THE SPELL

Hope is the last thing to go - and the first thing to lie.

She wanted it to work, she almost believed it would.

Every word said right. Every candle burned to the nub. Every thread tied in triplicate, knotted like her stomach. Each gesture slow and deliberate, like handling glass too thin to hold.

She followed the instructions exactly. (Almost.) Whispered the chant with the right tilt of her head, the right softness of breath. Folded the paper three times. Turned away as it burned.

No witnesses. That was the rule.

The problem with spells is they don’t always work the way you ask. They work the way you need. But need is slippery. Need is often what’s left after wanting rots away.

She asked for release. She asked for forgetting. She asked to unlove what would not love her back.

But spells know better. They don't erase. They carve. They make space. They burn away only the parts of you too tender to keep.

The ache didn’t vanish. The weight stayed. But lighter, somehow. More honest. The wanting no longer gnawed—it hummed. A dull, low song beneath her ribs.

When the spell was done, there was no crack of thunder. No shift in the air. Just the quiet knowledge that something had been asked and had been heard.