Chapter Five
By the time dusk started sketching long blue lines across the lane, every sensible voice in my head told me to slow down.
Naturally, I ignored them. Between hot flashes, guilt, confusion, and feet that hurt, I didn’t know which end was up.
“Pack for cold,” Luna’s letter had warned, which felt mildly insulting in late August when Stonewick carried the lazy warmth of peaches and dust.
Still, I stuffed mittens into my satchel between talismans and tea sachets while the cottage did its happy-creaky settling and Keegan double-checked knives he never hoped to use.
“We’re really doing this tonight,” he said, buckling the last strap. “You sure?”
“No,” I said truthfully, and then, because we were us, “Yes.”
He smiled with that tired, stubborn fondness I kept wanting to bottle. “I’ll take both.”
Outside, the gargoyles shifted, stone-on-shingle, as if the roof cleared its throat. Karvey’s rumble drifted down like flint rolled in velvet. “North winds sooner than the calendar says.”
“Noted,” I called up. “We’re going to need you.”
“I am already there,” he said simply.
Keegan tipped his head toward the door. “Stella said to meet at the tea shop. Brace yourself.”
“For tea?” I asked.
“For Stella,” he said.
We’d left the cottage quietly, and I looked over at Keegan as we made our way down the path.
“Are you sure you’re up for this?”
“And leave you to all the shenanigans?” His smile widened, and my stomach fluttered. He always had this way of making me feel like the most beautiful and capable woman in the world. It was something I didn’t even realize I’d been missing when I’d been married to Alex for all those years.
“Hopefully, it will be pretty harmless.”
“Yeah, falling for traps usually is in our world.”
I grinned and squeezed his hand. “But if we know that we’re headed into one, does that really make it a trap?”
“If the tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it…”
I smiled, feeling temporarily light as we walked into Stonewick Village. The sight immediately calmed me. It was a few days from September and the shops had already embraced fall with pumpkins stacked neatly on haystacks and broomsticks dangled teasingly on stoops.
By the time we’d made it to Stella’s, I was thirsty and slightly less confident about this idea.
Stella had arrayed herself like a prologue. Her cloak gleamed sable to midnight, her lipstick could cut paper, and the little diamond points on her teeth winked like a secret. She stood in the doorway of the tea shop as if it were a theater and we were late to our cue.
“Darling,” she trilled, sweeping us in with one jeweled hand. “Refreshments before ruin.”
“Can we skip the ruin?” Twobble asked, head popping out from behind a tower of biscuit tins. He wore earmuffs. Bright blue. Fuzzy. In August.
“You look ridiculous,” Skonk told him, adjusting his own tiny scarf with terrible dignity.
“It’s called ‘preparation,’” Twobble sniffed. “Luna said to pack for cold.”
“What about that ruby dangling around tour neck?” Skonk questioned.
Twobble cupped it protectively. “I deserve pretty things in these trying times.”
Nova leaned her staff by the hearth, the green in her eyes calm as river moss. “The threshold will not wait for us to be ready,” she said. “Best that we move before midnight.”
“I was born ready,” Stella said, which in her case might actually be true. She turned, drew herself up taller, and pointed a commanding finger toward the back parlor. “Limora, darling! Curtain up.”
Lady Limora glided forward with the elegance of a ballroom on holiday.
Her hair fell in glossy coils; her gown was traveling-simple but somehow also trimmed in starlight.
Behind her came Vivienne with a basket of clinking vials; Mara with a covered tray that smelled like sugar and warning; and Opal, practical Opal, carrying a leather case that thunked like it held an anvil.
“You voluntold them,” I said to Stella.
“I invited them to do what they were already planning to do,” Stella corrected, throwing a little sparkle at the word invited. “Which is to assist you and keep me entertained.”
Lady Limora’s smile crinkled at the corners.
“I did plan to come,” she admitted. “The Northern Luminary is not a place for the unaccompanied.”
“The what?” I asked.
Keegan’s hand brushed mine. “Northern Luminary,” he said quietly. “It’s what the old maps call that stretch of border where the magic meets the Glacial Hollow Forest.”
Nova nodded, pleased I’d asked. “Between Stonewick and Shadowick lies a seam the magical courts agreed not to cut. It’s a binding place.
The threshold folds there like fabric gathered on a needle.
Witches call it the Northern Luminary. Shifters call it the White Tail Run.
Fae…” She tilted her head toward Ardetia.
Ardetia hovered at the edge of the lamplight, hesitant and luminous as ever. “We call it Quiet Ground,” she said, voice as careful as her steps. “Because we agreed to let it stay—quiet. No rituals. No war. No hunting. It is neutral, in word and weight.”
“And cold,” Skonk put in. “Horribly, persistently cold. The sort of place where conversation freezes mid-sentence out of spite.”
“Because it touches what is not summer,” Nova said. “Do not be fooled by the calendar. August does not apply where the Luminary tangles the seasons.”
“Finally,” Stella said, brisk and delighted. “A chance to wear my mink.”
“Please don’t,” Bella said, horrified.
Stella sighed. “Faux mink. I’m old, not evil.”
Lady Limora’s crew set their offerings on the long table.
Vivienne lifted bottle after bottle from her basket: glow-tonics for low light, finger-salve to keep feeling, a pale blue draught that smelled faintly of thyme and old snow.
Mara uncovered her tray: sugar-dust moon puffs glimmering faintly; blueberry knots flecked with frost-sugar; a stack of lemon slices candied so thin the lamplight passed through.
