Astrid — The Cauldron Kept Her Warm (357 photos) (Patreon)

Berk had a night for masks, and Astrid decided the mask was unnecessary. She kept the horns. Small, black, set into the leather band she still wore across her brow, the same band the village knew from raids. The wings were new. So was the tail, heart-shaped at the tip, curling when she was pleased. Halloween had given her an excuse. The rest she had wanted for a while.

She set up in the old stone house at the edge of the trees, where the rafters still held hanging pots of ivy and the hearth had not gone cold in years. Candles on the worktable. Bottles with labels no one in the village could read. A black cauldron that changed its mind every hour: green and bubbling, then a gold swirl of flame, then a blue glow cold enough to frost the rim. She worked over it in black lace, straps tied in little bows, the bodysuit cut high on the hip, stockings held by garters that left a band of bare thigh. The wings folded when she leaned in. The tail did not.

He came because someone in the mead hall had said the Hofferson girl was taking visitors after dark, and that the potion she was brewing was not for drinking.

She was on her knees on the rug when he stepped in, hands on the boards, lace one-piece clinging, wings half-spread so the candlelight went red through the membrane. She looked up with those same blue eyes, freckles across the bridge of her nose, and the smile was the one she used before a fight.

"You're late," she said. "The green one's already finished."

He stopped at the table. The cauldron threw light up her stomach, under the cups of the bra, along the wet line of her collarbone. She rose without hurrying, one knee on the bench, one foot on the table beside a glass, and the tail hooked the air between them.

"I don't want the potion," he said.

"Good." She turned, looking back over her shoulder, wings opening just enough to frame her. The heart at the end of her tail tapped his wrist once. "I brewed it so you'd have a reason to walk in. The rest of the night isn't in the pot."

She took his hand and drew it to the lace at her hip, where the bow was already loose. Outside, someone laughed on the path in a cheap mask. Inside, the fire popped, the cauldron sighed, and Astrid let the horns stay on.

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