Chapter 18 Dean
Dean
Twilight bleeds across the festival grounds, painting everything in shades of uncertainty.
I stand at the back of the crowd, far enough that no one notices me but close enough to intervene if needed.
Not that I should be here at all. Eleanor’s perfectly capable of handling any magical disruptions.
More capable, probably, given how compromised I am.
The thought sits bitter on my tongue as Missy takes the stage with Giuseppe.
Even in the fading light, she glows. Her movements are precise, practiced—exactly what you’d expect from a world-class musician.
Jules joins her, their instruments weaving together a song in intricate patterns that leave the crowd breathless.
It should be beautiful. It is beautiful, in the way cut crystal is beautiful—pristine, perfect, hollow.
I’ve seen Missy play differently. Wrapped in starlight and blankets at the lighthouse, her eyes closed, her soul bare.
Playing not because she should, but because the music lived in her bones and demanded release.
The performance is nothing like that. This is craft without heart, technique without truth.
The magic responds anyway. Of course it does. The wards strengthen with each note, humming in harmony with her music like they always do. Like they shouldn’t. It eats at me—the lack of explanation.
Missy’s eyes remain fixed on some distant point, never meeting the audience.
It’s like she’s not really here at all. When I’d imagined her taking the stage, it was nothing like this.
I’d envisioned her as she was twirling in circles beneath my magic in the planetarium.
Alive and vivid. Instead, she seems like a husk.
My fingers itch to halt the performance, to stride onto that stage and break whatever invisible chains bind her to this pristine prison of perfection.
But I have no right. No reason. The magic flows smooth and strong, and my own selfish concerns aren’t grounds for intervention.
When they finally finish, relief floods through me like high tide.
Emma rushes forward to hug Missy, and despite everything, I smile.
This is the Missy I know—the one who nurtures young talent, who sees past Emma’s struggles to her potential.
The one who might leave next week without warning, taking her light and her music and leaving me with memories that won’t be enough.
I turn away, pushing through the crowd toward the nexus point. The wards need checking with so many humans present, even if Missy’s music has somehow stabilized them again. Another mystery I’ll never solve if—
“Wearing your extra-grumpy-council-member face today?”
Her voice stops me like a spell. When I turn, starlight catches in her hair, and for a moment, I forget every reason I shouldn’t reach for her. I tuck my hands into my pockets instead. “We all have our roles to play.”
Something flickers across her face—pain, maybe—before her expression clears. “Really? What’s mine?”
Beauty. Grace. Joy. The woman who makes my magic stronger and my walls weaker. The normal human who somehow sees too much and feels too deeply. The one I’m fool enough to love.
I shrug, swallowing truth for safer words. “Somebody has to be the favorite.”
She scrunches her nose. “Jules has already taken that spot and anchored himself onto it. I’ll need something else.”
I drift closer, pulled into her orbit as always.
“No desire to steal the spotlight from him?” She could take it if she wanted.
Jules is brilliant, polished, perfect. But Missy has something wild and untamed that even she doesn’t seem to fully understand.
Jules may have mastered every technical aspect of the performance, but he’ll never have what Missy has.
That spark that makes magic itself lean in to listen.
She only smirks, though. “I wish I could chuck it at him and knock that charming smile off his face.” A laugh escapes me before I can stop it. “But no,” she says softer. “No desire for that, I don’t think.”
“Well, then…” My fingers flex in my pockets, fighting the urge to touch her.
The festival lights paint her skin in amber and gold, making her look like a fairy in a children’s book, beckoning humans to wander into her enchanted ring and never leave.
“Perhaps your role could be the woman who trips over council members when she visits new towns?”
“Hey!” Her laughter rings into the cooling air, genuine and warm in a way her performance smile never is. The sound draws me closer, like magic responding to her music. Like a moth to flame. Like a fool to fate.
“Or woman who doesn’t pay attention to weather reports?”
“That was an accident!” Her hand lands on my arm, and warmth spreads through me like summer sun. Her touch burns through my jacket’s leather, through my carefully constructed walls, through every reason I’ve given myself why this can’t work.
The festival fades around us. The nexus point I’m supposed to be checking, the wards I maintain, the duties I’ve built my life around, all of it recedes until there’s just this.
Just her eyes catching starlight, her fingers grazing my bicep, the way she sways slightly closer as if she can’t help herself either.
I should step back. Should remember I’m the Head Warlock, should maintain appropriate distance. Instead, I find myself fixed on the curve of her smile, the glimmer of her lips.
“I seem to recall,” I say, voice dropping lower, “that you’re the one who chose to practice in a storm.”
She tilts her head, and god help me, but I want to brush back that strand of hair falling across her cheek. “If I knew who would rescue me—and what that night would lead to—I’d do it again.”
The certainty in her voice undoes me. This is how we keep happening—these small moments that feel bigger than magic, these quiet conversations that make me forget why I’ve spent years keeping everyone at an arm’s length.
“Dean?”
The voice hits like ice water, snapping me to attention.
I whip around to find my mother standing before us, my father beside her.
Both are staring at us with mouths agape and brows furrowed.
Both staring at Missy’s hand on my arm. At how close we’re standing.
At what they must recognize as history preparing to repeat itself.
Because they’ll know she’s non-magical. She has no aura at all.
They’re not the only ones staring, either. Grammie Rae watches from her booth, wearing that knowing smirk that makes me want to add sound-blocking wards around her house out of spite. Others are trying to appear like they’re not looking our way. We might as well have been dancing in the street.
“Mom?” The word scrapes my throat.
