Fire witch, p.1
Fire Witch, page 1
FIRE WITCH
THE FIRE CYCLE
BOOK I
V A WINTER
Copyright © 2025 by V A Winter
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
For those who’ve never quite belonged…
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by V A Winter
PROLOGUE
I remember how it began. Fractured moments pass before me, surround me.
Silver threads leading inevitably from one second to the next. But it’s not all in order. It jumps from the beginning, to the end, to the middle, to another beginning.
So many little moments that could have changed everything. A choice here, a decision there.
So many silver threads.
And they all lead back to a moment I could do nothing about. Not my choice. Never my choice.
I grasp hold of one thread, and it leads me back there. To that path, to that breathless childhood race to get home after school.
Houses flash past me, terraced, all the same to a child’s eye. Walls and hedges interspersed with broken fences.
I barrelled along to the end of the street where my house sat on the corner. Our fence was weathered, the paint chipped, but covered in the twining flowers my mother loved. The garden was wild, the grass up to my knees as I ran down the path. It was how we liked it, despite the mutters I sometimes overheard about how we should get it cut like decent people would.
My mother was standing at the front door. I had time to notice she looked upset, to take in the slight grey of her hair for the last time. I had time to see a shadow behind her. A shadow that wasn’t hers.
Hands clamped over my arms, stopping my headlong flight. Whoever it was spun me around. “Daphne, you need to come with us, okay?”
The social worker. Jill. Her blonde hair cut level with her chin. She had cold eyes, I remember.
“But—” I said, starting to tremble. I realised, without knowing the words, what was happening. Some deep part of me knew this was the last time I would see my mother.
“No buts,” Jill said, standing, taking my hand firmly in hers. “Say goodbye.”
But she didn’t really give me a chance. She started pulling me down the path as I stared over my shoulder at my mother, who hadn’t moved an inch since I got there. She just stood, leaning against the door frame, her hands covering her mouth.
“No,” I said, the word little more than a whisper. Then it turned into a scream. I hit out at the social worker, but she just held on tighter. My world became blurred by tears, filled with the sounds of my shouts and shrieks.
My throat hurt for days afterwards.
“Mum!” I screamed as a man opened the car door. I just wanted her to do something, say something, run for me, pull me back from the awful people who were taking me away.
But she didn’t do anything.
She just stood there.
Jill shoved me in the car, and the door slammed closed. I battered against it and tried to open it, but it was locked. I thought if I could just hit the glass hard enough it would shatter, and I could get out and go back to my mother.
But it didn’t shatter.
The car engine started as more doors slammed closed, then we were driving away.
Away from everything I had ever known.
I don’t remember when I stopped screaming, when the tears started, when they stopped.
All I remember from that horrid car ride is the thoughts that ran through my head: what was wrong with me? what had I done to deserve this?
I’d done everything they’d asked of me, everything my mother had said, everything the social workers had said.
I’d gone to school, and not fought with the other kids. I’d kept my magic hidden. I had been good.
So why wasn’t it enough?
Silver flashes, pulling me away from the car, away from that day, away from the screams.
So many threads, all tangled, all leading from one moment to the next.
I grasp on to another thread, trying to find my way back home, back to myself. But instead I’m pulled further into my past, to the beginning of the story…
1
13TH SEPTEMBER
I shoved my hands deeper into the pockets of my bomber jacket as I walked away from the house. I’d managed to get out without any more lectures or reminders about my behaviour.
Mist hung low and thick around me, so by the time I reached the end of the street, I couldn’t see the house anymore. It was covered in a layer of white. Somehow, that made me breathe a little easier. If I couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see me.
I turned the corner, and clicked play on my music app. The steady rhythm of one of my favourite songs enveloped my mind, pulsing through my cheap earphones.
I walked in time to the beat, trying my best to forget that I was going to school, that it was the first day of term, the first day of sixth form. I had no idea what to expect.
A brand-new school. On my own. Again.
I checked my maps app a few times as I made my way through the town. I turned on to the high street. The mist was starting to lift, the sun burning behind the thick white. It wasn’t busy, it was still too early for many shops to be open. A few people were walking to school like me, or work, I guessed.
I glanced in the shop windows and imagined all the things I’d buy if I had a limitless supply of money, if I could shop like the girls on socials. I stopped in front of a bookstore, not the type of shop I usually bothered with, but the display was Hallowe’en themed, and there were several books on witches. For reasons I could never really explain, witches had always fascinated me. Like there was a connection in my mind I couldn’t quite reach, couldn’t quite remember.
