Chapter One #2
“Gideon always plays games,” I said. “We just don’t know if we’re playing checkers or the game of magical Life.”
Twobble perked. “Oh! Speaking of housekeeping. Karvey asked if he could put in for a materials allowance. Something about micro-fractures in the south roofline where goblins dance. I have no idea who he could mean.”
Stella pointed at him with a teaspoon. “No dancing on the ridges.”
“It was interpretive stomping.”
Ardetia drifted closer, eyes on Keegan as if weighing a stone before placing it in a river.
“How is your…tide?” she asked delicately.
He gave a humorless smile. “Less drown-y this morning.” Then to me, lower, “I meant to come earlier. I didn’t sleep.”
I didn’t say I knew. I’d felt him like a prickle along my birthmark when the moon set. Between Keegan restlessness, the Wards listening to me, and me pretending humans could drink enough tea to fix a wolf’s nightmares, I knew time wasn’t on our side.
I only touched his wrist, a brush of fingers, quick as a promise, but my skin warmed.
A breath moved through the room. Not wind. Not a draft. A breath. The pages of the ledgers near my elbow lifted and settled. The lamps thinned and then steadied. Every hair along my arms stood up.
Nova’s staff ticked once on stone. “There.”
Stella set down her cup. “Darling, if this is another Ward signal, I swear I will retire to a cape and the countryside.”
“It isn’t a signal,” Bella said, head tilted. Fox-listening. “The Ward is …listening back.”
The doors sighed. On the threshold tucked under the door lay an envelope I would’ve sworn wasn’t there a heartbeat ago. No footprints and no messenger hurrying away on the sidewalk. So no footprints meant either invisible feet or no feet at all. Neither option made me feel cozy either way.
Keegan picked it up and walked it over to me.
White vellum, edges singed. The smell of rosemary and something metallic, like old coins or newer blood. My name across the front in a hand that made me nauseous with recognition, even though I’d never seen it, made me feel the slant of family where I didn’t want it.
MAEVE.
Keegan straightened.
“Don’t,” he said, which made me open it, because that is the sort of headmistress I turned out to be.
One square of paper, thin, expensive, smug.
Bring what is mine. No charms. No tricks. No wolf. No dog. No fox. No fae. Come with your courage alone.
Below the demands, a sigil I’d seen once in a dream reflection and filed away in my memory shimmered. It must be the mark of the priestess, complete with a thorned circle.
What was hers? What could we possibly have that she thinks belongs to her?
“Subtle,” Stella muttered.
Twobble chewed his lip like it owed him rent. “I vote we ignore the letter, bake a pie, and pretend we never learned to read.”
Ardetia’s brows knit. “No invite for a fox? How rude.”
“No wolf,” Nova said, voice like the edge of a blade. “She names us because she fears us.”
“Or because she wants to hurt me by forbidding the people who keep me breathing,” I said, the words steady because the alternative was very not steady.
“She will not tell me what to do. I’m not going alone, and I’m certainly not going unprotected.
And no one tells us who will or won’t be in attendance.
I’m not treating Keegan like a bundle because some High Priestess snaps her fingers. ”
Keegan’s mouth twitched. “I prefer rugged parcel.”
“You’re a man,” Stella said briskly. “Not a package.”
“A very capable man,” I added.
He sobered.
“We’ll pick the ground, not them.” He tapped the letter with one blunt finger.
“You think Gideon is involved in this?”
Keegan’s eyes steadied on mine. “Why wouldn’t he be?”
Twobble peered at the signature sigil, then produced a candy from somewhere anatomically concerning and popped it into his mouth. “Well. Good news is, I have an idea you’ll hate.”
I laughed and shook my head. “I’m listening.”
“We let them think they get what they want,” he said, waggling his brows, “and we bring fake charms to explode into glitter, nausea, and the deep desire to apologize to their victims.”
Stella beamed. “Now that’s theater.”
Nova tilted her head, almost smiling. “You’re as good as any tonic I know.”
