The Fae looked… unsurprised. Ardetia’s expression barely flickered, but the light around her dimmed.
Twobble’s ears drooped. Skonk’s notebook hung forgotten at his side.
Stella shut her parasol with a crisp little snap.
“Well,” she said, the single word landing like a china cup set too carefully on a table. “That did not go to plan.”
Lady Limora exhaled slowly, frost threading the air. “We knew this was a possibility,” she said. “We simply hoped it wouldn’t be.”
“The Hollows will forgive us, eventually,” Nova said. “It doesn’t like false starts, but it has seen worse.”
“We weren’t at fault,” I countered.
“I don’t care about its feelings,” Keegan said, low and rough. “I care that we just lost our best shot at closing that path without burning the world down.”
The anger in his voice made something in my chest flinch.
He was right.
We’d bet so much on Gideon’s yes. On his hatred of my grandmother being stronger than his fear. On his willingness to step into something bigger than his own orbit.
And now there was just… a blank space where he was supposed to be.
The hollow inside my ribs widened.
I stepped out of my quarter of the circle, rubbing my arms against a sudden, non-magical chill. The wind had picked up only a little, but the Wilds felt colder. Less like a waiting room, more like a warning sign.
Twobble climbed back onto his rock, then hopped down immediately, as if sitting still were suddenly unbearable.
“Okay,” he said, voice too bright. “So! Not to sound like a broken crystal, but: now what?”
“Now,” Stella said briskly, standing with a sweep of velvet, “we acknowledge that we have been stood up by the world’s most exasperating almost-antihero, we swallow our disappointment with dignity, and we drink tea.”
“Tea,” Bella echoed faintly, as if remembering the concept from another life.
Stella looked around at all of us, gaze sharp as a pin. “All of you. My shop. We’ll regroup there. I refuse to let the Wilds have the last word in this conversation. They don’t even have chairs.”
“Stella—” I began.
“No arguments,” she said. “If we’re going to be devastated, we’ll do it over pastries. I’m elderly, not heartless.”
She was the one who could say it out loud: devastated.
The word gave shape to the heavy, soggy thing in my chest. Naming it didn’t fix it. But it made it easier to carry.
Nova tapped her staff once, sealing the circle lines as best she could. “We’ll need to speak with Elira,” she said quietly.
She, Lady Limora, and the other coven witches began dismantling the temporary protective markers we’d set at the Wilds’ edge. The Silver Wolf trotted over to us, brushed against Keegan’s side, then mine.
“You did not fail,” she said in my mind, her telepathic voice like distant bells. “He did.”
“Feels like the same thing,” I answered silently.
“No,” she said. “His absence is his choice. We still have ours.”
Then she padded off toward the path back, tail held high.
We walked.