I glanced over the display, reading the book titles, trying to catch on to that connection, when a person’s reflection caught my eye.
A guy with black hair a little longer than was fashionable, pulled back at the base of his neck.
I searched through my memories. I knew him from somewhere.
Then it clicked. Scotland. The holiday I went on with my previous set of foster parents earlier this year. The boy I’d met on the beach not far from the house we’d stayed in. John. By the time I’d explored all the local areas I could, I had found myself out of things to do. I’d hated that my foster parents had decided to stay outside a city. It was just so boring.
I went out for a walk one afternoon. It had been an overcast day, the sun behind heavy clouds that seemed to constantly threaten rain. There had been a chilly wind blowing in off the ocean, but I had liked the light, the way it slanted through the clouds and seemed to get absorbed by the grey ocean. I planned to take some pictures for my feed. Maybe create some posts for socials. Try and get more followers. It was a stupid metric, really. But it made me feel like I was somewhere close to normal.
I had been walking down the path along the edge of the sand when I first saw him. He was walking towards me, head down, hands in his pockets. And I still don’t know what drew me to him, what made my heart race a little, my breath catch in my throat as I got closer. A pull, a knowing. Whatever it was, it had made me speak to him. I never spoke to random people I didn’t know.
“Hi,” I had said.
He had looked up, green eyes wide. “Hi.”
“Beautiful day.”
“Yeah,” he had said as we passed, and he actually smiled as our gazes met. It was the briefest of moments, an exchange of a smile, nothing more than a spark. But the spark was there. I knew I’d never forget it.
I’d watched him over my shoulder until he finally disappeared. But even once he had gone from my sight, I still kept smiling. It was a secret feeling, something warm. I had held on to it as I made my way on to the beach to take my photos.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the encounter over the next few days, until I saw him again. He was sitting on a bench in the street. I probably should have just walked past, but instead, I stopped and asked if I could sit with him. And it was there again when he looked up at me, that spark. “Sure,” he had said, and that was that.
We had started talking, and I don’t think we really stopped. It was like gravity kept bringing us together over that week. I can’t really remember everything we talked about, but I do remember that we discussed friends, and school, and fitting in. Or not.
I remember saying that I’d never really fitted in. It didn’t matter what I did, I’d always felt like I didn’t belong in any of the groups I found myself in. That I didn’t even really have a family to belong to. For the first time, I told someone that the memories of before, of my real mother, my first home, were so strong sometimes, that it was as though I was in the wrong world. Like the story had glitched, and I was in the wrong character’s life, living the wrong storyline. That I wasn’t even sure which storyline I was supposed to be.
He had said that he kind of got what I meant, about not fitting anywhere, not knowing where you belong. He lived with his uncle; his mother was abroad somewhere. Family meant little in his family, he’d said. He’d spent his entire life living their expectations. Figuring out where he belonged, who he was beyond that, was hard.
Then at the end of the week, as we were standing on the path that ran along the edge of the beach, he had said something that surprised me, and I can almost remember his exact words. “There are worse things, I’ve learned, than not really knowing where you belong. It just means you get to figure it out. It means you could be anyone, anything. It’s all just possibilities.”
For a moment I’d looked into his eyes again. Those green eyes that seemed so clear, so open, so honest. Then he’d turned to face the sea, the waves crashing against the sand. The sky was overcast, the water almost as grey as the clouds.
I had laid my hands on the railing that edged the path. The metal was cold and rusting in places. I wanted to ask so many questions, to know more, to know his story. But I barely knew him, so I just said, “I’ve never thought of it like that.”
“I think too much,” he had said, giving me a sidelong glance. “Or so I’ve been told.”
I had met his gaze and felt like, for the first in my life, maybe I’d finally found someone who actually understood me. Who was like me.
Going home felt very cruel after that.
But I did. And we didn’t stay in touch. And the memory had faded.
But now, standing in chilly England, in the autumn air, his words echoing in my mind, I found myself staring through the window at him.
Was it really him?
He looked up and our eyes met. For a moment, a breath, he frowned, then smiled. I smiled back, sure he remembered me just as I remembered him.
He finished paying for what he was buying, then turned towards the door. He stepped outside, and our smiles met. “Hi,” I said.
