Keegan stiffened beside me, but I felt something else, too. Understanding.
“She’s counting on fear to do the work for her,” Gideon went on. “That’s the cost of delay.”
Keegan finally exhaled, long and slow. “That could’ve gone worse.”
“That’s not comforting,” I muttered.
“No,” he agreed. “But it’s honest.”
I glanced at Gideon, who was watching the orcs with a distant, thoughtful expression.
“You didn’t have to step in,” I said quietly.
“Yes,” he replied again, softer this time. “I did.”
“How did you know?” I asked, knowing he wouldn’t answer.
As the valley settled into its uneasy truce, I became acutely aware of everything we’d spent without realizing it.
Magic.
Time.
Trust.
And something else.
Choice.
The Priestess had forced our hand, but she hadn’t taken free will away. But she’d made it clear that wherever we went next, we wouldn’t be unseen.
I rested my hand over my birthmark, feeling the faint echo of warmth still there, and wondered how many more times I could stand in the middle before the balance demanded something in return.
The battle had ended.
The reckoning hadn’t even begun.
Frost still clung where it shouldn’t. Shadows lingered at the edges of vision, thinner now, but thicker, as if watching to see who would move first.
I stood at the heart of it, exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with magic.
Keegan stayed close, but even he couldn’t soften the truth pressing in on me. I felt it with every breath. With every thrum of the land beneath my boots.
This hadn’t been an accident.
The Priestess hadn’t lashed out blindly. She’d chosen the moment with surgical precision. She’d waited until I stepped forward without a shield. Until I made myself visible. Until I proved, to the orcs, to the Hollows, to every faction watching,that I was willing to stand in the open and bear the weight of connection.
Nova joined me quietly, her expression unreadable as she followed my gaze across the ice-scored valley.
“She escalated into chaos. That’s never her move,” she said softly. “That means something’s changed.”
“Yes,” I replied. My voice sounded distant even to me. “She’s running out of room.”
“And you?” Nova asked.
I didn’t answer right away.
My birthmark stirred again, not burning this time, but pulsing, as if responding to a tide only it could feel. Images pressed at the edges of my mind—Stonewick’s crooked streets, Stella’s tea shop glowing at dusk, the Academy’s doors breathing open and shut, students returning with laughter and uncertainty and hope.
