Stella stopped pacing.
Twobble swallowed.
“I don’t like it,” the little goblin said.
“I don’t either,” I replied honestly. “But liking it isn’t the point.”
Keegan looked at me, and I saw the conflict there. The instinct to protect. The memory of everything Gideon had done. And beneath it all, the trust he’d placed in me again and again.
“You’re sure?” he asked quietly.
No. I wasn’t.
But I nodded anyway. “For tonight.”
Gideon watched us all with an intensity that made me uneasy, something raw and searching in his gaze.
“You don’t owe me sanctuary,” he said.
“I’m not offering it as forgiveness,” I replied. “I’m offering it as a strategy.”
That, at least, everyone could understand this wasn’t merely out of the goodness of my heart.
Nova exhaled slowly. “One night,” she said. “Under watch.”
“Constant watch,” Stella added.
“Extreme watch,” Twobble chimed in.
“Fine,” Gideon said. “I’ve had worse accommodations.”
The Academy doors brightened then, as if acknowledging the decision, their light warm but restrained.
As we stepped forward together, I felt that unsettled feeling coil again beneath my ribs.
This wasn’t over.
Not with the Priestess still out there.
Not with Gideon standing at the threshold of something he hadn’t yet figured out.
And not with the Academy watching us all, patient as ever, as it always was when history was about to repeat itself, just differently enough to matter.
Chapter Eight
The Academy welcomed us the way it always did after upheaval, by pretending nothing extraordinary had happened while quietly rearranging everything to compensate.
The doors closed behind us with a soft, decisive sound, and warmth rushed in immediately, the kind that sank into bone and coaxed breath to slow.
The kitchen sprites heard us before we reached the stairs.
They burst from doorways and cupboards in a flurry of aprons and enthusiasm, tiny hands already flour-dusted, cheeks flushed with purpose. One skidded to a stop in front of my dad and gasped. Another clutched her tiny chest dramatically when she spotted Gideon and spun around and out of the room so quickly it wasn’t hard to understand her feelings on the subject.
“Well, that’s great. We’re scaring the help,” Twobble said sarcastically. “And I, for one, am the help. I don’t like this one bit, Maeve.”
“I don’t either,” I whispered. “But the Academy didn’t disagree with this arrangement.”
“Maybe the Academy doesn’t know what it’s talking about.”
