropriate means.”

“Bruh,” Luz says. “We never finished that project. How—?”

“I might have paid a brief visit to the school this morning,” Amity concedes.

“You stole it?”

“Hush!” Amity leaps forward and claps her hand over Luz’s mouth. “Don’t say that! I would never!”

Luz licks her palm. Amity yelps and withdraws her hand, wiping it on Luz’s shoulder. 

“Who’s the delinquent now?” Luz teases, ducking out of reach. In a horrible, high-pitched voice, she sings, “You stole it! You stole a potion! You broke the rules!”

Amity gasps and dashes after Luz as she takes off running through the woods. All the while, Luz yells rhymes over her shoulder: “You stole it! That’s bold shit! Damn, didn’t know you could be so cold, bitch! ”

Amity shakes her head in mingled annoyance and reluctant adoration. As she springs across the forest floor, Amity realizes that she hasn’t run this way in forever. The arches of her feet strain a bit in her high-heeled boots, but she relishes the stretch in her calves as she pursues the nuisance known as Luz Noceda determinedly.

The woods thin soon, and Luz slows down before she reaches the edge of the little cliff overlooking the violet sea and the bare bones that lie beneath the Knee. Amity doesn’t care much for the sight, however, not when she finally catches up to Luz and catches her, flinging her arms around her waist and panting into her shoulder. 

“Got you,” she mumbles, chest heaving for air against Luz’s front. Luz stumbles back and returns the hug, the two of them swaying there until they both regain their breath and balance.

“So, how do we get up there?” Luz asks, stepping back and jerking her head to indicate the steep mountain beside them.

Amity smirks and straightens up, crossing her arms. “Thought you wanted to be a witch, Luz Noceda. You figure it out.”

“Oh, another challenge from you,” Luz retorts, a gleam in her dark eyes. “Sit back and learn.”

She twists around and tucks the potion vial she’s been carrying into a back pocket, then clears her throat dramatically. Amity rolls her eyes as Luz holds her arms up to the sky and adopts a solemn expression, eyes closed. 

“Oh, please, anytime this century,” Amity sniffs. “How did you even arrive there the last time you went?”

Luz opens her eyes and gazes back at her, an appraising look on her face. “How good are you at saving yourself from falling from the sky?”

“I’m a witch,” Amity scoffs. “Of course I can—”

“Great,” Luz interrupts. “Do you trust me?”

Amity hesitates. Yes. “Ugh, I suppose. ”

Luz beams at her. Then she starts shuffling a circle around Amity, dragging her feet in the dirt. When she finishes, she uses the toe of her boot to drag a few more lines in the dirt, effectively bisecting the circle and creating a diamond-like design. 

Amity has to step aside a couple of times during the process, carefully stepping over the lines as Luz works her way around her. Finally, she seems to finish the drawing.

“You ready, princess?”

Amity’s mouth falls slightly open at the nickname, thrown off guard in a pleasantly flustered way. “I—I suppose, yes?”

Luz stomps the ground, and the next thing Amity registers is a feeling of being crushed into the ground, no, the ground accelerating upwards, launching her into the air, flying through the air, screaming in surprise and at the swoop in her stomach. She doesn’t remember having closed her eyes as the wind rushes through her clothes, but when she opens them again, she regrets it, because they’re so high above the ground, and because the wind pressure against her eyes is uncomfortable. Luz is falling in close proximity to her, barely an arm’s length away, so Amity instinctively grabs onto her, pulling her close in midair so that they fall together, legs intertwined.

As the snowy slopes of the Knee fast approach in Amity’s line of vision, she marvels at the trajectory Luz must have calculated. The glyph circle she used must have produced some sort of force tilted at exactly the right angle and using exactly the right amount of force to catapult them to the right place.

Well, it’s her turn to show off her magic and calculations now. Amity waits for the exact moment they begin to fall, then reaches below her to draw a small spell circle. A miniscule abomination drops out, seemingly surprised to be falling through the air. Within seconds, however, it begins to grow, accumulating more and more of its gooey mass sucked out of the spell circle until its feet land solidly on the mountain. In one smooth, perfect motion, it catches the falling human-and-witch tangle and sets them down gently in the snow. 

Amity lands on her back, pinned underneath Luz by her entire body, Luz’s face somehow resting snugly in the crook of her neck. It’s incredibly ticklish. 

“Get off,” she mutters, pushing at Luz.

Luz’s head pops up, looking down at her. “Why? Don’t wanna be topped again?”

“Not with my abomination watching,” Amity growls. Luz looks over at it.

The abomination shields its eyes with a big, goopy forearm. 

“Guess he’s not a voyeur,” Luz comments.

Amity flushes and draws another spell circle to dismiss it. With only a little bit of distance left to reach the top, they’re absolutely fine walking there themselves. 

Luz jumps up and offers a hand, tugging Amity to her feet. 

“Impressive landing tactic, Amity.”

Well. She can’t help but smile at that. “Impressive launching tactic, Luz.”

It does seem to be getting rather cold, though. Amity’s clothes have been soaked through by snow melted from her body heat, and when she twists her neck to look, the back of her pants have darkened in weird splotches. She snaps her fingers, and a quick blaze of fire dries her off completely. 

