Chapter Forty-Six
The air had shifted since I’d gone down into the dragon wing—lighter, but charged. As if the sky itself had taken one long breath in, waiting to see what I’d do next. I went outside immediately, walked quickly, crunching over day-old snow, and found the path to the Butterfly Ward.
After I visited with the dragons, I didn’t return to the warmth of the hearth or the comfort of Nova’s voice. I needed to feel the land under me. I needed to see it—witness it.
The Butterfly Ward shimmered in the distance, pale and thin as breath.
It had always been beautiful. Even when the other Wards were fraying, it held…stubborn and bright, like it was laced with joy. I’d never questioned why. Never really asked what it took for that kind of magic to stay strong.
Until it started to fade.
I pulled my hand from my cloak pocket, cradling the red crystal in my palm. It was warm still, like it had soaked in sunlight from some unseen world and now shared it with me. I held it against my chest for a long moment before letting it rest in my hands again. The warmth soaked into my fingers. Up my wrists.
Into my throat like a warm cup of tea.
I stepped through the hedge, and the Ward came into view with the archway dulled, the air no longer dancing, the garden beyond brittle and quiet.
But the energy was still there.
Deep down.
Like an old song humming under the silence.
I crossed through slowly, letting my steps be deliberate. No rush. No fear. Just me, and the earth, and the promise of something more.
The moment I stepped beneath the arch, I felt it.
My birthmark pulsed once, then again, low and hot on my hip. Not pain but pressure. Recognition.
I stood in the center of the Ward, the very heart of the circle, and closed my eyes.
The crystal in my hands flared warm, and for a moment, I felt something… open, not outside me.
In me.
And into that space, I let the vision come.
I imagined it.
The Academy, not as it had been. Not as a place of secrets, sealed wings, and dusty halls, but alive.
Women from every walk of life moving through the corridors. Midlife women. Women with silver in their hair and fire in their eyes. Women who’d raised children and buried dreams, only to wake and realize there was still something calling to them. Women who had been told their best years were behind them, and who laughed in the face of that lie.
I saw them entering the courtyard with books under their arms and courage stitched into their sleeves. I saw laughter echoing off the library walls. Tears, too. Growth always brought both.
I saw classrooms full of women daring to learn again. To challenge, to change, to remember their names.
To reclaim them.
Magic passed between them not as something exclusive, ancient, or precious, but natural. As breath. As blood. As memory.
They were witches, artists, teachers, warriors, mothers, daughters, and everything in between.
And they were here.
The Academy was theirs .
And I was standing at its heart, holding the piece of fire a dragon had entrusted to me.
The burning in my side flared one last time, and then—just like that—
It stopped.
My eyes snapped open.
And the first thing I saw was the butterflies.
They hovered just in front of me, wings iridescent and trembling. Real. Not magic. Not conjured. Just alive.
One floated, then drifted gently down, landing on the back of my hand.
I didn’t breathe.
I couldn’t.
Its wings moved slowly, up and down, as if in rhythm with my heartbeat.
I looked around.
The Ward shimmered again.
The faintest pulse of gold moved through the stones.
The air stirred.
The garden hadn’t bloomed, but it wasn’t dead.
Blooms took time.
And I knew, with the kind of knowing that doesn’t require proof, that the Ward wasn’t dying. It had never been dying.
It had been waiting.
Waiting for me to believe.
Not in it.
In myself.
I looked down at the butterfly again, still perched on my hand like it had always belonged there.
And I remembered.
The vow.
That strange, quiet moment when I felt the Academy wrap itself around my promise.
I hadn’t known what it meant then.
But I did now.
The Academy hadn’t chosen me for power.
It had chosen me for connection.
It had asked me to see its broken pieces and choose to stay. In return, I showed mine.
To name what had been lost, and to rebuild anyway.
To gather the women who had been overlooked, set aside, dismissed…and remind them that they were still magic. That it wasn’t too late.
And in doing so, I would remember that I was too.
The butterfly lifted from my hand, spiraled once into the air, and vanished into the trees beyond the garden.
The crystal in my palm warmed again, quiet and steady.
I didn’t know what came next.
