Chapter Twenty-Seven
The knock didn’t come gently.
It pounded through the door like someone trying to wake the dead or confirm the living still answered.
Nova and I both jumped.
She blinked, shook her head once, and snapped her fingers.
A candle appeared in the far corner, sending a buttery glow over the wood floor. Shadows jumped like startled birds. My heart was still trying to decide whether it should beat faster or stop altogether.
Another knock. It was not quite a bang, but it was too loud for this time of night.
Nova made a sound low in her throat and moved out of the room. Her steps were slow and short, her long sweater dragging slightly, like the whole moment stretched out purposefully.
The candlelight wobbled as I stood. My legs didn’t feel like mine just yet. The energy from the reading hadn’t quite left. It clung to the air, a whisper pressed into the walls and floorboards.
Another knock, sharper this time.
Nova reached the door and laid her palm flat against it. I knew what she was doing. Listening. Feeling. Not for the person on the other side, she already knew who it was, but for whatever might’ve followed them. Or followed us.
She opened it.
Stella stood with red lipstick askew, and next to her was my mother.
They looked like they’d walked through a windstorm to get here.
“We’re fine,” Nova said before they could speak.
Stella stepped closer.
“Fine?” she repeated, arching a brow. “The whole street lit up like solstice night. I thought your shop had caught fire.”
My mom leaned past her, eyes searching for me. “Maeve?”
“I’m okay,” I said, stepping into the light. “Just… a reading. Got a little intense.”
Stella huffed. “Intense? You think?”
Nova stepped aside to let them in. “We didn’t break anything. Just stirred something that didn’t want to stay quiet.”
That wasn’t exactly comforting.
Still, my mom crossed the threshold without hesitation. Stella followed, muttering about wards and foolish witches.
The room hadn’t gone back to normal. The smoke from the spirit press still lingered in the corners, and the candlelight clung to everything like it didn’t trust the shadows yet.
My mother came to my side and reached for my hand. I let her take it.
“You sure you’re alright?” she asked.
I nodded. “Whatever it was… it didn’t try to hurt me.”
Nova leaned against a shelf, her arms crossed. “It was watching. Curious. Not a ghost. Not something dead.”
Stella let out a sharp breath. “So it’s alive?”
“Not in the usual way,” Nova said. “It’s something else. Old. And close.”
“Close as in here ?” my mom asked, glancing over her shoulder.
Nova tilted her head. “Not anymore. But it left a trace.”
Stella narrowed her eyes at me. “And this trace? Has it touched you before?”
I hesitated. “I think… maybe. I’ve felt it near the Butterfly Ward. That same feeling. Like someone breathing behind me.”
My mom gave my hand a gentle squeeze.
Stella walked toward the middle of the room, sniffing at the air like a hound. “This is why I stay on my side of town. Tea leaves don’t knock your windows out of alignment.”
Nova smirked. “You say that, but you had a scone recipe hexed for two years.”
“One time!” Stella snapped, but her tone was already warming. She waved toward the small electric kettle near the counter. “Boil water, please. My nerves have had enough.”
Nova moved without comment, flicking the switch with a flick of her wrist. The sound of water starting to warm was the first ordinary thing to happen in the last twenty minutes.
I sat down on the little bench near the bookshelves. My mother joined me, holding my hand like she wasn’t ready to let go. I didn’t blame her.
Across the room, the smoke had mostly faded, but the feeling hadn’t. That press of attention. That sense of something halfway through a sentence it hadn’t finished saying.
“What now?” I asked, looking at Nova.
She glanced over her shoulder. “Now? We stay alert. It made itself known, which means it wanted you to feel it. That isn’t a mistake.”
Stella muttered, “Neither is a damn lightshow.”
Nova poured tea into mismatched mugs. The sound of it filled the quiet between us.
My mom took hers with both hands. “You said it wasn’t a spirit?”
“No,” Nova said. “Not in the way we usually mean.”
“Then what is it?”
Nova didn’t answer right away. She passed the tea around, then sat beside the candle, her eyes flicking toward the still-warm stones we’d used during the reading.
She sipped. Then, quietly, “Something waking.”
The room went still again.
That word.
Waking.
Not evil. Not good. Just… rising. Becoming aware. Looking back.
“I don’t think it’s done with you,” Nova said softly, her eyes meeting mine.
I didn’t think it was either.
The room stopped buzzing like a storm had just swept through, and Nova stood up. No explanation, no dramatic flair—just stood, eyes distant, body moving like her thoughts were already ten steps ahead of the rest of us.
She crossed to the tallest bookshelf in the back, which looked like it hadn’t been touched in years. Most of the books there were wrapped in string or bundled in faded cloth, the spines blank or marked only with symbols that meant nothing to me. She paused, reached high and pulled down one heavy volume with both hands. It let out a soft groan as she moved it, the sound of something ancient remembering it had a voice.
