What Big Fears - Chapter One Preview

Hello, friends. 👋 Welcome to a first chapter preview of my upcoming fantasy adventure, What Big Fears. 😄

There might be changes to this before publication (hopefully on February 21st, 2026 😉) 

I'll announce preorders when they are available. 🤗

The Cursed Man of Bygone

Isaac Reis

He was dead. Allegedly. Optimistically. That fleeting dash of hope had been extinguished as Isaac Reis had opened his eyes to another beautiful Bygone day. The lackluster village was outside the boundaries of any kingdom, surrounded by deep forests and backed by jagged mountain ranges. It was unforgiving territory, but the land wasn’t nearly as ruthless as the criminals who had made it their home. The residency wasn’t by choice, but rather a lack of it. Once you became a Bygoner, you were done for. “Let bygones be bygones,” were often the last words you heard before being stabbed in the back. 

He wasn’t sure when, or how, he’d stumbled back to his slum apartment. It was precisely on the middle floor, a forced calculation. Even criminals didn’t care for heights the way of crows or dragons. Being on the ground level made getting to him a little too simple for his liking and as a man who made enemies easier than most breathed, he’d take what advantage he could get in a fight. 

His morning started with an empty stomach and a pounding headache that narrowed his vision and made every noise unbearable. He was grateful for the dim sun that lit Bygone’s slim daylight hours. The village was cloaked in a constant haze, a sickly tint of ochre. It was a miserable place to be, but there were no Reds or royal dogs sniffing around. He preferred his chances with cutthroats and thieves. 

On the hazy surface, the businesses of Bygone appeared as any belonging to a slum village. There was a library (it dealt in secrets, the dirtier the better), a bank (it cost you to leave your coin behind), and a dozen shops of varying uncouth expertise. There was one Isaac had taken to frequenting, a dingy little market with filthy windows and more vacant shelves than stock.

There was no routine, no hours that would be considered improper, so there was no predicting how much of the population might be roaming about. Or who, for that matter. The closest person Latch had found to keeping a schedule was the market shop’s owner, but that only applied to what passed as mornings. He locked up when he damn well felt like it, customers still shopping be damned.

A few shapes milled about in the dull light of the store: An elderly woman was trying to pick an apple out of a bunch of bruises and rot. A mother hurried about with a toddler clinging to her hand, scrapquilt doll dragging its feet. A young man stood staring at the liquor shelf, eyes flicking for the bottles to the sparse coins in his hand. 

He waited for the store to empty, nerves itching as each person startled away when they spotted him leaned against the brick wall. He smiled at each, his heart hitching and breath catching as they recognized a man better known by his violence than his name. 

A calico cat hissed at Isaac as he strolled through the door, his eyes immediately meeting that of the store’s owner. He was a squat man, rounded by his years and Bygone’s burning whisky. What hair he had left was graying to white, his face wrinkled in deep lines that cut a disapproving path as soon as they saw Isaac. He refused to share his name, telling anyone who asked to “Mind your business.” 

Myb stared at him as he ambled up to the counter. Isaac leaned against it, dropping a coin and going to swipe a pack of cigarettes as he did every morning. Instead, Myb smacked his hand with his cane – the gnarled prop a weapon and never a tool, despite how the aging man’s knees snapped. . 

Isaac cocked a brow at the break in their routine. Myb nodded upwards, above the door he’d just stepped through and the marks etched in the water-warped wood. 

“Thought those runes of yours would keep thieves away.”

Issac Reis, a slender shadow of a man, dealt in magic. It wasn’t a rare art. Magic was found throughout the world, in small ways and grand. Some had no affinity for it beyond the use of magicked items and spells created by magicians. Others could use magic themselves, casting spells or manipulations. Isaac lingered at the less remarkable end of the scale, able to construct runes or enchant objects, to discover the spell cast on a person or an item.

“I said the runes would deter thieves,” Isaac corrected. “Not stop them.” A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“Conning an old man,” Myb huffed. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“Oh, I am,” Isaac replied, smile widening. “I repent my sins every night.”

Myb gave him a disapproving look from his worn boots to his tattered coat. “I know where you spend your hours, Reis.” 

