Chapter Twenty-Seven
We stayed.
Because of course we did.
Nova warned us.
“Fifteen minutes,” she’d said, voice quiet, the Hollow’s glow reflected in her eyes. And then she’d gone silent again, listening to threads I couldn’t see, staff rooted in the earth.
The Hollows hummed louder, impatient. The trees rustled, then stilled. Everyone shifted, but no one left their post.
We stayed for fifteen minutes.
And then five more, because hope is stubborn and so am I.
By the time Nova finally lifted her staff and let out a long, low sigh, my legs ached and my heart felt bruised.
“The pattern is retreating,” she said at last. “We have to let it go.”
The words hit like a physical thing.
The circle’s glow dimmed stanza by stanza, sigils fading back into ordinary lines of chalk and disturbed soil. The thrum of power under my feet thinned until it was nothing more than a faint, residual echo.
Across from me, my dad’s shoulders slumped. Mom’s hand found his, almost unconsciously, and he didn’t pull away.
Keegan went still beside me, that particular stillness that meant he was holding a lot very tightly. The curse-shadows under his skin pulsed once, then settled into a darker pattern.
The Silver Wolf sat, tail curled around her paws, head lifted toward the empty west quarter as if she might still catch a scent on the wind.
The Fae looked… unsurprised. Ardetia’s expression barely flickered, but the light around her dimmed.
Twobble’s ears drooped. Skonk’s notebook hung forgotten at his side.
Stella shut her parasol with a crisp little snap.
“Well,” she said, the single word landing like a china cup set too carefully on a table. “That did not go to plan.”
Lady Limora exhaled slowly, frost threading the air. “We knew this was a possibility,” she said. “We simply hoped it wouldn’t be.”
“The Hollows will forgive us, eventually,” Nova said. “It doesn’t like false starts, but it has seen worse.”
“We weren’t at fault,” I countered.
“I don’t care about its feelings,” Keegan said, low and rough. “I care that we just lost our best shot at closing that path without burning the world down.”
The anger in his voice made something in my chest flinch.
He was right.
We’d bet so much on Gideon’s yes. On his hatred of my grandmother being stronger than his fear. On his willingness to step into something bigger than his own orbit.
And now there was just… a blank space where he was supposed to be.
The hollow inside my ribs widened.
I stepped out of my quarter of the circle, rubbing my arms against a sudden, non-magical chill. The wind had picked up only a little, but the Wilds felt colder. Less like a waiting room, more like a warning sign.
Twobble climbed back onto his rock, then hopped down immediately, as if sitting still were suddenly unbearable.
“Okay,” he said, voice too bright. “So! Not to sound like a broken crystal, but: now what?”
“Now,” Stella said briskly, standing with a sweep of velvet, “we acknowledge that we have been stood up by the world’s most exasperating almost-antihero, we swallow our disappointment with dignity, and we drink tea.”
“Tea,” Bella echoed faintly, as if remembering the concept from another life.
Stella looked around at all of us, gaze sharp as a pin. “All of you. My shop. We’ll regroup there. I refuse to let the Wilds have the last word in this conversation. They don’t even have chairs.”
“Stella—” I began.
“No arguments,” she said. “If we’re going to be devastated, we’ll do it over pastries. I’m elderly, not heartless.”
She was the one who could say it out loud: devastated.
The word gave shape to the heavy, soggy thing in my chest. Naming it didn’t fix it. But it made it easier to carry.
Nova tapped her staff once, sealing the circle lines as best she could. “We’ll need to speak with Elira,” she said quietly.
She, Lady Limora, and the other coven witches began dismantling the temporary protective markers we’d set at the Wilds’ edge. The Silver Wolf trotted over to us, brushed against Keegan’s side, then mine.
“You did not fail,” she said in my mind, her telepathic voice like distant bells. “He did.”
“Feels like the same thing,” I answered silently.
“No,” she said. “His absence is his choice. We still have ours.”
Then she padded off toward the path back, tail held high.
We walked.
Not in a neat group—more like a constellation slowly unraveling. Pockets of people drifted together, then apart, pulled by gravity and familiarity.
Bella and Ardetia walked ahead, speaking quietly in low tones, their heads bent together, fox and fae sharing wary calculations.
Nova and Lady Limora murmured about energy costs and timing.
Opal and Vivienne talked with Marla about logistics, because somebody always had to think about food and sleeping arrangements, even at the apocalypse.
My parents walked side by side, not touching now, but not avoiding each other either. Mom’s hands moved as she talked, ward patterns trailing behind her fingers. My dad nodded occasionally, face intent.
