Chapter Two
The bell above the Academy’s front doors had resigned itself to constant chiming, the sort of polite farewell that tried not to sound relieved.
Suitcases rattled like a chorus of mismatched snare drums, and the last stream of summer students rolled down the marble steps in a flurry of scarves, enchanted tote bags, and promises to write.
A charmed fern waved its fronds as if signing yearbooks.
Someone’s kettle whistled from inside a trunk, which felt very on brand.
I stood with my back against a cool pillar and watched it all, feeling both too full and not full at all, like I’d eaten an entire pie made of nostalgia and nerves.
The lamplight threw honeyed squares across the foyer.
Dust motes drifted like shy stars. The Academy hummed under my boots, tired and pleased, as if it had hosted a long holiday and was ready to unbutton the top clasp of its corset.
Beside me, Keegan was a quiet wall of warmth.
He hadn’t shaved in two days, which the universe had clearly custom-ordered just to see what I’d do with that information.
His shoulders were broad and steady under a soft gray shirt that had a stubborn crease near the collar.
He watched the procession with a wolf’s attention and a man’s patience, jaw working like he was chewing on thoughts he didn’t want to swallow.
“Hard to believe we made it to the end of the term,” he said, voice low enough that it didn’t disturb the last group hugging in a heap beneath the chandelier.
“Hard to believe we made it past Malore,” I answered, because some truths deserve to be spoken out loud so the walls can agree with you.
His mouth tugged at one corner. “That, too.”
We didn’t say his name like an invitation, but the memory uncoiled anyway: teeth like winter, the crack of stone, the Ward throwing itself between me and a body built for ruin.
I still saw the way the cottage flared, how the butterfly vines burned like a prayer candle.
How my magic came up in me like a tide and then kept coming.
And Elira, Grandma Elira, her hand in mine and then not.
A suitcase bumped into the pillar near my hip, snapping me back. I bent to steady it for its flustered owner, one of our midlife witches with a smile that could talk a storm out of raining.
“Thank you, Headmistress,” she said, breathless. “See you in the fall. Try to rest!”
“You too,” I said.
When the doors closed behind the last student, the foyer exhaled with us.
The charmed fern drooped, finally allowed to stop waving.
Somewhere deeper in the building, a clock chimed the hour and then changed its mind about chiming the next one.
Keegan rubbed his thumb along the edge of my sleeve as if memorizing the stitching.
“Autopilot,” I said, surprising myself.
He glanced down at me. “Hmm?”
“I feel like I’ve been on it since the battle,” I said, speaking to the pillar at first and then to him because he was the only person I trusted to hold that honesty without poking holes in it.
“Teaching, mending, smiling for a hundred women who needed to see the person in charge be steady. Pouring tea in a moving carriage while the wheels wobble. I keep doing the next almost right thing.”
He took that in. He always did. Keegan listened with his eyes as much as his ears. Hazel, today. Warm in the middle and flanked by worry.
“You kept us breathing,” he said. “Autopilot or not.”
“I’m not asking for a medal,” I said, even though part of me kind of wanted one in the shape of a teacup. “I just…sometimes I think if I stop to feel all of it, I’ll never start moving again.”
A soft sound mumbled from him, not pity, but agreement. “I know the feeling.”
“I know you do.” I tipped my head up toward him. “How are you? The answer I’ll accept is not ‘fine’ or any synonyms.”
He huffed a laugh that wasn’t really a laugh. “Synonyms are out, then. That cuts my repertoire in half.”
“Keegan.”
He folded one big hand over the other and looked at our reflection in a piece of antique glass.
It threw the two of us back at ourselves, a little blurred at the edges.
There was a line between his brows he didn’t used to have.
The curse had colored him darker for a while, then lighter, then stranger still.
We kept chiseling at it, and it kept returning with a new face.
“I’m…not sleeping,” he said at last, choosing each word like a tool. “But it isn’t the same as before. It used to be shadows gnawing. Now it’s…noise. Like the forest when it’s about to storm. I can hear it…the pressure of it all. And,” he added, almost sheepish, “I keep dreaming about the roof.”
“The roof?”
“The gargoyles,” he said, like that made perfect sense, which for us, it did. “Karvey is arguing with a raven that isn’t there. I can’t tell if it’s a memory or a warning.”
“We’ll put that in Nova’s cauldron,” I said. “See what bubbles.”
“Does she have one?”
I chuckled and shrugged. “I don’t know. It just seems like she should.”