Isaac laughed. He knew that Myb did not like him, but there was no one to like in Bygone. He was useful and that was enough for the cantankerous old man to tolerate him. For now, at least. 

“If I didn’t know better,” Myb grumbled, as if his scornful proclamation was a private aside, “I’d say there were wolves stalking about, having their fill of what ain’t theirs.” 

It had been decades since either sharp-toothed beast or the people named after them had been discovered. Both had driven from their lands by war and kingdoms. “The wolves are dead,” Isaac replied simply, as if commenting on how cloudy a day it was.

“Not all of ‘em, I’d wager.” Myb slid him a bitter glare, a man keeping as fine a tally on the ways the world had wronged him as he did his shop’s profits. “Not a sight I wouldv’e liked more than to see that bastard Warren Latch hanged and gutted.”

“Well, too bad you weren’t sent an invitation.” Issac knew the quickest way to end the conversation was agreement. He had no interest in another raving rant about a dead king, the so-called “Big, Bad Wolf” with power rivaling Wonderland, who’d destroyed kingdoms and nearly taken Camelot’s throne.

Myb gave him a glance that let Isaac know he was not considered much above the dead wolves. 

“I’ll catch your thief,” Isaac offered, giving Myb’s anger a useful direction. “If it’s worth enough to you.”

“Extortion now?” Myb grunted. 

“Bargaining,” Isaac argued. 

Myb leaned back, stroking his goatee as he considered his opening bid. “Week’s dinner.”

“Add a pack of cigarettes and bottle of booze.”

“Half a pack and the weakest.”

“Fine.” It was more than Isaac expected to pry out of the cheapskate’s hands. He offered up what little he could spare for his morning bread and a thin drink. 

Myb rolled his eyes at him as he slid the meager rations across the counter. “A starving man doesn’t live long.”

“That the wisdom of age?” Isaac asked, smiling around the lip of the glass liquor bottle. 

“You’ll be quicker to the grave than me.”

Myb had no idea how right he was.

The nights lasted longer than the day in Bygone, no matter the season. The village had found itself in an unfortunate position on the globe, cast in long shadows no matter how the sun spun about. 

Isaac preferred the dark. The people who feared it tended to stay within lit walls or the shade of sleep. The world was more peaceful without them. 

He strode his way to his evening haunt. The building was a sprawling mass, shaped every bit a snake. A worthy visage for the woman who had claimed it in pieces. The cunning proprietor had allowed a different sort of rat to make home of the dingy, flithy pub, elevating it by ill bargains and deceit to a pricey den of vice. 

She had no shortage of customers in Bygone, Isaac the most loyal of them.  He tipped his head against the back of the small booth, exhaling smoke towards the shallow ceiling. He watched the cloud drift, mixing with the one already suspended from the putrid, wasted air of other Bygoners. . 

A silhouette slipped closer as he burnt through his last cigarette, his mind foggy, his vision hazed by more than smoke. His heart slowed, past a calm that he craved, to the trudging pace of a dying man. A body settled against his, a hand on his face, sharp nails pressed underneath his eye. A perfumed scent cut through the rest, a bouquet of flowers that had never once bloomed in Bygone. He slid his sluggish gaze to the face leaning towards his. Painted lips parted in a humorless smile, a hollow imitation of the beguiling falsity bestowed on others. 

“Hello, Isaac,” the woman said, voice a low purr that snapped against every letter of his false name. She turned his face towards hers. He let her. 

“Delilah,” Isaac greeted with his own sharp grin. No one in Bygone used their real names.

She plucked the cigarette from his mouth, dropping it into the shallow remains of his liquor. 

He’d paid a steep price for the best the bar had to offer. “The hell you put in that shit this time?” he muttered, last of the smoke drifting from between his teeth. 

“Poison.” 

Isaac grinned as the woman shrugged, her own wry smile twisting her mouth. Over the years, he’d formed a strange relationship with Delilah. They did not like one another, but it was the type of detestation that made fine business partners and too occasional bedfellows. Delilah prided herself on knowing a person before she met them, but Isaac was a locked door even her plethora of seductive methods could not break down. She enjoyed trying though, almost as much as Isaac did her attempts. 

