The Wards were under attack again.
And I was standing in a hidden nook under a window, watching the childhood of the enemy like it was a lantern held up to my face.
The sprite hovered beside the blue flame, its tiny hands still moving in slow circles, patient as breath. It didn’t push. It didn’t demand I understand. It simply showed me.
As if the Academy had decided I needed this.
As if it wanted me to know that monsters were not born fully formed.
They were made.
My birthmark stung again, sharper this time, and I flinched, lifting a hand to my wrist instinctively.
“What more are you trying to tell me?” I whispered, not sure if I was speaking to the sprite, the Academy, the memory, or whatever thin part of the world Gideon had managed to slip through.
The sprite tilted its head, almost like a curious bird.
A sound reached us, but it wasn’t from the flame. It was from somewhere outside the Ward.
At first, the ruckus was distant, a dull crash as though something heavy had struck stone. Another noise followed close behind it, voices raised and urgent, the kind that carried panic even when the words themselves were lost.
My whole body tightened.
The sprite froze mid-motion, its small hands hovering over the blue flame. Slowly, it lifted one palm and swept it across the surface the way someone might cup a hand over a candle to smother the light without stirring the air.
The blue dulled, swallowed by fire that returned to its slow, quiet curl as if nothing had ever been there at all.
The noise outside grew louder—shouts now, unmistakable. The echo of running feet. The high, startled cry of someone who hadn’t expected the night to turn dangerous.
I backed away from the nook, my gaze flicking once more to the blue flame.
It burned steadily, indifferent.
The sprite hovered near my shoulder for a moment, as if it knew something I didn’t and had already decided I’d figure it out eventually. For the briefest instant, I felt a light brush against my thoughts, calm and steady, almost reassuring.
But the relief flicked away into the shadows between the cauldrons and was gone so quickly it might never have been there at all.
I turned toward the stairwell and dashed down the steps.
The noise outside wasn’t dying down.
If anything, it was growing louder.
And it was in the center of Stonewick.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
My broom leaned against the Ward’s front steps where I’d abandoned it in a hurry. For half a heartbeat, I didn’t think. I just grabbed it.
The wood vibrated under my palm like it had been waiting for this exact moment. I swung one leg over—
—and the broom jerked.
Not forward like I intended. Not even upward in a controlled rise.
It scooped me.
One second I was braced to launch, and the next the broom shot up with the enthusiasm of a puppy that had spotted a squirrel. My stomach heaved, my grip tightened, and the night wind slapped my cheeks hard enough to make my eyes water.