Before she can turn around to dry off Luz, a pair of arms wrap around her waist from behind. Amity can feel Luz’s cold and soggy clothes seeping moisture into her own. 

“Hey, Amity~” comes the purr in her ear. 

“No!” Amity yelps, struggling to free herself. “You’re getting me all wet again!”

“I’m glad I still have that effect on you,” Luz laughs lightly in her ear. 

Amity blushes furiously and tries her best to reach back and smack the pervert holding her.

“Sorry. Heh. You walked right into that one.”

Amity manages to turn around within Luz’s embrace. Too close. Her face is too close.

Luz’s eyes flick downward, to her lips, and Amity’s breath hitches. She rests her hands on Luz’s waist, drawing closer and closer in anticipation of their first kiss on their date. For a brief moment, the sun, low in the sky, shines straight into Luz’s eyes, and Amity can tell because it illuminates their dark depths, revealing little flecks of amber and darker shadows within the warm brown of her irises. For that moment, all of Amity yearns forward, wanting their faces to be touching, their lips to be touching, for there to be no space whatsoever between their bodies. 

The kiss never comes. A spatter of snow hits Amity across the face from somewhere to her left, and she shrieks and reflexively jumps back at the same time as Luz. 

“What the fuck was that?” Luz exclaims, wiping snow from her face. 

Amity freezes. What if it’s someone I know?

Luz is already stomping over to investigate. There seems to be nothing much in that direction, however, as she returns relatively quickly. “Guess it was just some sort of weird natural phenomenon?”

Although she doesn’t believe this, Amity accepts the explanation for the purposes of soothing her terrified heart. She pulls out her vial of Homeostasis Potion and uncorks it, gesturing for Luz to do the same. 

Together, they exchange smiles over the vials, clinking them together with a soft declaration of “Cheers!” before they each down the contents.

Amity gasps as the potion burns its way down her throat. It’s not the same sort of alcoholic warmth that she’s felt on past birthdays when her parents offered her a glass of wine, nor the numb heat of the generic brand healing potions she sometimes takes to cure her headaches after all-nighters. The Homeostasis Potion turns her body to ice and fire at the same time in an instant, sensations radiating from her throat and stomach outwards. First the heat, then the cold, then the numb absence of feeling, and finally the pleasant tingling and comfort. It tastes of nothing. Its temperature exactly matches the inside of Amity’s mouth. 

“Whoa,” Luz gasps, her eyes widening. “That’s… damn. Interesting.”

Amity quite agrees, though she would have worded it differently. Glad that she came up with the idea to use the potion, she smiles smugly at her own genius. “Now we won’t be too cold.”

“Excellent,” Luz says, and immediately flings herself face first into a thick bank of snow. She emerges with her face absolutely covered in tiny snow crystals, spluttering. “Oh, dang! It really feels room temperature. Ohhh, this is weird.”

“Idiot,” Amity says with a roll of her eyes. She turns to tuck her empty vial in her satchel.

“It’s great that we have cold immunity now,” Luz calls.

“Mmm,” Amity replies noncommittally, still looking down. 

“Great because now I can do this! ”

Amity looks up in alarm just in time to be hit in the face, flinch, and go flailing backwards. It is indeed so… strange to feel the texture of snow on her forehead and cheeks without the accompanying cold sensation. 

Normally, she would hate being forced into a state of such physical humiliation and would burn the life out of anyone who dared to try, but Amity finds that she doesn’t mind that much right now. Luz seems to have a very physical, slapstick way of showing affection, and she is intriguing and different in a way that removes her from the rest of the world—she occupies a category all of her own in Amity’s mind now.

So, she lets herself step outside what she’s used to for a bit when she scoops up an armload of snow and yells back, “You’ll be sorry!” 

The ensuing battle is legendary. A lightness I haven’t felt in years.

* * *

The passage of time goes unnoticed, what with the adrenaline and constant concentration that comes with friendly competition with someone you like. At some point, one of them, probably Amity, brings magic into it, intercepting an attack with quick blasts of fire. (Amity thinks this is still perfectly valid as she suspects that Luz must have been cheating and using magic too, because there is no way the girl naturally harbors such athletic prowess.)

“This reminds me of that time we actually had a duel,” Luz says, diving behind a tree. “It feels so long ago.”

“That happened two days ago,” Amity reminds her. 

There’s no response. Amity advances cautiously on the tree. However, now that Luz has brought up the matter of the last week, she can’t stop thinking about their closet encounter again. And what Luz said. I’ll let you do whatever you want to me on our first date.  

It’s easier said than done. Amity has no idea how to broach the subject. Luz doesn’t seem to be interested in… that… at the moment, and Amity doesn’t want to seem too forward. Her best bet is to remain as normal as she can and wait for Luz to initiate again. 

Just as she reaches the tree, Luz leaps out in a whirl of movement, grabs her by the shoulders, and slams her against the trunk. All the breath is knocked out of Amity’s chest. 

“You always underestimate physicality in a fight,” Luz says, shaking her head. “It’s too easy to surprise you.”

Amity scoffs at this, turning her head to the side. “That’s just because I was lost in thought.”

“Oh?” Luz leans in, so close that her nose almost touches Amity’s cheek. Her voice drops to a low, husky murmur. “What kinds of thoughts were these?”