She let her hand fall from his face, the edges of her nails dragging off his jaw as her palm came to rest against his throat. Her focus drifted about his face, from his eyes to his lips and back again. It was her way of weighing a person, of deciding what they were worth to her in that moment. “I have a job for you.”

The words weren’t unexpected, but they weren’t the ones Isaac wanted to hear. She spoke as if he was an employee, trained temptation still weaving through her tone. It was an act she never dropped entirely, a defense as much as a skill. To be found in Bygone was to lose your life. 

“And what is that?” He already knew what his payment would be. It was a matter of the amount, the nights and drugs she’d sacrifice to his accounts rather than sell. 

She tightened her hold on his neck, just enough for him to tell the difference, for her to feel his pulse and his rumbling words. 

“I have a thief.” The sentence was a breath against his skin, a hush like a blade cut through the dark.

“You live in Bygone,” he answered. Thievery was part of the city, but Delilah was far from an easy mark. That was a lesson that still stung his pride, burning almost as badly as the blade she’d run across his fingertips. 

“This one is different.” 

That was enough to pique his interest. She was not a woman to utter a single phrase that could be considered praise. “How’s that?”

She frowned. It was there and gone, a fleeting glance of the person beneath the false name and appearance that changed as often as the weather. She leaned closer, whispering in his ear. “They stole magic.”

“What sort?” Isaac shifted forward, away from her and to the new bottle and flat metal case that had been dropped onto his table as they’d spoken. She was keeping him plied, a bad sign for the work she wanted him to do. It was possibly a trap, he considered. Betrayal was always one bad card away in a starving city.

“Does that matter?”

“Does if you mean for me to find it.”

Delilah curled her legs beneath herself, propping an arm against the back of the booth while she watched him light another cigarette. He ignored her focus, even as his hands took to shaking just enough for the match to miss the paper. Other company would have long ago excused his sudden quirks as withdrawal or lingering damage from an injury, but Delilah observed him as if someday he would make a mistake, the truth of him revealed like a curtain falling. Well, that and she liked to see him suffer. He couldn’t take much offense to that, considering some nights, that was what he paid for. 

Isaac mirrored her pose, his perception of her slowly returning to better focus. Tonight, her hair was blonde, twisted into a braid that hung over her shoulder. Her dress was cut low, a deep blue that was nearly black. Bits of gold and silver dotted her skin in her jewelry, all of it real and a display of her skill. She’d both earned her wealth and managed to keep it. 

She let her blue eyes, that had been green last week, drift out to the other Bygoners. With another cunning smile, she wove her fingers between Warren’s and bid him to follow. He did, but not before swiping the table clean. 

He made himself at home in Delilah’s room, collapsing into one of the plush chairs, his liquor bottle hanging from his fingers. He doubted he’d make it through the conversation before draining it, the numbing of the drugged cigarettes fading fast. It was another trick of Delilah’s, making sure he felt what she wanted, when she wanted him to. 

She stood in the middle of the room, arms crossed and looking as if she wanted to blame him for the heist. 

“Well?” he prompted. He knew the room was warded against spies, as much fortress and finery that could be found in Bygone’s borders. It was all spots of color, a painting spilled from its frame. In another life, he thought Delilah might have been an artist of a different medium.

Delilah was considering her words, which was so unlike her that for a moment, Latch wondered if someone else was wearing her skin. “Is it possible for magic itself to be stolen?” she asked. The words had an uncertain edge, a person fearing their mind playing tricks, desperately hoping for someone else to be noting a sudden strangeness to the world. He felt her worry in the restlessness stirring his muscles, his nerves burning like they’d been singed. 

“You had a ward broken? Or an enchanted item taken from your collection?”

He sensed the array of magicked objects throughout the room, from the obscure to the obvious, unremarkable or a prize worthy of galleries. Delilah had her hobbies. It was the only reason she tolerated him, Isaac thought, for his similar interests beyond the nights they spent in bed.  

She walked over to him, taking the bottle from his hand. “Look at me,” she commanded.

He was. Isaac quirked a brow, confused. She liked giving orders, but never was there a worry beneath them, not even the first night she’d brought him to her quarters, an absolute stranger with bloodied mouth and hands. 

