Keegan’s gaze flicked sharply to mine, as if he heard something else in my tone.
I raised my voice so it would carry over the crowd.
“You want to know where they were when Stonewick needed them?” I said, looking first at the red-faced man, then at the orc standing with his hands open. “You want to talk about who left first, who shut the door, who decided safety meant everyone acting the same?”
A murmur moved through the crowd—uneasy, defensive.
“Not everyone is as strong as Keegan. He stayed while hisfamilyleft him.” I scanned the crowd, and my gaze found my dad and the Silver Wolf. “Imagine how that must have felt. Imagine what that did to him.”
More murmurs.
“My mother wanted to save me, so she fled. Does that make her a bad person? Does it make me less than?” I lifted my brows as the words settled.
“But more importantly, ask yourselves who benefits from us reliving that question tonight? Is this where magic should lead us?”
The apron woman blinked. “What are you saying?”
I swallowed hard, and the memory of my mother’s letter pressed against my ribs like a weight, and her words,To the priestess, it means control.
“Something is happening to the Wards. There’s pressure. There’s testing. There’s manipulation. The Priestess is trying to gain control through division, and it wouldn’t be the first time. We have to ask ourselves, what does magic mean? To each of us, it’s different, but I bet not one of us wants it to mean that Stonewick falls into Shadowick’s clutches.”
Ardetia’s expression softened. Bella’s eyes narrowed, predator-sharp.
“And there’s a reason this is all boiling up now. Fear travels fast. Faster than the truth. And someone out there knows exactly how to stir it.”
The younger shifter stared at me, chest rising and falling. “Are you saying this is… magic?”
“Shadow magic, and I’m not saying your anger can’t be real. You feel that, and it’s your right. But at the moment, it’s being twisted into something more.”
For a moment, the whole street went quiet.
Then a voice rose from farther back in the crowd, rough and shaking.
“My son got sick during the curse. My husband and I asked for help, but it wasn’t anything Stonewick could provide, so we left.” The woman’s words faltered before she forced them out again. “It wasn’t to abandon what we came from. It was about survival, but this has always been our home. It’s why we’re back now.” Her voice cracked on the last word.
The sound landed in the street like a stone dropped in still water.
The words hung in the air.
People shifted where they stood, the certainty in the crowd starting to fray at the edges.
The orc with the open hands looked down, his jaw tightening before he spoke.
“We weren’t here because,” he said quietly. “We weren’t allowed to be.”
The red-faced man gave a sharp laugh. “Not allowed by who? Us? Some invisible council?”
Before anyone else could answer, Keegan stepped forward.
He didn’t raise his voice, but it carried anyway.
“Because of our differences. The curse made sure to divide us,” he said. “The fear multiplied, and each decision we thought would help unite Stonewick, tore it apart.” He glanced across the crowd. “But the curse is over. Don’t let it live on.”
Several groups nodded, and he continued.
“Some of those choices made sense at the time,” he added. “But they don’t look the same now.”
No one spoke for a moment. The street fell still around us.