Amity’s hands find their way to Luz’s shoulders. Her flannel has slipped down to her elbows, and she hasn’t shrugged it back up. This leaves her shoulders and collarbones bared enticingly, beaded with droplets of melted snow. She tugs Luz close as an answer, hands roaming up and down her back. Luz presses Amity against the tree and presses herself even closer, her leg slotting between Amity’s thighs. Their mouths meet hungrily, and Amity lets her eyes fall closed in relief and pleasure, her lips tingling against Luz’s warm mouth. 

As Luz groans softly into her mouth, there’s a sudden pattering sound above their heads. A deluge of snow and tiny icicles cascades down from the boughs of the tree, dousing the two in a cold shower. 

“Not again,” Amity mutters as they break apart. 

“Guess the tree wants to fight me too,” Luz jokes, aiming a good-natured kick at the tree. It shakes violently, dislodging more snow. 

To Amity’s great surprise, a creature also falls out of it and scrambles to its feet defensively. It’s some sort of demon having an elongated dog skull for a head, with sickly yellow fur, long and jagged antlers, and long, thin haunches. It’s also wearing a large and almost tacky collar with a big round dog tag. 

Amity’s first instinct is pure surprise. It doesn’t even occur to her until after Luz is already speaking to it that it could have been a spy sent by her parents to follow her, but, well, Luz does seem to know it, so it should be fine.

“King!” Luz yells. “Why are you here?!”

Amity stares at this King, suddenly conscious of how she might look. She quickly pats herself down, smoothing her pants and running a hand through her mussed hair. 

The demon replies in a wheedling voice: “Eda wanted me to! It’s not my fault. I didn’t even want to follow you and try to stop you from kissing your witch.”

Luz groans loudly. “Dude, tell Eda I can fucking handle myself! I’m almost eighteen! I’m allowed to go on a date without a chaperone, I hope!”

King raises its paws placatingly. “I know, I know. I’ll tell her.”

The demon turns on its heel and flees, bounding across the snow in huge leaps. 

“Wait! Get back here, King!” Luz yells, staggering after it for a few steps. “I’m not done with you! How much were you watching us! What did you see!”

Amity clears her throat politely, and Luz turns back around immediately. 

“Sorry, yeah,” she says sheepishly. “He’s my demon roommate. Yeah. Really. Sorry about that. I had no idea he was here, really. Guess we solved the mystery of who interrupted us the first time, though.”

“It’s alright,” Amity says, and it really is. As long as no one from her life runs into them. “Tell me more about your roommates.”

A brief flash of what seems like alarm crosses Luz’s face. Amity has no time to dwell on it, however, as Luz recovers quickly and begins talking. “So, right, we live in a pretty… secluded area, in this house with a… doorbell that’s really fucking annoying. But that’s fine! My demon roommate, you just met, that’s King and he wants to be carried a lot, but he’s kinda cute like a baby and hates being dressed up, which is why I do it to him. Eda keeps threatening to eat him, and it took me a whole week to figure out that was a running joke. Oh, yeah, Eda, she’s my witch roommate, this hot older witch—well, not as hot as you, but like, you know? in that older woman way—and I’ve basically tricked her into adopting me. She’s pretty powerful. Anyway. Love my roommates, when they’re not spying on me.”

Amity flushes and decides to ignore the embarrassing not as hot as you part. “What coven is she in? If she’s really powerful, I might have heard of her. I track all the big names in the Emperor’s Coven.”

Luz’s eyes widen comically. “Oh! Well. Well, uh, she’s not in the Emperor’s Coven, so you probably haven’t heard of her.”

“I see,” Amity says, a bit confused at Luz’s behavior.

“What about you!” Luz says quickly. “Who do you spend your time with, in, uh, your life?”

Now it’s Amity’s turn to be at a loss for words. She can’t think of the right answer to give. She spends time at school with her group of friends, but they aren’t important to her; she doesn’t even notice them most of the time. They’re more of a blur at her lunch table than individual people she trusts and loves, and when her parents ask how her friends are, she finds herself delivering mechanical and disinterested updates on their academic prowesses, with maybe a singular tasteful academic anecdote thrown in.

She has two older siblings who tried to help her, asked her to run away with them when she was fourteen and they were sixteen. They were mischievous and carefree and beyond the scope of her parents’ limitations; in fact, perhaps it was because of the way the twins had turned out that Amity’s parents brought her up so stringently, to make her perfect and demure and obedient in the way the twins could never be. It’s been almost four years since they left. They are both members of the Illusion Coven, and they don’t see Amity anymore. They tried sending letters, which were intercepted and destroyed by their parents, but Amity told them not to worry, to forget about her and live their own lives. She’s fine. She’ll be fine. She’ll live the life she was meant to live and ignore her desire to rage, to strike out, to burn down Blight Manor and do whatever she wants.

She cannot talk about her parents to Luz. She will not. They aren’t bad people, just… perhaps bad parents. She loves them and hates them and at the same time feels nothing about them but indifferent detachment, like they are two strangers who live in her house and barely talk to her, strangers whose expectations she despises but wants badly to fulfill. 