“What, exactly, am I meant to be seeing?” He let his gaze roam the rest of her, a puzzle presented rather than a prize to be won. The haze was parting from his vision, a clarity returning. He held onto the numbness, knowing Delilah would keep him sober until her property was returned to her. She was such a vicious creature when the mood struck her.

She was different. It was in more than the ways she used her magic, the changes in her appearance that suited her whims or her company. She felt more real, more human, no illusion cast about her that made Delilah more portrait than person. He could see fine marks on her skin, the workings of a humor she never shared and scars with stories she would not tell. He thought both her eyes blue, but one was a different tone, a hint of the former green still mixed in the iris. It looked like spilled ink, an accident that could not be erased. 

“Huh,” Isaac grunted. “All this time, I thought it was spell or charm that let you change.”

He knew otherwise, but he wasn’t going to show his hand so easily. Delilah had hidden her own magic under the spells cast on her jewelry. There was one necklace she wore no matter her design, the series of thin, interconnecting golden circles given credit for her shifting aesthetic. 

“So,” he continued on, “a competitor or unhappy customer put a binding spell on you? Took away your magic? Or tried at least?” He tipped his head, making it obvious his focus was on her unusual eye. 

“That’s what I suspected at first,” she agreed, “because that makes sense. Hell, I’d even respect the move. But I can find no marks of a spell. No trace of its magic. It’s just as if my own magic has been,” she paused, no explanation suiting her, “taken.” 

“There has to be a spell.” 

“Then you find it,” she challenged, waving to herself as if he could sense a cast upon her. 

He couldn’t. If Isaac admitted as much, she would think his arrogance put in its proper place, a man making a bet he had no chance of winning. But it was more than that. If there was no spell placed on Delilah and she was correct in her magic being taken from her, that left only one option. She’d been cursed. 

There was no shortage of danger in Bygone, but Isaac had yet to sense a magician strong enough to cast a curse. Even if there had been, it was more than a matter of power. It took skill to control and cast such dangerous magic. A spell required order. A curse demanded sacrifice.

He knew enough of Delilah and her reputation to be certain she’d garnered no such enemy. She had influence in Bygone’s shadows, but not a touch beyond it. If she had crossed a royal, they would’ve had her imprisoned or killed. 

He sighed as he stood, strolling over to her bar cart and helping himself to her personal stash of alcohol. None of it was bitter enough for him, but the action annoyed Delilah enough to make up for it. “When did you notice your magic missing?”

Delilah was silent a moment. She had not expected him to believe her. At least, not so quickly. She joined him at the bar, pouring herself a glass. “Three days ago,” she said after a long sip. “I went out on a walk and when I came back here, I looked in the mirror and I saw…well, myself.” She lingered on the confession. There was as much disgust and disappointment as there was regret, an old wound resurfaced. 

She stood beside him, their shoulders just touching, each facing an opposite direction. “Tell me I’m not mad,” she said, voice quiet, as if speaking to some unseen god instead of the man beside her. 

“You want me to lie?” Isaac smirked at her glare. “Not a one of us in this city sane. But I do believe you.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because you look like shit.”

She stared at him. He stared back. He didn’t flinch away from the hand raised to him, laughing when she gently smacked his face instead of landing the slap he deserved. “Nothing is free, Isaac,” she reminded. 

“Not even your disdain?” he asked, a joking lilt to his voice.

“That you’ve already earned,” she replied. “But you’ve done nothing this evening to be worth my time or company.”

“And yet you ask me to solve this riddle of yours? Why trust me?”

It was Delilah’s turn to smile. “Because I knew you’d bite.”

Isaac chuckled. “Fair enough.” He twisted the glass in his hands, watching the amber liquid spin. To hunt a magician was a dangerous gambit for him to make. One wrong step and he was on a path to further ruination. His name already belonged to one grave. He really didn’t need a second. “Give me a few days. I’ll see what I can find.”

“Good boy,” Delilah replied, tapping his nose. 

“Hag,” Isaac scoffed, leaning away from her touch. 

