Chapter Twenty-Nine
You can’t mend what I tore long ago. I thought you knew that, grandchild.
The Priestess’s voice carried the faintest amusement, like she was watching from somewhere comfortable, sipping tea while my life burned around me. It was just a game to her, always had been.
Another thought tried to force its way in from my grandmother, but I pushed it away as best I could, squinting my eyes closed.
Keegan shifted beside me as if he sensed the change in my posture.
“Maeve?” he said low, only for me.
I forced a breath through my nose, anchored myself in the smell of pumpkins and fall air and Keegan’s presence.
The whisper pressed again, light but insistent.
This is what you’re protecting. This is what you’d die for? Bickering townsfolk? They would not do the same for you.
Anger flared so fast it startled me.
It wasn’t directed at the townspeople.
It was at her…at the audacity of her trying to use my fear as if it were her own tool.
I clenched my fingers until my nails dug into my palm.
“You don’t get to narrate my village,” I said quietly.
A few heads turned, confused. They thought I was talking to them.
Keegan’s gaze flicked sharply to mine, as if he heard something else in my tone.
I raised my voice so it would carry over the crowd.
“You want to know where they were when Stonewick needed them?” I said, looking first at the red-faced man, then at the orc standing with his hands open. “You want to talk about who left first, who shut the door, who decided safety meant everyone acting the same?”
A murmur moved through the crowd—uneasy, defensive.
“Not everyone is as strong as Keegan. He stayed while his family left him.” I scanned the crowd, and my gaze found my dad and the Silver Wolf. “Imagine how that must have felt. Imagine what that did to him.”
More murmurs.
“My mother wanted to save me, so she fled. Does that make her a bad person? Does it make me less than?” I lifted my brows as the words settled.
“But more importantly, ask yourselves who benefits from us reliving that question tonight? Is this where magic should lead us?”
The apron woman blinked. “What are you saying?”
I swallowed hard, and the memory of my mother’s letter pressed against my ribs like a weight, and her words, To the priestess, it means control.
“Something is happening to the Wards. There’s pressure.
There’s testing. There’s manipulation. The Priestess is trying to gain control through division, and it wouldn’t be the first time.
We have to ask ourselves, what does magic mean?
To each of us, it’s different, but I bet not one of us wants it to mean that Stonewick falls into Shadowick’s clutches. ”
Ardetia’s expression softened. Bella’s eyes narrowed, predator-sharp.
“And there’s a reason this is all boiling up now. Fear travels fast. Faster than the truth. And someone out there knows exactly how to stir it.”
The younger shifter stared at me, chest rising and falling. “Are you saying this is… magic?”
“Shadow magic, and I’m not saying your anger can’t be real. You feel that, and it’s your right. But at the moment, it’s being twisted into something more.”
For a moment, the whole street went quiet.
Then a voice rose from farther back in the crowd, rough and shaking.
“My son got sick during the curse. My husband and I asked for help, but it wasn’t anything Stonewick could provide, so we left.
” The woman’s words faltered before she forced them out again.
“It wasn’t to abandon what we came from.
It was about survival, but this has always been our home.
It’s why we’re back now.” Her voice cracked on the last word.
The sound landed in the street like a stone dropped in still water.
The words hung in the air.
People shifted where they stood, the certainty in the crowd starting to fray at the edges.
The orc with the open hands looked down, his jaw tightening before he spoke.
“We weren’t here because,” he said quietly. “We weren’t allowed to be.”
The red-faced man gave a sharp laugh. “Not allowed by who? Us? Some invisible council?”
Before anyone else could answer, Keegan stepped forward.
He didn’t raise his voice, but it carried anyway.
“Because of our differences. The curse made sure to divide us,” he said. “The fear multiplied, and each decision we thought would help unite Stonewick, tore it apart.” He glanced across the crowd. “But the curse is over. Don’t let it live on.”
Several groups nodded, and he continued.
“Some of those choices made sense at the time,” he added. “But they don’t look the same now.”
No one spoke for a moment. The street fell still around us.
Keegan wasn’t just another shifter in their eyes. He ran the inn where half the town gathered on bad nights and good ones, and people had gotten used to listening when he spoke.
So when the words left his mouth, the crowd didn’t interrupt. They stood there with it.
Then the Priestess brushed against my thoughts again.
Listen to them. They want someone to blame. Don’t let that be you.
My birthmark flared hot against my hip.
No more.
I closed my eyes and reached for the quiet place inside me where the edges of things reside.
The feeling I get when I speak with Celeste, and the peace that comes over me, or when I can’t stop giggling because Twobble stole a scone.
I dug deep for the instant I felt what it meant to push back on thoughts, to wipe them clean away and begin again.
And with that, something answered.
The pressure in my head surged once, angry and sharp, but I held that line the way you hold a gate against someone pushing from the other side.
Then the pressure slipped.
She was gone.
The feeling didn’t last long. In its place came the uneasy sense that someone was watching.
I turned my gaze toward the sensation, then over to Ardetia across the street.
Her eyes shifted in the same direction mine had gone.
She stopped mid-step, and our gazes met for a second. I knew she’d seen it too.
But the shadow was gone, snuffed out as suddenly as a candle in a draft.
The quiet around us didn’t survive it. Voices started up again—first a few murmurs, then louder as people talked over one another and the tension crept back in.
I stood there in the middle of it, the realization settling heavily in my stomach.
This ruckus wasn’t just a side effect.
It was a test.
