Chapter Twenty-Seven
I watched the sprites move around the cauldrons, their small bodies weaving strands of flame that curved and folded like threads of glass. A flurry of activity arose as the sprites flittered faster, and I tried to calculate what was happening.
A thin distortion caught my eye at the rim of the third cauldron. It slid between the etched runes and disappeared.
Someone was drawing from it.
I watched the flame sprites scurry between cauldrons.
They knew the Flame Ward was under attack and were harvesting the memories to keep them safe.
The sprites worked carefully, pulling heat and flame from the stored memories in slow, controlled increments. It almost looked like they were siphoning water from barrels. It was slow enough that nothing was lost, steady enough to keep things going.
My stomach tightened at the sight of it.
The thin thread pulsed once, tightening slightly, as if it knew I had noticed.
The sprites flared brighter in response. Their movements grew quicker as they tried to compensate.
“No,” I whispered.
I stepped closer to the cauldron. The heat grew stronger with every step, and when I laid my hand over the flame, warmth spread across my palm. The etched sigils trembled faintly beneath my touch, and the memory forge pulled again.
The sensation was stronger this time as the liquid flame inside the cauldron dimmed by the slightest shade, but something brushed the inside of my mind.
The reaction didn’t come from the cauldron itself. It came from whoever was guiding the probe.
The Priestess.
She didn’t announce herself. She didn’t have to. The precision of the touch made it clear enough.
She wasn’t trying to break the Ward.
She was studying it and drawing just enough power to see how the structure responded without forcing the Academy to fully defend itself.
And just as carefully, she was watching to see whether the sprites would notice…whether I would notice.
The realization sent a chill through me that had nothing to do with the heat in the room.
“She’s measuring,” I murmured.
The flame tightened again, so slightly I might have missed it if I hadn’t been watching.
For an instant, something brushed the back of my thoughts. It wasn’t a voice and it wasn’t quite a feeling either.
You see it.
The words never formed clearly, but the meaning settled in all the same.
You see what I’m doing.
I closed my eyes for a moment and drew in a slow breath, willing my pulse to steady despite the heat burning beneath my skin.
I can do far more.
My eyes opened, and I followed the distorted line. It didn’t stretch beyond the Ward or anchor somewhere outside it. Instead, it curved inward, slipping into the deeper seam where the Academy’s magic joined the perimeter defenses.
She wasn’t just siphoning heat.
She was mapping the structure.
The sprites flared brighter as they darted around the cauldrons, their movements quick and agitated now.
“Easy,” I said quietly. “We’ve got this.”
I stepped around the cauldron and followed the thin line of distortion to where it disappeared into the seam of the floor. The stone there gave off a faint pulse, something most people would never notice. But the Academy’s mark burned along my skin, and it made the glow impossible to miss.
My birthmark flared again, sharper this time, like it was pushing me forward.
I slowed for a moment.
Getting closer meant stepping directly into whatever loop the Priestess had created. The cauldron wasn’t just pulling power. It was a connection. If I touched it, she would feel that, but then again, she already knew I was here.
That had been clear the moment the cauldron tightened under my gaze. She was waiting now, watching to see what I would do next.
The thread pulled again, a little stronger this time, and something in that movement felt almost… impatient.
She hadn’t been surprised when the Academy woke. If anything, it felt as though she had been counting on it.
Perhaps waiting so she could infiltrate when our thoughts were elsewhere.
Which meant this wasn’t a reaction to the Academy stirring.
It was part of a larger plan.
Behind me, the memory cauldrons flickered again. One of the sprites spun wildly for a second before catching itself, its glow noticeably dimmer than before. The others darted around it, their movements sharp and restless as they tried to keep the heat balanced.
My jaw tightened.
“You don’t get to feed off this,” I muttered.
I felt a pulse of energy stutter and I smiled.
“No more.” I didn’t raise my voice. There was no point in that. The words were simply a fact.
I drew in a slow breath and let my thoughts settle. Fighting the Priestess head-on would only give her exactly what she wanted. She had slipped her magic into a seam, but seams were where my magic worked best.
Hedge Witch magic had never been about overpowering anything. It lived in boundaries and in the moment when a path narrowed, when a gate closed, when a line that had been crossed was quietly restored.
