Good. Something she didn’t like.
Her lips thinned.
“Then show me,” she said. “Show me what yoursomethingcan do.”
Shadows surged again, racing along the cobbles toward Stella’s tea shop, rising up like a wave about to crash over the windows.
For a heartbeat, panic clawed at my throat.
Everyone I loved most in the world was on the other side of that glass.
Keegan. My parents. Nova. Stella. Twobble, Skonk, Bella, the Silver Wolf, Ardetia, Lady Limora and her witches. All of them.
“No,” I said.
I didn’t shout it.
Imeantit.
Hedge magic wasn’t about dramatic gestures. It was about boundaries.
I reached down, not for the sigils, not for dragon power, not for anything grand and cosmic.
For the Hedge.
For the Butterfly Ward. For the stubborn, invisible lines that saidthis is one thing and that is another, and you do not cross without permission.
I threw my will into the space between the tea shop and the oncoming shadows and imagined a line.
A simple one.
Drawn in chalk.
In salt.
In thorn.
The shadows hit it.
They didn’t stop completely.
She was too strong for that, but theyslowed.
Their wave crested and turned sludgy, piling up against the unseen barrier like mud against a dam.
The priestess’s eyes widened, just a fraction.
“You are… inconvenient,” she said.
I was shaking now, from the inside out, but I managed a smile that felt mostly like baring my teeth.
“It’s kind of my brand,” I said. “Now, I’ll say it again.Let Gideon go.Whatever game you’re playing with him, it ends. He’s not your knife. He’s not your leash. He’s not your anything.”
Her gaze went flat, all amusement gone.
“For a girl who claims not to care for him, you are very insistent,” she said softly.
“I care about anyone you think you own,” I shot back. “On principle.”
