When his gaze finally lifted to the sky and found me, the tight knot in my chest eased a little, as though someone had stepped in behind me and steadied my spine.
But relief and dread spread at once.
Because if Keegan was running like that, it meant this wasn’t a small argument. It was probably going on longer than I’d realized.
Behind him, it was as if the entire Academy had emptied to come see what was going on in the village. I spotted my dad and the Silver Wolf coming up behind the crowd.
The midlife witches had poured into the street in hurried waves of voices. Twobble was somehow in the center of it all, moving through the crowd like a very small general who had misplaced his army but intended to organize it anyway. I caught a flash of candy wrappers in his pockets and the worried look he was trying, and failing, to hide.
Skonk came barreling along nearby, half running and half bouncing the way he always did, though even his usual chaos had sharpened into something more focused tonight.
Bella moved faster than the rest. Even in human form there was no missing the fox in her—quick, light on her feet, eyes narrowed as she scanned the street.
Ardetia followed close behind, though running wasn’t quite the word for it. She moved through the crowd with that effortless glide she had, her bright hair catching the lantern light while herexpression stayed cool and composed, as if she’d already decided exactly what she was willing to tolerate and what she wasn’t.
And above all of them—
my broom decided it was time to make an entrance.
It dipped suddenly toward the crowd like it wanted a better view of the chaos below. I made a strangled noise that might have been a laugh if my stomach hadn’t been trying to climb into my throat.
“Not now,” I muttered, hauling back on the handle the way you might pull a stubborn dog off a scent.
“This is not the moment for flair,” Twobble called out.
The broom ignored Twobble and me, dipped once more, low enough that people looked up, and then, with the same enthusiastic jerk it had given me at the Academy steps, it popped me upward again.
I heard someone gasp, then a scattered ripple of startled awe.
A few students even cheered. Actually cheered.
Bless them. Truly.
Keegan reached the edge of the crowd and stopped. His gaze moved quickly—from me, to the shifters, to the orcs—and his jaw set.
I could almost see the thoughts running behind his eyes. He was weighing how to step in without turning the whole mess into something worse, how to shield people without lighting another spark in a crowd that was already too tense.
I pushed the broom down again, this time putting enough stubborn pressure into it that it had no choice but to listen. It resisted for a second, then dipped lower.
My boots hit the cobblestones.
The broom hovered beside me, vibrating with unresolved excitement.
“Stay,” I muttered.
It did not. It zipped over to Stella’s tea shop and plunked down near a pile of pumpkins.
I stepped forward into the shifting edge of the crowd, voice steadying as I drew in a breath.
“Enough! Please, enough.” It wasn’t a shout, but my voice carried well enough.
The pushing stalled, and I moved forward until I stood between the Stonewick residents, the orcs, and the shifters, as Twobble and Skonk scanned a few of the goblins who were in the mix.
Keegan came to my side as Bella and Ardetia fanned out slightly behind us, a subtle line of defense.
“Maeve, you need to tell them—” The woman in the apron looked at me. “You need to tell them that.”
“I’m going to telleveryonesomething,” I said, keeping my tone even, though my blood still rang from the flight and the sight of old hate resurfacing.
