“We can’t hold this forever,” Limora called, voice tight. Her witches were sweating, knuckles white around their joinedhands. The net overhead still flickered, but the shadow lattice was thickening again, sigils reasserting themselves.
“Then we don’t hold,” Nova said. “We break. We need a rupture. A misstep. Something that turns her own power back on her.”
“And how do you propose we do that?” the priestess asked coolly, clearly hearing every word. “Your little circle has no teeth without my knife.”
She tugged on the shadow cord like a leash.
Pain lanced down my mark.
I gasped. The world tilted for a second, the square smearing.
Hands grabbed me—Keegan’s wolf shoulder pressing against my legs, my father’s grip on my arm, my mother’s palm between my shoulders.
“I’m fine,” I choked. “It’s just…She’s…I’m linked to her. She’s pulling on everything at once.”
“You’re not a rope,” Nova snapped. “Stop acting like one.”
“Working on it,” I wheezed.
The priestess’s smile was razor thin now. Sweat beaded at her own temple, though she pretended otherwise.
“Enough,” she said.
The shadows around her swelled.
They poured outward in a final, massive wave, aiming not just for the town now, but forus.Tendrils lashed, cords snapped, and a tide of dark wanted to wrap every ankle, every building, every inch of Stonewick in its grip.
There was no time to think.
Only to answer.
I reached, not for dragons, not for circles, not even for my grandmother Elira.
For Stonewick.
For every cup of tea Stella had poured. For every joke that Twobble had made on these streets. For Karvey on the roofs, for Luna’s old yarn tangling in the shop, for kids running with sparks at their heels, for Skye’s smile when she first visited, for Celeste’s empty place at my kitchen table that I was desperate to fill again.
I let that love slam into the Hedge.
Into the thorns.
Into the Wards.
Into the Energy.
“No,” I said.
The word wasn’t loud.
It didn’t have to be.
The ground under us answered.
Butterflies burst from the sigils etched into the walls. Some were real, and some were made of light. They swarmed into the air, wings beating in frantic, furious patterns. Where they touched the rushing shadows, tiny flares of gold lit.
The Maple Ward sent up a surge of deep, anchoring strength. The trees lined the streets shuddered and straightened, branches reaching out toblockthe incoming dark, leaves flaring a sudden, vivid green that looked almost obscene against the gray.
Somewhere, far above, I heard the low, distant rumble of stone on stone.
