Chapter Twenty-Four
I didn’t go back to my room. Instead, I went to my office.
It had once belonged to women with firmer buns and stricter posture. Women who probably didn’t pace barefoot in the middle of the night thinking about dragons and traitorous grandmothers and mothers who walked into the Wilds to meet a Shadow Priestess.
But I’m sure they had their own set of problems to deal with, right? I couldn’t just be that unlucky where magic is threatening to unravel around us now and never before.
The corridor felt different after the dragon den. I didn’t feel so alone.
When I pushed open the office door, I expected darkness.
What I didn’t expect was the faint rustle of parchment and the unmistakable crinkle of candy wrappers.
I froze in the doorway.
Twobble sat in my chair triumphantly. He wasn’t perched or cautiously occupying the seat. He acted as if he had declared a small but decisive coup to gain access to my candy stash.
There were at least six brightly colored sweets scattered across my desk. One was already halfway to his mouth. Another was being unwrapped with surgical precision, and my neatly stacked papers were no longer stacked. They were all over the place.
He looked up, and we stared at each other.
“You weren’t supposed to see this,” he said. “I’m having a meltdown. Candy makes me feel…better. A lot is going on in these halls and outside of them. I just helped haul up some herbs from the UnderLoom, and I’m just…exhausted. The kitchen sprites chased me away, so here I am.”
Twobble immediately stuffed the candy into his mouth as if that would erase the evidence.
His cheeks puffed slightly before he swallowed.
I stepped closer to the desk toward the chaos and smiled.
“Do what you’ve got to do, buddy. If I thought candy would take away my worst nightmares, I’d do it too.”
His brows lifted. “Have you tried it?”
I chuckled and glanced at the scattered papers and realized they weren’t just in a mess because of the candy. He’d been perusing.
“What made you want to rifle through professor applications at midnight?”
He froze mid-reach toward another sweet, but then his shoulders, usually held with goblin confidence and mild theatrical indignation, sagged.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he admitted.
“Neither could I,” I said, nodding.
“I was scouring and offering administrative oversight. You know, just reviewing any possible staffing developments.”
“With candy?”
“With strategic sustenance.” He nodded. “It makes my mind quicker and my gaze more focused.”
I snickered and studied Twobble, his small feet dangling slightly, his hands faintly stained white with sugar dust.
“I’m sorry,” he said suddenly.
“For what?” My gaze met his.
“For not stopping her,” he said again.
The words landed gently but heavily.
“You’re not her keeper.”
“I feel like I could have done a better job of slowing her down,” he muttered.
“She would have found another way,” I replied softly.
He shook his head. “You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do. I watched the scene unfold. Nova showed me how to do it, and I watched my mother walk toward the Priestess.”
I waited until he looked at me.
“My mother has spent her entire life finding ways around obstacles,” I said. “She left Stonewick. She built a life somewhere else. She raised me without letting the Priestess’s shadow swallow our family. If she decided to go, Twobble… she was going to go no matter what any of us told her.”
He pressed his lips together.
“I don’t like it,” he said.
“Neither do I.”
Silence stretched between us, and finally, a smile touched his lips.
And I knew, he finally believed me.
“You’re getting a lot of good applicants.” He shoved a stack toward me and ate another piece of candy. “The Academy must have put out a call again.”
“One is a vampire witch who specializes in emotional alchemy. It sounds suspicious but intriguing.”
Despite everything, a small laugh escaped me.
“She attached three recommendation letters and a detailed curriculum plan,” he said solemnly. “Very thorough.”
The Academy must go on.
He didn’t say it exactly like that, but it hung in the air anyway.
“I thought things might… slow down,” I admitted.
“Ha. In Stonewick?”
I chuckled and nodded.
Twobble stared at me.
“No matter what Shadowick wants to throw at us, students still require education.”
I smiled and glanced at the vampire’s letter of recommendations.
“And the good news is that witches still believe in this place enough to send resumes.”
“Maybe they know everything that’s happening.”
Twobble shook his head. “Word spreads fast. They know. Between the orcs and shifters, not to mention us goblins, those applying know exactly what they’re volunteering for. If anything, instability makes people apply faster.”
“That’s a strange recruitment strategy,” I muttered.
“Hope to make something better sustains the interest.”
My brows lifted in surprise. “Hope?”
“Absolutely.” He licked his fingers and let out a deep breath. All the wrappers were empty.
“What does magic mean to you?” I asked suddenly.
Twobble blinked twice and cocked his head slightly. “Well, that’s… broad.”
