Mara scraped the last spoon of honey from the bottom of the jar and let it drip into her tea.

  The jar didn’t glimmer. Didn’t hum with replenishment. Didn’t top itself off with golden sweetness like it had every other day for the past seven years. It was, unmistakably and irrefutably, empty.

  She set the spoon down gently. Stirred once. Didn’t bother sipping.

  The kitchen around her creaked. Not from the house settling—there was nothing left to settle—but from the slow unraveling of old spells, the soft tearing of seams that held warmth in the walls and silence in the shadows. The fire in the hearth had gone out last night and hadn’t come back. Not on its own, and not when she whispered to it.

  Her owl hadn’t come back either.

  He’d left three days ago to fetch thyme, and though she knew the forest was thick this season, he’d never taken more than a day before. She didn’t want to believe something had gotten him. She just didn’t have the energy to believe anything else.

  Mara wrapped her robe tighter around her shoulders. It smelled like lavender and moths. The hem dragged over a floor scattered with petals and burned wicks, abandoned from spells half-cast and never cleaned up. She passed her hand over the tea. The steam didn’t rise. Magic didn’t answer. Her wards, she suspected, were no longer interested in keeping her safe.

  Which was fair. She wasn’t, either.

  The cupboard where she kept her enchanted pantry was already gaping open. Empty jars glared back at her like teeth. The peppercorns had walked out weeks ago. The flour turned to dust the moment she touched it. The salt simply... stopped being salt.

  But it was the honey that did it.

  The honey had always been there. Quietly sweet. Undramatic. It didn’t make her stronger, or braver, or smarter—but it made the tea taste like mornings used to. The kind with sunlight. The kind before the frost came early and never really left.

  She left the teacup on the counter. It looked out of place. Like someone had lived here once and just never returned.

  Her boots were cold when she slid them on. Not just cold—damp, as if they’d been waiting outside without her. She didn’t remember leaving them there. She didn’t remember much at all this week.

  The forest was waiting. Of course it was.

  The cursed forest had always been the place to go when things ran out. You paid in blood or memory or secrets, and it gave you what you needed—if you didn’t die, or forget why you came in the first place.

  Mara opened the door.

  The wind didn’t bite, just sighed. A tired kind of gust that didn’t rattle or shriek, just slipped around her and tugged at the loose threads of her sleeves. The path was overgrown. The wards no longer held it back.

  She stood on the threshold. The empty jar of honey still in her hand. She hadn’t realized she’d taken it with her. It was glass, etched with runes long faded, warm once. Now it felt like holding the bones of something that had died a quiet, dignified death.

  “I don’t want to go,” she said aloud.

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  Her voice sounded strange. Thin. Like it had been left in a drawer too long and lost its shape.

  She could go back inside. Pretend the forest wasn’t there. Pretend she didn’t need thyme or warmth or magic anymore. She could crawl into the nest of her bed and wait for the house to finally dissolve, piece by piece. Let the wards fall. Let the cold in.

  She looked at the jar.

  It had never asked for thanks. Never demanded praise. It had simply given and given until it couldn’t anymore.

  Maybe that was what love was. Maybe that was what she was.

  She stepped off the porch.

  The grass clung wet to her boots. Brambles tugged at her robe. The forest didn’t roar or wail or whisper—it just was. Like her. Old. And tired. And full of things that no longer wanted to be found.

  Still, she walked.

  One step. Then another.

  Not because she had hope. Not because she wanted to survive.

  But because there had been honey, once. And if something that sweet could exist, maybe it was worth finding again.

  It was not long before the mist met her. It rolled in from between the trees, thick and low, curling at her knees like a cat. The birds didn’t sing. The moss didn’t glow. Even the insects had fallen quiet. Every part of the forest felt... restrained. Like it was holding its breath.

  She stepped over a root and nearly tripped on a stone covered in sigils. Her own work. Wards meant to warn her if the boundary between worlds thinned too far.

  They were cracked now.

  A few paces later, she found her owl’s feather. Black and grey, dusted with faint gold. It was damp, clinging to the base of a thorn bush.

  She didn’t pick it up.

  There was a silence to it she didn’t want to disturb.

  An hour deeper, she found the hollow.

  Once, it had been a place of bargains. A dryad grove, sacred and golden. Now the bark had blistered black, the branches bent low with rot. The air tasted of rust. She approached anyway.

  At the center, something sat in the shape of a woman. Long limbs, long face, long teeth. Her hair was made of vines and her eyes were sapphires cracked from pressure. Mara bowed, and the creature watched her with the curiosity of something remembering hunger.

  “I’ve come to trade,” Mara said.

  “For what?” the thing asked, voice a soft drag of stone across stone.

  “Honey.”

  The figure’s grin showed teeth like moon-silvered bone. “You want sweetness?”

  “I want... something gentle. Something kind. I don’t care what shape it takes.”

  The woman who wasn’t a woman leaned forward. “What will you give?”

  Mara opened her palm. Showed the jar.

  “Empty.”

  “I know.”

  She closed her hand and pressed it to her chest. “But I remember what it held. I remember what it meant to have it. I’ll trade a memory for it. One of the good ones.” The not-woman’s grin faded.

  “You understand what that means?” she asked. “You’ll lose it. Not just forget—it will be gone. The color. The warmth. You will know something mattered once, but not why.”

  Mara hesitated. And then she nodded. The jar pulsed, just once. Warm in her hand for the first time in weeks. And that was when she forgot what the honey had tasted like.

  She stumbled back. She didn’t cry. She didn’t panic. She just stood there, knowing she’d lost something vital. A sweetness that no longer had a name and reason.

  The woman in the grove stood as well. From her cupped hands, she poured a thick amber substance into Mara’s jar.

  “Take it,” she said, “but do not let it sit untouched. This is kindness given. It will spoil if ignored.”

  Mara nodded. She didn’t thank her. You didn’t thank forest things. You just took the gift and left a part of yourself behind.

  By the time she returned to the cottage, the house had grown colder. Her wards no longer recognized her. The hearth refused to catch.

  Still, she brewed the tea. Steam rose this time. She added a spoon of the honey. It did not taste the same. But it was warm. And that was enough.