“I always forget what a charmer you are.” She walked away and towards her bed, kicking off her heels as she glanced back at him over her shoulder. “Enjoy sleeping alone.” She nodded towards the door. 

Isaac set his empty glass back on the bar and left without another word. It wasn’t his insults that had him kicked out. Delilah didn’t want anyone near who could see the difference in her, a revealing more vulnerable than a shedding of clothes. He felt the same when she noticed his shaking hands, even if she misplaced the blame. 

He made his way back through the smoke and out into the night. Tomorrow morning, he would start his search, but where the hell it would lead, the wolf had no idea. 

Esme Malda

Esme flexed her wooden hands, feeling the magic flicker and fade. The enchantments on the strings were fraying. Geppetto had warned her the spell was fragile, that it would wear over time and with careless use. The carved hands were no replacement for flesh and bone but still, she was grateful for them. 

She bent her fingers again, curling them towards her palm, her lifelines replaced by the rings of fallen trees and the marks of a carver’s knife. It was the fourth set the old man had made her, the fifth that she’d had to learn how to use.

She wondered how many other people in the world had used several hands. That was a saying about thieves -that they had several hands, so no two keen eyes were a match. 

Esme never thought she’d be a thief. She reached into her coat pockets and the coins she knew were there. Her magic had never let her go hungry, a stash of metal picked at every opportunity. It was such a dependable constant that she no longer realized when money slipped through her touch. She had tried to stop herself, or rather her magic, but it was a losing battle.

When she’d crept into the market shop, she’d fully intended to pay for her supper. Her magic, of course, had other ideas. When Esme tried to gather the coins from her pockets, they slipped through her grasp as if they were alive. She imagined them as tiny creatures, sprouting stick-legs and claws to scurry about like panicked chickens. 

She thought about explaining the situation to the shopkeeper, making the excuse of her wooden hands lacking the fine touch to catch the coins. Or taking off her coat and turning it about, shaking it until the metal fell out. But if she did that, there was no telling what else might tumble to the floor. Perhaps the store’s entire profit for the day had found its way into her pockets without her knowing. 

She was left with one choice. She ran. Again.

The shopkeeper shouted after her, but he had no chance of catching her. The wards and weak relics spotting the walls and doorways had done nothing to stop the girl or her magic. She felt the crafted marks reach for her, a cobweb seen only in sunlight against her skin. Her magic batted it away, as easily as she could have the reality of the sensation. 

Traveling Bygone was like traversing the innards of a massive carcass, crawling over bones and rotting innards. Buildings were patched together, crumbling at their edges as if literally worn by time. What glass remained in its panes was as foggy as a spring morning. Esme found shelter in an abandoned inn, sharing the space with an elderly woman who carried on lively conversations with people who Esme could not see.

She must have been a seamstress in her former years. Her hands were always busy piecing together hats of all shapes and sizes. Occasionally, the woman would place them on random items, addressing the pretend mannequins as if they were people. But she spoke to Esme or even seemed to realize the girl existed.  

More coins found their way into Esme’s pockets. A bracelet twisted onto her wrist. A figurine of a king tangled itself into her scarf. Her magic took what it could, but the options thinned alongside the girl. Stealing from criminals was a challenge, even to her assiduous magic. 

She was called Delilah, though Esme was certain the name was a lie. She was beautiful. Startlingly, so. Delilah stood out like a diamond dropped onto the earth, her dress and adornments finery worth more than Esme’s life. The girl’s magic was a child before a buffet of sweets. It dragged her along before she could decide otherwise, her hunger a conclusive instigator. 

She felt her magic slip the woman’s power from her grasp. The sensation was not the same each time. It was water between her fingers, cold and solidifying. It was silk on a winter’s morning, paint spilled across a canvas. It sunk into Esme’s skin, coloring her with its artistic vision. 

Heels clicked on uneven stone. Delilah passed Esme with a quick glance down her nose, another Bygone orphan that would grow to become a problem, a weed in her tended garden. Or worse – future competition.

The fear in Esme’s eyes must have assuaged the woman, because after her moment’s linger, she continued on undisturbed. Esme tried to breathe, her mouth gone to dust. 

As Delilah walked on, the color of her hair shifted in the sun’s haze. Her eyes, as they’d doled out their judgmental scorn, had faded in their stunning hue. 

