Chapter Twenty-Four #2
“I know,” I said. “She’s at the cottage now. Anchored to the Stone Ward. Part ghost, part something else. Still bossy.” A reluctant smile tugged at my mouth. “She said she chose it. That the Luminary gave her a choice.”
The dragons exchanged a look—a series of tiny shifts in posture, pupil dilation, the flex of a talon. They were so old that even their quiet meant something.
Choices are rare at the edge of a curse, the bronze-and-emerald dragon said. She took the only one that did not close a door forever.
“I am grateful,” I said. “I really am. But I’m also… tired. And scared. And I don’t know if I can do another sacrifice. Not like that. Not with Gideon and my grandmother both watching.”
The silver-blue dragon’s eyes glowed brighter. You think the circle will demand a life.
“Doesn’t it?” I asked. “Every account in those screaming books ends with someone bleeding. Either the curse wins, or the caster loses themselves, or the circle twists and binds the wrong thing. Even Malore, he built his entire path around someone else paying the price.”
That was his mistake, the opalescent dragon said. He saw hunger as a thing to feed, not a thing to end by satisfying.
“And you…?” I looked between them. “You know how this ends, don’t you? You see threads I can’t.”
The smoke-gray dragon exhaled, sending a curl of mist drifting over my hands. It felt cool, soothing, like someone laying a cloth over fevered skin.
We see many endings, it said. They are like scales on our bodies. Some are hard. Some are soft. Some shimmer. Some flake away.
“That’s very poetic,” I said. “And entirely unhelpful.”
The silver-blue dragon huffed what might have been laughter. If we told you the precise steps, you would not take them the same way.
I frowned. “That’s not how instructions work.”
With dragons, it is, the opalescent one said, amused.
And I realized their sense of humor was relaxing around me.
I scrubbed my hands over my face. “Fine. No spoilers. Can you at least tell me if closing the circle will weaken the high priestess? Or if she’s just going to throw a bigger tantrum?”
The bronze-and-emerald dragon shifted, scales clinking softly.
Its gaze went far beyond the chamber, beyond the Academy, beyond Stonewick.
When a river is dammed, it said, the water does not disappear.
It presses against the barrier. It finds new routes.
It carves stone. The hunger path is like that.
You are not… erasing it. You are closing an easy channel.
“So we’re… redirecting,” I said slowly. “Making it harder for her to use.”
Yes, it said. Harder. Not impossible.
I chewed on that. “So she’ll be weaker, but not gone. Which means she’ll adapt. Which means we’re buying time, not winning outright.”
The silver-blue dragon’s tail curled around my ankles, a strangely comforting gesture. Time is not nothing, it said. For beings who live such brief spans, you do not appreciate it enough.
“I appreciate it just fine,” I said. “I’d like a lot more of it. Preferably with my daughter alive and un-cursed.”
The child, the smoke-gray dragon murmured. She walks closer to the seam than she knows.
My chest tightened. “Celeste has already had one too-close dance with Shadowick. I’m not letting my grandmother use her as a bargaining chip.”
Then do not, the opalescent dragon said simply.
“That simple,” I said softly.
The silver-blue dragon lowered its head so that its snout pressed lightly against my butterfly mark. The contact sparked—not burning, exactly, but bright. A pulse of energy traveled from the mark down my spine, then out, like a circuit being completed.
You are not powerless, it said. You are a junction.
“Between what?” I asked.
Lines, it said. Fae. Wards. Blood. Stone. Fire. Dragons. Shifters. Goblin.
“Gideon?” I asked.
There was a pause.
Shadow, it said finally. Knife-boy walks in shadows. He thinks he is one. He is not.
“Okay,” I said. “Cryptic, but intriguing.”
I hesitated. “Can I trust him?”
All four dragons focused on me then, the weight of their attention so intense I almost flinched.
The bronze-and-emerald dragon spoke first. You can trust what he wants, it said. He wants to live. He wants not to be owned by your grandmother. He wants to matter.
“Those aren’t terrible motivations,” I said slowly.
They are not good, either, the smoke-gray one pointed out. They are… unstable.
The silver-blue dragon’s gaze softened. He will not betray you for her, it said. He will betray her for himself.
“That’s… sort of comforting?” I said. “In a deeply unsettling way.”
Use it, the opalescent dragon advised. You do not have to like a knife to aim it away from your own throat.