He nodded, but his gaze had drifted to the high staircase, to the landing where Grandma Elira used to wait just so she could greet me before I reached her. The throb behind my ribs answered the look.
“Do you feel it,” I asked, “the place where she should be?”
“I feel the place she is,” he said quietly. “Inside the walls. In the way the lights hold a little longer at night. In the way the library remembers what you need.”
My throat went tight. “She gave herself to save the thing I was supposed to protect.”
He squeezed my hand. “She didn’t do it to make you smaller.”
“I know.” I blinked. “I just wish I’d had more time to say the right words.”
“You said the ones you had,” he said, without flinching from the ache. “She knew.”
We stood there with it. I let the silence settle into my bones and turned toward him because it was easier to breathe with the scent of pine and soap and Keegan anchoring me.
Earlier, in the tea shop, he’d said I love you like a bruise you press to see if it still hurts.
I’d said it back like the only charm I knew for certain would work.
Warmth puddled low in my chest at the memory.
“About earlier,” I started, and immediately wanted to set myself on fire for picking the worst possible time to talk about hearts when villages were balancing on toothpicks.
“I meant it,” he said simply. “But we don’t have to solve it today.”
Relief unfolded through me. “Thank you.”
“We do have to solve Gideon,” he added, because of course he would bring us back to the map on the table.
I wrinkled my nose. “I was hoping you’d say he moved to a beach town and took up paddleboarding.”
Keegan’s mouth twitched. “And a gluten-free bakery.”
“With bad scones,” I said, warming. “The worst.”
“I’d still burn it down,” he said, and the humor left his voice like steam escaping a kettle. “He’s too quiet. I don’t like quiet.”
“Nova said stillness is a posture,” I murmured. “The river before the drop.”
He nodded. “So we go upstream and kick at the dam.”
“How?” The word came out thinner than I wanted. “We keep drawing circles, checking the Wards, reading until my eyes blur. He sends letters that smell like iron and rosemary and nothing else. The sky practices falling and then holds.”
“We drag him into our light,” Keegan said. “Make him come to us. We’re stronger on our ground.”
“Lure him out of Shadowick?”
“Maybe.” He leaned against the pillar, looking like a man considering a chessboard he’d once used to kill time and now had to use to save a village. “Predators stalk where they think they own the woods. We need to make the path look easy across our fence and then move the fence.”
“That was so many metaphors in one statement,” I said, chuckling.
“Stella would applaud.” He glanced toward the tea shop in his mind. “She’d also insist we bring tea to the ambush.”
A flutter of affection caught me off guard.
He traced the groove in the pillar with a thumb. “The question is, what does Gideon want badly enough to cross?”
“Me,” I said, because pretending otherwise served no one. The mark at my hip gave a twitch like it agreed. “The Academy. The Wards. The book Elira trusted to me. The pieces that make Stonewick more than a place on a map.”
“Control,” he said. “He wants to control you. So we choose what we’d be willing to pretend to lose.”
“It seems the priestess wants it too.” I thought of the mirrors in the pedestal, the way I could lean into time and pull a thread from hours earlier. I thought of the dragon-winged hush inside the stacks, of Luna’s shawl that held warmth like a memory.
It was still hard to believe she betrayed us, and a part of me wanted to believe she didn’t, somehow.
“What if we staged a fracture? A rumor that the Wards were failing, that I was alone, that you were gone. He loves a weakness he can’t resist.”
Keegan’s jaw flexed. “I don’t love the part where I’m gone.”
“I don’t love any of it,” I admitted. “But if we bait him with the shape of what he wants…”
He looked at me for a count of five, long enough that I shifted on my feet. Then he nodded once, decisive. “We can make him think the Flame Ward faltered again. The forge has been acting strange. He might believe it.”
“And we control the ground,” I said. “The Stone Ward, maybe. It’s steady. Ardetia can weave the edges. Bella can set fox trickery along the paths.”
“Nova will know where the light is thinnest,” he said. “We can use that.”
“And Stella will brew something that makes confession sound like a good idea,” I said, because if anyone could steep regret into a tea bag, it was our centuries-old vampire who never met a blend she couldn’t boss around.
Keegan gave me a look that warmed my knees. “We’ll keep you wrapped in circles of protection. If he steps one toe inside—”
“He’ll lose it,” I finished for him, voice level. “To us.”
“To you,” he corrected.
I averted my face so he wouldn’t see the way that sentence stitched itself into me.