Esme turned to the window at her back, running a sleeve through the decades of dirt. She stepped so close that her nose nearly touched, the realization of what magic hers had stolen making her shiver.

One of her brown eyes had a splash of green spilling out around the pupil. The red of her dark curly hair been tempered, a pale blonde twisted through her locks. Her freckles still spotted her brown skin, spreading across her cheeks and nose. She examined her face as if trying to determine a forgery from the truth, searching for what the stolen magic had done. 

She could be a new person. Esme Malda could truly disappear, never to be found again. 

Esme stared at herself, at her reflection faded by Bygone’s grime. She ran a hand across her face, along the path of freckles, willing them to erase under her touch. Her tongue pressed against her crooked teeth, pressing them into a perfect line. Her gaze did not leave the brown eyes she wanted blinked to hazel-green. 

Nothing happened. Esme Malda was as she stood moments ago, the changes to her body stopped at her magic’s selfish curiosities. As if a girl with two different colored eyes would find it easier to go unseen, to be forgotten, to be free.

She picked a loose stone from the road and threw it through the window. In Bygone, no one so much as looked her way. What was one more shattered reflection in a village full of scars?

She had no choice but to be brave. That didn’t feel like bravery. Just cowardice run out of options. Esme walked back into the shop she’d stolen from without a look towards the owner. It was more suspicious in Bygone to be polite, so she kept her eyes forward and her hands in her pockets. She felt the man’s eyes land on her and leave, back to muttering over bins of rotting tomatoes and wilting lettuce. There was only a calico cat watching her, stretched across an empty shelf too high to be anything but a purposeful perch. 

Her magic flitted across the store, picking up sweets and bread, fruit and dried meat. It was all sad quality priced as luxury, the options in Bygone limited. Esme’s steps were light, her weight on her toes, as she slipped towards the door. The owner still had his back turned, complaining to the cat about bad weather and crooked transporters. 

Just as Esme began to step into the day’s ochre light, a shadow cast itself over her. 

“You gonna pay for all that?” a low voice asked.

The man was tall and thin, his clothing all black. Dark circles were beneath his eyes, paired with an evening shadow. His mouth quirked in the slightest smirk as he stared back at Esme.

Esme needed to run, but the moment her mind and muscles made an accord, the man moved first. He stepped forward, hooking a ragged old broom that was withering by the door with the heel of his boot. He caught it as it tipped forward, barring her path with the wooden handle. 

“Asked you a question,” he said past the cigarette clenched in his teeth. “Thief.”

Isaac Reis

Isaac Reis had a heart. It was a bloody muscle that had suffered an attempted excision more than once across his forty  decades. If his enemies had a mind to make a meal out of it, they’d break their teeth trying to chew through the damned, tough meat. 

“Please. I can explain,” the thief said, voice wavering, hands raised in surrender. 

He felt no pity for the girl, for the fear that overcame her. Still, his breath caught in his throat, making him hack a plume of smoke and nearly drop a cigarette to the dirt. He tightened his grip on the old broom, feeling the rotting wood start to give under his white-knuckle grip. The thief stumbled back out of Isaac’s shadow, into Bygone’s day. Her eyes were two different colors. 

“Looks like you took more than food and coin.” He swung the handle so that the end was even with the girl’s miscolored iris. 

It was a complicated emotion that crossed the young teen’s face, but Isaac recognized it swiftly. He’d felt it enough across his own life. He swung the broom at the gust of wind the girl pulled from the perfumer’s shop, the rune Isaac had made meant to carry the scents beyond the door. Instead, it barreled towards him like a summer storm, carrying debris with it. He cleaved the wind in two with the broom, his feet firmly planted. The violent wind still cut at the edges, making his long coat flutter and the fire of his cigarette extinguish. He cracked his back teeth together on one side, a flame bursting to light and relighting the end. It been a hell of a job carving that mark into his bones, but damned useful. 

“Not bad,” he said to the girl, just in time to be sent tumbling by a burst of water erupting from the street. He staggered to his feet, heart hammering, hacking water that he was grateful was from the shared springs and not the failing sewers. 

