Binding Star

I wake to the scent of soil and sex, my sheets damp with sweat. The dream clings to me like morning dew on grass—hands I’ve never felt moving over my skin, a mouth I’ve never tasted claiming mine. I press my thighs together, fighting the ache that pulses between them. Fucking earth magic. Always strongest during the full moon, always leaving me raw and wanting.

My plants know. The potted herbs lining my bedroom windowsill have grown inches overnight, their leaves stretching toward me as I sit up. The rosemary’s practically writhing, and I swear the mint looks smug.

“Stop looking at me like that,” I mutter, running my fingers through tangled curls. “It’s just magic. Just the moon.”

The plants don’t believe me. I don’t believe me either.

I drag myself to the bathroom, avoiding my reflection. I know what I’ll see—flushed cheeks, pupils blown wide, lips bitten red from dreams I can’t control. I splash cold water on my face and force myself to breathe. Just another day at Bullock Botanicals. Just another day of pretending I’m normal.

The floorboards creak under my feet as I make my way downstairs. Our apartment above the shop isn’t large, but it fits the five of us. Somehow. Usually with a lot of cursing and shoving.

The kitchen smells like cinnamon and smoke. Stone stands at the stove, her red hair a wild tangle down her back. Her fingers dance over the burner, flames licking at her skin. She turns, catching me watching, and grins. A rivulet of sweat runs between her breasts, visible through her thin tank top.

“Morning, earth-fucker,” she says, flipping a pancake with her bare hand. The flesh sizzles. She doesn’t flinch. “Sleep well?”

I grab a mug from the cabinet, ignoring the heat rising to my cheeks. “Fuck off.”

“That good, huh?” She laughs, the sound crackling like the fire she manipulates. “You know, you could just get laid. Real cock instead of dream cock.”

“And who do you suggest? Sheriff Straight-Edge?” I pour coffee black as night into my mug, let the bitter burn chase away the lingering arousal. “Not everyone fucks their magic away like you do.”

Stone shrugs, her amber eyes flashing. “Fire needs feeding.”

A crash from the back bedroom saves me from responding. Clover stumbles into the kitchen, platinum blonde hair floating around her face in a personal breeze. Three books hover behind her, pages flipping of their own accord.

“Did you know,” she says, pushing wire-rimmed glasses up her nose, “that certain species of plants can change their sexual reproductive organs based on environmental stimuli?” Her gray eyes focus somewhere beyond the kitchen wall. “Quite fascinating, really. Makes one wonder about the fluidity of all things.”

“For fuck’s sake, Clover.” Stone flips another pancake onto a growing stack. “It’s too early for plant sex lectures.”

“It’s never too early for knowledge.” The air around Clover ripples as she snags a mug from the cabinet without touching it.

The temperature drops as Romie enters, trailing shadows like a funeral veil. Her black hair hangs straight to her waist, her pale skin nearly translucent in the morning light. Dark eyes scan the room, seeing things none of us can.

“Mrs. Prescott will be our first customer today,” she says, voice soft but certain. “She’ll pretend to want valerian for sleep, but she’s really looking for something to keep her husband’s ghost away.”

I choke on my coffee. “Jesus, Rom. Warning next time?”

She blinks slowly, like a cat. “I am warning you.”

“Morning, all.” Aspen glides in, blue-black hair damp from the shower, skin gleaming with moisture that never quite dries. She moves to each of us in turn, fingers brushing skin—Stone’s shoulder, Clover’s wrist, Romie’s cheek, my hand. The contact brief but deliberate. Checking our emotional weather.

She lingers at my touch, eyes shifting from blue to stormy gray. “You’re unsettled.”

I pull away. “I’m fine.”

“Liar.” She doesn’t push, though. Just moves to the counter, where droplets of water gather around her fingertips as she prepares tea.

This is us. The Bullock sisters. Earth, fire, water, air, and whatever the hell Romie is. Spirit. Void. Death. We don’t talk about it.

The clock on the wall reads 8:47. Thirteen minutes until we open the shop.

