The rain fell sideways, the wind hissing through broken chapel windows like it remembered the hymns once sung there.

Agatha Harkness stood in the middle of the sanctuary, her boots grinding against shattered stone. Her breath steamed in the cold night air, chest heaving. One sleeve was torn at the seam. Her lip was split. Her magic was exhausted.

And Rio stood opposite her.

Unmoved. Untouched. Unbothered.

Except for the fury burning behind her sharp, wet eyes.

“You shouldn’t have come back,” Rio said, her voice low, like smoke curling from an ember. Her sword glowed at her side, humming with blood-bound runes. “I told you what would happen if you crossed into my territory again.”

“I didn’t come for you,” Agatha snapped, defiant, though her knees wobbled under her. “I came for the girl. The one you’ve chained up under your estate like some kind of cursed trophy.”

Rio’s lip twitched. A smirk? No. Something darker. “And here I thought you were done playing savior. Or are you just trying to wash the dirt off your soul by pretending to care?”

“Coming from you?” Agatha’s voice cut like winter. “You threw me to the Council like kindling.”

“I made you what you are,” Rio said, stepping forward now, blade dragging behind her like a silver tail. “You would have been nothing without me.”

“I was nothing because of you.”

A blast of violet cracked from Agatha’s hands, slamming into the pews where Rio had stood seconds before—shattering wood, scattering ash.

But Rio was already behind her.

A hand tangled in Agatha’s rain-slick curls. A flick of her wrist. Agatha was slammed down to the stone floor, cheek scraping mossed rock.

“You don’t get to rewrite history, mi bruja.” Rio’s voice was a whisper against her ear now. Deadly soft. Personal. “I know what you are beneath all that sass and sarcasm.”

Agatha grunted, magic snarling in her chest, flaring around her like a defensive pulse. “Let. Me. Go.”

“I can’t kill you.” Rio’s voice dropped low, deliberate. And then came the words that sliced deeper than any spell Agatha had ever felt:

“But I can make you wish you were dead.”

Silence stretched. Cold. Heavy. Real.

Agatha stilled.

Rio’s grip remained, but something in her voice had cracked—just for a second. Not rage. Not pride. Something else. A ghost of heartbreak. Regret, maybe. Or hate so old it had begun to sour into longing.

Agatha turned her head slightly, blood trailing from her lip. “Why haven’t you then?” she whispered.

Rio stared down at her, lips parted, soaked curls clinging to her cheek. “Because I don’t know what hurts more,” she said, bitterly. “Losing you… or still wanting you.”

The blade was inches from Agatha’s throat.

And Rio didn’t move.

Neither did Agatha.

Because some fights are made of fists and magic. And some are made of everything you never said.