Amity’s throat closes up. Who else do I even spend time with? Luz enters the Boiling Isles and immediately finds love and family. That’s simply the kind of person she is. One can’t help but gravitate towards her. And me? I have nothing. No one. There is nothing special about me except for my talent and my last name, but nothing that could ever make someone want to… be with me. 

How could Luz have chosen me? She doesn’t—I don’t deserve her care.

But. They are on a date. While the school environment felt like a layer of protection, a field Amity knows how to play, a place where she knows to look and act a certain way, it’s different out here. She’s no longer Future Valedictorian and Top Student, fire witch extraordinaire and shoo-in to the Emperor’s Coven—wait. 

Emperor’s Coven. Amity’s mind, wildly jumping from thought to thought, finally settles on the perfect someone to talk about.

“My mentor Lilith,” she blurts out. “She’s the leader of the Emperor’s Coven.”

Luz’s jaw drops.

“I know,” Amity agrees, nodding. “It was astonishing to me as well when I first heard the news. Someone of her power and authority, training me. Apparently, she was doing it as a favor to my mother, and they decided that I could use extra studies to get ahead. When I’m older, Lilith says I have the skill to possibly take over for her as the leader.”

“L-Lilith Clawthorne ?” Luz asks. 

“Yes,” Amity says. “The famous one. She’s really not that intimidating in person, though. She comes over to train me about three times a week, and she’s a very understanding and careful teacher while at the same time firm and challenging. I think I spend most of my time with her if I’m not alone.”

“F-fascinating,” Luz says, evidently unable to move past her starstruck state. Amity understands this absolutely, what a great privilege and honor it is to be taught by Lilith Clawthorne.

“So, who taught you how to do magic with your human glyphs?” Amity asks, hoping to put Luz at ease again. 

Luz lights up. “Oh! I actually figured it out myself!” she exclaims. “Eda demonstrated a spell circle for me, and I found that the patterns naturally occur in most elements. In fact, I learned my second glyph here.”

“Here… as in the Knee?”

“Yep!” Luz says. “Here, come on, I’ll show you exactly where!”

She grabs Amity by the hand and takes off running again, slogging uphill through the snow. Their shadows stretch long and blue on the snow before them: hours have passed, and they haven’t even reached the icy cap of the Knee yet. Amity doesn’t mind. She’s having a surprisingly nice unsexual, unawkward time. 

Even the ancient stone ruins seem homey and welcoming when they pass through them together. Luz leads them up a mild slope that evens out to a thin forest of pink, snow-laden coniferous trees some distance above the ruins. From this vantage point, the purpling sky of the Boiling Isles silhouettes the imposing ribs of the Titan’s carcass that thrust up to the sky, a sublime backdrop against the jagged crack of the canyon that runs down the center of the Isles. The huge skull in the distance gazes up at the wide open sky and the few pale stars already beginning to show in the late afternoon. 

Luz plops herself down on a round rock, immediately wincing and putting a hand on her behind. “Fuck. Thought it looked softer than it is. Honestly, I dunno why I made the same mistake again, ‘cause I did the exact same thing when I first came here.”

Amity giggles. “I’ll stay standing; thanks.”

“Come over here and I’ll show you how to find the glyphs.”

Amity obliges, walking forward to stand before Luz. Her hips are at about the same level as Luz’s face, and this fact flusters her greatly. Luz doesn’t seem bothered, though, and picks up her hand again. 

It’s an oddly intimate pose, Amity thinks. All of it. The sun, beginning to slip away behind her, warms her back and tinges the sky maroon. Towards the opposite direction, the barest streaks of clouds glow red on their undersides and fade to dusky lavender on their backs, assembling in fleets over the mountain, over Luz’s head. Around them, the dying light glistens fiery gold in the tips of the trees, the dazzle of the snow, the wisps of Luz’s hair that stick out past her hat. Everything seems suspended in a singular moment, poised on the almost cusp of sunset, waiting.

For some reason, the thought and the beauty of it all makes Amity’s heart clench. In happiness? In fear? In the terror of the ephemeral nature of this moment of happiness? 

Luz smiles at her warmly, and Amity can’t help but smile back. Although her shadow falls across Luz’s face, Amity has never seen any other face so bright. So full of light and life. 

It’s both, Amity thinks wildly, her thoughts suddenly thrown sharply into coherence. Yes, it’s both. Light and shadow, happiness and fear, dream and reality, aggression and intercourse, hot and cold—no, not that, warmth and chill, yes, Luz and I.

Again, that feeling—that she must seize this moment and memorize it forever, that Luz will leave soon, why, oh, why didn’t she begin to appreciate the beauty in the curve of that nose, the flutter of those eyelashes, the toss of black hair over her shoulder sooner, starting from that fateful Monday instead of now—why didn’t I spend more time admiring her instead of fighting her?—that feeling that Luz in her life is like the shadow of a flame, something she would expect to be there, silhouetted in sharp relief on the wall of reality, yet something gone the moment she might think to turn her head and look—

“Look,” Luz says, and the touch of the pads of her fingers against Amity’s own brings her back to this moment. 

“Hmm?” 

