Chapter Ten
There was still no sign of Grandma Elira or Miora, but the cottage still felt occupied.
Keegan carried two mugs into the living room and set them down on the low table. The tea smelled like chamomile and something darker beneath it.
He sat across from me, close enough that our knees nearly touched, and he leaned forward with his forearms on his thighs, hands loose. His posture said relaxed. His eyes said he absolutely wasn’t.
“So,” he said softly. “What’s happening in that head of yours?”
"Nothing," I lied.
He lifted his brows.
"I can't decide if I'm getting better at this," I said, "or if I'm just getting used to the feeling of the floor shifting under me."
Keegan's gaze stayed steady. "Both can be true."
"That's not comforting."
"It's honest."
I stared at my mug. The tea trembled with the smallest movement of my hands.
"I keep thinking about her," I admitted. "And the fact that she's not even here."
Keegan's jaw tightened. Almost nothing. Like stone setting.
"The Priestess," he said.
I nodded. Saying the title felt like tapping a glass and finding a crack, and pretty soon she’d flood the cottage.
"She's everywhere," I murmured. "In the way the orcs talk about their land. In the wolves pressing toward the Wards. In the people arriving and unpacking, like Stonewick is the last solid thing left."
Keegan didn’t interrupt. He never tried to patch over my fear with reassurances. It was one of the reasons I trusted him to sit in the dark with me.
“I hate that she can do this without lifting a hand,” I continued. “She destabilizes things, and then she waits for us to do what she expects.”
“What do you think she expects?” he asked.
The fire popped softly. Somewhere in the rafters, the cottage creaked like it was thinking.
I swallowed. “I don’t know. Maybe she thinks I’ll be able to end it since I’m blood.”
Keegan’s eyes sharpened. “How.”
The word was simple, but the question wasn’t.
I held my breath for a moment because even saying it felt like giving it shape.
“What if I go to her when she’s least expecting it…soon,” I said quietly. “Walk straight into her compound and end this.”
The cottage didn’t flinch, but Keegan did.
“No,” he said. One syllable.
I lifted my chin because stubbornness had kept me alive long before magic ever did. “We don’t know where Gideon is. We don’t know what she’s planning next. We don’t know what she thinks I am.”
Keegan leaned forward just a fraction, eyes dark. “We do know what she wants.”
“Control,” I said.
“Leverage,” he corrected softly, and the difference mattered. “Control comes after.”
“And how are the wolves doing? The mom and pups?” I knew to steer the conversation in a different direction.
“Thanks to the medicine, they’ll be fine.”
I let out a breath in relief. “Any thoughts why Caleb didn’t mention this?”
“Maybe he didn’t know or didn’t want it to appear that the shifters were a burden or couldn’t handle this.” Keegan twisted his lips into a deep scowl. “Don’t forget what these packs have been used to doing for centuries.”
“They turn their backs on the ones who look weak, or they think are different.”
“It’s a hard thing to break, apparently.” Keegan shrugged. “He probably thinks we’d second-guess ourselves about letting them stay if they come with illness or other drains on the system.”
I shook my head, realizing how deeply the Hunger Path etched its mark.
“Sad.”
Keegan nodded in agreement.
“It feels cowardly not to confront her,” I admitted. “To keep waiting while she’s pulling strings, and meanwhile we have sick pups and mothers.”
Keegan’s expression shifted into something like pain, quick and restrained, before it smoothed.
“It’s not cowardly to refuse a trap,” he said. “It’s discipline.”
“I’m tired of discipline,” I muttered.
That earned me the smallest, most infuriating curve of his mouth. “I know.”
“I can feel her,” I said, quieter now. “I don’t mean like a presence in the room, but like… like a hand hovering over a candle. Waiting to decide if she’ll snuff it or let it burn.”
Keegan’s gaze dropped to my hip for a heartbeat, like he knew where the pulse lived without me having to point it out. He lifted his eyes back to mine.
“You’re not a candle,” he said. “Nobody’s going to eliminate your flame.”
“That’s poetic.”
“That’s fact.” He shook his head and glanced around the cottage as if he were waiting for Elira or Miora to appear, as I exhaled. The breath came out shaky, and he smiled at me, touching my knee.
“I keep thinking,” I said, “if I went to her, maybe I could at least see the shape of her plan. Learn what she’s hiding. I could understand why Gideon seemed so certain there was something in Stonewick that belonged to him.”
