EVELYN’S POV
Witchcraft, despite what mundanes believed, wasn’t chaos.
Magic obeyed rules. Power flowed through established pathways. Circles and sigils held because they were constructed correctly.
For most of my life, my world functioned with the comforting certainty of precision.
Then I met Tobias.
Tobias hadn't shattered my world so much as opened a window in a room I hadn't realized was suffocating me.
He asked inconvenient questions. Pointed out inconsistencies I had trained myself not to notice.
Forced me to look directly at truths I had spent years carefully stepping around, because acknowledging them would have required admitting that the woman who raised me was not who I believed her to be.
Slowly, painfully, the blindfold began to slip.
I saw Catherine for the monster she really was, and once I did, I couldn’t unsee it.
I became an active participant in the effort to stop her. A conspirator hidden beneath her own roof.