“Okay,” he said, cigarette now beyond saving, “that pissed me off a little.”

The girl had taken the chance to run, but Isaac knew from the numbness of his limbs that she wouldn’t make it far. Even with his head thumping and skin scrapped to bloody shreds from striking stone, he’d catch up to her.

He got his share of unwanted looks as he strolled through Bygone, soaked and dripping like he’d taken a dive in the fishing lake. Most, he assumed, would think Delilah had finally tired of him and tried to drown him. In any other locale, that would have boded badly for his reputation. In Bygone, it earned him a little envy and a dash of respect. 

Isaac knew the old inn well enough. He’d spent a night or two there before charming his way into Delilah’s graces by nearly killing another man. 

He crept through the ruins of rat-tattered furniture tossed about and made into smaller shelters, slinking through the deep shadows. The thief was crouched into a corner, clutching a burlap bag to her chest.

“If you’re gonna run, you can’t stop,” Isaac warned, his low voice echoing in the hollow spaces. 

The girl startled, jumping to her feet. Isaac felt his modest meal churn onto his tongue, his heart lose its proper pace.

What happened next, the magician had no defense against.

The thief’s magic reached for his, for the power buried deep and hidden for all the years he’d supposedly spent in a grave. 

But his curse was stronger than her magic, stronger than his as it had proven through his attempts to break it. It was a cage of chains within his body, trapping him and limiting the use of his power. 

When the thief’s magic tried to to steal Isaac’s, it instead took hold of the curse. 

The curse’s magic inflicted itself on hers. He could feel it in his rising panic, barely able to breathe, chest aching like his heart was on the verge of implosion. 

“Let! Go!” Isaac panted through his clenched jaw.  

The girl was terrified – their fears, his curse, her magic – all caught in a tangled loop. If Isaac felt like he was on death’s doorstep, then the girl was stepping over the threshold.

The fear of death was always a gambit. Fight or flight was the rule, but too often, freeze was the wildcard. 

Luckily for them both, flight was the master of a runaway thief. 

Isaac fell to one knee as the girl’s magic fled. His nerves were frayed, his pulse thumping in his ears. “Fucking hell,” he muttered. He looked back up to the girl, whose feet hadn’t traveled despite her magic’s fleeing. “What in the hell did you just do to me?!” he demanded. 

He’d never once heard of a magician being able to take another’s magic. For one to steal a curse? That was goddamn impossible. 

The only way to be free of a curse was to break it. That was it. There was no wishing it away, no bargains, no using your own power against it.

The thief’s attempt to steal his curse was the first time he’d ever felt the chains so much as rattle. They did not loosen or even fracture, but that was more freedom than he’d felt for years. If only the girl hadn’t been so terrified of its magic, worsening the effects to a painful degree.

“You-You’re…” the thief stuttered, more afraid of him now than before, keeping him on the ground and barely able to breathe.

“Don’t,” Isaac warned in an irritated grumble, knowing the words were too far gone to stop.  

Esme Malda

“You’re cursed.” 

Her words were little more than whisper, but they didn’t need to be in the empty inn. The older woman hadn’t returned from her morning wandering, accompanied as always by her ghosts.

The man glowered up at her before huffing out a rough laugh. “Guess we found some magic you can’t steal, huh?”

Curses were dangerous magic. Forbidden. Their effects were unpredictable, but always terrible. 

“I didn’t mean to,” she said again. She was so tired of apologizing for what was beyond her control, for what she became with no say or intent. She wanted to change. She tried – and failed – over and over. “My magic just does what it wants. I swear! I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”

“You didn’t,” the cursed man obviously lied. He struggled to his feet, sopping wet and caked with dust turning to mud. “But being a thief is a good way to get yourself hurt.” He dug through his pockets, pulled out a pack of cigarettes ruined by the water. He looked from the crushed packet to her, as if accentuating his point. 

“Sorry,” Esme muttered again.

“The fuck you mean you can’t control your magic?” he asked. He plopped one of the cigarettes in his mouth and began to gnaw on it.

“Um, exactly what I said,” Esme replied, words lilting up like a question as she was unable to hide her disgust.