“If anyone eats more than three moon puffs, I can’t be held responsible for the confessions,” Mara warned.
Twobble and Skonk exchanged guilty, greedy looks.
Opal thudded her case open to reveal… metal needles, each one a foot long, their tips engraved with sigils, their shafts lined with a twist of moon-silk thread.
“Travel spikes,” Lady Limora said, touching one. “They pin a path when the world tries to fold. We won’t be lost if the Northern Luminary breathes on us.”
I blinked. “I love how none of you mentioned these existed before today. I just minded my own business, tried to run an Academy, defeat Malore and then I hear…oh, by the way, there’s a secret ancient winter playground up north just waiting for you.”
“You didn’t ask,” Stella said sweetly.
Keegan rolled a shoulder, restless but steadied by the rhythm of preparation: counting, checking, scanning for gaps. “We’ll take a western line past Spindle Bridge,” he said. “Stay on the dry bank until the birches thin.”
“Past the big mill?” I asked, trying not to think about the way the air there bit already, even in July. I’d been there before I even believed in magic. We’d camped as a family there so Alex could tour the old mills in the area. To say it was riveting would be kind.
Nova nodded. “The Northern Luminary begins where the frost lies thin as lace along the grass even at noon. You will feel it catch at your breath. You will know.”
“Any rules I should know about beforehand just for funsies?” I asked.
Nova lifted one finger. “No true names beyond what we already hold.” Another. “No bargains.” A third. “No drawing blood.” She paused. “If you lie, your breath will frost black.”
“That seems…unambiguous,” Twobble said, impressed.
“And no lingering,” Ardetia added, soft but firm. “It may be neutral, but that does not make it gentle. It prefers silence, and we are not silent creatures.”
Stella clapped, bracelets chiming a little chorus. “Very well. We are sensible, we are overdressed, and we are leaving in fifteen minutes. Put on something warm. Limora, darling, have you brought your polite smile? The one that makes even old borders feel like they were invited?”
Lady Limora’s smile deepened a fraction, which in her world meant thunder and lightning had been added to the forecast. “On.”
Keegan slid a wool coat over my shoulders even though the shop was warm. “You sure about bringing half the town?”
“I’m sure about not going without them,” I said.
He kissed the top of my head like a yes.
Twobble appeared at my elbow in earmuffs and gloves so thick his fingers looked like sausages. “I’ve packed snacks, emergency snacks, post-emergency snacks, and a backup snack plan,” he reported. “Also this.” He produced a bundle of cinnamon sticks from under his vest.
“Did you pay for that?” Stella asked without looking up.
He blinked. “Define pay.”
Stella’s tone went silk-smooth, which with her meant danger. “Leave four copper in the dish.”
Twobble dropped in five, very loudly, and then looked proud of himself.
Skonk peered out the front window, nose smushed to the glass. “Tourists are thinning. Karvey’s shadow is moving. Pigeons are in formation. We can do this without causing a scene bundled in winterwear if we—”
Something green and floral and terrible thudded into the window with a squeak.
Everyone jumped. Twobble yelped. Skonk flailed, smacked his own face, and then, peering harder, squealed with an unholy glee. “Oh no.”
“Don’t say it,” Keegan muttered.
“Bramble mule,” Twobble breathed, eyes like saucers. “He followed me here!”
“No,” I said on reflex, because there are only so many sentences a headmistress wants to hear in a lifetime, and that one was not on my list.
The bramble mule pressed its emerald muzzle to the glass with a kissy fog of breath, garlands of tiny flowers sprouting anew along its neck. Hooves sparked against cobble. Its eyes, sweet, ridiculous, and full of opinions, landed on Twobble and went soft as jelly.
“You,” Keegan told the goblin, “are not bringing a Wilds bramble mule into a neutral ground between realms.”
“It’s a threshold,” Twobble said, insulted. “Not a courtroom. He wants to help.”
“Define help,” Skonk said, scooting behind me.
The mule brayed, which in mule meant behold me, I am a miracle with hooves. Two tourists cooed from across the lane. A third pointed his phone and said, “Animatronic?” which earned him a visible wince from a gargoyle on the roof.
“Twobble,” I said, patient teacher voice firmly on. “Do you keep feeding him?”
“No,” Twobble corrected. “Possibly. Sometimes, if he’s hungry.”
“We can use him,” Opal said suddenly, assessing the mule with a craftswoman’s eye. “Pack frame, low profile. If the world folds, four-legged things find the seam better than two.”
Keegan looked personally betrayed by this logic.
Nova tilted her head, listening to something only she could hear.
“He is fond,” she murmured, amused.
“Of what?” Keegan asked warily.
“Of Twobble,” Nova said, smiling with almost all her teeth. “And of mint.”
Twobble produced a fistful of mint leaves from a pocket so quickly I began to suspect he might be part plant. Twobble opened the door, and the mule sniffed and sneezed confetti, actual confetti, pastel paper fluttering, and then delicately accepted the mint.
“Fine,” Keegan said, resigned. “But if he kicks a treaty stone, I’m sending you to apologize, Twobble.”
“I’m very good at apologies,” Twobble said, climbing onto the mule’s back like a prince of questionable kingdoms. “I bring desserts.”
Stella adjusted her hat and took command of the door. “We leave as if we have somewhere mildly important to be.
“You mean not like the future of magic depends on us?” I teased.
Stella winked and nodded. “Precisely.”