“The kettle,” I said, though even as I did, I knew it wasn’t true. The kettle didn’t have that kind of authority.
The cottage’s bones hummed.
Not the usual friendly creak, not the warm settling that saidI know you, I like you, here’s a cozy draft by the window.
This was lower. Deep. A vibration in the floorboards that worked its way up my spine.
Keegan felt it too. His head snapped up from the circle diagram he’d been studying with my dad. His eyes went that shade darker, the wolf shifting just under his skin.
“Ward?” he asked.
“No,” I said slowly. “That’s… inside.”
The birch sprig on the mantle shivered, leaves tugged by an invisible wind. The flame in the hearth bent sideways for a heartbeat, as if something had walked past it. Every candle in the room flared, then shrank, then steadied.
Twobble, sitting cross-legged under the table with a muffin and a quill, froze mid-bite. Crumbs stuck to his chin. His ears pricked straight up.
“Does anyone else feel like the house just got taller?” he whispered.
Skonk’s pen blotted. “The ambient resonance just spiked,” he muttered, grabbing his little notebook. “This is not normal cottage behavior.”
Miora put her knitting down. Her fingers were steady, but the color had drained from her face. She pressed a hand to the arm of her chair, as if bracing against a wave.
“Something’s wrong,” she murmured.
My stomach clenched. “Wrong how?”
She shook her head. “Can’t tell yet. But it’s old. Older than this cottage. Older than me.”
That narrowed the field uncomfortably.
Another tremor ran through the house, not a physical shake, but a magical shudder. The lantern by the door flicked from warm gold to cold blue and back. The charms above thedoor, my mother’s neat sigils woven through Elira’s old work, glowed faintly, then dimmed.
On the roof, stone shifted. The gargoyles alerted.
I heard it as a low grind, like someone dragging a heavy trunk across the floor upstairs. But therewasno upstairs in this part of the cottage. The loft was behind us, which meant only one thing.
The gargoyles were moving quickly.
Keegan was already halfway to the front window. I joined him, pressing my fingers to the paneled glass. The woods sloped away outside as the pine trees whispered
Nothing looked wrong. No gathering storm. No shadow creeping across the sky. No priestess sending down weaponized weather.
“Do you see anything?” I asked.
He squinted toward the ridge. “No. The Stone Ward looks intact.” His hand brushed the window frame, feeling. “But… tense. Like it’s bracing.”
Another heavy scrape from above. Then a thunk. Then another, closer.
Twobble crawled out from under the table and peered up at the ceiling, as if expecting a gargoyle to come politely through it.
“If they fall through the roof,” he said, “I am not responsible for the plaster.”
“The roof is reinforced,” Skonk said, though he didn’t sound entirely certain. “Probably.”
The front door latch rattled.
Every head in the room snapped toward it.
