Stella reached the window first.
Her hand hovered over the curtain, ring catching the light. For once, she hesitated.
“Whatever it is,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper, “it found us. Not the other way around.”
“That is not a comforting assessment, darling,” she replied. “But accurate.”
She flicked the curtain aside.
I stepped up beside her and looked out.
And for one long, breathless heartbeat, my brain refused to understand what it was seeing.
The village square. The familiar cobbles. The fountain. The shops.
All there.
And yet—
Something else.
Something impossible.
My hand flew to my mouth.
Behind me, someone swore softly. Someone else prayed. The Silver Wolf growled, low and deep.
Twobble’s voice came from somewhere near my elbow, thin and awestruck.
“Okay,” he said. “So. On the plus side… that explains the shaking.”
No one laughed.
Because whatever waited outside Stella’s tea shop window, whatever had arrived in the heart of Stonewick while we were nursing our hurt and drinking our tea, was not subtle.
Or safe.
Or anything I’d even begun to plan for.
And as my mark burned and the air thickened with looming magic, one thought rose, cold and clear, through the shock:
The circle might not have closed.
But the fight?
It had just found a new way in.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I’d seen Stella be dramatic.
I’d seen her throw open the tea shop door in a swirl of velvet and sarcasm. I’d seen her glare a kettle into boiling faster and smile at people in a way that made them reassess their life choices.
I had never seen herturn.
Not like this.
The moment my brain finally caught up with what we were seeing through the window, something in the air shifted, sharp and metallic.
