Chapter Twenty-Six
The Wilds always smelled like a memory you weren’t sure you wanted back.
Damp earth, cold stone, something sharp and metallic under the green—like the air still remembered every bargain ever struck here.
The trees thinned into crooked sentinels, their branches leaning over the clearing where the Luminary’s power sank closest to the surface. Beyond that, the world went strange, where it wasn’t quite forest, and not quite other realm, just… Wild.
We stood at its edge like people waiting for a train that might or might not arrive.
Nova had drawn the circle at dawn with a wide, careful ring etched into the bare earth, layered with sigils only visible if you tilted your head just right. The Wards hummed beneath it now, a low, patient thrumming, like a giant cat deciding whether to wake up.
The others filtered in, one by one.
My dad stood near the north point of the circle, hands in the pockets of his worn jacket, jaw tight.
He looked more man than bulldog today with eyes clear and shoulders squared.
The only sign of nerves was the way he kept flexing his fingers, as if checking that they would still turn into paws if he needed them.
Mom hovered beside him, cloak wrapped tight around her shoulders, hair pulled back in a witch’s braid I’d never seen her wear before coming back to Stonewick. Magic clung to her like a subtle perfume now—rosemary, lemon, old charms.
She checked the chalk line for the twentieth time, then pretended she hadn’t.
Keegan’s mother lingered just outside the circle, in her silver wolf form.
She’d refused to shift into her human shape for this, saying something about “honoring the old ways” and “fangs being more practical than fingers.” Her fur was the color of moonlight on steel, eyes pale and piercing that missed nothing.
Nova stood with her staff planted in the center of the circle, eyes half-lidded, listening to threads I couldn’t see. Her raven hair whipped a little in a breeze that hadn’t reached the rest of us.
Ardetia hovered nearby, not quite inside the circle, not quite out, as if her fae nature refused to fully belong to either. Her braid glittered with ice-pale threads today, and the air around her felt like the moment before a frost.
Bella paced, which for Bella meant she walked in fidgety human loops while her fox tail flickered ghostlike behind her, as if desperate to be fully present. Every snapping twig made her ears twitch.
Twobble and Skonk had claimed a flat rock near the southeastern quadrant. Twobble kicked his heels against it and pretended not to be jittery, while Skonk scribbled notes at a ferocious speed that could probably power a small city.
Lady Limora and her crew, Opal, Vivienne, and Marla, clustered together like a coven of particularly glamorous crows.
Lady Limora’s deep green cloak caught the light when she moved, her hair pinned up with something that might have been a dagger disguised as a hairpin.
Opal’s rings flashed as she fidgeted with her necklace.
Vivienne looked deceptively mild, her floral dress at war with the steel in her gaze.
Marla just watched everything with the resigned air of someone who’d seen too many strange things to be surprised by one more.
And Stella, naturally, had claimed the nearest large rock like it was a throne.
She sat with ankles crossed, velvet coat flaring, lipstick perfect, a parasol resting over one shoulder even though the sun hadn’t fully broken through yet. If dramatic vampire witch were a category in the magical Olympics, she’d be undefeated.
I stepped up beside Keegan, who stood at the south point of the circle, hands loose at his sides, face calm in that way he used when he was anything but.
“Everyone’s here,” I said quietly.
“Everyone but him,” he said.
Gideon’s quarter, west, sat empty.
The wind shifted. The Wilds rustled. The Wards hummed. Time… stretched.
Small talk tried to happen.
“This is good weather,” Lady Limora remarked, studying the sky like it had personally agreed to cooperate. “Not too hot, not too cold. No biting rain. Good omens.”
“Could be less damp,” Opal said, lifting her boot to examine a smear of mud. “But I suppose ancient rites rarely come with ideal ground conditions.”
Vivienne smoothed her skirt. “You should have seen the mud the last time we did a town-wide protection ritual,” she murmured. “And we didn’t even get a proper prophecy out of it. Just windburn.”
Marla snorted. “Think of it as an exfoliating experience.”
My dad made a low noise that might’ve been amusement.
“This is nice,” he said. “Talking about the weather before magical surgery on reality. Very normal.”
“Normal is overrated,” Stella said, inspecting her nails. “Besides, darling, if we stared grimly at the empty spot in the circle, Maeve might start chewing her own arm.”
“I’m not that bad,” I said.
Bella gave me a look. “You tried to eat a pencil this morning.”
“It looked like a breadstick,” I protested.
“It was behind your ear,” Keegan pointed out.
“Traitors,” I muttered.
The minutes crawled.
Nova’s staff gave a tiny, impatient tick against the earth.
