All Chapters of Salt and Starlight: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Chapter One — The Cottage on Willow Lane The rain had followed Rowan all the way to Mystic. It streaked down her windshield in silver ribbons as she crossed the drawbridge, the town unfolding before her like a painting—salt-stained docks, crooked shingled rooftops, and lamps glowing soft in the fog. Windy’s ears twitched in the passenger seat, her bright mismatched eyes tracking the shadows between the buildings as if she saw something Rowan couldn’t. The sale had finalized on October twenty-first, one week after Rowan’s eighteenth birthday. It felt poetic somehow, the way the tide of her life had turned right on time. She had bought the little seaside cottage with a portion of her inheritance—money left to her by her late parents and her grandmother, Isolde Blackwell. The house had come furnished, every lamp and teacup waiting as though someone had known she was coming. “New start,” Rowan murmured, resting a hand on the dog’s head. “Just you, me, and the sea.” Her GPS announced

Chapter Three — The Girl from AshwoodAshwood never forgave the Blackwells.It was the kind of town that clung to its Puritan bones—white steeples, iron gates, and people who whispered prayers louder than their kindness. Even the trees leaned inward there, crooked and listening.Rowan had grown up among those whispers. People fell silent when she passed, their smiles too thin, their blessings too sweet. Strange girl, they called her when they thought she couldn’t hear. Wild thing. Witch child.Her aunt, Mara, would purse her lips whenever someone said it. “Ungrateful fools,” she’d mutter. Then, when the doors were shut, she’d turn to Rowan and say, “You owe me your life.”And Rowan had believed her for a long time.She remembered fire in dreams.Always the same.The smell of smoke, the heat licking at the walls, her mother’s voice calling from somewhere she couldn’t reach. Then strong arms lifting her into the cold night air, the taste of salt on her tongue, the sound of someone—Mara—

Chapter Five — The Pull of the TideDawn crept gray and quiet over Mystic.Rowan woke with the heaviness of forgotten words on her tongue and the taste of smoke in her throat. For a moment she lay still, eyes open to the faint glow seeping through the curtains. Windy was sitting upright beside the bed, not sleeping—watching.The air smelled wrong.She pushed back the covers and crossed the room. The chill boards bit at her bare feet, and when she reached the window, she froze. A thin veil of ash dusted the sill, faint and gray as moonlight. She rubbed it between her fingers; it was real, cold, clean, scentless.Outside, fog rolled across the cliffs, thick as breath. The sea beyond it was almost soundless, as though the world itself were holding still.Windy pressed against her leg, tail flicking once. Rowan knelt and buried her hands in the dog’s fur. “It felt so real,” she whispered. “The fire. You were there.”Windy gave a quiet chuff, leaning harder into her. The spot of blue in he

Chapter Seven — The Shape of the MoonlightThe last week of October unfurled slow and golden, the kind of days that made Mystic feel bewitched even without magic.Rowan tried to settle into ordinary rhythms—tea at dawn, walks along the cliffs, helping Ms. Alden stack new books at Moon’s End. But the ordinary no longer held. The world had started to respond to her.It began with the candles.One night she fell asleep reading, and when she woke, every wick in the room burned steady and white though she’d never lit them. Another evening, she whispered her grandmother’s lullaby while washing dishes, and the flame in the stove rose and swayed in time with the tune.Windy watched all of it without surprise.Mystic itself seemed to shift with her moods.When she laughed, the chimes on the porch rang though there was no wind.When she grew restless, the tide climbed higher than it should.And once, after a dream of her mother, she found sea-salt crystals scattered across the kitchen table

Chapter Nine — The ThresholdThe candles had burned to stubs, but the air still glowed faintly, silver threads drifting through the room like dust in moonlight.Rowan sat on the rug, Windy’s head resting in her lap. The cottage had fallen quiet after the storm of energy, but it didn’t feel empty. It felt awake—watching her.Every creak of wood seemed to listen.She whispered, “I didn’t do that, did I?”Windy blinked, calm as the tide.Outside, fog clung to the cliffs. The tide surged and receded with the rhythm of a slow heartbeat. Then—three soft knocks. Not at the door, but through it, as if from another side of the world.Rowan froze. The brass latch trembled once.On the cliffsLucien stood beyond the gate, the salt wind biting his face, rain glinting in his hair. His wrist burned where the mark glowed—a pulse that answered hers.The threshold shimmered faintly ahead of him, runes circling the door like a living seal. It was the same enchantment that once marked every Lunar sanctu