Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The ballroom was a lot.
Ramona had been to the Ostara Gala before. She’d walked these floors when she was faculty, when she was Simone’s wife, when she’d belonged to the kind of world that threw parties like this. She thought she remembered it.
She didn’t, apparently, because either it had gotten significantly more extravagant since her expulsion, or she’d spent the last several years of her attendance too busy not catastrophically ruining anything to actually look at the room.
Vaulted ceilings. Murals of Persephone rising, flowers blooming in her wake, painted so well the colors seemed to shift when Ramona wasn’t looking directly at them.
Crystal chandeliers big enough to have their own gravitational pull, dripping candles that floated without any visible support, their flames cycling through gold and rose and green.
The walls were gold and cream and hung with tapestries that moved — slow, subtle, winter melting into spring on a loop.
And the flowers. Everywhere. Not arranged, but growing.
Vines climbing the walls, cherry trees and magnolias coming up directly from the floor, all blooming at once despite half of them having no business blooming in March.
Daffodils and tulips and irises carpeting the ground in patterns that parted around every step and closed again in people’s wake.
The air smelled like spring, earthy and wet and fresh, full of possibility.
The whole thing was gorgeous and excessive and exactly as insufferable as she’d remembered.
“Holy shit,” Felix breathed.
Gerald cooed.
“The flowers are overstrained,” Posey said, a hand over her heart and great concern in her tone. “This many species forced into simultaneous bloom—”
“Five minutes,” Cammie said in an awed voice. “We are going to enjoy this for five minutes before anyone audits the ethics of the decorations.”
They moved into the crowd.
The whispers started almost immediately.
Ramona felt them before she heard them — that specific prickling awareness of being watched, of a room recalibrating around a presence it didn’t expect.
She caught fragments as she walked. Is that Ramona Greenbriar?
And then: Wasn’t she expelled for trying to kill the High Priestess?
And then someone who was genuinely not being quiet enough: I’m telling you, it was a demon at the convergence point.
Someone else, much more urgently: Is that a pigeon wearing a bow tie?
Gerald puffed up slightly at that last one. Felix looked like he might say something. Ramona put her hand briefly on his arm.
Fresh starts. New beginnings. Chin up.
She kept walking.
At the far end of the ballroom, the Magical Council occupied a raised platform in their formal robes — deep purple, silver embroidery, the works. The High Priestess stood at the center of them, her posture stiff and straight as she held a flower in her fingers, its petals shifting in color.
The High Priestess’s eyes found Ramona across the room.
Ramona went still for a half second, waiting for something inevitable, like screaming or pointed fingers or something worse, like being ignored.
The High Priestess looked at her for a long moment — steady, unreadable — and then gave one small, deliberate nod. An acknowledgment. Nothing warm, nothing formal. Just: I see you. You’re here. That is noted.
Ramona broke protocol and approached the dais where the High Priestess sat. The Magical Council went silent at her appearance, the general mood shifting to icy silence.
“May I have a word with you, High Priestess?” Ramona asked.
The High Priestess dipped her head in acknowledgment, then stood.
Ramona followed her toward the back of the ballroom, her voice dropping low.
“You’re wondering how I knew about the convergence point and the ritual last night.
” The High Priestess seemed to tower above her now, her robes glowing from an internal light.
Her eyes were startlingly light blue and seemed to stare through Ramona straight to her soul.
“Well, uh, yes,” Ramona stammered, thrown off by the High Priestess’s directness.
The High Priestess she had known had always moved in silence, her wisdom feeling more like a riddle than an answer.
Last night at the ritual was the most they’d spoken in years, even before Ramona had been exiled from the coven.
“The Magical Council found the convergence point two weeks ago. Your signature was all over it. I asked Iris for answers, and she told me the truth. All of the truth. I’ve exiled witches for less,” the High Priestess said.
Ramona shifted her weight between her feet, her eyes defying all of her internal self-control to glance toward the High Priestess’s ears. “I know.”
“Of course.”
“Did Iris tell you about last night, then?” Ramona asked.