I didn’t know who the first student would be, when the doors would open, or what would rise from the egg in the dragon wing.
But I knew this.
I knew the Ward was healing.
I knew I wasn’t alone.
And I knew, for the first time, that the woman I had become, standing in the middle of a fading garden with magic in her hands, was the same woman who had once made tea for a man who never saw her.
She had been there all along.
She just needed a place to land.
And wings of her own.
The magic had always been inside me, but now I was brave enough to use it.
The shimmer returned slowly.
First, as a glint on the edges of the archway, a glimmer of gold that caught in the corners of my eyes and made me blink. Then the light thickened, wrapping around the stones like morning sun through mist. It wasn’t dramatic. Not a sudden flash or jolt of magic. It was gentler than that, like the Ward was waking up from a long, hard sleep.
I slowly turned in the circle's center, watching the air stir. The wind carried the scent of warm earth and something sweet I couldn’t place—maybe honeysuckle, maybe something older. The dry stalks in the garden shifted, and I swore I saw the faintest sheen of green at their roots.
The shimmer passed through me, warm as breath.
I stood still, my heart quiet, and the red crystal tucked close to my hip. And then, without warning or fanfare, I laughed.
It started as a chuckle, light and sudden, catching me off guard. Then it grew.
Because, honestly, it figured.
“I didn’t even cast anything,” I muttered, pressing a hand to my heart. “Not a single spell. No incantation. No formal circle. I didn’t even bring chalk.”
Just a dragon’s gift and a heart full of fear. A hedge witch walking through life with a vague idea of how magic should work and a bellyful of half-forgotten dreams.
“I’m terrible at spell work,” I added, laughing softly as I walked to the edge of the garden path. “Ask Nova. I always skip steps. I forget the names of herbs. I talk through the parts that are supposed to be silent.”
A butterfly swept past me, wings glowing in the now-restored shimmer of the ward.
“But I’m a hedge witch,” I said aloud, more to the garden than myself. “That’s the whole point, isn’t it?”
We weren’t meant to stay in lines. We weren’t meant to follow every rule or recite spells from a page. Hedge witches walked between. Between the wild and the warded, the sacred and the chaotic. Between doubt and belief. We imagined. We wandered. We stood in doorways and whispered to both sides of the veil.
And sometimes, just sometimes, we healed a garden without casting a single spell.
“I’m not meant to master magic,” I whispered, smiling as the shimmer swirled around my ankles, “I’m meant to connect it.”
The shimmer brightened at that, almost in agreement, and I gave a mock-curtsy to the air.
“Glad we’re all on the same page now.”
I lingered for a moment more, watching the light dance across the garden beds. The butterflies were back. The grass felt softer beneath my boots. The ache beneath my mark had vanished completely. In its place was a quiet strength, like the hum of the ground preparing for spring.
I tucked the red crystal back into my pocket, brushed my hair from my face, and turned toward the path.
The Academy waited.
And this time, I was ready to walk back in without hesitation.
The journey along the path felt different now. The shadows didn’t lean as long, the air didn’t clutch at my throat.The path that had once felt uncertain now felt like a thread, pulling me home.
Home.
I smiled to myself at that word.
The Academy hadn’t always felt that way. It had been a mystery, a challenge, a riddle I wasn’t sure I was meant to solve. But not anymore. It had chosen me. And, more importantly, I had chosen it.
When I reached the great doors, they opened without a creak.
And inside, I heard voices.
Nova. Bella. Elira. Even Ardetia’s distinct clipped tone threading through the air like punctuation. I stepped inside and was instantly wrapped in the scent of spices, ink, and old stone warmed by fire. The halls were alive again, magic fluttering in the sconces and rippling through the tapestries on the walls.
I let out a long breath.
They were waiting for me. Not to fix anything. Not to explain myself.
Just to be with me.
As we waited.
My people. My teachers. My odd, brilliant, magical mess of a found family.
I brushed my hands down my coat, pushed my hair back from my face, and walked toward the sound of their laughter.
I didn’t know what tomorrow would bring. I didn’t know when the first student would arrive, or what the dragons were preparing for, or what Gideon might try next.
But I did know this…
I wasn’t alone.
And I couldn’t wait to see what came next.