“Come on. Try giving me an answer anyway.”
“Magic,” he said slowly, “means belonging.”
I didn’t expect that, but it fit absolutely perfectly for Twobble. He’d spent decades trying to get into the Academy, and it continually told him he didn’t fit in, didn’t belong. My chest squeezed at the thought of this little goblin trying again and again.
He continued, fiddling absentmindedly with a corner of parchment.
“I wasn’t allowed inside the Academy for years,” he said. “Blown miles away if I tried. Rejected by Wards that I didn’t even understand. But then you showed up, and the Academy… bent.”
He glanced around the office as if half-expecting the walls to comment.
“It means being seen as more than just a nuisance,” he finished quietly. “It meant everything to be accepted here.”
“Twobble,” I said gently, “you’re never a nuisance.”
He snorted. “Well, that’s debatable.”
“I mean it. If nothing else, you just know how to brighten my day.”
He shrugged, uncomfortable with sincerity. “Well, I do believe Skonk is quite a nuisance.”
I glanced down at his shoulder. “Where’s Cindy?”
“In the Butterfly Ward for now. She seemed pretty hungry. Every time I turned around, she was slipping off and finding herself a leaf.” He turned his gaze back to me. “What does magic mean to you?”
“To the Priestess,” I said slowly, “it means control.”
“But I asked what it means to you.”
“Well, to me…” I hesitated. “It means hope.”
He beamed. “Good answer for a headmistress.”
“Thank you. I rather liked that idea.”
“Do you think she’s in danger?” he asked quietly. “Your mom?”
I nodded as he absorbed the answer.
“But I don’t think she’s helpless,” I added.
He seemed to consider that, and pushed another stack of applications toward me.
“Look these over tomorrow,” he said, tapping the papers. “If the Priestess decides to escalate, we’ll need proper teachers in place.”
I raised an eyebrow. “We?”
“Obviously.”
“You’ve promoted yourself.”
He straightened his vest with exaggerated dignity. “Head of Morale and Confectionery Distribution.”
“That’s not a real position.”
“It is now.”
Despite everything sitting heavy on my chest, I felt a small warmth creep in.
Life didn’t stop just because the world tilted. The Academy still had students to teach and kitchens to run and apparently, goblins inventing new job titles.
I stepped around the desk and nudged him gently out of my chair.
Twobble hopped down without complaint and brushed sugar dust from the front of his vest.
When I sat, the chair didn’t feel quite the same as it had earlier that night. Before, it had felt like something placed on my shoulders.
Now it felt like something I had decided to carry.
My gaze drifted to the window. The grounds outside lay quiet. Most of the students had gone back to their dormitories, and the night had settled into that strange calm that sometimes follows a storm.
My mother walking through the Stone Ward rose unbidden in my thoughts.
The slow, steady breathing of the dragons.
The black dragon that had stepped forward and simply watched.
“Twobble,” I said.
“Yes?”
“If my mom thinks she’s saving us…”
Twobble didn’t interrupt. He just waited.
“…then I need to make sure there’s something here worth saving. I have to ensure the Academy continues to grow.”
For once, he didn’t crack a joke or try to soften the moment.
He simply nodded.
I looked back down at the applications spread across the desk.
Names of instructors who wanted to come teach here. Notes about new students arriving. Reports from the north about the orcs who had come seeking shelter.
Outside, the shifters were still holding the Ward.
Karvey and the other gargoyles would be somewhere on the roof.
And beneath the Academy, the dragons were breathing slowly in the dark.
Even Gideon, half in shadow, half in trouble of his own making, had stepped forward tonight when he didn’t have to.
I rested my hand on the stack of papers.
The Academy was still moving forward, whether the world made room for it or not.
And I wasn’t going to be the one who let it stop.
I picked up a pen and started making notes on the top application.
Halfway through the first line, something tugged at my attention.
It wasn’t in the office. Twobble hadn’t moved, and the room was quiet except for the scratch of the pen.
The sensation seemed to come from deeper in the building.
From the stone beneath the Academy.
A faint vibration ran through the floor, so slight I might have missed it if I hadn’t been sitting still. It felt less like a tremor and more like the building shifting its weight.
I paused, the pen hovering above the page.
“Do you feel that?” I asked.
Twobble tilted his head. “…Feel what?”
The vibration came again, just as faint as before.
Not strong. Not destructive.
But deliberate enough that it set my nerves on edge.
My pulse picked up.
The Academy didn’t move without a reason.
And whatever had stirred beneath it…
was awake now.