He filled the doorway without trying, shoulders broad beneath a plain shirt, hazel eyes carrying more worry than he’d admit.
Some days the curse made his edges shadowed, a bruise under the skin of his magic, but today he looked merely tired and unfairly handsome. The unfairness annoyed me, but it was a useful emotion to keep my mind on track.
“You should be in bed,” I said.
“You should be in bed,” he countered, then ruined his gruffness by looking at me softly. He leaned against the doorframe, jaw rough with a new beard. “Any news?”
“Not the good kind,” Nova said. “And not the bad kind. The kind that makes you wonder if magic is holding its breath.”
He grunted. “He’s setting up a board game.”
“Gideon always plays games,” I said. “We just don’t know if we’re playing checkers or the game of magical Life.”
Twobble perked. “Oh! Speaking of housekeeping. Karvey asked if he could put in for a materials allowance. Somethingabout micro-fractures in the south roofline where goblins dance. I have no idea who he could mean.”
Stella pointed at him with a teaspoon. “No dancing on the ridges.”
“It was interpretive stomping.”
Ardetia drifted closer, eyes on Keegan as if weighing a stone before placing it in a river.
“How is your…tide?” she asked delicately.
He gave a humorless smile. “Less drown-y this morning.” Then to me, lower, “I meant to come earlier. I didn’t sleep.”
I didn’t say I knew. I’d felt him like a prickle along my birthmark when the moon set. Between Keegan restlessness, the Wards listening to me, and me pretending humans could drink enough tea to fix a wolf’s nightmares, I knew time wasn’t on our side.
I only touched his wrist, a brush of fingers, quick as a promise, but my skin warmed.
A breath moved through the room. Not wind. Not a draft. A breath. The pages of the ledgers near my elbow lifted and settled. The lamps thinned and then steadied. Every hair along my arms stood up.
Nova’s staff ticked once on stone. “There.”
Stella set down her cup. “Darling, if this is another Ward signal, I swear I will retire to a cape and the countryside.”
“It isn’t a signal,” Bella said, head tilted. Fox-listening. “The Ward is …listening back.”
The doors sighed. On the threshold tucked under the door lay an envelope I would’ve sworn wasn’t there a heartbeat ago.No footprints and no messenger hurrying away on the sidewalk. So no footprints meant either invisible feet or no feet at all. Neither option made me feel cozy either way.
Keegan picked it up and walked it over to me.
White vellum, edges singed. The smell of rosemary and something metallic, like old coins or newer blood. My name across the front in a hand that made me nauseous with recognition, even though I’d never seen it, made me feel the slant of family where I didn’t want it.
MAEVE.
Keegan straightened.
“Don’t,” he said, which made me open it, because that is the sort of headmistress I turned out to be.
One square of paper, thin, expensive, smug.
Bring what is mine. No charms. No tricks. No wolf. No dog. No fox. No fae. Come with your courage alone.
Below the demands, a sigil I’d seen once in a dream reflection and filed away in my memory shimmered. It must be the mark of the priestess, complete with a thorned circle.
What was hers? What could we possibly have that she thinks belongs to her?
“Subtle,” Stella muttered.
