Kitchen doors slammed shut out of nowhere in disagreement.
“Or maybe not.’ Twobble’s cheeks reddened.
The sprites immediately went into motion anyway, because chaos, it turned out, was best addressed with food. Trays levitated. Pots rattled. The long banquet table stretched itself wider, benches scooting into place with a flurry of legs. Someone shouted something about soup, and someone else countered with bread, and a third sprite screamed something about pie.
I didn’t stop them.
I was too tired to argue with the Academy’s instinct for nourishment, and some part of me understood that this, too, was ritual. Breaking bread. Grounding the body after magic tore the world open.
Gideon paused just inside the doorway, eyes flicking from the sprites to the ceiling to the charms humming faintly in the beams overhead. For a moment, he looked genuinely uncertain, like someone who’d wandered into the wrong house and wasn’t sure whether to apologize or flee.
He glanced at me and straightened his shoulders.
“Well,” he drawled lightly, “this is… homey.”
Keegan stiffened instantly, and Stella’s eyes narrowed.
My dad made a sound in the back of his throat that suggested he was reconsidering several life choices.
And I didn’t like the fact that it didn’t take an hour for Gideon’s cockiness to come back. I saw the subtle realignment of Gideon’s posture, the return of that familiar sharpness around the edges. It wasn’t full arrogance, not yet. But the beginnings ofit had sprouted, stretching its limbs like a tree in the shade too long.
“You’ll eat,” Stella said briskly, sweeping past him toward the table. “You’ll rest. And you willnotexplore.”
Gideon smiled faintly. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“That’s what concerns me,” Stella replied without missing a beat. “You’ve had too much practice lying.”
The sprites set plates before us whether we sat or not, bowls of thick vegetable stew steaming, bread warm enough to tear easily, butter melting at the edges. A roast appeared at the center of the table with a flourish, followed by a stack of pies that smelled suspiciously like apples and cinnamon.
Twobble climbed onto a bench and clapped his hands.
“Look at that. One apocalypse later, and we still get dinner. Truly, civilization endures at the Academy. I knew I needed to get myself in here one way or another.”
I chuckled and sank onto a bench, exhaustion finally catching up with me now that the adrenaline had somewhere safe to land. Keegan sat beside me, and I rested my hand on his knee, feeling the steadiness of him once more.
Across from us, Gideon accepted a bowl from a sprite with a polite nod, then glanced up as if suddenly aware of the eyes on him.
All of our eyes.
“What?” he asked mildly.
“Eat,” Bella said from the end of the table. “Preferably without doing anything suspicious.”
He launched cynically and took a spoonful, pausing briefly as if surprised by the taste.
“Huh. That’s… good.”
The sprite who had made it, puffed up proudly, while another hissed, “Don’t take compliments from him,” under her breath.
Conversation stumbled into being the way it always did after shared danger in awkward fragments, circling around anything except the thing that mattered most.
My dad talked about repairs that would need to be done. Nova murmured something to Ardetia about the Wilds settling. Bella argued with a sprite about whether pie counted as a vegetable.
Through it all, Gideon ate slowly, watching and listening.
And adjusting.
By the time he set his spoon down, some of the weariness had left his face. Color had returned. His gaze tracked movement with a familiarity that made my shoulders tense.