Luz reaches down, tugging Amity’s hand down with her slightly as she leans to the side and scoops up some snow with her left hand. Then, to Amity’s surprise, she firmly plops the snow into Amity’s palm and mashes it determinedly with her own two hands, clasped tightly around Amity’s, until the snow feels like a compacted little cake.

“What… what’s this for?”

“Look!” Luz exclaims proudly. “Look at the way the ice thingies, like, the lines and stuff freeze.”

Amity peers at it closely, bending down. Luz’s beaming face, shifting up and down in tiny, excited little nods close by, is very distracting. Honestly, the snow just looks like… snow. Even if Amity can’t feel its coldness, the snow can tell, because it’s all melted and forming into ice, yes, developing cracks along which Amity’s concentrated gaze roves. She still sees nothing. 

Then, suddenly, something clicks and she sees the whole thing from a new angle.

“It’s the symbol!” she exclaims. “The one you drew on the ground!”

“Yeeep,” Luz says, popping the ‘p’ in her funny little manner. “Ta-da. Ice glyph in the ice.”

“Wow,” Amity says. Several questions run through her mind. “I’ve never seen it cast that way before.”

“Yeah, I know,” Luz says, jumping to her feet. She starts walking further into the trees, and Amity follows her automatically. “I had to learn it this way myself, trial and error, ‘cause humans don’t have a bile sac. I’m not really a witch.”

“I doubt you’d let that stop you. After all, you held your own in our duel, and you never even flinched at all the things I said to you, and I—I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Luz shrugs. “Besides, I said some, uh, things to you too. Sorry. I really didn’t know much about your… I was just guessing and trying to hurt y—”

“It’s fine,” Amity echoes quickly. “We were both… uncivil.”

“Different flavors of raging bitches.”

Amity wrinkles her nose. “I suppose.”

Luz laughs. Amity glows inside a little at that.

A comfortable silence for a bit. The sky darkens further, and they walk into that darkening. Amity begins to grow used to the feel of Luz’s hand in her own.

“According to Eda, the glyphs way of casting magic, the way I showed you, was the way that the Wild Witches used to do it,” Luz says after a while.

“Interesting,” Amity replies. “The school curriculum didn’t cover their magic much during that unit in history class. We mostly just learned the various rebellions and battles.”

“Colonizers. Probably scared of the new generation learning the Old Ways,” Luz mutters.

Amity doesn’t know how to respond to that. “Mmm,” she says. “So… what else do you know… I guess… about magic?”

“Ah, yeah. So, Eda had some interesting books and materials in the back of her personal storeroom, so after I did some digging, I did find, like, several branches of magic that weren’t really part of the main nine tracks. Ooh! Here, I’ll show you.”

Luz slips her hand away and starts dragging her shoe through the snow while Amity stops to watch. “So, here, see this point? That’s like, the intrinsic magic in the bile sacs and stuff that each witch has. Now I’m gonna draw nine lines away—oop, there’s not really space, just pretend these five lines are actually nine—to represent the tracks or like, the covens too.”

“Right,” Amity says, a bit uncertainly. Twilight is falling, and she’ll probably have to be home soon. Before midnight tonight for sure. It’s all right. They still have a good maybe… five to seven hours? Night simply sets Amity on edge with its reminder of temporal boundaries, and she refuses to check her scroll for fear of breaking the spell of a special day alone with Luz.

“So,” Luz barrels on, “in that book I found, it wasn’t only this pipeline of like, you get sorted into tracks and continue down that path and stay within it. And it wasn’t just like, a decision tree where every path was parallel and each node connected only to the one before and after, ending in a singular perfect leaf, but it was this huge ass crazy map of like, crisscrossing lines and stuff interconnecting so many different fields of magic. Fields of magic, Amity, wild fields , not just trees! With the freedom to move around and all!”

Amity blinks, a bit bemused, as Luz takes off her beanie and shakes all her hair out, gloriously messy. She doesn’t remember when the moon came out, but there’s that soft glint of moonlight on Luz’s dark tresses, the same mild brightness that highlights her cheekbones. As Luz dances around in the moonlight, twirling and skipping high and throwing her hands in the air, Amity is suddenly reminded of an image in her textbook depicting the way the old savage Wild Witches used to frolic around fires at night, engaging in hedonistic rituals of reckless excess and uncontrolled glee. 

She thought Luz was wild and dangerous and uncontrollable before, at Hexside, an unknown factor, a creature who could lash out and change everything. But even then, Luz was restricted, by the rules of the school and the distance that comes from being classmates (seeing someone every day and thinking you know them, that delinquent who must not care about learning, thinking you know everything there is to know about them except you really don’t know anything about them, especially not the fact that they love learning). Yes, Luz was holding back then, holding a layer of aggressive projected flirtation appearing strong but truly tentative between them. This is Luz in her element, today has been Luz in her element, presenting herself as she truly is and not holding back, sharing herself as someone who is more smile than smirk, someone very… very true.

And Amity has been thinking more, too. No longer occupied with shallow, hateful thoughts, no terror of impending deadlines and maintaining grades and not giving a fuck about any other person in her life but herself—no, so many thoughts have occupied her mind today, beautiful thoughts, poetic thoughts, more genuine emotion than she thought she could ever force herself to feel.

