Chapter Twenty-Five
The morning of the circle began with the sound of Keegan not breathing right.
Not exactly not breathing, just… catching. Like his lungs were snagging on something I couldn’t see.
I lay still, eyes half-open, watching the soft rise and fall of his chest. In sleep, some of the edges usually left him. He always looked younger, less haunted, more like the man who might’ve existed if curses and Hunger Paths didn’t lurk in the corners of his life.
Today, the curse was sitting closer.
His skin was a shade paler than usual, as if someone had turned down the saturation just on him.
The dark circles under his eyes cut deeper hollows than they had in weeks.
A faint shadow bruised his cheekbones, not actual discoloration, but that strange, unreal darkness that came from inside the magic itself.
Every few breaths, his chest hitched. It wasn’t violent, but it was wrong. Like the air had teeth.
The last few weeks had lulled me into something dangerously close to hope where his curse was concerned. He’d been… better. Not healed, never that, but steadier. The shadows had loosened their grip. His nightmares had faded from blood and moonlight to something more mundane.
I’d known better than to believe it meant the curse had subsided. It had just been waiting. Saving its worst for the important day, because of course it had to be that way.
He made a small sound, barely audible. His fingers twitched against my waist like he was reaching for something.
“Hey,” I whispered. “You’re snoring in existential dread. That’s my job.”
His eyes fluttered, then opened. Even hazy with sleep, they went straight to me, searching my face.
“Morning,” he rasped. His voice sounded like gravel that had forgotten how to be water.
“Morning,” I said. “On a scale of one to ‘the universe is terrible,’ how are you?”
“Mm.” He blinked slowly. “Somewhere between coffee and doom.” He shifted, propping himself on one elbow. The motion cost him. I saw it in the way his jaw tightened, how his breath stuttered once before evening out. “You?”
“Somewhere between fine and hysterical,” I said. “So, you know. Tuesday.”
He stared at me for a long second, then huffed. “You’re shaking.”
I looked down at my hands. They were, in fact, vibrating like I’d mainlined espresso.
“It’s ambient,” I said. “Like the Ward. Decorative tremors.”
He reached over and wrapped his hand around mine, warm and solid despite the paleness. The shaking slowed just a little.
For a heartbeat, if I didn’t think about the time, the date, the circle, Gideon, the priestess, this could almost be a normal morning.
Almost.
He studied me, that keen, quiet way he had, like I was something written in another language he’d half-learned and wanted to get right.
“You didn’t sleep much,” he said.
“Neither did you.”
“Mine’s normal,” he said.
I gave him a look. “Your normal is cursed by a murder moon.”
He made a noncommittal noise and looked away, toward the ceiling.
“It’s louder today,” he admitted. “Like it knows it’s about to get a door slammed in its face.”
“Does it hurt?” I asked, softer.
He hesitated.
“It feels like… standing on the edge of a cliff when the wind wants to push. And knowing some idiot built a bridge that half-remembers how to hold.”
Silence settled for a moment, not uncomfortable, but heavy. The circle sat between us like an extra presence in the bed.
Six hours.
Gideon would be in the Wilds in six hours. The Hollows would be waiting to ensure the vows were kept.
The Wards would be listening. My grandmother in Shadowick would be watching for any crack she could exploit. And we would step, willingly, into a pattern that had eaten better people than us.
“Okay,” I said, peeling my hand from his even though I didn’t want to. “We have choices. I can either lie here cataloguing worst-case scenarios, or I can go shower and wash my face and pretend water fixes things.”
“Water is very powerful,” Keegan said solemnly. “Especially when it’s boiled and poured through coffee grounds.”
“You’re very wise,” I said. “Has anyone told you that?”
“Not this morning,” he said. “But it’s early.”
I slid out of bed before I could talk myself into staying.
My bare feet hit the cool stone floor. The moment I stood, my heartbeat picked up; my body knew before my brain did that today mattered, that whatever happened at the circle would ripple out through everything else—Stonewick, Celeste, my parents, the Academy, even the dragons and their wise non-answers.
The bathroom off my room was small and familiar, the sink basin chipped in one corner, the mirror slightly warped in a way that made my left eyebrow look surprised all the time. I twisted the tap. Water rushed out, cold at first, then warming just enough to be kind.
I splashed my face, watching my reflection blur before I turned on the shower.
