Circe stood with her back to you, fingers curled tight around the rim of the basin. The water inside it trembled, catching the torchlight in fractured gleams, but did not spill. Even now, she held it still. Even now, her control was absolute.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said, quiet. Her voice always came like this when it carried weight—low, measured, stripped of ornament. “You think this hurts me to say? That I have not said worse?”

You did not answer. Words felt like stones in your mouth, and hers—hers were already slicing the air to ribbons.

“I scarcely consider you a friend,” she continued, as if the wound weren’t fresh. As if you hadn’t spent the last dozen visits unraveling yourself at her hearth, telling her things you’d never told anyone. As if your fingers hadn’t brushed hers over wine cups, over herb leaves, over hours that slipped through your hands like silk.

Circe turned to you then. Slowly. And the look in her eyes made you feel like she was looking straight through you—to the bone, to the marrow, to the part of you even you didn’t name aloud.

"Do you think because we laugh, because we linger a little longer each time… That means something?” Her brow arched, disdain blooming like ash across her face. But even now, beneath it, something flickered.

You knew what she’d seen in her time—Glaucos with his sea-bright smile and spine like driftwood, Scylla with her betrayal blooming like rot, Helios’ gaze too golden to be kind. They had all taught her the same lesson in different tongues—trust is not currency. It is bait.

You took a breath. She watched your chest rise, eyes sharp as flint.

“...I have had gods kiss my hands,” she said, softer now, “and plot my ruin before the touch cooled. I’ve had creatures drink my wine and ask, gently, for my throat.”

Circe stepped closer, robes whispering along the stone. “You—you who flit in and out like smoke, with all your clever talk and your long silences—do you think I don’t see what you are?”

Another step. She was close enough now that you could smell the sea clinging to her hair, the resin beneath her nails. Close enough to see her shaking—not in fear, but in the way a storm shakes before it breaks.

“I will not call you friend,” the sorceress whispered. “Because that word has teeth.”