Chapter Text
“Okay, King, focus. You only have one shot to get this right.”
“I-I don’t know about this—what if I mess it up?”
“Don’t worry about that now, just concentrate.”
Squares of paper laid out on the table.
“Now, this is important, King: when it looks like the deck is stacked against you…”
Squares of paper sliding from one hand to another, covert.
“....that’s when you break out your wild card!”
King slams the playing card down on the coffee table, making the rest of the cards already splayed out there rattle. The instant the card is down it sparks to life—bolts of electric magic springing forth and zeroing in on his opponent’s deck, catching the cards, making them kindle and burn in bursts of sparkling magic. Gus yelps, dropping his burning cards to stomp them out before the fire can spread to the carpet.
“Ha-ha!” King throws his fists in the air. “I win!”
Willow claps politely, a big proud smile on her face. “Well done,” she praises.
Hexes Hold ‘Em. The trickiest card game on the Boiling Isles. Any witch worth their salt knows how to play.
At least, that’s what Willow and Gus told King when they busted out the deck half an hour ago.
“I say that wasn’t very fair!” Gus finishes tamping down the last of the embers, drops down onto the sofa behind him, sinks slightly into the worn velvet seat. “You had Willow telling you what to do the whole time.”
“I was coaching him!” Willow insists, fists on her hips in defiance. “I am his honorary co-mentor.”
A few hours before, Willow and Gus had dropped into the Owl House for their weekly magic training session with King. Well, training session was putting it in business terms—really, they haven’t been able to accomplish all that much so far, not with only one spell to work with and no other way for King to conjure more.
(“You can’t get more glyphs from Luz? Different ones?”
“Luz doesn’t have ‘different ones.’” King had sneered, kicked at the light glyphs spread out on the floor before him. But then his face had gone soft and in a voice grown quiet he’d added: “She says the light glyph is the only glyph she knows how to find.”)
Finally, after hours of floundering around experimenting with light spells (read: using them to create increasingly incomprehensible shadow puppets), the three were in the middle of a well-deserved break. “You don’t need magic to enjoy a good round of Hexes Hold ‘Em,” Gus had suggested, with a smile and a wink.
King gathers his cards back into a haphazard deck, running his fingers over the muted colors of the illustrations printed on them. They’re pretty, in a gruesome way: eyeballs and ghouls and towers collapsing into flames. “That was fun,” he finds himself saying, then frowns—suddenly he wants to say You guys are fun, but he stops himself, presses his mouth shut. Where did that come from?
“Was I right or was I right?” Gus leans back on the sofa, crossing his arms behind his head cockily, a goofy look of pretend smugness on his face. “Willow and I know how to bring on the party, don’t we, Willow?”
Willow throws a quick pair of finger guns Gus’ way. “You know it.”
But the next instant her smile’s fading slightly, her eyes casting down to her lap. Idly she works at the fibers of the carpet beneath them, clumps of them catching between her fingers when she runs them through.
King notices Gus’ reaction first. There’s a crease at the edges of Gus’ smile as he looks down at Willow, concern clear without having to say anything. An awkward quiet hums through the living room. Suddenly eerie.
King’s looking back and forth between Willow and Gus, brow raised. “Wwwhat’s going on….?”
Willow and Gus share a look. Quietly Willow winces.
She sighs, “....Amity’s throwing a moonlight conjuring tonight.” She brings her knees up to her chest, wraps her arms around them. Sighs again. “And she invited everybody but me.”
A beat. Then King’s huffing in a breath, miffed. “I don’t know what that means but that sucks.” Of course it had to be Amity. Of course.
“You go over to someone’s house,” Gus exposits from his spot on the sofa, “and then you try to bring something to life with moon magic.” He sighs, looking up at the cracks on the ceiling. “Willow and I have never been to one.”