Forty-something, tired, more silver at my temples than I’d had last year. My butterfly mark on my hip , faintly glowing now even in ordinary light, like it had given up pretending to be normal. Dark circles under my eyes that could almost match Keegan’s if I tried.
“Okay,” I told myself. “Here’s the plan. We close the circle. We keep everyone breathing. We prevent the high priestess from using us as her personal power strip. We don’t let Gideon be a martyr or a weapon. We do not, under any circumstances, let Twobble handle ceremonial snacks unsupervised.”
The mirror did not answer, which was an improvement over the last mirror-based conversation I’d had, and I stepped into the shower.
“You can do this,” I whispered. “You have done harder things. You raised a teenager.”
Thinking of Celeste eased something and tightened something else at the same time.
She’d texted last night: exam done! might leave tomorrow instead of today. depends on rides. don’t stress. love you.
Don’t stress.
Right.
I pictured her walking into Stonewick, backpack slung over one shoulder, hair piled in its usual messy bun, making some joke about the cottage smelling like garlic and destiny.
I wanted that more than I’d let myself admit.
Wanted her to see Stella’s tea shop properly, to meet Twobble in his full goblin disaster glory, to sit with my mother, now unapologetically witching, and hear stories I never got.
By the time she got here, the circle would be done.
It had to be.
Fall would be closing in. Or the first fake fall, at least—the one where the air pretends to be crisp before remembering it’s attached to early September and going sticky again.
The Academy would shift from summer session’s worn-out magic to the fresh chaos of a new term. Wards would need tuning. The cottage would need new wards against cold.
We were supposed to be building toward that.
Not edging up to a cliff hoping the bridge held.
I dried my face and looked at myself again, pulling my thoughts away from what-ifs and back to the present.
Mom and Dad.
They’d gone up to the Academy two nights ago.
Technically it was “for safety” and “to assist with final protective measures,” but I’d seen the way they’d looked at each other when they left the cottage.
A little wary. A little hopeful. A little like two people who’d been handed a second chance and didn’t quite know what to do with it.
I had no idea if they’d taken separate rooms. Part of me hoped they hadn’t. Part of me braced for heartbreak if they had. Even in my forties, with a divorce of my own under my belt, some stubborn, childlike part of me still wanted my parents to make their way back to each other.
Their love story had been interrupted by curses and fear and half-truths. It deserved at least a shot at a new chapter.
It also wasn’t my job to manage.
“Boundaries,” I muttered as I rinsed off the suds. “Circle first. Parent reunion subplot later.”
I stepped out of the shower, dried off, and looked up to see the mirror making my left eyebrow look skeptical.
I returned to the bedroom to find Keegan halfway dressed, tugging on his shirt with the kind of stubborn determination usually reserved for people arming themselves. The curse-shadow around him had faded a fraction, but it still clung. He moved a little carefully, like his joints had sand in them.
He caught me looking and lifted his brow. “What’s that face?”
“Just mentally writing a strongly worded letter to whatever designed this curse,” I said.
“Get in line,” he said.
I crossed to him and reached for the buttons. “Let me.”
His gaze softened as I started fastening them one by one. Up close, I could see the faint tremor in his hands, the tightness at the corners of his mouth. But his eyes, those infuriatingly loyal hazel eyes, were clear.
“How’s your head?” he asked quietly.
“Full,” I said. “At least we know what he wants. Mostly.”
“Do we?” Keegan asked. “Because all I’ve got is ‘not to die’ and ‘not to be owned.’”
“That’s something,” I said. “It means his goals intersect with ours… for now.”
Keegan slid his fingers under my chin, lifting my face. “I still don’t like him near you.”
“I know,” I said. “I still don’t like the curse near you. We’re both going to have to tolerate unpleasant proximity today.”
He sighed. “Fine. But if he so much as looks at you like you’re a spell component, I’ll rearrange his jaw.”
I smiled, even as my stomach twisted. “Duly noted.”
A knock pounded at the door before I could say anything else.
“Mighty Headmistress!” Twobble’s voice rang out cheerfully. “Are you decent? And if so, can you fix that? It’s unnerving.”
I groaned. “Why is that my goblin?”
Because you fed him, a traitorous part of me answered.
Keegan stepped back, expression smoothing into something approximating composure. I opened the door.
Twobble and Skonk stood on the porch like a chaotic welcome committee.
Twobble had crumbs on his shirt and ink on his nose. Skonk clutched a notebook to his chest like a holy text. Both wore expressions that tried very hard to be solemn and failed around the edges.