“Well, try kindness,” I offered. “She might actually like you this time around.”
Another bang from below.
Dad chuckled. “That sounded like a firm not happening.”
I sighed, realizing this was the least relaxing time to relax… ever.
The Academy needed me. Keegan needed me. Gideon, blast him, probably needed me too.
Mom, of course, chose that moment to lean back with a sigh and announce, “Maeve, you really do look stressed.”
I bit my tongue before the snark could spill out. Because she wasn’t wrong. But I refused to give her the satisfaction.
“Tea is handling it,” I said instead, reaching for the doorknob.
“Tea isn’t a cure,” Dad said.
Karvey’s voice rumbled from outside. “Nor is sarcasm.”
I opened the door, the cool air rushing in like relief.
“Close enough,” I muttered, stepping into the evening.
Behind me, the cottage clawed with new, uneasy dynamics: Mom nesting where she didn’t belong, Dad caught in the middle, Miora banging jars in passive-aggressive Morse code. But outside, the woods stretched toward the Academy, and I walked through them because if I stopped moving now, the fire inside me might finally catch.
I stood in the trees, the cottage door at my back, the Academy like a magnet in the distance, and my thoughts pulling me toward the inn. Two directions that called me so hard I thought I’d split in half.
Keegan or Gideon.
Keegan, who was unraveling thread by thread under Malore’s curse. Gideon, who had no business being in my world again, yet here he was—half-dead, half-shadow, half a secret I couldn’t tell.
I closed my eyes, pressing my fingertips to my temples. Keegan had Nova and Ardetia at his side. I reminded myself of that twice, maybe three times, until it felt like a rope I could hold onto. They’d been staggering their shifts, watching him, making sure he wasn’t alone. And more instructors had signed on to cover summer school, so the Academy wasn’t running on fumes.
No, I needed to see Keegan first.
“Stella and the others can babysit Gideon,” I muttered. “They’re practically professionals at wrangling the impossible.”
The words steadied me, at least enough to set my feet on the path toward the Academy. My cloak brushed against the herbs lining the way, rosemary and mint scenting the air, grounding me in something ordinary.
But the air itself had other plans.
Halfway to the Academy, the sky shifted.
Not just clouds moving. Stonewick’s skies never did anything halfway. No, this was a rolling, curling, dimming, and spreading across the heavens. The lanterns along the lane flickered nervously.
The shadows grew.
I stopped dead as breath caught in my throat.
My first thought was Keegan. He’d feel this, even half-asleep, even fading. The curse inside him would answer it. My second thought, traitorous and unhelpful, was Gideon. He’d be calling to it too, as he lay under Stella’s care.
“Not now,” I whispered, tilting my face upward. “I don’t have room for this tonight.”
But the shadows didn’t listen. They never did.
I quickened my pace and tried to keep my breathing steady, as though I wasn’t walking straight into the jaws of something waiting overhead.
The air smelled different now, like ozone and iron.
