“Very funny.” I shook my head and trailed my fingers along his arm. “Your power is always simmering, ready to tap. We need more of that skill.”
He went still at that, something in his eyes shifting from confusion to understanding.
I turned toward Stella next, who’d caught the tail end of the conversation.
“You too,” I said. “You’re more than brews and gossip.”
She scoffed, but her blue eyes softened. “I mean, my gossipispretty top-tier.”
“Stella. You’ve held more people together with tea and stubbornness than half the covens in the faction combined. You know what magic people need when they don’t even know they need it.”
She crossed her arms, her expression somewhere between flattered and intrigued. “What would I teach? Magical Hospitality 101?”
“Something like that,” I said with a wink. “You’d be surprised how many students don’t know how to set protections with herbs and joy.”
“And pie,” she added.
“Especially pie.”
Ember was last. She said nothing, just watched me like she’d been expecting this all along.
“I can’t sneak between walls like you,” I said. “But I know people who need to learn how.”
She nodded once. “Not just the how. But the why.”
“You’ll teach both.”
And then I knelt beside my dad, who cracked open one eye and huffed like I was interrupting something important.
“You, sir,” I said, scratching behind his ear, “are going to change lives.”
He grunted.
“You’ve got more empathy in your jowls than most people have in their entire bodies. These women, these students, they need someone who understands what it’s like to be told you’re too much. Or not enough.”
Frank licked my cheek.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
When I looked up again, the four of them watched me.
None of them laughed. None of them questioned it.
And that’s when I knew I wasn’t wrong.
The Academy had opened its doors not just for learning but forhealing.
And the best teachers weren’t always the ones with glowing staffs or polished syllabi.
Sometimes they were the ones who’d been through it. The ones still healing themselves. The ones who brought laughter to a dinner table, calm to a brewing storm, wisdom wrapped in sarcasm, and side-eyes.
They weremine.
And now they weretheirs,our students.
“You’re serious,” Keegan said, stepping closer.
I looked at him, really looked, and smiled.
