“Prophetic pronouncements make me itchy,” Stella said, somehow managing to sound bored while keeping her body between Luna and the worst of the fall. “Can we make it stop?”
“Yes,” Nova said, no drama..
She stepped into the center of the hexagon with the calm of someone walking into a church to pinch out a candle that had burned beyond its wick. The crystals thickened as if in defiance. She set the ferrule of her staff down in the spiral, halfway along its turn, and exhaled.
The room exhaled with her. The Hollows were grateful for her help as she hummed in a language I could only describe as ancient, possibly Elfin.
The crystals slowed their spin as if embarrassed by how much noise they’d been making and fell straight down, shattering into harmless glitter before they touched the floor. The quivering knives went soft as thin strips of frost that melted into the spiral and fed it light instead of malice. The shroud gave a last silvery shiver and stilled.
The trembling stopped.
The Hollows prevailed.
Silence settled back into the room as if it had been waiting with its coat on. I hadn’t realized until then how high I’d held my shoulders. They were nearly to my ears.
Nova remained very still for a count of ten. Then she lifted her staff and stepped out of the spiral, expression smooth, breath steady.
“She should know better,” Nova said at last, voice like a pale blade rather than a loud one. “Than to dabble in places she doesn’t belong.”
Stella’s smile turned predatory. “Oh, she knows. She simply hoped the Hollows might be in the mood for a flirtation.”
“Let’s not ascribe romance to reckless weather,” Lady Limora said dryly, but the line in her brow had not left.
Gideon looked worried in a way I’d never seen sit on his face. Not performative. Not calculated. The worry of someone who has been found by a thing they would very much like to avoid.
“She knows I’m here,” he said quietly.
The bramble mule leaned harder into him, as if to say he had known it all along and had merely waited for the human to catch up. Twobble popped up from behind the table, checked for falling weaponry, and then stuck a lollipop against his lower lip like a talisman of bravery.
“She also knows we’re here,” I said, wiping a smear of frost from my cheek with the back of my glove. “I can’t tell if that’s the problem or the solution.”
“Both,” Gideon said. “But my presence is the pebble she threw. Yours is the pond she wishes to own.”
The words shouldn’t have shivered through me the way they did. But the way the ice had turned to needles when it hit the shroud felt personal. The Hollows had flattened the attack into weather, but the intent had started aggressively.
Keegan rose, offered me a hand up, and didn’t let go when I took it. “You all right?”
“I will be when my heart remembers we’re not in a snow globe being shaken by someone spiteful.” He squeezed once, and some part of me uncrumpled.
Stella smoothed her cloak as if straightening the hem could straighten the world.
“Darlings,” she said, bright again because choosing brightness is a form of war, “we are not fleeing a parlor because of rude precipitation. Nova has restored the decor. Someone boil water. If the priestess insists on throwing a tantrum, we will answer with sweetness.”
Skonk already had a match out and was trying to light a travel kettle with a look of religious concentration. “I’m on it,” he said, and the match flared obligingly. The bramble mule tried to eat the flame and was sternly denied.
Luna brushed tiny shards of harmless glitter from her shawl. She looked calmer than I felt, which either meant she was braver or had made her peace with danger in a different year.
“She was measuring,” Luna said softly. “Not striking. She wanted to know if the Hollows would let her touch the room.”
“And it won’t,” Nova said, as certain as the frost-writ circle at our feet.
“For now,” Gideon said, and that was the part that worried me.
I turned the line of thought around with cold, careful fingers. Was it Gideon who pulled her attention? Or me? Or both of us in a geometry that made her want to correct the chalk lines? The Hollows had stopped the tantrum, yes, but it had also acknowledged the hand that shook the globe. That acknowledgment sat in the air like the ghost of a bell.
“Does she care that I’m here?” I asked the room, which is to say I asked Nova, and I asked the feeling of the shroud because I had begun to trust that kind of answer almost more than human mouths. “Or does she only care that he is?”
“Yes,” Nova said simply.
