The spell above me shrieked, its corrosive edge chewing through the last of my hedged shield.
I had a half-second.
Maybe less.
“Up,” Ardetia had said.
My muscles remembered, in a chaotic rush, the awkward, ridiculous flying lessons at the Academy. The feel of the broom under me, the way it had jerked to life when I stopped overthinking and justwantedto move.
Keegan’s golden eyes locked on mine.
Don’t you dare, his expression said.
“I’ll be back,” I whispered, which we both knew was the worst possible thing to say in a situation like this.
Then I hopped.
One leg over the broom.
A desperate, graceless, Hedge-Witch-at-forty-somethinghop.
For one sick moment, nothing happened.
The broom sagged under my weight, the spell screamed, and the priestess smiled.
And then something in the bristlescaught.
The broom jerked forward like it had been insulted and was fleeing the conversation.
The ground dropped out from under me.
We shot up toward the roaring, descending vortex of shadow and light.
Chapter Thirty-Four
If I lived to be a hundred and fifty, and given the week I was having, that seemed optimistic, I was never complaining about my cooking spells again.
The broom yanked me upward like it had something to prove.
Wind slapped my face, tearing the breath right out of my lungs. My fingers clamped so hard on the handle my knuckles ached. For a wild, useless second, I waited for the familiar smell of burning bristles, for smoke, for the inevitable explosion.
Nothing caught fire.
We just… flew.
“Okay,” I croaked to the broom. “Okay, okay, okay.”
Below me, the square dropped away, shrinking in jerky increments. Stella’s tea shop became a dollhouse. The fountain turned into a silver button. People became the tiniest moving dots, sparks of magic flaring like fireflies in a storm of shadow.
From up here, the battle looked less like a fight and more like a painting losing a war with ink. Dark streaks radiated from the priestess, crawling along streets and rooftops, whilepockets of light—witches, wolves, fae, goblins—flared and flung themselves against it.
My heart clenched so hard it hurt.
I saw Keegan.
Even at distance, I knew his wolf. That streak of too-dark shadow along his flank, that gold-bright flash of his eyes. He leapt at a knot of coiling dark, teeth bared, taking the full brunt of it on his shoulder. The shadows splintered, but he staggered, dropping briefly before forcing himself up again.
“Turn around,” I begged the broomstick through gritted teeth. “We have to go back. We…we need to go back and…”