Missy takes a step back from me and produces that perfect performer’s smile that never reaches her eyes. “Oh, hello, I’m Missy.”
She extends her hand. They stare at it like she’s offering them poison.
After an incredibly awkward moment where even the festival itself seems to have gone quiet, she withdraws and wipes her palm against her blouse.
A shaky laugh spills from her as she speaks.
“I’ll excuse myself. See you later, Dean. ”
“Missy, wait—” I reach for her, but she’s already gone, swallowed by the festival crowd.
My parents’ stares weigh like stones.
“I just need to check over the wards once more,” I manage. “Let me finish up and we can go to my house.”
The ocean’s roar almost drowns my thoughts as I watch my father examine my bookshelves without seeing them, one hand pressed against his mouth. Mother’s quiet sniffling from the kitchen table makes everything worse.
“Dean,” she starts, voice trembling, “was that young woman… was she… I mean is she…”
“Yes, Mom. She’s non-magical.”
Fresh tears spill down her cheeks. My father drops his hand. “Dean. Son.” He shakes his head slowly. “We love you, and we’re so proud of everything you’ve done here in Magnolia Cove, but a non-magical woman, son? Is she even connected to the community?”
I suck a breath in over my teeth. My fingers itch to reach for a mint, but I refuse to show that tell. Not now. Not during this conversation that shouldn’t even be happening. “Only through her sister who is marrying a local.”
“She’s marrying a witch or a warlock?”
“No.”
The question grates against my nerves. As if he doesn’t already know.
As if thirty-five years on the National Council hasn’t taught him exactly how rare—how impossible—these connections are.
He’s watched enough powerful magic users fall from grace over human entanglements to fill a library of cautionary tales.
And here I am, Head Warlock of Magnolia Cove somehow following the same worn path to ruin.
His disappointment settles around my shoulders like a cloak.
Council members don’t fraternize with non-magical people.
We definitely don’t fall in love with them.
These are the rules that have kept our world safe, our magic protected.
Rules I helped write. Rules I’m breaking every time I let Missy slip past my defenses.
“We came here”—Mom chokes out—“to try to convince you to come to Nell’s wedding only to find you repeating the same choices that tore our family apart.”
“We supported Nell too, remember?” Dad’s laugh holds no humor. “Thought we were being progressive. Had her boyfriend over for Sunday dinners.”
Mom nods and dabs at her eyes. “And look where that got us. Ten years of barely seeing our son. A decade for our daughter to heal from the scars it left.”
“I know well that’s my fault.” A headache builds in my temple, causing the vein there to throb.
Old guilt rises like high tide, familiar as magic, bitter as mint-flavored regret.
Ten years of carefully maintained distance, of watching my family fracture like ward lines under too much pressure.
Of being the one who made the hard choice, who did what needed to be done, who chose duty over love.
I flex my fingers, fighting the urge to reinforce the wards around the cottage—my knee-jerk reaction to any turbulence. As if magical barriers could protect any of us from the consequences of our choices. As if they ever had.
My parents both blink at me. Dad’s face softens some. “We don’t blame you, Dean.”
“You don’t have to. I blame myself.” I take a breath only to realize that I’ve unconsciously reached for memory magic, my power responding to the memories too intently.
The taste of mint—sharp and cold like the first frost of winter—fills my mouth.
“I know how much I hurt Nell. Why do you think I’m not planning to attend her wedding?
Because I'm selfish? Because I don’t care?
” My laugh comes out rough as sea spray.
“It’s because I won’t risk casting shadows on the day she deserves nothing but light. ”
My father frowns. “She wants you there, son.”
“She hasn’t told me that.”
Mom crumples her tissue. “You’re both too stubborn. Always have been.”
“At the moment,”—Dad cuts in—“that’s not the most pressing issue.” His voice hardens. “This woman—this Missy—someone without magic, Dean? You, of anyone, know that people like us can’t date normal humans. We thought you’d have learned that from everything that happened with Nell.”
“I did.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I mean, I have. Missy is different.”
Mom rises. “How? How is she different?”
The words I plan to speak die in my throat. Because Missy is probably leaving next week. Because I’ve turned her into a security risk by showing her our world. Because my heart says she’s different, but my heart’s an idiot that should have learned its lesson a decade ago.
The ocean’s rhythmic rush fills the silence, steady as a heartbeat, relentless as guilt.
A decade of carefully maintained control threatens to crumble beneath the weight of their expectations, their fears, their love.
The same love that made them welcome Charlie to Sunday dinners, that made them believe in second chances, that made the eventual fallout cut so much deeper.
Some patterns repeat like tides against the shore, wearing away at resolve until nothing remains but bare rock and bitter truth.
“If it means so much to you, I’ll attend the wedding.” After all, I’ve had a decade to perfect the art of staying on the edges. I can keep to the shadows, nod at the right times, and slip away before anyone notices.
Mom cries again. Dad closes the space between us and settles a heavy hand on my shoulder. “I knew you’d do the right thing, son. You always do.”
His eyes bore into me, dark and knowing as storm clouds.
The weight of unspoken meaning hangs between us—because this isn’t just about Nell’s wedding.
This is about Missy. About duty. About the choices a Head Warlock must make to protect his community.
About how some patterns shouldn’t be repeated, no matter what the heart says.
The praise settles like chains around my shoulders. Always doing the right thing. Always protecting everyone else. Always sacrificing what I want for what needs to be done.
The ocean’s roar fills my cottage, making my headache throb even more intensely. Outside, waves crash against the shore—relentless, inevitable, wearing away at stone until nothing remains but sand and salt and surrender.