Twobble and Skonk flanked me like mismatched bookends. Twobble muttered under his breath, presumably about Gideon’s fashionably-disastrous lateness. Skonk periodically wrote something down, then crossed it out.
Keegan kept pace at my side, close enough that our shoulders brushed when the path narrowed. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. His presence sat like a wall between me and the worst of my thoughts.
The walk from the Wilds to the Academy usually felt short.
Today it felt like three different lifetimes.
The air changed to that familiar, softened-sharp sensation of stepping through magic crafted by hands I knew.
The towers rose ahead, golden light catching on the stone.
Summer session’s absence showed in the quiet, with no clusters of midlife students gossiping on the lawn, no familiars chasing each other between hedges.
Just us, and a handful of gargoyles shifting high on the roofline, watching.
Stella slowed, looking up at the building with narrowed eyes. “She’s bracing,” she said.
“The Academy?” I asked.
“The magic,” she corrected. “She doesn’t like being nearly used for something and then not.”
“Relatable,” Twobble muttered.
Karvey dropped from a ledge with the kind of controlled grace only a centuries-old gargoyle could manage. He landed heavily beside us, stone knees bending, then straightened.
“It did not happen,” he said. Not a question.
“No,” I said.
He studied my face, then Keegan’s, then the others’. “The Wards felt the Hollow’s rise and fall,” he said. “They are… unsettled. But stable.”
“Unsettled but stable,” I repeated. “Good. We match.”
“If you’re all going to mope in front of the school,” Stella cut in, “we’ll be here until the next solstice. Move your tragedies along, darlings. Tea awaits.”
She herded us like a sparkly, undead sheepdog, prodding people toward the gate with sharp little tuts and remarks about “wasting perfectly good stooping posture on the wrong doorstep.”
I’ll admit, it helped.
The walk from the Academy down through the Butterfly Ward and into Stonewick village was muscle memory now.
We followed the cobbled path, past the Butterfly Ward, where the air still shimmered with soft colors even in the glow of late afternoon.
My butterfly mark tingled faintly as we passed through, a nervous greeting.
The village went about its business, mostly unaware that we’d just failed to close a dark magical highway.
Shopkeepers swept stoops. Kids chased each other, shrieking happily, tiny sparks popping at their heels as their nascent magic flared. Somewhere, someone laughed too loudly.
The normalcy of it made my throat tighten.
We crossed the little square where Luna’s now-closed yarn shop sat, its windows still dark. I didn’t let myself look at it too long.
Stella’s tea shop came into view like a promise.
The bell above her door chimed as we approached, then chimed again with more force, as if recognizing the weight of the group. Warmth rolled out at us in a wave: spiced tea, sugar, polished wood, the faint iron tang of Stella herself.
She swept ahead to hold the door like a particularly glamorous ma?tre d’.
“Welcome to emotional triage,” she announced. “Seats wherever. Tears optional. Goblins, no licking the sugar bowls.”
“I did that one time,” Twobble muttered.
“Twice,” Skonk corrected.
We spilled inside, filling the small space in a way that would have felt claustrophobic if it weren’t so familiar. Stella’s shop had always been part sanctuary, part gossip hub, part war council. Today it was all three plus something heavier.
Chairs scraped. Cloaks were shrugged off.
The big table by the front window filled quickly: my parents, Keegan, the Silver Wolf now in her human form, Nova, Ardetia, Bella, Lady Limora, and her trio.
Twobble and Skonk claimed their usual spot near the counter, like two gremlins staking their emotional support corner.
I took the chair with the slightly wobbly leg.
Stella moved like a general prepping her troops. Kettle on. Teapots selected at lightning speed. Cups set out…mismatched, each one somehow perfect for the person it landed in front of.
“Courage blend for the wounded egos,” she said, pouring amber liquid into my cup. “Focus blend for those of you who can’t stop tinkering. Nova, Limora, don’t look at me like that, you know who you are. Something soothing for the wolf. Goblins get chamomile, but I’ll never admit it out loud.”
“You just did,” Twobble pointed out.
“That’s the grief talking,” she said.
The chaotic murmur of small talk tried to surface again.
Opal asked Bella about the fencing around the Wilds. Vivienne offered Marla a biscuit and a quiet, “You did well, you know.” My mother and Nova discussed whether the Luminary would hold a grudge. My father and the Silver Wolf shared a look that held more history than words.
I cupped my tea, letting the heat sink into my cold fingers.