She brought it to the table and set it down gently, like she’d just unearthed someone’s bones and wasn’t entirely sure they wouldn’t rattle.
None of us spoke.
Nova opened the cover, her fingers brushing over the first page. The parchment was thick, yellowed at the edges, and the script was tiny and precise. Some pages were dense with ink, while others had diagrams with spindly circles, nested runes, and strange illustrations that reminded me more of dreams than anything I’d ever studied.
Stella let out a small breath behind me. “What even is that one?”
Nova didn’t look up. “A ledger of crossings and sightings,” she said. “The kinds most seers never speak aloud. I’ve only opened it once before.”
I stayed quiet, my eyes tracking her as she flipped carefully through the book, page after page. Her fingertips hovered just above the vellum, as if touching the wrong word might spark something off.
“This is where I look,” she murmured, more to herself than anyone else. “When nothing else fits.”
That didn’t ease the knot forming in my chest.
We waited.
My mother sat on the edge of the low bench, her tea cooling between her palms. Stella paced once, then stopped. She didn’t even fill the silence with a joke this time.
Nova turned another page.
Then another.
She paused.
Leant in.
Her eyes scanned a paragraph so quickly I barely saw her blink. Her expression didn’t change. It just grew sharper. More focused.
She kept reading. Quiet. Still.
Then she stopped again.
This time, her hand lowered to the page, fingers resting gently on a crooked line near the bottom.
Her lips parted like she meant to say something, but nothing came out.
My stomach dropped.
“You found something,” I said.
Nova’s eyes flicked to mine, then back to the book.
“I’m not sure,” she murmured.
But I could see it. Something had shifted in her. A deep stillness, like the world had tilted a little and she was waiting for it to settle.
She read the passage again.
And again.
Then turned the page.
She didn’t speak for a long time.
“Nova?” I stepped closer, heart thudding. “What is it?”
She looked up.
And I saw something in her face I’d never seen before. Not fear. Not wonder. Something heavier. Something that felt… old. Like she’d just remembered a secret she’d promised never to speak aloud.
She opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Ran her hand down the edge of the page and stared at the text like it might change if she just looked hard enough.
“Is it dangerous?” I asked.
She didn’t answer.
“Is it coming back?”
Still nothing.
Finally, she whispered, “It’s not what I thought it was.”
That made Stella shift uncomfortably beside the candle. “So what is it, then?”
Nova didn’t take her eyes off the page. Her voice came low, barely above the rustling of the paper.
“I don’t know how to explain it yet.”
I waited for more, but she didn’t say anything else. Just closed the book with slow, deliberate care and rested her hand on the worn cover like she was keeping something inside.
“You’re not telling me everything,” I said.
Her eyes met mine. Tired. Steady.
“No,” she said softly. “Not yet.”
Nova didn’t need to say anything else. Not right away. I could already see the answer hanging behind her eyes, like a curtain half-drawn over something that had waited a long time to be noticed again.
She didn’t blink, not at first. Just looked at me in that way she does, still, quiet, patient like a kettle just before it boils.
I stepped closer to the table, my hands tightening around the edge, heart pushing against my ribs in slow, steady thumps.
“Nova?”
And then, finally, a slow smile crept across her lips. Not one of amusement or relief. It was something else. Something heavier. Wistful, maybe. Worn.
She shook her head faintly and breathed like she’d been holding it for years.
“They haven’t roamed our streets in over forty years.”
I blinked.
“What?”
Her eyes dropped to the book again, but only for a second. Then she looked back at me, face unreadable.
My mouth opened, but the words didn’t come all at once. They tumbled out in pieces, as my thoughts caught up.
“You’re saying…” I trailed off, jaw slowly lowering. “You think it’s a fae?”
The weight of the word filled the room.
Nova didn’t nod. She didn’t need to.
I straightened up, still clutching the edge of the table.
“But—fae haven’t been seen since the curse. Since the Divide.”
“They’re one of the few who can walk between plains,” Nova said softly. “Slip through cracks in places where others only see walls.”
I swallowed. My mind reeled back to the figure in the Butterfly Ward—the shimmering, fleeting form, the whisper that might’ve been my name. I remembered the sensation that followed. Not fear. Not malice. Just something watching, cautious, holding its breath.
“You said it felt timid,” I murmured. “Possibly shy.”
Nova tilted her head. “It didn’t come to flaunt itself. That much I’m sure of.”
I nodded slowly, the pieces falling into place. “So it’s not here to cause harm. It’s here to… test us.”
“Maybe.”
“To see if the Academy is safe again,” I whispered. “If those within it, if I, might be hostile.”
Nova’s gaze dropped, thoughtful. “When the curse took hold and the Wards fractured, the fae were the first to disappear.”
“They were seen as deserters,” I said. “People still talk about it in whispers, like some old betrayal that never got washed out of the stone.”
Nova met my eyes again. “Maybe it’s not here to reopen old wounds. Maybe it’s here to see if anything’s changed.”
Maybe we had.