Now Willow and Gus are both sad and King is caught awkwardly between them, feeling like he’s walked into the middle of some interpersonal drama he has zero context for. Nervously he clears his throat, if only to give himself something to do. Busies himself with gathering up the rest of the playing cards on the table. “Why don’t you just have one yourselves?”
“You need at least three people,” Willow sighs again. Morosely turns to help King shuffle cards back into their pack. Drops one on the carpet. Sighs a fourth time. Reaches to pick it up.
“I’m three people!”
The familiar voice suddenly screeches through the air, causing all three of them to jump (all cards now tumbling back to the carpet), stifling shrieks. They turn in the direction of the unexpected interruption and find the front door of the Owl House swinging wide open, late afternoon sunlight streaming in to paint the living room golden.
Hooty beams down at the terrified trio from his spot in the center of the door. Evidently oblivious.
“Hooty! What’s wrong with you??” King instinctively snaps, arm thrown up in incredulity.
“We can have our own moonlight conjuring, right here in this room!” is what Hooty chooses to answer, and as he does he unwinds himself from the door, spooling out the entire length of his tube-like body to plunk himself in between Willow and Gus, nudge them both excitedly. If he had arms he’d be wrapping them around the pair right now. “And with King here too, we can have double the fun!”
Willow and Gus share a nervous glance, scootching themselves slightly away from the enthusiastic wooden bird tube. “No offense, Hooty, but,” says Gus, “I’m not so sure house demons can count for a conjuring.”
“You’re kind of already a something, ” adds Willow, then rolls her shoulders to indicate the whole of the house—all of it controlled by Hooty, all of it technically a part of him.
Hooty frowns in protest. “I—”
“No, he’s right.”
Now all their eyes turn over to King, who’s staring down at the spill of Hexes Hold ‘Em cards on the floor, knuckle pressed to his chin in thought. It takes him a second to notice their gaze on him.
“Ah—about the conjuring, I mean,” he elaborates, then presses his hands to his chest to illustrate his next point: “I could be your third person!” Holds his arms out next, to Willow and Gus, inviting. “We can have our own conjuring and prove Amity was stupid for not inviting you!” He beams.
If Hooty is ruffled at King for stealing his idea, he’s not being vocal about it. But nobody’s really focusing on Hooty anymore, because now Willow’s more preoccupied with considering the human’s proposal, tapping her fingers together uncertainly.
“Well…. the celestial powers only align once a year.” She looks to Gus for support, sees him smiling wide and ecstatic, nodding his yes. She’s beginning to smile back.
“....Okay.” She fists her hands in triumph. “Okay! Let’s do it! Let’s have a conjuring!”
“Yeah, conjuring!” King pumps his arms in the air, excited despite that he’s still not entirely sure what a moonlight conjuring means exactly. “Bring something to life with moon magic” makes it sound deceptively simple.
It’s in the middle of this celebration that another voice cuts through the din, this one a lot gruffer and far less shrieky:
“Kid! What’re you yelling about now?!”
Eda has suddenly appeared in the doorway between the living room and the stairs, arms crossed impatiently. A single grey feather is sticking up from her hair like a cowlick.
“Eda!” King greets her, unwittingly glad. “Me and Gus and Willow are—”
“Pause.” Eda holds up a hand. On reflex King falls silent immediately.
“I need you upstairs for a mo’. Something’s come up.” With that she turns to climb back up the stairs, two at a time in her urgency.
King frowns. Makes to stand up hastily. “I’ll, uh.” He glances down at the other three gathered at the table apologetically. “Imma be right back.”
Eda’s bedroom is a mess, but it still looks a lot better than it did after the Owl Beast attacked it a few weeks ago. The massive stained-glass window, patched up good as new, tints the amber daylight even warmer as it shines through.
Eda sits on the edge of her nest, a worn wooden chest balanced on her knees as she opens it. Standing before her in expectant silence are King and Luz, patient. Luz has been upstairs with Eda these last few hours, helping her out with, in her own words, “stuff.”
