I groaned softly. “I didn’t know that was happening.”
“Oh, it is. I’ve even heard about a love triangle.” She laughed.
“That couldn’t be the furthest from the truth.” I chuckled, feeling a sense of relief fill me.
“You must have a biblio gift,” I said in awe of the book she’d found for me.
“I’ve been told that,” she confessed. “I was hoping the Academy could find me useful one day after I finish my schooling.
I smiled, clutching the book. “I think it already has. And your name?”
“Trinity.”
“Welcome to the Academy, Trinity.”
She gave a small bow of her head and left me with the book heavy in my hands and my pulse hammering in my ears.
I cracked the cover open with shaking fingers. The scent of old parchment and sage rushed up to meet me.
Illustrations of wolves sprawled across the first pages, their eyes inked in silver that gleamed faintly even in the dim light. The text was written in careful script, detailing clans that had risen and scattered, rituals of calling, and the bonds that tethered bloodlines to the land, along with rifts and clashes that separated them.
But as I traced the words with my fingertip, something else struck me…something sharp and shameful.
I had been so focused on Keegan. On Gideon. On Malore’s curse and the shadows pressing closer every day. I had been so intent onprotectingthe Academy’s midlife students and shielding them from fear and keeping them comfortable that I had forgotten the truth staring me in the face.
The Academy wasn’t just a sanctuary.
It was Stonewick’s greatest asset.
Not the building. Not the Wards. The people inside it like Trinity.
Lady Limora, Vivienne, Mara, and Opal…
The midlife witches, shifters, and fae who had chosen to return, who had chosen to keep learning, to keep growing when the world told them their chance had passed.
They weren’t fragile. They weren’t here just to be sheltered from the storm. They were strength waiting to be tapped, a chorus waiting to be woven into something louder than the shadows could ever be.
And I had been wasting them.
I pressed my palm flat against the book, my throat tight.
All this time, I’d been thinking my job was to hold the line. To stand in front, to shield. To carry every burden myself until my back cracked under the weight.
But maybe my real job wasn’t protection.
It was utilization.
It was teaching. Inspiring. Gathering their strength and weaving it into Stonewick’s.
The Academy was alive again, not just because its Wards flickered, but because midlife witches filled its halls with laughter and mistakes and stubborn hope. They were the reason the land stirred. They were the reason Stonewick had a chance at all.
I had been so afraid of losing them that I’d forgotten how much we stood to gain if I let them rise with me.
Unity.
The realization knocked the wind out of me, but so did…
Sacrifice.
