Ardetia closed her eyes briefly, listening to something only fae ears could catch.
“The lines are focusing,” she said softly. “It will not wait forever.”
“It doesn’t have to,” I said. “He’s coming.”
I believed it when I said it.
Mostly.
Twobble started bouncing one knee. His foot tapped against the rock with increasing speed. Skonk’s quill scratched faster.
No one mentioned the time.
The sun climbed a finger’s width higher.
The wind picked up, then dropped again.
I tried to focus on my breathing, on the weight of the circle etched around us, on the steady presence of Keegan at my side, and my father across from me, and my mother just behind. We had anchors. We had power. We had a plan.
We were just… missing a very specific, very infuriating piece.
“I’m not trying to add stress to an already stressful situation,” Twobble said finally, breaking the silence like a dropped plate, “but where is Gideon? Someone gave him the address, right?”
I closed my eyes.
“Maybe he’s circling around dramatically,” Bella said. “He strikes me as the ‘make an entrance’ type.”
“Perhaps he’s fashionably late,” Opal suggested, though her tone said she didn’t believe it. “Some people think it makes them more mysterious.”
Stella arched a brow. “There is a fine line between fashionably late, and I have no respect for other people’s blood pressure.”
Nova’s mouth tightened, her gaze still on the Luminary threads.
“His absence is bending the pattern,” she said. “The circle knows whom it’s missing.”
The Silver Wolf let out a low, displeased growl.
Keegan’s jaw flexed.
“We told him noon,” he said. “Wilds edge. This exact clearing.” His voice remained almost calm, but I could hear the strain underneath. “He agreed.”
“Gideon agrees to many things,” Ardetia said mildly. “His follow-through is… selective.”
My heart gave a sour twist.
He’d said yes.
In the neutral ground, ice and light and fractured sky, he’d looked me in the eye when he agreed to stand in the circle. He’d sounded… sincere. Not pure, never that. But honest in his own sharp-edged way.
“I know him,” I said quietly. “He hates being cornered, but he likes control even more. Breaking his word here means losing control. It would be stupid.”
“He also hates being owned,” Keegan said. “And he might feel like agreeing to stand in our circle makes him… beholden.”
“Newsflash,” Stella said dryly, “he already owes us. We didn’t leave him to be chewed on by Malore.”
“Should I go find Luna?” Skonk piped up suddenly. “Make sure she didn’t run off and hide him again, or…?”
He trailed off as half a dozen heads whipped toward him.