I felt anger rolling off her entry point. She hadn’t expected me to find her.
Satisfaction wove through me as I thought about my quiet magic and followed the thread through the Flame Ward.
The anger in her magic led me straight to its source.
Her.
I felt her shape, but I didn’t picture the Priestess. I pictured my grandmother.
Mariselle.
A woman no better or worse than me,
“Not this way, grandmother,” I murmured.
The cauldron jerked sharply, and for a moment something pushed back from the other side, a flash of cold resistance that made my vision blur at the edges.
As I tightened the boundary, the magic surged through my hands in a way I’d never felt before—warm and steady, humming through my fingertips.
The Academy answered the pull, its strength rising through the Ward and into me until the seam closed beneath my hands, and my grandmother’s presence was pushed cleanly out.
I watched the last of the seam close completely, and the sprites burst into brighter motion around the cauldrons, scattering sparks through the air as the pressure lifted.
I wanted to shout in celebration as excitement ran through me, but then I glanced around the Flame Ward as the sprites went on about their business as if we hadn’t just stopped Shadowick from digging into our memory forge.
It was a quiet reminder about how little each action mattered when everyone had a part to play.
I smiled and turned around, walking nearly to the stairwell when I felt a tug at the hem of my sleeve.
It was gentle, barely a pull at all, but it brought my attention down to a small sprite.
She was smaller than the others. Her flame-body glowed softer, but her eyes were bright.
“What is it?” I whispered, because something about the place demanded quiet, the way a library does. Even the air seemed to listen.
The sprite lifted one tiny hand and pointed—not toward the cauldrons I’d seen, not toward the tucked-away alcove where Celeste’s memories now rested, but toward a shadowed corner I would have sworn hadn’t existed five minutes ago.
A nook under a window.
And inside that nook, on a low iron stand, burned a flame.
A small one.
And it was blue, but this blue was deep and cold at the edges,
I stopped so abruptly that my boot scuffed the floor.
Every part of me that had learned magic the hard way, by stumbling into it, by getting burned, by losing things I cared about, told me that blue flame meant old power, old magic.
“What is that?”
The sprite fluttered in a small circle, then pointed again, more insistently, then lifted both hands and made a motion like stirring the air.
Circling.
Circling.
I stepped closer, and the heat from the blue flame didn’t hit me the way the others did. It didn’t warm my skin, but it pressed against my mind.
I leaned in, peering in and expecting to see something immediately, and at first, I saw nothing but the slow curl of fire and the dark metal beneath it.
But as the small sprite lifted her hands again, she began the circling motion, slower this time, as though coaxing the flame into remembering.
I felt the air change and watched as the blue fire sharpened. A faint shimmer spread across it like oil on water. The bowl seemed to deepen, as if it held more space than it should.
And then, like fog parting, an image emerged.
It wasn’t immediately clear. It felt like I was looking through a rain-streaked window, and I held my breath.
And then, finally, two figures stood in a dim place. Their outlines were indistinct, but their voices carried through the flame as if the memory cared more about sound than sight.
“…he’s back again,” one voice said.
It wasn’t Nova. It wasn’t Ardetia. It wasn’t Keegan. It wasn’t my father. It was someone I didn’t recognize. Perhaps older, perhaps, but not ancient.
“The boy?” another voice asked.
The words sent a chill through me.
“The boy,” the first voice repeated. In the flame, the blurred figure shifted slightly, turning as though someone had just stepped into a doorway behind them.
I leaned closer to the flame, bracing my hands on my knees to steady myself.
The second voice muttered something sharp under their breath. “He came from Shadowick.”
At the mention of Shadowick, the blue flame jumped. For a moment, the image sharpened enough that I could see a stone path and the dark line of trees beyond it.
My stomach turned.
“He keeps coming back,” the first voice said, quieter now. “Stands there at the edge like he thinks the Ward might change its mind.”
I heard laughter, followed by a soft sound, coming through the flame, and for a single second, the image sharpened again.
A boy.
Not a man.
It wasn’t the Gideon I knew with his sharp arrogance and his dark, dangerous confidence. It wasn’t the Gideon with his taunting smile and his eyes that always looked like they were calculating the fastest way to make someone hurt.