A man near the front of the crowd scoffed. “What, you think we’re supposed to welcome them back with casseroles? Just because we’re in the Midwest doesn’t mean casseroles fix everything.”
“They fix a lot,” Twobble muttered somewhere behind me.
A few people chuckled, the sound quick but enough to ease the tightness in the air for a moment.
The laughter faded almost as quickly as it started, and the air tightened again.
I raised a hand, palm out, just asking for a moment.
“I’m not asking anyone to pretend the past didn’t happen,” I said. “And I’m not asking you to swallow years of hurt overnight because it would make things easier.”
A murmur passed through the crowd as I willed myself forward. I thought we’d moved on from this when we’d made a deal with the goblins, but when I looked at everyone standing in the crowd, I saw the pain ran deep. The history was hard to forget.
“I’m asking you to consider whether someone might be using our past against us.” I drew a breath.
Keegan’s focus sharpened as he watched the crowd, and Ardetia glanced at me, one brow lifting slightly, as if trying to see where I was about to take this.
The woman in the apron frowned. “What does that even mean?”
“I’m saying…” I started to answer, but the birthmark at my hip flared, a sharp flash of heat that made my breath hitch, and I stilled.
The crowd kept talking around me, voices overlapping, boots shifting on the cobblestones, but my attention narrowed until the rest of it felt distant.
Something brushed the edge of my thoughts, and I knew what was coming.
Look at them, Maeve. Look how easy they are to turn…
The whisper in my mind was soft, but it carried the kind of precision that made it impossible to ignore.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
You can’t mend what I tore long ago. I thought you knew that, grandchild.
The Priestess’s voice carried the faintest amusement, like she was watching from somewhere comfortable, sipping tea while my life burned around me. It was just a game to her, always had been.
Another thought tried to force its way in from my grandmother, but I pushed it away as best I could, squinting my eyes closed.
Keegan shifted beside me as if he sensed the change in my posture.
“Maeve?” he said low, only for me.
I forced a breath through my nose, anchored myself in the smell of pumpkins and fall air and Keegan’s presence.
The whisper pressed again, light but insistent.
This is what you’re protecting. This is what you’d die for? Bickering townsfolk? They would not do the same for you.
Anger flared so fast it startled me.
It wasn’t directed at the townspeople.
It was at her…at the audacity of her trying to use my fear as if it were her own tool.
I clenched my fingers until my nails dug into my palm.
“You don’t get to narrate my village,” I said quietly.
A few heads turned, confused. They thought I was talking to them.
