Celine in the circle (Part two)

Ruby P.O.V.

It isn’t dramatic. The circle doesn’t bark, it breathes in, and then it doesn’t breathe out. The air between warlocks thickens like glass cooling, and the space Celine was enjoying gets narrower.

She tries to step sideways into a shadow, but Tara taps the stone with her socked toe and every shade in the meadow turns out its empty pockets. “No hiding,” the child says, as serious as bedtime. Celine’s pretty face cracks.

“Who is that?” she snaps, nostrils flaring for a scent that never belonged to her.

“The one who doesn’t shout at them,” Talia says from the north, mild and smug as Celine’s eyes come back to me. She tries something that would have worked last month, pity as a pry bar.

“Poor Ruby,” she purrs, stepping only where the chalk’s memory is weak. “Look how hard you are trying to be enough.” I don’t take the bait, I just give an instruction.

“Circle,” I say, “we are enough.”

The east line holds and across the meadow, the west hums in agreement, iron in its lines. B