“Hi,” he replied. “You remember me then?”
“Of course. I remember what you said about being different.” I immediately wished I hadn’t said that. How sad did I sound? I cleared my throat. “Anyway, how come you’re here?”
“I’m starting uni,” he said, looking slightly bemused.
University seemed like such a grown-up thing, and so far away for me. Foster parents’ and teachers’ niggling voices echoed in my mind, insisting that I’d have to decide soon what I wanted to do with my entire life. It felt far too big to even contemplate. And right then, so unimportant. “English?” I asked.
He glanced at the books in his hand. “Yeah. Not the most practical, I know. But I don’t know what else I’d do. What about you? A levels?”
“BTEC Photography,” I said. “I barely passed my exams last year, so more exams and essays wasn’t a good idea.”
“You enjoy it, right? I remember your pictures… they’re good.”
“Thanks.” I felt heat rise in my cheeks and hoped it wasn’t obvious. “I do enjoy it. Maybe it’s what I’ll do. I don’t know.”
“You’ll figure it out,” he said. And I heard the unspoken in his words: he wasn’t sure he would.
“I hope so.” I paused, then instead of saying all the things I wanted to, I said, “So you’ll be here for a while?”
“That’s the plan.” He tried to smile, but it was like his heart wasn’t really in it. There was still that same aura of sadness around him that I’d felt earlier in the year. I wanted to ask about it, to know why, what had happened. But I couldn’t. I didn’t know him well enough to ask something like that.
“So I guess I’ll see you around?”
“I guess so.”
My phone buzzed in my hand, the alarm a reminder that I was now about to be late for school. “I have to go,” I said, hating the clock. I didn’t want this conversation to end. “School.”
“Sure,” he said, and we shared another smile as I turned away, heading down the high street, that strange feeling settling into my heart.
A knowing, I guessed.
2
I pushed through the doors into the hallway. I had no idea where anything was, or who anyone was. But it was a school. Just like any other, at least in my experience.
Kids were milling back and forth, a sea of black blazers and white shirts, with the odd piece of colour here and there: sixth formers or teachers. I pulled the timetable from the outside pocket of my tote bag. I was supposed to be in room 31G. Wherever that was.
I spent some time checking numbers on doors as I walked past the other kids. Though I was one of the older ones in the school, I was relatively short. Some of the boys still in uniform towered over me. I wove through them as the hallways slowly emptied. The bell rang at 9am just as I found the right corridor.
And there it was.
31G.
It was only then that my heart rate picked up a little, my hand shaking as I pushed the door open. I had been anonymous moving through the crowd. Now I would be seen.
Several heads turned to look at me as I entered the room, but no one really seemed bothered. I heard a few whispers of “Who’s that… I’m sure she must be new…” But nothing worse. No sneers. Or laughs.
Which was always a good start. I wanted to blend in, just become one face among many.
It was my introductory photography class, and we were given a lot of information. Assessment was mentioned. No exams though, which was a relief. I wondered what I was really doing there. I enjoyed taking pictures, but I couldn’t stop myself from gazing out the window, my attention drifting in the same way it always had in school. I daydreamed of all the ways my life could suddenly change, all the adventures I could get swept up in, all the glamour that could be waiting for me just on the other side of these school walls.
The bell finally went again, and I got up. On to the next class. I followed the stream of bodies out the door into the hallway. Kids were walking in both directions in the mad scramble between classes. And again, I had no idea where I was going.
So I had to stop every few minutes, blocking the stream, interrupting the flow of people who knew exactly where they were heading.
I turned a corner, looking at door numbers, and my shoulder collided with someone.
For a moment, just a breath, just a heartbeat, it was like I was standing outside of myself. I saw my shoulder hit his in a flash of light. Images flickered through my mind, edged with silver, too fast to understand what any of them were. And a single phrase that I’ve never forgotten passed through my mind: This is what it was all for.
Then I was looking up, reality settling back into place, about to mutter the standard ‘sorry’, and hear it back, knowing that neither of us really meant it. But the word died on my lips.
For the barest breath of a moment, I met a pair of ice-blue eyes with my own. My mind snagged on a few other details. Blond hair. Grey suit. A sixth former. A frown creating a small line between his eyes.
“Sorry,” he muttered, and I thought he was going to keep walking. But he stopped and looked at me. “Really, I’m sorry. I should have been watching where I was going.”
