She moved with her usual grace, robes flowing, chin lifted, her expression composed but eyes bright with something sharper than curiosity. She didn’t bother with pleasantries.
“They’re restless,” she said, falling into step beside me as I crossed the foyer.
“I noticed,” I replied. “That’s never a good sign.”
She sniffed. “Vampires are patient by nature. When they stop being patient, it’s because something old is stirring.”
That phrasing again. Old. Ancient. As if the world were a book someone had decided to reread from a much earlier chapter.
“They feel it in their blood,” Lady Limora continued. “A pressure. A pull. It’s not fear, precisely. It’s… anticipation.”
“That’s worse,” I muttered.
She smiled thinly. “Yes. It is.”
Before I could ask anything else, the Silver Wolf approached from the far side of the hall, her presence parting the crowd without effort. The vampires didn’t retreat from her, exactly, but they did give her space, their instincts recognizing something equally ancient standing before them.
“Maeve,” she said, inclining her head. “Lady Limora.”
“Wolf,” Limora replied, cordial but cool.
The Silver Wolf’s gaze returned to me.
My stomach dropped. “What do you think?”
The Silver Wolf nodded, explaining to Lady Limora, “There is a kind of an awareness that precedes clan movement.”
Lady Limora’s lips pressed together. “That aligns with what my gals are sensing.”
I folded my arms, trying to ground myself. “Ending the Hunger Path was supposed to calm the fractures. That was the point.”
“It did,” the Silver Wolf said carefully. “But calm doesn’t always mean stillness.”
I frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” she said, “that something has replaced the Hunger as a point of focus.”
The Academy’s lights dimmed slightly, as if in agreement.
“Do you think it’s related to the orcs?”
“It would be foolish to pretend it isn’t,” the Silver Wolf said.
I was about to respond when laughter drifted in from the corridor, light and unexpected enough to make all three of us turn.
My parents stepped inside together.
And for half a heartbeat, everything else faded.
My mother was smiling—really smiling. It was the kind of happiness that softened her whole face, making her look years younger. My father walked beside her in his human form, his hand resting casually at the small of her back as if it had always belonged there.
They looked… happy and comfortable. It seemed my parents finally stopped circling the truth and decided to sit down in it.
It was a lot to process in one day.
“Oh,” I said eloquently.
My mother caught sight of me and beamed. “Maeve! There you are.”
