Karvey.
Gargoyles peeled themselves off the inn’s roof and leapt, wingless but faster than falling. They crashed into the outer edges of the shadow wave, stone fists punching holes, stone backs creating bulwarks.
Above it all, the Flame Ward flared.
A light streaked down the paths we’d walked when we’d repaired it. Lanterns along the main road whooshed into bright, fierce flame. Candles in windows jumped high, their glow punching through the murk.
The incoming tide of shadow hit all of that.
It didn’t stop.
But itslowed.
It fractured.
Instead of smothering us all at once, it crashed around obstacles. Vines of darkness grabbed for gaps.
Magic collided in the square in a dizzying blur of shadows and flames, frost and wind, dawn-fizz and wolf howls and stubborn, thorny hedge-lines.
Nonstop.
No safe corner.
No time to breathe.
I lost track of individual moves and only flashes remained. Stella yanked a tendril of darkness off a villager’s door and bit it clean in half, spitting out bitter smoke. Bella launched herself off the Silver Wolf’s back like a tiny, furious rocket. My dad half-shifted, claws and teeth out, pinned a writhing patch of shadow to the ground while Skonk poured salt, of all things, around it, sealing it.
The shadows overhead writhed, lit from within by Gideon’s resistance and Keegan’s howl.
The priestess, at the center of it all, stood like a black sun, power streaming out of her in impossible amounts.
And me?
I was the hinge.
Again.
The point where Wards and Hedge met, where dragons watched, where two grandmothers’ legacies collided.
Every time she reached for the town, I threw myself in the way—not physically, but with the lines only magic knew about.
Redirecting.
Blunting.
Turning her grabs into glancing blows.
It wasn’t sustainable.
She was older, stronger, more practiced.
But we weren’t nothing.
We were a power she hadn’t accounted for.
“If you wanted my attention,” I gasped, forcing my voice to carry across the chaos, “you could’ve just sent a postcard.”
Her gaze cut to me, furious and fascinated.