Keegan’s shoulders tightened. “You don’t get answers from someone like her. You get dungeons or worse.”
“You’re afraid for me.”
Keegan’s gaze held mine without flinching. “Yes.”
“I’m afraid,” he continued, voice quieter now, “because I know what she does with people who walk into her reach believing they can bargain. You even had to rescue Gideon from her compound, and you want to show up there…what, tonight? Bargain a little?”
Keegan didn’t toss that word around. If he said afraid, he meant it.
I swallowed. “I wouldn’t bargain.”
“You don’t have to,” he said. “She’ll bargain for you.”
The fire cracked again, and the cottage’s warmth suddenly didn’t feel like enough.
I closed my eyes, imagining the aftermath when it turned out my quick decisiveness was exactly what she’d been waiting for.
Keegan reached for my hand then. His fingers threaded through mine, and he studied me.
“You don’t have to prove anything,” he said softly. “Not to her. Not to Stonewick. Not to anyone. Don’t lose sight of that. She’s been haunting Stonewick longer than any of us has been alive. There’s no rush.”
“I’m not trying to prove anything,” I whispered.
“You are. You keep thinking that if you can meet the threat head-on, you can keep everyone safe. That you can stop the Priestess just by showing up.”
My throat tightened, and I looked up at him. “Can’t I?”
Keegan’s eyes softened, and I felt a ripple of cold air through the cottage.
“You don’t want to walk into the mouth of the very thing that wants to swallow you, even if it’s your grandmother.”
I nodded, listening to his words and truly hearing them.
“I know how much is at stake,” he continued. “The Academy. The town. Your students. Your father. The Wards. All of it.” His voice dipped. “And I know you’d trade yourself for all of them without thinking.”
I opened my mouth to deny it, then stopped because we both knew it was true.
Keegan’s jaw flexed, and when he spoke again, there was something rawer under the steadiness.
“And selfishly,” he said, “I can’t bear it.”
I stared at him, feeling tears prick my eyes. “Keegan…”
He didn’t look away. “I can’t bear to think of you in her hands. I can’t bear to think of you thinking you’re doing the right thing and realizing too late you walked into a trap.” His voice roughened just slightly. “I can’t bear losing you.”
My chest ached, fluttered, and twisted into something I hadn’t felt for so long.
Needed.
“So, we play smart.”
“Yes,” he said immediately. “We play together, and we don’t give her the piece she wants most.”
I swallowed. “And if she comes here?”
Keegan’s gaze sharpened again, the softness pulling back into something protective.
“Then she finds out Stonewick doesn’t fold just because she stares at it or raises her wand.”
I squeezed his hand once, and it felt like a promise I could keep.
“I hate that she makes me feel like every choice is a trap,” I admitted.
Keegan’s thumb stilled on my knuckles. “That’s her art. Making the world feel smaller until her hand seems like the only shelter.”
My birthmark warmed into a low, steady pulse.
I looked at the fire, then at the kettle in the kitchen, where it had already cooled slightly because we’d forgotten it existed.
I brought my eyes back to Keegan, and his gaze held mine a beat longer than it needed to, just long enough for that familiar flutter to spark under my ribs.
His mouth softened into the smallest smile, the one he gave when he was trying to make the world gentler for me without pretending it was.
“We should reheat the tea,” he said.
“Reheating tea is a crime,” I told him automatically.
He huffed something like laughter. “So is walking into a Priestess’s compound alone.”
I watched him walk into the kitchen to remake our tea…this man who carried violence in his bones and tenderness in his hands, who could become a wolf and still somehow feel more human than most humans I’d known.
Maybe that was the whole point.
Keegan brought the mugs back warmer this time, and when he sat again, he held my hand and didn’t let go.
“Tomorrow,” he said quietly, “we plan. We talk to the people we trust. We gather what we know. We make her work for every inch.”
I nodded, eyes on the steam curling up from the mug.
“And tonight?” I asked.
He looked at me, and something in his gaze softened again, careful and real.
“Tonight,” he said, “we let the cottage hold you for a few hours. We rest. We listen. And we don’t hand her a victory just because you’re tired.”
I stared at him, and the flutter in my chest steadied into something stronger.
“Okay,” I whispered.
The cottage had settled around us fully now.
The fire in the hearth burned low but steady, light flickering over the old beams and the shelves lined with jars and bundled herbs.
Somewhere in the walls, the faintest whisper of magic hummed.
It wasn’t the Academy’s wide, watchful awareness, but something older and smaller.
