Chapter Twenty-Four
Twobble scrambled out of the Academy doors like he’d been launched, nearly missing the last step, with boots skidding on stone, hat crooked, and coat flapping behind him as if it were trying to keep up.
He caught himself on the railing with a sharp curse, then bolted straight toward us, eyes wide and unblinking in a way I’d only ever seen when something had gone very wrong underground.
“Maeve,” he shouted. “Maeve, we’ve got trouble.”
The shift was instant. Whatever warmth lingered between Keegan and me evaporated, replaced by that familiar, coiled readiness. Keegan straightened, his body going still in a way that had nothing to do with relaxation. I was already moving toward Twobble, my heart beginning to pound.
“What happened?” I asked.
Twobble skidded to a stop, bent forward with his hands on his knees, sucking in air like he’d run the entire length of the goblin tunnels without stopping.
“The UnderLoom,” he said. “It’s active.”
That word hit differently than alarm ever could.
The UnderLoom wasn’t a bell or a Ward or some polite magical warning system.
It was the goblin underground itself with a web of passages, pressure lines, stone-sense, and living awareness beneath Stonewick and even Shadowick.
Goblins lived in it, listened through it, and felt the world’s weight shift long before anything reached the surface.
“Active how?” I asked carefully.
Twobble straightened slowly, and the humor that usually lived just under his skin was completely gone.
“Movement.”
Keegan crossed his arms. “Define movement.”
“Large-scale,” Twobble said. “Tracked across multiple tunnel branches and enough to wake the deeper listeners.”
My stomach tightened.
“Could it be the vampires? Maybe more coming?” I asked, glancing toward the Academy steps where clusters of shawl-draped women stood talking quietly, unbothered, unhurried.
Twobble shook his head immediately. “No.”
The word landed heavily.
“No?” I echoed.
“No,” he repeated, firmer now. “The UnderLoom knows vampires. They’ve walked those tunnels for centuries. Their presence slides. This doesn’t. This is a pounding.”
Stella had joined us without a sound, her expression sharpened with interest and concern. “Then what does it feel like?”
Twobble’s jaw tightened. “Heavier.”
“Heavier how?” I pressed.
“Stout,” Twobble said, lowering his voice. “Dense. These aren’t gliding or slipping steps. This presence presses through the ground.”
A chill slid down my spine.
“Pressing through,” I repeated.
“Exactly,” he said. “The UnderLoom can feel the strain. Old stone doesn’t like being pushed, Maeve. It notices.”
My hand drifted instinctively to my hip. The birthmark was warm again.
“Could this be the Priestess?” I asked.
Twobble hesitated just long enough to make my heart stutter. Then he shook his head.
“Not directly. Maybe. No. Yes.”
“That’s not comforting,” Keegan muttered.
“It shouldn’t be,” Twobble replied. “Because whatever this is, it’s organized.”
Stella’s eyes narrowed. “Organized how?”
“Group movement,” Twobble said. “Not a single entity probing. Multiple bodies moving with intent. Coordinated. Slow enough not to collapse the tunnels, heavy enough to test them.”
“Testing for what?” I asked.
“For resistance,” he said. “For response time.”
The words landed like a stone dropped into still water. “Is she building an army?”
The wind shifted across the courtyard, and one of the vampires glanced our way, her expression narrowing just a fraction before smoothing. She wasn’t afraid. She was alert.
I swallowed. “Where are they coming from?”
“Not inside Stonewick,” Twobble said. “Yet. They’re circling the deeper routes. The old paths that predate Wards and roads. Places most surface magic doesn’t touch, but they are a ways out yet.”
“That’s bad,” I said.
“Yes,” Twobble agreed. “That’s very bad.”
Keegan leaned closer to him. “Can the UnderLoom tell what they are?”
Twobble grimaced. “It can tell what they’re not.”
“And that is?”
“They’re not shadow-creatures. They’re not glamour-bound. Creature nor spectral,” he said. “They have mass. Structure. Whatever’s moving across the land was built to survive resistance.”
Built.
The word made my pulse kick harder.