Still: “How’s training with Willow been going?” she asks softly, glancing up at King. Though her voice is gentle there’s something surprisingly biting in her eyes when King catches them, and he finds himself stammering out his answer.
“I-i-it’s been goin’,” he says, shrugs. Looks away, outside the window to the gold-tinted woods beyond the house. “We’ve been doing okay.”
“That’s good,” Luz responds, still soft, fixing her eyes back to Eda. Her hands are clasped behind her back. They press tighter.
“Alright, here’s the issue.” Their trains of thought are both broken by Eda, looking up at them from the dusty depths of the chest in her lap. She brings up a familiar glass container: a bottle of elixir—empty, reflecting the sunlight almost directly into King’s and Luz’s eyes. They blink.
“I’m out of elixir for the week, and my regular supplier won’t be producing any more until next week.” She grunts, clunks the empty bottle back into the chest. It clinks against other presumably empty glass bottles inside.
“We’re going to have to hit up the Night Market if we want to avoid another…. incident.” A knowing glance upwards. “We’re leaving tonight, nice and early so we don’t get caught up in any lines.”
“Wait— tonight?” King’s pulse jumps. “All of us?”
Eda stands up with a grimace, closing the chest as she goes. “The Night Market is an unpredictable den of crookery—I need all hands on deck to fend off pickpockets.” A small smile, breaking through her stony mask: “...and some extra sets of hands in case I want to pickpocket.”
“B-but—” King scuttles behind her as she turns to leave. “I told Willow and Gus that we could—”
“Whatever it is, it’s going to have to wait.” Crossing the hall now, Eda elbows open another door, slips halfway in. “Better tell them we’re cutting your scout meeting short.”
“But—”
He’s met with a door to the face.
King stands in the middle of the hallway, reeling. Downstairs below him he can faintly make out the sound of Gus and Willow’s excited chatter, hopeful. “Uuuuuggh….” he groans in frustration.
“Everything okay?” Luz is coming up beside him now, curious. “What was that about Gus and Willow?”
Now King winces slightly before answering. None of them had thought to ask Luz if she might want to join in. “Nothing.” He says it terse. “I gotta go talk to them.”
Willow and Gus are still sitting around the carpet. Nevermind their previous cleanup efforts: the Hexes Hold ‘Em cards are back out on the coffee table, and the two of them are in the middle of trying to deal Hooty into the game—key word trying. Mostly they’re trying to fish the cards out of his mouth before he can eat them.
Gus spots King walking back into the living room. “Hey!” A smile. “What did Eda say?”
“Can we still do the conjuring tonight?” Willow means it as a friendly question, but the strained edges of her smile give away something else, something decidedly more desperate.
King holds in a breath, hoping his inner turmoil isn’t showing on his face. He starts, “Actually, we—”
He stops.
Gus and Willow are looking up at him with restless patience. His eyes catch on Willow’s in particular, and as he agonizes over having to tell her the bad news he remembers—
Please. I swear it’s the last thing I’ll ever ask of you.
The sun sets lower on the horizon outside. Dark shadows start to lengthen across the floor.
“....Actually, we can.” King raises himself a little straighter, shoulders firming up with the beginnings of an idea. A decision. “We’re doing the conjuring tonight. Right here.” Slightly lower this time: “But you’re going to have to come back later.”
The tiniest wink of confusion flits over Willow and Gus before it’s gone, replaced with relieved joy. “Well— great!” Willow’s smile lights up her soft face like a firework. “Alright, we’re doing this!”
“Yeah—we’re doing this!” Externally King’s nodding along determinedly, smiling, perfectly composed.
Internally, he’s planning how he’s going to get Eda to let him stay home tonight.
None of them turn to notice Luz in the doorway at this very moment. Looking silently between the three of them, early evening shadows casting her face in tones of grey. Her golden eyes seem to gleam brighter in the growing darkness.
She knows perfectly well when she’s being left out of something.
“King,” she whispers under her breath, “I hope you know what you’re doing….”