“Dance with me,” Luz says, holding out her hand. Amity takes it and is instantly pulled in flush to Luz’s chest, an arm wrapped around her waist. She hesitantly places her own hand on Luz’s shoulder, and they rock together, no longer Luz’s frenzied jumping but a quiet, peaceful accord, simply standing and swaying together. 

“This isn’t dancing,” Amity remarks dryly.

“Yes, it is.” Luz stares challengingly into her eyes, and Amity imagines that her eyes are full of playful desire. A tingle runs down her spine.

“Not any respectable type I’ve ever seen,” Amity sniffs.

“I’ll have you know it’s a very respectable human dance called slow dancing. A rite of passage at our dance gatherings.”

“Oh, I’m sure .”

“Mmm, yep. Them awkward slow dances. My favorite part of middle school.”

“Really. An awkward prepubescent human socialization ritual.”

“Fine, just kidding, Ami. My favorite part of middle school was the learning.”

Amity tries to ignore that nickname and the accompanying flutter in her stomach and the tingly feeling racing across her scalp and up behind her ears. “Learning? Learning what?”

“Oh, just anything, really. I was that kid who got bullied for being a little too into school. And that manifested differently for every class, you know? I brought in live garden snakes for an eighth grade book report, got sent home and assigned detention for that.”

“So you are a delinquent.”

“Was I a delinquent at fourteen? Sure, I guess. But I also got bullied for raising my hand at every question in geometry class, and spending all my lunches reading fantasy fiction in the library, and for asking the teacher too many questions about how do we know this? and why is this true? in class. I used to visit teachers outside of class all the time ‘cause the school stuff they taught us was just too boring. You know, not enough.”

Amity looks at Luz wonderingly, searching her face for signs of exaggeration or falsehood. But no, Luz’s expression is open and honest and vulnerable, and Amity suddenly feels shame. 

For this is the moment when she realizes. She’s not a Top Student. Luz is.

Being a Top Student is not about being the valedictorian that Amity Blight is. It’s not about seeing every other student cower with a mix of jealousy and fear and awe in the hallways. It’s not about the approval of every teacher and faculty member in Hexside. All the hundreds of perfect scores and hours spent stressing over work and carefully calculated polite laughs and networking visits with professors that constitute Amity Blight’s meticulously cultivated success cannot measure up to the unbridled, unorganized curiosity that is Luz Noceda. And how could she ever live up to that? That true desire to learn?

“I—I understand how you feel,” Amity says, though she’s unsure of the validity of this statement. “I also sometimes feel that the resources at Hexside are insuffi—that is, sometimes I’ve also conducted some personal research, or, fantasy fiction, yes—”

“Haha, nerd,” Luz says, thankfully cutting her off. Then, she amends, “Nah. We’re both nerds.”

Amity is suddenly conscious of the fact that her hand might be sweaty. She feels kind of sweaty. She also doesn’t know what to say, a recurring problem she will no doubt have to work on. She shifts from foot to foot, biting her lip and looking over Luz’s shoulder at the dark silhouette of the trees.

“So, Ams, you’re like, really good at magic,” Luz says, very suddenly and brightly.

“Obviously.”

“May I have a demonstration? What’s the coolest thing you can do?”

Amity steps away, smirking. “Since you asked so nicely, I suppose I may oblige you, Luz. Now. Please stand back.”

“Of course, my lady.” Luz bows deeply and flips her hat in front of her before cramming it back on top of her head, jumping back and tucking her hair under.

Amity concentrates. The air is so cold and thin. It’s going to be hard to summon fire, and it certainly won’t be as big as she can normally muster, but it’s the spell she knows the best. Breathe in. Gather it. Feel the magic burn inside. Keep it. Hold it. Wait for it. Breathe until you can’t hold any more. Steady… one… two… 

Amity breathes out evenly but firmly, and as she does, she lets the pink-tinged fire emanate from her body, licking its way across the ground in a stately, controlled procession, steaming the snow away in hot clouds of vapor until she’s left standing in a circle of mud. 

“Impressive,” Luz grins. “You made… mud!”

“I made fire,” Amity corrects. “The fire then revealed mud.”

“It still wouldn’t do for you to get all muddy,” Luz says, very clearly looking her up and down. Amity flushes and looks away as this onceover becomes a twiceover and then a thriceover. “Love those pink pants of yours. Sure wouldn’t want nature to get them dirty and soaked before I could.”

“Oh, Luz,” Amity says, and it’s part exasperated sigh, part fond annoyance. It’s true, though. Not that part! Just… her heels are sticking in the mud a little.

“Big ass ice glyph to the rescue,” Luz announces. She picks up a stick from the ground, and in no time she’s running circles around Amity, drawing lines and patterns on the ground in the same way she did hours ago near the start of their date.

This time, a platform of ice rises from the ground, reasonably slowly. 

“Impressive,” Amity says. She’s truly duly impressed. “Didn’t know you had that much control in you.”

Her heels are now certainly unstuck, lifted entirely off the ground by a few inches of thick ice. In fact, where her perfect circle of fire melted away the snow, Luz’s perfect circle of ice has taken its place, slotting perfectly into place. 

Amity shifts her weight tentatively, her stomach flailing for a moment as she nearly loses her balance. It’s a lot slipperier… more slippery than she thought. She stares down at her ankle boots, willing them not to betray her.