“Stone, dishes.” I drain my coffee. “Clover, sweep. Romie, change the window display—nothing too morbid today. Aspen, inventory. I’ll count the till.”

They move without argument. For all our bickering, we know the drill.

Downstairs, Bullock Botanicals waits. Our legacy. Our prison. Our power source.

The shop smells like home—dried herbs hanging from the ceiling, potted plants lining handcrafted shelves, glass bottles filled with tinctures and oils catching the morning light. I run my fingers over a jar of dried lavender, and it trembles beneath my touch.

The till is exactly as I left it yesterday. I count anyway, grounding myself in numbers. Seventy-three dollars and forty-two cents in the drawer. Not enough. Never enough.

The door connecting the shop to the greenhouse opens. Aspen steps through, a clipboard clutched to her chest.

“We’re low on mugwort and yarrow,” she says. “And the protection sachets are almost gone.”

I nod. “I’ll make more tonight.”

Her eyes shift to sea glass green, reading me like the tide reads the shore. “You had the dream again.”

It’s not a question. Nothing gets past Aspen.

“It doesn’t mean anything.” I busy myself arranging bottles on the counter, alphabetical by use, then by potency. “Just the moon.”

“The moon doesn’t make you dream of violet eyes and constellation tattoos.” Aspen’s voice ripples like water over stones. “Grandmother used to say—”

“Grandmother’s dead.” The words come out sharper than intended. A nearby peace lily wilts, responding to my spike of emotion. I take a breath, forcing calm I don’t feel. The flower slowly straightens.

“Sorry,” I mutter.

Aspen touches my wrist, cool fingers against my overheated skin. “Something’s coming, Bryn. You feel it too.”

Before I can answer, the front bell chimes. Nine on the dot.

Mrs. Prescott stands in the doorway, thin and rigid as a dried cornstalk. Her eyes dart around the shop, settling on me with desperate intensity.

“I need valerian,” she says, voice pitched too high. “For sleep.”

Romie materializes from between shelves, making Mrs. Prescott jump. “The ghost won’t leave because you haven’t returned what you took from his study.”

The color drains from Mrs. Prescott’s face. “I don’t know what—”

“The watch.” Romie’s dark eyes reflect nothing. “Gold with his initials. You pawned it last month. That’s why he stands at the foot of your bed every night.”

Mrs. Prescott’s knees buckle. I shoot Romie a glare, then guide the trembling woman to the stool behind the counter.

“She doesn’t mean any harm,” I say, though we both know it’s a lie. Romie never says anything she doesn’t mean. “Let me make you some tea.”

The morning passes in a blur of customers—tourists wanting locally made soaps, regulars picking up weekly tinctures, teenagers giggling over love sachets they don’t realize actually work. I lose myself in the rhythm of it, the practiced smile, the careful measuring of herbs that respond to my touch, growing more potent under my fingers.

None of them knows. They see five sisters running a quaint botanical shop. They don’t see the magic that pulses beneath our skin, that flows from our hands into every product we sell. They don’t feel the boundaries between worlds thinning with each passing day.

The greenhouse calls to me during the midday lull. I slip through the back door, letting the humid heat envelop me. Here, surrounded by growing things, I can breathe. My magic hums just beneath my skin, connecting me to every plant, every root, every seed. I press my palms into the rich soil in a large planter, and the seedlings strain toward my touch, unfurling leaves and stretching their stems.

The letter burns in my back pocket.

I found it this morning, tucked beneath my pillow. Grandmother’s handwriting on the envelope. My name in her precise script. I haven’t opened it yet. Don’t want to. Something tells me once I do, nothing will be the same.

“Hiding from customers?”

I spin around, heart hammering against my ribs. Sheriff Jace Harlow stands in the doorway, broad shoulders blocking the light from the shop. His sandy hair falls across his forehead, amber eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiles.

“Official business,” I say, wiping dirt from my hands onto my jeans. “These plants don’t grow themselves.”