I thought of Gideon’s face in the moonlit neutral ground, the way he’d looked when he agreed to join the circle. Tired. Frayed. Calculating. Something like desperation buried under arrogance.
“You really do see everything, don’t you?” I said.
We see enough, the silver-blue dragon replied. Enough to know this: you cannot do this without him. Or the wolf. Or the father. Or the ghost-witch in the cottage. You are not the circle, Maeve. You are one of its anchors.
“I know that,” I said automatically.
Do you? it asked.
I opened my mouth to argue.
Then closed it.
I thought about how I’d been reading until my eyes burned, how I kept telling myself that if I just learned enough, planned enough, controlled enough, we’d be safe. How every problem felt, reflexively, like mine to fix.
“Fine,” I said quietly. “Maybe not as much as I should.”
The silver-blue dragon’s eyes gleamed. Your grandmother in Shadowick believes you are the key, it said. The center. The hinge. She is wrong. That is why she will fail.
“That’s… reassuring,” I said. “Terrifying, but reassuring.”
The opalescent dragon shifted, sending a ripple of light along its body. You asked us for advice, it said. Here it is: remember you are not alone in the pattern. When the circle closes, let the others carry their share. Do not try to hold it all. If you reach for all the threads, you will snap.
“Even if I think I can handle—”
Especially then, the smoke-gray dragon cut in.
“And the high priestess?” I asked. “Will this… mute her? Even a little?”
All four dragon heads turned slightly, angling toward some unseen point. The chamber’s glow flickered.
She will feel it, the bronze-and-emerald dragon said. She will know you have taken something from her. She will rage. But rage is noisy. It makes her careless. But you are getting ahead of yourself, worrying needlessly. But her rage will be vocal.
“Angry grandmother is better than quiet grandmother?” I asked skeptically.
Quiet things cut deeper, the opalescent dragon said. Noise gives you warning.
I sat with that for a long moment, feeling the hum of the chamber wrap around my frayed nerves like a heavy blanket.
“You said you knew how it ends,” I said finally. “Or that you see many endings. Are there any where we… survive? Where Stonewick isn’t ash?”
The silver-blue dragon regarded me for a long, unblinking beat. Then it did something I did not expect.
It smiled.
Not in a human way. There were no teeth and no lips. A shift of eye-shape, a softening of the ridges around its mouth, a curl of its tail that spoke of amusement.
Little hedge witch, it said. If there was not hope, we would already be gone. But the ending is not for us to share.
The breath left me in a shaky rush.
“That’s the closest thing to hope you’ve ever given me,” I said. “Thank you for warning me before. For… nudging me here today. Even if you refuse to give me a neat, bullet-point list of what to do.”
The smoke-gray dragon’s mist brushed my cheek like a cool hand. You do not need a list, it said. You need to remember who you are when the pattern pulls.
“And who is that?” I asked.
Four voices answered at once, overlapping in my mind like chords.
A hinge.
A junction.
A flame.
A refusal.
A light.
Heat rose in my chest, not the panicked burn of anxiety, but something steadier.
“I can work with that,” I said softly.
The silver-blue dragon pulled back, the line of contact between its snout and my mark breaking with a tiny, audible pop of magic. The chamber’s light shifted, subtly, as if whatever conversation we’d had had nudged the threads just enough.
Go, it said. Sleep, if you can. Hug the wolf. Hug the goblin. Hug the child when she arrives. Circles close best when the anchors remember what they’re binding for.
“I’ll try,” I said.
I stood, legs a little shaky but heart… clearer.
At the archway, I paused and looked back.
“Hey,” I said. “One last thing. If this goes sideways tomorrow, if we mess it up, if the priestess rips through, will you…?”
The words stuck.
The opalescent dragon finished them for me. Will we help?
I shook my head.
“Will you be okay?”
The dragons’ eyes gleamed, one by one.
That is an answer for only us to know.
No pressure.
The weave at the doorway parted once more. I stepped through, back into the narrower, more human corridor, the door sealing shut behind me.
The Academy’s normal sounds drifted back in with distant footsteps.
My anxiety hadn’t vanished.
But it no longer filled every corner. The fear had room now to sit beside determination, beside the sharp, quiet knowledge that the dragons had not abandoned us. That Elira was anchored. That Keegan, Dad, Gideon, and I were not the whole story, but we were a piece.
On the eve of the circle, with the high priestess listening and the hunger path pulsing like a vein in the dark, it wasn’t certainty.
But it was enough to keep moving.