“No, a first-year witch could have told me to watch for the new moon, Ramona. I’ve had it on my calendar for weeks,” the High Priestess said.
“Weeks.” Ramona gulped. “And you didn’t think to maybe… help before that?”
“My help was not needed before.”
“I would beg to differ, but—”
“We were there last night. We assisted when it counted. And if you want to return to Thornwood Coven, you have a place again,” the High Priestess said, her light eyes unnervingly watching Ramona with intensity.
Ramona ducked her head in a strange mixture of gratitude and shock and the heavy realization that she’d spent two years dreaming of this moment and now that it was happening, it wasn’t what she needed after all.
She cleared her throat, blinking back the surge of emotions in her body.
“I am honored and grateful, High Priestess. But I’ve found a new coven where I belong. ”
The High Priestess nodded, her eyes moving beyond Ramona. Ramona glanced over her shoulder to where Felix, Kashvi, Posey, and Cammie were standing, watching them with blatant interest like four bodyguards ready to defend her honor at any moment.
The High Priestess added, “And although I do welcome you at Thornwood Coven, the Magical Council has made it clear that your previously held position at Thornwood Academy will not be—”
“I understand.” Not that she’d be accepting that role, either.
“Please do let me know if you plan to summon any more demons,” the High Priestess added, blinking quickly in a way that made her look inhuman.
Ramona realized with shock that she was… teasing. Had the High Priestess just made a joke? She’d never heard of such a thing happening before. “No more demons,” she promised.
Ramona watched the High Priestess return to the Magical Council’s dais and realized a lot had changed in two years. She turned back to where her friends were waiting and shrugged. “I’ll explain all that later.”
A floating tray materialized at elbow height with champagne. She took a glass. Her coven did the same. Felix raised his: “To the Exile Coven, and to making everyone here deeply uncomfortable.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Kashvi said. Her fingers sparked faintly at the tips.
“Even ourselves,” Posey said, eyeing the flowers at her feet.
They drank. The champagne was perfect — cold, with a secondary warmth that spread through Ramona’s chest and had nothing to do with alcohol.
She scanned the room without really meaning to. An old habit. She found — without surprise, but also without being totally prepared for it — Simone.
Near the windows. Wearing a silver dress that looked like dripping mercury against her skin.
Still beautiful. Still effortlessly everything Ramona had spent years feeling inadequate next to.
Beside her was Kate, her hair chopped into a blunt bob that made her look severe and sharp.
The two of them were visibly arguing about something, glancing toward Ramona and then looking away, their voices low but posture tight, the particular choreography of a fight that was trying not to be a scene.
Ramona waited to feel something about it, taking a mental calculation of her own emotional reaction.
Instead, she felt nothing. Not even the distant bruised ache she’d been carrying for two years. The whole thing felt like looking at a photograph of a place she used to live. Something happened there, once. It just wasn’t hers anymore.
“Is that your ex?” Cammie asked.
“Yeah.”
“She looks miserable.”
Ramona couldn’t help a small smile tug at the edge of her mouth at that.
Simone glanced up and saw her watching.
Ramona watched the flicker cross her ex-wife’s face — embarrassment, then something more complicated than that. Regret, if Ramona didn’t know better. Kate followed her gaze.
The rational thing was to look away. Move on. Let the nothing stay nothing.
Subtlety and tact had never been Ramona’s strong suit. Instead, she moved toward them.
She wasn’t entirely sure she’d decided to do it. But there she was, crossing the ballroom floor, champagne glass in hand, while Simone’s expression settled into the careful composure of someone who’d had a lot of practice looking like everything was fine.
“Ramona.” Simone’s voice was measured. “Good evening.” She shifted uncomfortably. She always was obsessed with appearances, and fighting with her partner and her ex-wife at one gala must have been a step too far. She’d chosen fake niceties instead.
Ramona let her gaze move briefly to Kate, letting it trail down to the floor and back up, unimpressed with what she found.
Simone’s chin came up slightly. “Listen, about the other night—”