Ellis wound the thread of magic around her finger in a lazy spiral. It flowed bright as a sun, hot against her skin. For a moment, she let it linger, considering the possibilities. She could fashion a speck of good luck? Perhaps relieve an aching pain? Domerick Pice could use a bucketful of common sense, but she couldn’t fashion that out of magic.

The magic sparked, and Ellis felt an echoing pulse in her chest. Her own enchantment, hungry to devour the speck of charm wrapped around her finger. Hastily, Ellis twisted the strand into a simple health charm. Not very original, she supposed, but an easy way to dispatch Domerick’s curse. With one finger, she pressed the new spell back into his skin.

Domerick flexed his fingers. Then he tested his toes. “You’ve done it!” He clenched both hands in triumphant fists. Ellis resisted the urge to roll her eyes. He acted as if she’d lifted a deadly enchantment, not refashioned a silly stone-finger curse.

“My pleasure, sir,” she managed to keep her tone professional.

But Domerick positively beamed when he turned to her, and she braced for one of his abundant overreactions. “I’ve never met anyone like you before!”

“You should be grateful for that,” Ellis clipped. Before he could get all moony-eyed, she swept her apprentice bag from the bench and strode out of the hospital. She didn’t even tell him about the health charm. He would have no idea when it kept the next bout of flu at bay, and he had no need to know.

Her nerves were frazzled. Most of her patients weren’t as frequent as Domerick, but the comments were the same. “Why aren’t you one of the king’s enchantresses?” “You’ve got some uncommon skill, lassie!” “We need more people like you in these parts!”

It stung the most from the ones like Domerick, who returned week after week with minor fairy curses for her to break. Her heart was fragile after months of pulling curses from other people’s bones while all the white her own curse raged rampant.

Domerick was nothing but a weekly reminder that she was enchanted to be unrecognizable. Unremembered. Unknown.

Always, she would be enchanted.