“Huh,” he grunted, which she learned was his eloquent response to most things. “You got a name, thief?”

In the moment of Esme’s hesitation, he motioned towards himself. “Isaac Reis.” 

“Esme Malda,” she reluctantly said, as if speaking her name would bring all she was hiding from out of the dark.

“I’ll pay for what I stole,” she promised. “I was just hungry.”

“Think I give a shit about that?” Isaac laughed. “Let that old bastard live a little slimmer. It’s the magic thievin’ that’s got you in trouble.” He crouched to draw a series of overlapping circles in the thick dirt. “You ran into a woman wearing a necklace that looked like this, didn’t you?” 

Esme shrugged. “Maybe.”

“You’d remember,” he replied, making it obvious he knew that ‘maybe’ was a ‘yes’ trying to save its own ass. “Can you give magic back?” Isaac asked, no space between her words and his. 

“I don’t stick around to try,” Esme confessed.

“Smart,” Isaac nodded. “You’ve got some survival sense, at least. The magic you take – is it yours permanently? You still have every bit of skill you’ve pilfered?”

“I’m not sure.” Her magic had no interest in sharing its horde. Whether the magic she stole was part of her forever and faded like a dream, she hadn’t a clue. 

“Can you use what you steal? Can you change about your appearance?” He stood, his balance slow to right itself. Esme wondered if the cause was the alcohol on his breath or the impromptu swim she’d sent him on. 

“Not on purpose,” she stammered, his curiosity feeling more and more like an interrogation. 

“So, you can’t control your own magic or what you steal. Fucking great.” Isaac sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face. His brown skin had a copper hue, dulled from Bygone’s short days and unkind weather. There was a jagged scar across his neck, a knife’s slash that had cut deep. “Bygone is no place for you. You’ll end up dead. Or traded off to whoever the hell it is you’re running from.”

His level look was enough to send Esme’s heart racing again. 

Before she could try to run, Isaac barked a laugh. “Got a specific enemy in mind, huh? They happen to have a name?”

“Does it matter?” Esme asked, the conversation making her want to flee more than the criminal magician before her. 

“They go looking for you, they might find me instead. So yeah, it does.” Isaac’s tone made it obvious he wasn’t letting her go without an answer. Maybe he didn’t want payment in coin, but there was a price for his mercy. 

“My family.” The words burned Esme’s throat, tasted bitter on her tongue. “Kind of,” she added, the uncertainty waffling through the air between them like a wayward moth.

“Well, which the hell is it?” Isaac asked, flipping over an armchair and plopping down in it. A plume of dust rose around him, settling into his damp clothes. 

“Both,” she replied, the man’s frown deepening. 

Just as he started to ask again, there was a noise off to the side of the inn. They both startled, Isaac muttering a vulgar complaint as he leapt to his feet just as Esme backed away. “Calm down,” he snapped. “It was probably just a rat.”

“Or the old woman who lives here,” Esme said. “She’s usually back by now.”

“Old woman?” Isaac echoed. “What old woman?”

“The one who lives here. She talks to herself. She makes hats.” She waved towards the side of the lobby the woman usually haunted, the collection of partially completed works scattered. 

“Oh, fuck,” Isaac muttered, just as the noise grew closer.

“What? What is it?”

“A mad hatter, you fool.” 

That was the magic of Wonderland, dangerous and wild, no matter which of the three factions it was from. 

Before either could speak again, a blur raced through the ruins. Suddenly, it halted a few paces away. 

“A white rabbit,” Esme whispered in awe. It stared at them with its pink eyes, nose wiggling.

Isaac stepped beside her, held his arm out in front of her.

“Don’t move,” he warned.

A white rabbit was a herald of Alice Avara, one of the rulers of Wonderland. The girl was a mystery of magic, unable to be tracked. Rumors abounded as to her powers, but there was no certain truth to any of it. There were only stories. 

“Aren’t we supposed to follow it?” Esme whispered.

“The opposite actually,” Isaac replied, a slight bemusement twisted through his annoyance and nerves. 

In a split second, the rabbit darted away towards the door, hopping right past their feet.

“Which is why,” Isaac said with a wide grin, “following is exactly what we’re gonna do.”