A probe.
The Priestess wasn’t only pressing the Wards from the outside. She was pressing us from the inside, pushing on the weak seams of old resentments to see where we would split.
“The Priestess managed to probe a bit of the Flame Ward.”
“Was anything stolen?” he asked, searching my gaze.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I can’t be certain, but the sprites were on it before I understood what was happening.”
His jaw tensed, and he nodded.
I debated about telling him about Gideon, but the crowd was unsettled, and now wasn’t the time.
Keegan leaned closer to me, his voice a quiet thread in the chaos.
“Maeve,” Keegan said quietly. “We need to move them.”
I nodded, but my attention kept drifting back to where that shadow had been. The birthmark at my hip was still throbbing, a steady pulse that didn’t feel like it belonged to me.
Twobble tipped his head back to look at me, and Skonk shifted beside him, his ears twitching as though he were trying to catch a sound the rest of us couldn’t hear.
Ardetia stepped in beside me. When she spoke, her voice was quiet enough that only we could hear it.
“Maeve. That flicker—”
“I saw it,” I said under my breath.
Something in her expression darkened. “Then she’s closer than she should be.”
The words settled in my chest in a way I didn’t like.
“It doesn’t feel like her…”
She cocked her head and nodded. “No?”
I shook my head.
“I'll handle the crowd,” Keegan said.
Around us, the crowd was starting to move again, people talking over each other, fear and anger tangling together until it felt like the whole street was winding itself tighter.
I drew in a breath and raised my voice.
“Everyone,” I called. “Listen to me. I’m asking you for one thing tonight. Not forgiveness. Not friendship. And not some sudden rewriting of the past. Believe me, I get it.”
That caught a few of them off guard. I saw it in the way shoulders eased, and people blinked like they hadn’t expected honesty.
“I’m asking you to give us one night,” I continued. “One night where we don’t tear each other apart in the street while something else is busy trying to tear down our Wards. This is the work of the Priestess. She’s bringing us together so she can tear us apart.”
A shape at the far end of the street, near the bend that led toward the bridge out of town.
Tall. Cloaked. Still.
Watching.
My heart slammed against my ribs.
Gideon?
The crowd didn’t seem to notice—too busy dispersing, too caught in their own adrenaline.
But Keegan went rigid beside me.
Ardetia’s head snapped up.
Bella’s posture shifted, fox-alert.
Twobble sucked in a breath like he’d swallowed a pebble.
And the shape lifted one hand, slow as a greeting.
Not to the crowd.
To me.
We all saw it.
“Maeve…” Keegan began.
“It’s fine. It will be fine.”
But then something wonderful happened. Stella stepped out from the direction of her tea shop, with Lady Limora at her side, and behind them a quiet procession of vampires I recognized from countless afternoons spent over chipped teacups and honey scones.
Their movements were unhurried, almost regal, even under sunlit tension.
Each of them carried trays full of porcelain cups, carrying the smell of chamomile, lavender, and something warm and spicy, maybe cardamom, out into the street.
For a second, the simple sight of it nearly broke me.
Stella didn’t shout for attention. She never did. She just walked forward until the sunlight caught the silver in her hair and people started noticing her.
“Darlings,” she said mildly, “if you keep shouting like this, you’ll all lose your voices before midnight. At the very least, drink something while you argue about the fate of the world.”
A few surprised laughs slipped through the crowd.
Lady Limora stepped up beside her with a tray balanced neatly in both hands. She offered a cup to one of the Stonewick residents whose hands were still shaking.
“Tea,” she said gently. “It won’t fix everything, but it might help you think more clearly.”
Some hands reached out immediately, grateful, embarrassed, shaken. Steam warmed cold fingers. Cups clinked faintly as people accepted them like lifelines.
Others recoiled.
One man scoffed loudly. “Oh, perfect. Now the vampires are officiating?”
“When did you ever care who served you tea?” Stella’s scarlet lips smiled.
“But I have officiated worse,” she replied mildly. “And this feels rather tame by comparison.”
But her eyes, ancient and knowing, flicked briefly to mine.
And in that glance, I saw the weight.
She had done this before.
She had stood in streets that turned suspicious. She had watched neighbors turn wary. She had offered comfort only to be eyed as if she were the contagion.
My heart felt suddenly too heavy for my ribs.
Was this how it had happened?
Not with a dramatic explosion of violence. Not with a villain twirling her cloak in the town square.
But like this…
With fear curdling into blame.
With kindness treated like interference.
With old magical folk quietly stepping forward to soothe, while being subtly reminded they were not entirely trusted.
Stella moved through the crowd with that same unshakable grace, offering cups, murmuring small reassurances.
“Breathe, love.”
A young shifter hesitated before accepting a cup from Lady Limora. An orc did the same. Their fingers brushed porcelain at the same time, and both pulled back awkwardly.
Stella noticed. Of course she did.
“See?” she said lightly. “Already sharing.”
But the jeers hadn’t gone unnoticed.
A few residents stood back, arms crossed, watching the vampires as if waiting for proof that they were the true threat.
And my chest ached because I recognized that posture.
Suspicion dressed up as righteousness.
I swallowed hard and looked at Stella, at the quiet way she continued pouring comfort into cracked places without demanding gratitude.
She had always united. Always soothed. Always held space when no one else wanted to.
And now, watching the way a few glances hardened toward her, I felt the sharpest question settle into me:
Was this how it began all those years ago?
Not with war.
But with whispers?