Not edging up to a cliff hoping the bridge held.
I dried my face and looked at myself again, pulling my thoughts away from what-ifs and back to the present.
Mom and Dad.
They’d gone up to the Academy two nights ago. Technically it was “for safety” and “to assist with final protective measures,” but I’d seen the way they’d looked at each other when they left the cottage. A little wary. A little hopeful. A little like two people who’d been handed a second chance and didn’t quite know what to do with it.
I had no idea if they’d taken separate rooms. Part of me hoped they hadn’t. Part of me braced for heartbreak if they had. Even in my forties, with a divorce of my own under my belt, some stubborn, childlike part of me still wanted my parents to make their way back to each other.
Their love story had been interrupted by curses and fear and half-truths. It deserved at least a shot at a new chapter.
It also wasn’t my job to manage.
“Boundaries,” I muttered as I rinsed off the suds. “Circle first. Parent reunion subplot later.”
I stepped out of the shower, dried off, and looked up to see the mirror making my left eyebrow look skeptical.
I returned to the bedroom to find Keegan halfway dressed, tugging on his shirt with the kind of stubborn determination usually reserved for people arming themselves. The curse-shadow around him had faded a fraction, but it still clung. He moved a little carefully, like his joints had sand in them.
He caught me looking and lifted his brow. “What’s that face?”
“Just mentally writing a strongly worded letter to whatever designed this curse,” I said.
“Get in line,” he said.
I crossed to him and reached for the buttons. “Let me.”
His gaze softened as I started fastening them one by one. Up close, I could see the faint tremor in his hands, the tightness at the corners of his mouth. But his eyes, those infuriatingly loyal hazel eyes, were clear.
“How’s your head?” he asked quietly.
“Full,” I said. “At least we know what he wants. Mostly.”
“Do we?” Keegan asked. “Because all I’ve got is ‘not to die’ and ‘not to be owned.’”
“That’s something,” I said. “It means his goals intersect with ours… for now.”
Keegan slid his fingers under my chin, lifting my face. “I still don’t like him near you.”
“I know,” I said. “I still don’t like the curse near you. We’re both going to have to tolerate unpleasant proximity today.”
He sighed. “Fine. But if he so much as looks at you like you’re a spell component, I’ll rearrange his jaw.”
I smiled, even as my stomach twisted. “Duly noted.”
A knock pounded at the door before I could say anything else.
“Mighty Headmistress!” Twobble’s voice rang out cheerfully. “Are you decent? And if so, can you fix that? It’s unnerving.”
I groaned. “Why is that my goblin?”
Because you fed him, a traitorous part of me answered.
Keegan stepped back, expression smoothing into something approximating composure. I opened the door.
Twobble and Skonk stood on the porch like a chaotic welcome committee.
Twobble had crumbs on his shirt and ink on his nose. Skonk clutched a notebook to his chest like a holy text. Both wore expressions that tried very hard to be solemn and failed around the edges.
