“Nicely done,” Stella said. “Ten out of ten maternal wrath.”
The priestess flicked her gaze toward my mother.
The air around my momstilled.
The wind she’d called sputtered, then died, dropping leaves and dust in a limp, messy flurry.
“I did not give you permission to interfere, little runaway,” the priestess said. “Stonewick’s second-rate student.”
My mom’s face went bloodless.
Limora stepped in then, cane tapping sharply against the cobbles.
“I’ve had enough of this,” she said crisply. “Stonewick is not an audition stage.”
Opal, Vivienne, and Marla moved with her, like planets aligning.
They joined hands, and Limora’s cane went from walking aid to conduit. Power poured through it, lighting the carvings along its length one by one. Their little circle glowed—warm, gold, and stubborn.
“Ready?” Limora murmured.
“Ready,” the others echoed.
They thrust their joined magic upward, not at the priestess herself, but at the shadow lattice dome overhead.
Lines of warmth shot up, threading through the dark grid. Wherever their light touched the shadow sigils, the symbols flickered, some sputtering out like bad neon signs.
The dome trembled.
The priestess’s expression tightened.
“You are gnats,” she said.
“And you’re in our living room,” Vivienne replied pleasantly. “Feet off the table.”
Ardetia lifted her hands, palms up.
Ice crystals formed instantly above them, spinning in tiny, delicate orbits. Her eyes went bright and inhuman, all pupil, no white. When she flicked her fingers, the crystals shot forward in a glittering storm, embedding themselves in the shadows along the edges of the square.
Where they struck, frost spread—not the priestess’s brittle, hungry cold, but a clean, sharp freeze that pinned the shadows in place.
“Fae ice,” the priestess said. “How quaint.”
“It lasts,” Ardetia replied.
Bella darted in and out of the thickest dark patches, fox form a streak of red-gold against black. She snapped at trailing ends of shadow, ripping off chunks and tossing them toward Twobble and Skonk, who bombarded them with bottled dawn fizz until they popped like nasty balloons.
“Maeve!” Keegan shouted.
I turned just in time to see a tendril of shadow rip free from the net above and spear straight toward me, faster than anything had a right to move.
I threw up my hands.
Fire answered.
It wasn’t entirely mine.
The Flame Ward’s power pulsed through me, mingled with my own hedge magic. Heat roared up from my center, out through my palms. A sheet of blue-white fire burst outward, not burning the air, not scorching the cobbles, only the shadow.