“Can you give me more to go on?” I asked, forcing my voice steady. “Size? Shape? Anything.”
Twobble looked at me then, really looked at me, and for the first time since he’d come tearing out of the Academy, he hesitated.
“I can,” he said slowly. “But once I say it, we can’t pretend we didn’t hear it.”
I nodded. “Tell me.”
Twobble drew in a deep breath, shoulders rising as he braced himself. I swore the goblin underground shifted beneath our feet, listening right along with him.
Twobble slowly exhaled, like whatever he was about to say weighed more than he’d expected.
“By all accounts,” he said, voice dropping, “they’re orcs.”
My jaw actually dropped open.
Orcs.
“As in,” I said faintly, “big, burly, green dudes with tusks and axes and an attitude problem?”
Twobble scowled at me. “I guess that’s one way of putting it.”
Keegan closed his eyes and rubbed a hand over his face. “This isn’t good.”
I blinked at him. Once. Twice. And I laughed, the sound shrill and disbelieving as it escaped me.
“Well. Now I’m worried.” I shook my head.
He opened one eye. “Because I said it wasn’t good?”
“Yes,” I said, nodding. “You don’t say things like that unless we’re standing on the edge of something deeply unpleasant.”
Keegan laughed softly, despite himself.
“We’re not doomed,” Keegan said. “But this won’t be clean.”
Twobble folded his arms, ears flicking. “That’s an understatement.”
“Talk to me,” I said, forcing myself to focus. “Orcs aren’t exactly subtle, but Stonewick’s Wards should—”
“Slow them,” Keegan finished. “Don't stop them.”
I turned fully toward him. “Meaning?”
“They’re not the swiftest magical creatures,” he said carefully. “They don’t slip through Wards or dissolve into shadow. They move forward through whatever is in their way. And they don’t mind stepping on things to get what they want.”
“That’s comforting,” I muttered.
“And mondo boar,” Twobble added.
I stared at him. “I’m sorry—what?”
“Mondo. Boar,” he repeated. “Huge. Armored. Mean. The kind that doesn’t ask permission from forests or fences.”
My laugh came out thin this time. “So… large orcs riding even larger murder pigs.”
Twobble grimaced. “When you put it like that, I almost miss the shadow things.”
Stella, who’d gone very quiet during all of this, finally spoke.
“Orcs don’t wander,” she said. “They mobilize.”
“Yes,” Twobble replied. “That’s what the UnderLoom’s picking up. This isn’t a raid. It’s a movement with supply behind it.”
Keegan’s jaw tightened. “An organized push.”
I swallowed. “Toward Stonewick.”
“Not directly,” Twobble said. “Yet. They’re gathering along the deeper routes and testing weight tolerance. Seeing what gives. Maybe we’ll be lucky, and they’ll walk on by.”
“Because luck has always been on our side?” Skonk asked, deciding to show up at the most inopportune time.
The warmth at my hip pulsed again, a low, steady thrum that made it clear my magic was paying very close attention.
I drew in a breath. “Do you think the Priestess sent them?”
Twobble hesitated, then shook his head slowly. “Possibly. But I think it’s more than that.”
My heart sank. “More than… hired muscle? Isn’t that enough?”
“Yes, but,” he said. “This feels like coordination on a scale that doesn’t come from a single summons. I don’t know. There’s just something about this that has my cockles up.”
“You’re saying the Priestess is not just reacting.”
“She’s preparing,” Twobble replied. “Assembling. Possibly.”
The word echoed uncomfortably in my head.
An army.
The realization settled into my bones with a cold clarity that made the earlier coziness feel distant, as if it were something I’d dreamed rather than lived.
Orcs didn’t show up unless someone had promised them territory, power, or blood. Sometimes all three. I’d read all about it months ago in a late-night library session.
“And Stonewick,” I said quietly, “sits right where old paths cross?”
“Yes,” Twobble said. “Which makes it very appealing, or at least we’re in the way. And if we add the Priestess on top of it, I don’t know what to think other than I wonder why I had been itching to get into the Academy all those years.”
I chuckled. “Because you love it here.”