A flash of movement catches her eye, and she looks up to see Luz whizzing gleefully past her, knees bent, hands stretched out in front of her, sliding across the ice… purposefully.

“How—why—how are you doing that?” Amity calls.

“Oh, boy, I have the coolest fucking human tradition to tell you about. Did you know…”

Amity waits patiently while Luz steers herself in a new direction and conducts a dramatic drumroll on her own thighs.

“...that humans have this thing called ice skating where we wear these white boots with knives attached to the feet that help us glide on ice?”

Amity splutters. “Knives? On your—on your feet?! ”

“Yes,” Luz nods, looking very smug at Amity’s disbelief.

“Knives. Knives on your feet.”

“Mhm.”

“Like I said. You humans are a violent and sexual lot. I can’t believe I’m hanging out with you. You’ll corrupt me.”

Luz laughs and slides over to her, mischievous intent in the way she crouches with her hands out, ready to pounce and grab and catch. Amity tries to run but nearly stumbles again, so she resigns herself to the sweet captivity of Luz’s warm embrace around her, the soft brush of the beanie against her jaw as Luz snuggles her face into Amity’s neck. 

There’s been a lot more embracing today than pinning, and Amity is about to point this out as well as the time and very subtly ask Luz if she would like to partake in a more… salacious activity before they return to their respective homes, when, suddenly, she sees a figure over Luz’s head. 

For a wild, terrifying moment, Amity’s tired, somewhat confused mind thinks, Lilith.  

“Luz, we need to hide,” Amity hisses, panic and adrenaline coursing through her body.

“What? Why?”

“There’s someone over there.”

“Why would we need to hide? We’re good magic users, we—”

“Luz, please! We can’t be s— we shouldn’t—”

Luz lets go of her and holds her at arm’s length, her face falling to a frown. “We can’t be seen? Is that what you were going to say?”

Oh. “No, no,” Amity tries to backtrack, trying to subtly catch a glimpse of the possibly-Lilith figure over Luz’s shoulder, trying not to see the hurt and confusion on Luz’s face.

Then, the figure speaks.

“You’re out here pretty late, kid.”

It’s a rough, feminine, somewhat smoky voice, but not unpleasant. Amity’s shoulders relax. It’s not anyone she knows, and it’s definitely not Lilith. Silly brain. Why did I think it was—?

“Eda!” Luz exclaims, and now she’s the one who sounds panicked and guilty, and Amity doesn’t know why, it’s just her roommate, right? 

And then the figure draws closer, sitting on a staff with an owl palisman, floating nearer and nearer until Amity can make out the features under the moonlight, and then she sucks in a cold, horrified breath.

That’s a criminal. That’s— That’s the— 

Her pulse pounds so loudly in her ears that she can barely hear herself think; in fact, the terror surging through her from before has left her thoughts scattered already, she has no thoughts, simply a visceral reaction of dread, of confusion, of horror; she can barely hear Luz talking with Eda—her roommate—the Owl Lady —the most wanted criminal on the Boiling Isles—Luz didn’t tell her—Luz didn’t tell her!—the most wanted criminal and an enemy to the Emperor and to the Emperor’s Coven and her mentor Lilith and her future and everything she stands for. 

“—we didn’t think you should’ve started associating with her sort,” the Owl Lady says, jerking her mane of grey hair in Amity’s direction.

“My relationship has nothing to do with you,” Luz growls, stepping in front of Amity as if to shield her from the criminal. But no, Luz knows this criminal, they’re in league, they’re friends—  

“Oh, yeah?” the Owl Lady continues, leaning to the side to get a good look at Amity. “Look at ‘er! She’s a Blight. Ha, you think she knows you think of it as a ‘relationship,’ what you have with her?”

“You had no right to fucking follow me, or send King to follow me, and you don’t fucking know her.”

“Trust me,” the Owl Lady scoffs. “You know one Blight, you know them all. Oh, sure, at Hexside you’re all sneakin’ into corners and makin’ out under the bleachers, and you start calling her your girlfriend, and then she meets some rich witch boy toy and marries him for status and wealth, and then you bam! As soon as she becomes a Blight, you never see her again, but she starts talking about you like you were the stupidest mistake of her youth, and then you try to steal all the furniture from her fancy little mansion to get her to notice you, but then! Oh, then! Oh, she decides to be the one who gets to be righteously mad! And as revenge, she decides to ignore you for the rest of her precious little blighted life, and she hires your older sister to tutor her youngest daughter as revenge, and then you just gotta deal with knowing your ex fucks your sister on weekends, and that affair is gonna last way longer than your ‘relationship’ with her, so, yeah, I think I’d know what I’m talking about.”

Amity blinks. Honestly, she’s not sure she understood any of that. The words simply don’t form meanings in her mind, probably because she’s still stunned by the fact that the wanted Owl Lady is standing in front of her and ranting at Luz, disparaging Amity right in front of her face. 

“That’s… uh… oddly specific,” Luz says slowly. 

For a brief moment, a confused silence hangs in the air. 

Then, the Owl Lady shakes her head. “Point is, kid, don’t trust this… Blight. I heard what she said when she saw me. She told you to hide, right? Said that she couldn’t be seen with you?”