Twobble chewed, ignoring Nova’s subtle compliment. “I have to borrow Ember.”
“Ember is already in,” Ember said, and I nearly dropped my cup because she’d been in the corner for who knows how long, shimmering faint as rain on slate, the haunt’s eyes kind as ever. “And I rather like the idea of making the priestess sneeze regret.”
Keegan looked at me. Not at the letter. Not in the plan. At me. “What do you want to do?”
A simple question, but never a simple answer in this world.
I tucked the letter into the inside pocket of my purse, beneath a grocery list.
“We prepare. We don’t step where she points. We fortify what’s ours. We send a message that we’re not pressed flowers in her book.” I shrugged. “I don’t even know this woman, so I’m certainly not going to hop, skip, and jump to where she tells me to go.”
I glanced at Keegan, and something was stirring behind his gaze.
“I love you,” he said, soft as a bruise.
The air in the room gulped.
Stella’s mouth turned into a perfect O of delight.
Twobble whispered, “Finally.”
Nova looked at the ceiling, as if she would not be moved by romance during office hours. Ardetia smiled in that tiny, fae way that makes you feel like you’ve passed a test without knowing you took one. Bella elbowed me in the ribs so gently I might have imagined it.
“I love you, Keegan,” I breathed, because if I said it louder, I would cry, and crying would lead to hiccups, and hiccups would lead to goblin commentary I’d never escape.
And this wasn’t the way I thought it would come out, but I memorized every feature of Keegan’s expression and knew this could either end us or forge us together.
Stella cleared her throat and went to steep more tea.
“Then we do it your way,” Keegan said, and the iron in his voice was the nicest thing I’d heard in days.
Twobble hopped down from his stool and clapped his hands. “Team meeting! Battle snacks! Maybe we should find Lady Limora and her crew.”
“First, we set our board,” Nova said
Ardetia nodded. “I’ll walk the lines. Fae see edges where clouds think they’re whole.”
Bella flashed teeth, pure fox. “I’ll set decoys along the south fence. If Shadowick even breathes here, we’ll know.”
Stella gathered cups onto her tray like a general collecting small, porcelain soldiers. “And I’ll brew until the kettle begs for mercy.”
I blew out a breath and smiled. This moment felt both full and unknown. Summer was ending, but my grandmother was no longer waiting at the Academy. Her sacrifice edged every single thought and move I made over the last several weeks.
My mom and Keegan’s mom were back in Stonewick.
My dad had the choice to move between a bulldog and a man.
The Academy bustled with midlife witches, magical creatures, and familiars.
My heart had broken into a million pieces and stitched back together again.
My worries over Keegan making it from one day to the next never stopped.
But those words he said lodged deep in my heart.
They meant something.
However, there was never enough time to truly soak in the successes and feel settled.
The silence outside felt less like a trap and more like a challenge.
Shadowick could send letters scented with old iron and thorned symbols without us even mildly aware.
We had tea, goblins, fae, a fox with mischief to spare, a haunt with a sense of humor, gargoyles with perfect timing, and a wolf who loved me enough to let me choose.
The last of the summer students drifted past the windows, arm in arm, already making plans for when they returned.
“We do need to prepare for these breaks and utilize what we have while the students are away and before they return,” I said, glancing outside.
Somewhere above us, a gargoyle shifted on the roof. Outside, the butterflies changed flight. A new season was close.
“Tea first,” Stella decreed, sweeping toward the door. “War after.”
“Add biscuits,” Twobble said.
“Add courage,” Nova murmured.
“Add me,” Keegan said, fingers finding mine, warm and sure.
“Add all of us,” Bella chimed.
Ardetia’s smile deepened a fraction. “Add caution.”
“And glitter bombs,” Ember added, pragmatic as ever.
I lifted my cup, mismatched and warm, to our little found family under a roof that creaked when it was happy and sighed when it was scared. If Gideon wanted silence to work for him, he should have picked a different town.
“Welcome to the end of summer,” I said. “Let’s make it interesting.”