“Your friends are… loyal.”
“That’s one word for it,” I muttered, taking another step forward in front of Twobble
Twobble grabbed the back of my coat.
“No,” he whispered urgently.
But I was too focused on the man in the clearing.
The strange familiarity tugged harder the closer I got.
His face.
His voice.
Something about the way he held himself.
“Have we met?” I asked again.
“Not properly. Not that you’d remember.”
That didn’t help.
“Then why do you know my name?”
The man glanced briefly toward the trees behind us, as if checking something unseen.
Then he looked back at me.
His brows lifted in surprise. “Doesn’t everyone? The new headmistress of the Academy. You’re why the doors have opened again. You’re the reason the Priestess is worried.”
A cold thread slipped down my spine.
“Why?”
He hesitated.
For the first time since we’d found him, something uncertain crossed his face.
“That,” he said at last, “is a longer story.”
Twobble stepped forward immediately. “I vote we skip the story and go back to town.”
I noticed Skonk out of the corner of my eye, lifting the broom a little higher. “Still ready to go.”
The broom gave a small twitch in his hands, as if it objected to being talked about.
The man watched the movement with mild interest.
“That’s how you got here,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You were expecting that?”
“I was hoping.”
