Keegan wasn’t just another shifter in their eyes. He ran the inn where half the town gathered on bad nights and good ones, and people had gotten used to listening when he spoke.
So when the words left his mouth, the crowd didn’t interrupt. They stood there with it.
Then the Priestess brushed against my thoughts again.
Listen to them. They want someone to blame. Don’t let that be you.
My birthmark flared hot against my hip.
No more.
I closed my eyes and reached for the quiet place inside me where the edges of things reside. The feeling I get when I speak with Celeste, and the peace that comes over me, or when I can’t stop giggling because Twobble stole a scone. I dug deep for the instant I felt what it meant to push back on thoughts, to wipe them clean away and begin again.
And with that, something answered.
The pressure in my head surged once, angry and sharp, but I held that line the way you hold a gate against someone pushing from the other side.
Then the pressure slipped.
She was gone.
The feeling didn’t last long. In its place came the uneasy sense that someone was watching. I turned my gaze toward the sensation, then over to Ardetia across the street. Her eyes shifted in the same direction mine had gone. She stopped mid-step, and our gazes met for a second. I knew she’d seen it too.
But the shadow was gone, snuffed out as suddenly as a candle in a draft.
The quiet around us didn’t survive it. Voices started up again—first a few murmurs, then louder as people talked over one another and the tension crept back in.
I stood there in the middle of it, the realization settling heavily in my stomach.
This ruckus wasn’t just a side effect.
It was a test.
A probe.
The Priestess wasn’t only pressing the Wards from the outside. She was pressingusfrom the inside, pushing on the weak seams of old resentments to see where we would split.
“The Priestess managed to probe a bit of the Flame Ward.”
“Was anything stolen?” he asked, searching my gaze.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I can’t be certain, but the sprites were on it before I understood what was happening.”
His jaw tensed, and he nodded.
I debated about telling him about Gideon, but the crowd was unsettled, and now wasn’t the time.
Keegan leaned closer to me, his voice a quiet thread in the chaos.
“Maeve,” Keegan said quietly. “We need to move them.”
I nodded, but my attention kept drifting back to where that shadow had been. The birthmark at my hip was still throbbing, a steady pulse that didn’t feel like it belonged to me.
Twobble tipped his head back to look at me, and Skonk shifted beside him, his ears twitching as though he were trying to catch a sound the rest of us couldn’t hear.
Ardetia stepped in beside me. When she spoke, her voice was quiet enough that only we could hear it.
“Maeve. That flicker—”