A lie. With me around, they absolutely do.

Jace steps further into the greenhouse, and the plants react, stretching toward him, then shrinking back, undecided. Interesting. They never do that with regular humans.

“Thought I’d stop by for some of your headache remedy,” he says, moving closer. “That stuff you made last time worked better than any prescription.”

Of course it did. I infused it with magic specifically keyed to his body, his pain. Not that I’d tell him that.

He stands too close now. I can smell him—pine and leather and something else, something that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. His fingers brush mine as he hands me a twenty-dollar bill, and electricity arcs between us.

“Jesus.” He jerks back, staring at his hand, then at me. “Static shock.”

But it wasn’t static. We both know it. Something passes between us, something that causes the greenhouse temperature to rise by five degrees. The tomato plants burst into flower around us. Fuck.

“I’ll get your remedy.” I push past him, back into the shop, breathing hard. What the hell was that?

The afternoon crawls. Stone works the register while I hide in the back room, grinding herbs with more force than necessary. The pestle feels good in my hand, solid stone against dried plants that surrender beneath my strength.

Clover floats in—literally inches off the ground—with a dusty book cradled in her arms.

“Did you know there’s a celestial alignment happening tonight?” She pushes her glasses up, eyes bright with excitement. “The Night Court stars will be directly overhead for the first time in seventy-seven years.”

The pestle slips, crushing my finger. Blood wells, drops onto the herbs. They absorb it instantly, turning a deeper green. Shit. Now I have to start over.

“Night Court?” My voice sounds strange even to my ears.

“One of the five Fae Courts.” Pages flip without her touching them. “They govern darkness, stars, cosmic mysteries.”

“Clover, we sell herbs and soap. We don’t need astronomy lessons.”

She looks at me over her glasses. “It’s not astronomy, Bryn. It’s history. Our history.”

The back of my neck prickles. The letter seems to grow heavier in my pocket.

The shop closes at six. We move through our closing routine in practiced synchronicity—Stone counting the register, Aspen wiping down surfaces, Clover organizing the reference books, Romie turning the sign to CLOSED. I sweep, gathering the day’s detritus into neat piles.

That’s when I feel it—a shift in pressure, like the moment before a thunderstorm. The plants sense it too; their leaves tremble without a breeze.

“Do you feel that?” Aspen whispers, water beading on her skin.

Stone’s hands burst into flame. “Something’s wrong.”

Romie goes still, eyes unfocused. “She’s trying to warn us.”

“Who?” I demand.

“Grandmother.”

The air thickens. Outside, darkness falls too quickly. Stars appear in a sky that should still hold daylight.

My hand moves to my pocket, pulls out the letter. The seal breaks under my thumb. Inside, a single sheet of paper and something else—something that glints with metallic light.

The contract unfolds itself in my hands, golden ink shimmering on parchment too fine to be modern. At the bottom, two signatures. My grandmother’s, and another I don’t recognize, elegant script that seems to shift as I stare at it.

The words burn themselves into my mind:

*By ancestral right and cosmic decree, the firstborn daughter of the Bullock line shall be bound to the Prince of the Night Court upon the seventh cycle of the seventy-seventh year...*

The hidden mark on my hip—the one I’ve always thought was a strange birthmark—burns like a brand. My sisters crowd around me, reading over my shoulders. Stone curses. Aspen gasps. Clover’s glasses fog with sudden emotion. Romie says nothing, her silence more terrifying than any reaction.

Outside the shop window, stars become visible in daylight. Constellations I’ve never seen before burn against a sky that shouldn’t be dark yet. The plants in the shop rise up, stretching toward the ceiling, growing inches before our eyes.

“Bryn?” Stone’s voice cracks, the first time I’ve heard fear there in years. “What the fuck is happening?”

I stare at the contract, at the object that fell from the envelope into my palm. A ring made of material I can’t identify—neither silver nor gold, but something that catches light from sources that don’t exist.

“I think,” I say, my voice sounding far away, “I’ve just been sold to the Fae.”