Overhead, a flock of birds changed direction mid-flight, like they’d brushed against the edge of whatever was gathering here and decided to try another route.
Ardetia closed her eyes briefly, listening to something only fae ears could catch.
“The lines are focusing,” she said softly. “It will not wait forever.”
“It doesn’t have to,” I said. “He’s coming.”
I believed it when I said it.
Mostly.
Twobble started bouncing one knee. His foot tapped against the rock with increasing speed. Skonk’s quill scratched faster.
No one mentioned the time.
The sun climbed a finger’s width higher.
The wind picked up, then dropped again.
I tried to focus on my breathing, on the weight of the circle etched around us, on the steady presence of Keegan at my side, and my father across from me, and my mother just behind. We had anchors. We had power. We had a plan.
We were just… missing a very specific, very infuriating piece.
“I’m not trying to add stress to an already stressful situation,” Twobble said finally, breaking the silence like a dropped plate, “but where is Gideon? Someone gave him the address, right?”
I closed my eyes.
“Maybe he’s circling around dramatically,” Bella said. “He strikes me as the ‘make an entrance’ type.”
“Perhaps he’s fashionably late,” Opal suggested, though her tone said she didn’t believe it. “Some people think it makes them more mysterious.”
Stella arched a brow. “There is a fine line between fashionably late, and I have no respect for other people’s blood pressure.”
Nova’s mouth tightened, her gaze still on the Luminary threads.
“His absence is bending the pattern,” she said. “The circle knows whom it’s missing.”
The Silver Wolf let out a low, displeased growl.
Keegan’s jaw flexed.
“We told him noon,” he said. “Wilds edge. This exact clearing.” His voice remained almost calm, but I could hear the strain underneath. “He agreed.”
“Gideon agrees to many things,” Ardetia said mildly. “His follow-through is… selective.”
My heart gave a sour twist.
He’d said yes.
In the neutral ground, ice and light and fractured sky, he’d looked me in the eye when he agreed to stand in the circle. He’d sounded… sincere. Not pure, never that. But honest in his own sharp-edged way.
“I know him,” I said quietly. “He hates being cornered, but he likes control even more. Breaking his word here means losing control. It would be stupid.”
“He also hates being owned,” Keegan said. “And he might feel like agreeing to stand in our circle makes him… beholden.”
“Newsflash,” Stella said dryly, “he already owes us. We didn’t leave him to be chewed on by Malore.”
“Should I go find Luna?” Skonk piped up suddenly. “Make sure she didn’t run off and hide him again, or…?”
He trailed off as half a dozen heads whipped toward him.
“I was joking,” he added quickly. “Mostly.”
Luna.
My stomach tightened.
She’d disappeared with Gideon after the battle.
Helped him escape. Tied up Stella and the vampires in the hotel, thinking, somehow, that she was preventing something worse.
We’d met her again in the neutral ground.
She’d stood there, eyes wide, magic fluttering, looking like someone who’d stepped into deeper water than she’d expected.
She’d promised to make sure he came.
Now, the clearing’s empty westward edge yawned like a missing tooth.
“Luna wouldn’t—” I began, then stopped.
Wouldn’t what? Wouldn’t lie? Wouldn’t falter? Wouldn’t get scared? I didn’t know her well enough to hang anything that heavy on her shoulders.
“What if something happened to them?” My mom asked, the lines around her mouth deepening. “The priestess is not exactly known for letting her toys roam without punishment.”
“That’s a cheerful thought,” Dad muttered.
“We’d feel it,” Nova said. “If she took him. If the Shadowick Wards reached this close, we’d know.”
“Unless she learned from the last time,” Ardetia murmured. “Silence can be sharpened.”
The wind gusted, lifting the hairs at the back of my neck. The trees bordering the clearing rustled uneasily.
Lady Limora stepped closer to the circle’s outer edge, her cane tapping lightly against the ground.
“We can’t hold the Hollow’s attention indefinitely,” she said. “If he isn’t here soon, we’ll have to decide whether to attempt a partial closure or stand down and he will face the wrath of the Hollows.”
“Partial closure is a bad idea,” Nova said at once. “The pattern is balanced on four anchors. Remove one, and it will reconfigure in ways we cannot predict. If it was a good idea, we would have done it long ago.”
“Standing down sends a message,” Keegan said tightly. “To him. To her.” I knew which her he meant. “That we flinch.”
“Better a flinch than a fracture,” Ardetia replied calmly.
“So those are our options,” Twobble said. “Difficult, terrible, and worst. Excellent. Very on brand.”