Angelica pressed her webbed thumb against the clasp of a half-finished necklace and told herself she would not try another counter-spell until she knew what had been done to her. The last one had turned her tongue black for two days. The one before had made her eyes bulge wider. Every ritual she guessed at without knowing the source only pushed her further from the brown-eyed woman with the gap in her teeth who used to live in this apartment. She worked at her table with the curtains drawn and the bathroom mirror wrapped in a beach towel. The necklace in her hands was the best thing she had ever made, a row of diamond-shaped stones catching lamplight in reds and greens and clear whites. A buyer wanted it by morning. Her jewelry had grown sharper, stranger, more beautiful since the curse. She hated that it was true. She finished the clasp, boxed the necklace, and made herself leave the apartment before she lost her nerve. There was only one person left to ask. The oracle in the swamp took payment in beautiful things, and Angelica had run out of cheaper answers. The path ended at a low hut hung with glowing vines that shed pink and blue light onto the water. Inside, Morphelia filled the room. Her braids pooled around her purple feet. She did not look up when Angelica ducked through the door. "Frog girl," Morphelia said, warm as bathwater. "You brought me something shiny." Angelica set the box on the low table. "I need to know what kind of curse is on my face. I've been guessing. Every fix I try makes it worse." Morphelia opened the box, lifted the necklace, and draped it across her belly. She smiled. Then her face went still. She reached under her braids and pulled out a cracked shell mask, painted with a serene human face in gold and green. "Hold this to your face," Morphelia said. "Don't ask why yet." Angelica pressed the mask against her frog skin. It was cold. It grew colder. A thin heat ran down her jaw, and the mask hummed against her cheekbones like a struck bell. When she lowered it, the painted face on the shell had darkened along one side. Morphelia studied the stain. Her airy voice went flat. "Swamp-blood magic. Close kin, or close as kin. Whoever cursed you did it with something of yours in their hand. Hair. A tooth. Something you gave them once." Angelica's throat tightened. She knew the person. She knew, now, what the person had of hers. "Can I break it?" "Not without taking it back from them," Morphelia said. "And they will feel you coming the moment you try." Angelica picked up the mask. The buyer's necklace was gone. She had a name in her mouth and no time left to hide from it.

Angelica walked home from the oracle's hut with the name pressing against her teeth. She would not say it out loud yet. Morphelia had told her the truth she came for, and the truth had a cost. The moment she confronted the caster, they would feel her coming. She had seen what their magic could do to her face. She did not want to know what it could do to her lungs, her hands, her heart. She needed a shield before she knocked on any door. She went back into the swamp before dawn. The path narrowed between hunched trees and pools of green water. Moss dripped from every branch. She was looking for the old man everyone in the swamp warned her about. He kept the crocodiles calm. If anyone knew how to stand in front of swamp-blood magic without burning, it was him. She found him gutting a fish on a stump outside a leaning shack. Groak the Swamp Elder did not look up. His green braids swung as he worked. Flies circled his beard. Angelica had been told not to waste his time and not to lie to him. She did neither. "Someone close to me cursed my face," she said. "I have to face them to break it. They'll feel me the second I try. I need something to hold them off long enough to get my hair back." Groak set the knife down. His pale eyes moved over her frog skin without flinching. "Swamp-blood curse wants a piece of you," he said. "You want a piece of them first. Fair trade." He wiped his hands on his pants. "There's a woman up the ridge who grows charms in crystal. Tell her Groak sent you. Tell her what you're carrying. If she says no, come back and I'll think again." The ridge path opened into a cave lit from inside. Clusters of purple and pink and lime crystal grew from the walls. Celestia Bramble stood at a low bench, threading a strand of moss through a shard the size of a thumb. Flowers moved in her hair though there was no wind. "Groak sent me," Angelica said. "Swamp-blood. Someone close." Celestia's soft face went still. "Close ones are the worst kind." She pressed the shard into Angelica's palm and closed her fingers over it. "Wear it against your skin. It buys you one blow. One. When they strike, the crystal takes it and cracks. After that, you're bare." Angelica tied the shard on a cord and slipped it under her collar. The stone was cold, then warm. She felt it settle against her chest like a second pulse. She walked home with one shield and one strike. She knew the door she had to knock on. She knew the name of the person on the other side. Tomorrow she would spend the crystal, and after that there would be nothing between her and whatever came back.

Angelica woke with the crystal shard warm against her chest. She knew the name now. She knew the door. But the caster still had her hair, coiled in a locket she had watched them wear for months. As long as they held that piece of her, the curse could pull tighter the moment she knocked. She needed the hair out of their hands before she stepped in front of them. That meant a thief's errand before a fighter's one. She went back into the swamp to think. The lake sat quiet under a low mist, cypress roots black in the green water. A single lily pad drifted near her boots, its petals glowing a bruised purple. She sat on a root and tried to picture the locket coming off a neck without a fight. She couldn't. Not alone. Not with this face. A voice broke the quiet. "You look like someone counting a bill you can't pay." Lilith Croco stepped out from behind a cypress, red heels sunk in the mud, tank top clean somehow. Angelica had sold her a pair of earrings once and never forgotten how gentle Lilith's claws had been on the counter. Most people crossed the path when they saw a crocodile. Angelica had not, and Lilith remembered. "I need something taken off a person," Angelica said. "A locket. Hair inside. Mine." Lilith's green eyes softened. "Say who." Angelica said the name. Lilith did not flinch. "I can get close to them," she said. "They like being admired. I can admire. You wait by the water. When I bring it out, you break the clasp and burn the hair." They went that afternoon. Angelica stayed at the tree line by the lake. Lilith walked up to the porch alone, laughing at something the caster said, touching their arm the way a friend does. Angelica watched the locket lift as Lilith leaned in for a hug. Watched Lilith's claw slide the chain up and off in one clean motion, hidden by her hair. Watched her step back, still smiling, still talking. Lilith walked to the water and handed the locket over without stopping. Angelica cracked it open on a rock. A dark curl of her old brown hair lay inside. She held it to the shard on her chest. The crystal flared. The hair caught and turned to ash on her palm. Something snapped tight across her ribs, then let go. Far off, on the porch, she heard a chair scrape and a door slam. The caster had felt it. Angelica wiped the ash on her dress. The locket was empty. The hair was gone. But she had spent her quiet approach to get it. Whoever waited behind that door was awake now, and looking for her.