Amity winces at the disgust clear in the way that raspy voice pronounces her last name. She closes her eyes at the rhetorical questions. I wish I hadn’t…

When she opens her eyes, Luz is looking at her, not accusingly, which she would have preferred, but with hurt. As if she’s pleading for her ears to have misheard, for Amity to have misspoken. 

“Amity’s not like that,” Luz says quietly, but she’s still looking right at Amity.

The Owl Lady scoffs, sliding off her staff. “I bet you all the snails I have that that witch hasn’t told the Parental Blights, much less anyone else, and she sure as hell don’t have any intention to.”

Amity can’t tear her gaze away from Luz as the words pierce through her and fill her eyes with tears. Fuck, the tears! They might as well be an admission of guilt. Because what the Owl Lady’s saying, those words, it’s all true, that’s exactly the type of person Amity is, and she just can’t ever seem to escape, can she?

“Kid, come home with me. Don’t waste any more of your time on her. Please. I’m doing this for your own good, you hear me? Don’t make the same mistake I did.”

“Amity wouldn’t break her promise. I trust her.”

“Luz, she doesn’t care about you. Even if she wanted to, d’you really think she’d date someone without generational wealth? You think she’d date a human? You really think she’d wanna date the Owl Lady’s apprentice? Nah. Come home to King and I, we got a nice and hearty spider soup for dinner.”

Amity’s thoughts race. It’s true, now that these points have been brought up, her fears from the morning return in full force. There’s no way she could make this work. No way she could make sure both she and Luz could make it out unscathed. 

I knew it. I knew it, she thinks. I knew that I wouldn’t have enough time with Luz.

I need to let her go now. It’s better this way. At least we had a day together.

The three of them stand there as if in a stalemate, Luz with her jaw clenched, gazing beseechingly at Amity; the Owl Lady with her hip cocked, waiting patiently for Luz; and Amity with her heart broken, knowing silently that she must be the one to break this impasse.

“It’s true, Luz,” she whispers. “I’m no good for you. It’s all true.”

She thanks the Titan for the tears blurring her vision, because she doesn’t have to see what sort of disappointed? stricken? hurt? furious? expression must be on Luz’s face. Scrabbling for even footing on the ice, she manages to slip off the circular platform and land solidly in the snow. She registers for a moment the presence of the Owl Lady, the dangerous criminal, the powerful witch still standing nearby, but she brushes it off. All she needs is to get away. Get away and cry until she can make herself appear normal enough to go back to Blight Manor.

She takes off running down the mountain, her boots kicking up little sprays of snow and snagging on hidden roots. Her skin starts to smart and sting from the cold air, and her fingers and toes begin to stiffen. The Homeostasis Potion is wearing off. Behind her, there’s an insistent shout of “Amity!” but she ignores it.

She’s running. Running so quickly. There’s too much running through her mind. It’s like what happened this morning, but even worse. Luz. Betrayal. My promise. Was it true? I care. I do care! I’m a Blight. I can’t escape. Luz was never going to stay. Luz. Going to take Luz away from me. The Owl Lady. Eda. Roommate… Luz lied to me! Luz didn’t tell me… Luz knew about Eda. The Emperor’s Coven. My future. Didn’t tell me. I didn’t tell her. Secrets. Lies. Not true. Oh, Titan… the Emperor. Lilith. “Older sister.” “Tutor.” Eda. Lilith. Luz knew this too! My mother. My parents. A human girl. Luz. We can’t. We’re not meant to. To be together. There’s too much. Too much against. Too much…

Her thoughts come fast and fragmented, and the familiar dizziness comes before her eyes. The blurriness of her tears swirls into the brief darkness of unconsciousness, and the next thing Amity knows, she’s falling, there’s a red-hot flare of pain as she smashes the back of her hand against something hard, then there’s darkness, oh, she’s still falling, falling far, her body tumbling against hard surfaces until she finally comes to rest on a single hard surface, her face up to the sky. Her vision clears only gradually, and at first Amity doesn’t realize what she’s seeing, a giant black sky with patches of grey and a speckled, jagged crack of dark blue, but then, just like with the ice glyph, something suddenly clicks, and she realizes that she’s lying on her back in some sort of crevice and staring up at the sky visible through the crack.

Amity sucks in a deep breath and realizes that multiple parts of her body feel like they’re on fire, while other parts feel absolutely freezing. She clenches her jaw, letting tears of physical pain well up and oust those of emotional suffering. 

Then, a solid shape darkens the opening of the crevice above her. There’s a gruff “ugh!” and a pair of black stompy boots land lightly on the floor beside her head.

“How did you do that,” Amity says in a surprisingly normal voice.

“A human hobby called parkour,” Luz replies, equally normally.

Then Amity’s lip trembles and she’s struggling to sit up and Luz is there beside her, wrapping strong arms around her, taking off her flannel and draping it around Amity’s shoulders, and Amity cries because she doesn’t deserve this hug, and her head hurts, and she doesn’t remember what emotions she’s supposed to feel or cry about, but Luz doesn’t seem to care; Luz is here, and she lets Amity turn and cry into her chest, until Amity’s sobs fade into heaving breaths, and, exhausted, she drifts off to sleep with Luz still holding her.