Stella let out a slow breath. “I knew I shouldn’t have enjoyed the calm.”
I glanced back toward the Academy steps, where the vampire women still lingered, watchful but relaxed, utterly unbothered by the idea of orcs moving beneath the earth. And that was when something else clicked into place.
“Lady Limora,” I said softly.
Keegan looked at me. “What about her?”
“She knew,” I said. “Or at least suspected. She wouldn’t have put out a call to this many vampires unless she expected trouble on a scale that requires teeth.”
“She said it herself,” Stella reminded us.
“True, I guess I just didn’t take it at face value.”
“Always take things a vampire tells you at face value.”
Twobble nodded grimly. “Truer words.”
“And these are women who’ve survived worse than this,” Stella added.
I let out a breath, part relief, part unease. “So, Lady Limora knows more than she’s letting on.”
Keegan’s gaze flicked to mine. “She usually does.”
“So,” I said, forcing a wry smile, “we’ve got an ancient Priestess with a talent for manipulation, a possible army of orcs and armored boar testing the underground, and a sentient Academy that prefers to be cryptic, and Gideon on the loose like a crazed mage.”
Twobble tilted his head. “When you say it like that, it almost sounds manageable.”
I snorted. “You’re terrible at reassurance.”
“I try.”
Keegan stepped closer and rubbed my back.
“We prepare,” he said. “We don’t panic.”
“Agreed,” I said. “But we also don’t pretend this is nothing.”
“No,” he said quietly. “We don’t.”
My gaze drifted once more to the Academy. Stonewick had weathered storms before, but this one felt heavier.
And as the realization settled fully into place, one truth became impossible to ignore.
This wasn’t about Gideon anymore.
This was about war knocking politely on the edges of a town that had been pretending it was done fighting.
I stood there for a moment longer than anyone else, my mind stubbornly snagging on the image I could not quite reconcile.
Massive, armored boar snorting steam into the underground tunnels and above through the forests. Orcs riding them with brute confidence, pushing forward because that was how they’d always gotten what they wanted.
And just a few steps away, elderly vampire women stood on the Academy steps, shawls tucked close, teacups cradled delicately in their hands as they discussed ward integrity and structural weak points like they were planning a garden party.
The contrast was absurd, and it made me want to laugh and panic in equal measure.
“Well,” I muttered under my breath, shaking my head slightly. “If nothing else, Stonewick has range.”
Keegan glanced at me. “You okay?”
“Ask me again after my brain stops trying to put pigs and porcelain cups in the same sentence,” I replied.
Twobble snorted. “You’ll get used to it. Eventually.”
I wasn’t sure I believed that.
I took a steadying breath and deliberately shook the worry out of my shoulders, rolling them once as if I could physically dislodge the tension.
We’d faced worse before.
Deadly curses with a time limit.
Shadow creatures.
A living Academy with opinions.
We’d survived betrayal and loss and the kind of magic that tried to hollow people out from the inside, where blood relations mean nothing.
This wasn’t the first time Stonewick had been threatened.
But it was the first time the threat felt so… intentional.
My gaze drifted to the horizon behind the Academy grounds, where the Wilds stood quietly, hiding paths older than the town itself. Orcs and boar were symptoms. Tools. Whatever was coming wasn’t about brute force alone.
It was about direction.
And that was when Celeste’s question resurfaced, gentle and devastating in its simplicity.
What does the Priestess want?
What.
The answer mattered more than all the rest because you could repel an army, you could strengthen Wards and call in allies and stand your ground with teeth bared and magic blazing, but you couldn’t defend against something you didn’t understand.
I pressed my hand to my hip, feeling the warmth there pulse softly, like a reminder ticking beneath my skin. The Priestess hadn’t moved all these pieces for chaos’s sake. She wasn’t the kind of woman who wasted energy on spectacle.
She wanted something specific, tied to Stonewick.
Something tied to me.
And until I knew what that was, no number of vampires, no thickness of stone, no strength of Wards would truly be enough.
The wind stirred again, carrying the scent of fall and iron and something distant but approaching, and I knew deep in my bones that answering my daughter’s question was the only way forward.