He grinned. “No promises.”
They left in a swirl of energy and half-formed arguments about whether goblins counted as official ceremonial witnesses. The door clicked shut behind them.
The room felt smaller without their noise.
Keegan stepped close again, resting his forehead against mine. His breath warmed my lips, steady now, if not quite normal. The shadows under his eyes were still there, but he didn’t look like he was about to fall over. Not physically, anyway, and then he kissed me.
Softly and gently as our worries blended together and he stepped back.
“Last chance to run away with me,” he murmured.
“Where?” I asked. “The non-cursed shoreline?”
“Somewhere with bad cell service and good soup,” he said. “We could fake our deaths and open a very small, very judgmental inn.”
“As tempting as it is to own the world’s most sarcastic bed-and-breakfast,” I said, “we have a date with a cursed circle.”
He sighed, but there was no real protest in it. “Worth a shot.”
I slid my hand against his cheek, feeling the faint chill under his skin where the curse tugged.
“Hey,” I said. “Whatever happens out there… we’re doing this together. You’re not a bridge alone. You’re… one of those braided rope things. With too many knots.”
“That’s very romantic,” he said dryly.
“I’m a poet.”
He kissed me once again, just enough to remind me that for all the magic and curses and grandmothers with delusions of godhood, there was this too. This human, painfully mortal, deeply inconvenient love.
“Let’s go end a Hunger Path,” he said.
“Let’s go annoy my grandmother,” I said.
“Best bonus,” he agreed. “And by the way, can we talk about potential in-laws because you’re serving up quite the assortment?”
“In-laws, huh?” I smiled and felt my chest loosen just slightly.
Outside, somewhere beyond the stone walls, the Wilds waited. The Hollows thrummed. The Wards watched. Gideon moved, silent and sharp, across a landscape that had seen too many old rites.
And soon, with my heart full of fear and stubbornness and the memory of dragon eyes, I’d step into the circle and hope the world chose to hold.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The Wilds always smelled like a memory you weren’t sure you wanted back.
Damp earth, cold stone, something sharp and metallic under the green—like the air still remembered every bargain ever struck here.
The trees thinned into crooked sentinels, their branches leaning over the clearing where the Luminary’s power sank closest to the surface. Beyond that, the world went strange, where it wasn’t quite forest, and not quite other realm, just… Wild.
We stood at its edge like people waiting for a train that might or might not arrive.
Nova had drawn the circle at dawn with a wide, careful ring etched into the bare earth, layered with sigils only visible if you tilted your head just right. The Wards hummed beneath it now, a low, patient thrumming, like a giant cat deciding whether to wake up.
The others filtered in, one by one.
My dad stood near the north point of the circle, hands in the pockets of his worn jacket, jaw tight. He looked more man than bulldog today with eyes clear and shoulders squared. Theonly sign of nerves was the way he kept flexing his fingers, as if checking that they would still turn into paws if he needed them.
Mom hovered beside him, cloak wrapped tight around her shoulders, hair pulled back in a witch’s braid I’d never seen her wear before coming back to Stonewick. Magic clung to her like a subtle perfume now—rosemary, lemon, old charms.