A hearth-keeper kind of magic. A stay-awhile magic.
It wrapped around my shoulders without asking.
Keegan leaned back into the couch, and I rested my head against his shoulder.
“We’ll speak to Nova in the morning,” he said. “And Karvey again. Caleb.”
I nodded. “And the orcs. We need to compare what they’re sensing in the stone.”
“We will.”
I stared into the fire, listening to the quiet crackle of wood, the small pop of sap. My body was tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. It was the exhaustion of holding steady for other people, of being the hinge.
Keegan’s thumb traced a slow line over my knuckles.
“You don’t have to carry it alone,” he murmured.
“I know.”
I did. I knew, but knowing and feeling are two entirely different creatures.
I turned toward him, and this time I didn’t look away when I caught his eyes on me. They were darker in the firelight, steady and searching like he was waiting for me to flinch first.
“I meant what I said,” I told him quietly. “About not giving her space in every thought.”
He nodded. “Good.”
“But that doesn’t mean she’s not there,” I added.
“She’s there,” he agreed. “She just doesn’t get to drive.”
A small breath of laughter escaped me. “You and your metaphors.”
He shrugged slightly. “You started it.”
The quiet stretched, but it wasn’t strained. It felt like the moment before a decision.
He shifted closer, slowly, like he was giving me every opportunity to stop him. His hand slid from mine to my waist, warm through the fabric of my shirt.
I could feel the heat of him even before he touched me fully. The space between us thinned until it barely existed at all.
And then he kissed me.
I kissed him back, but he pulled away.
“You’re still shaking,” he said softly.
“I am not.”
He arched a brow.
“Maybe a little,” I conceded.
His hand moved higher, brushing the side of my ribs, then up to cup my jaw gently, and he kissed me again.
His touch was careful, almost reverent, like he was memorizing the shape of my face.
“You don’t have to be brave in here,” he murmured.
The firelight flickered across his cheekbones, caught in the faint scar near his temple, and softened the intensity in his eyes into something warmer.
“You’re very distracting,” I whispered.
“That’s intentional.”
His mouth brushed mine, and the kiss deepened by degrees.
“I meant that, by the way.”
“Meant what?”
“About not losing you.” His eyes stayed fastened on mine as my pulse raced.
The words settled between us, heavier than the kiss had been.
I brushed my thumb along his jaw.
“You won’t,” I said softly.
He touched his knuckles against my cheek, and I smiled, reveling in his touch.
But that’s when I felt it.
A pull.
It was subtle at first, and I stilled.
“What is it?”
I glanced around the cottage.
“Do you feel that?”
He went still, senses shifting, wolf beneath the skin listening.
“Feel what?”
The pull strengthened to something insistent. It didn’t come from outside the cottage. It came from within it.
I felt it coming from below, underneath the floorboards.
My birthmark warmed in answer, a slow, deliberate pulse.
“The pedestal,” I whispered.
Keegan’s eyes sharpened instantly.
The cellar had held too many truths already.
The pedestal beneath the cottage was older than the Academy, older than most of Stonewick.
It didn’t call idly. The pedestal introduced me to a magical library that I couldn’t even dare to dream of until I entered it…
but it had shown it to me long before I knew it existed.
The fire crackled behind us, deceptively normal.
The pull tightened, a quiet, steady beckoning.
Keegan’s hand slid from my waist, but didn’t leave me entirely. He kept one palm at my back as he rose with me from the couch.
“Don’t go down there alone,” he said quietly.
I shrugged, unsure that I agreed with that.
The cottage seemed to inhale around us as we moved toward the trapdoor in the floor. The boards creaked under our steps, familiar and unchanged, which somehow made the pull feel sharper.
I knelt and pressed my hand flat against the wood.
The warmth beneath my skin answered.
It wasn’t frantic.
It was awake.
Keegan crouched beside me, close enough that his shoulder pressed against mine.
“We play smart,” he reminded me softly.
I glanced at him, at the steadiness in his gaze, at the man who had just kissed me like the world wasn’t ending, and then shifted without hesitation when it threatened to.
“Always do,” I teased.
The pull from below steadied into something unmistakable.
It was an invitation.
Or was it a warning?
Or both?
I closed my eyes briefly, letting the cottage settle around us, letting the warmth of the fire and the echo of his kiss linger just a second longer before whatever waited below demanded my full attention.
I needed to remind myself that patience wasn’t a weakness. It was what would hold our world together when we needed it most.