The word came out stronger this time.
“This doesn’t make sense.”
The man didn’t argue.
He simply watched me the way someone might watch a storm roll across the horizon—patient, knowing it would pass eventually.
“Why now?” I asked.
The question felt heavier than the forest air.
Decades.
Keegan had lived his entire adult life believing his father was gone.
Dead.
Lost.
And now he was standing here as if he’d just stepped out for a walk.
Rendel smiled faintly, but it wasn’t smug.
“You have something the Priestess wants,” he said.
A cold ripple slid down my spine.
“And she has something you need.” His eyes stayed on mine, and the forest seemed to press in closer around us.
Twobble shifted beside me, and Skonk tightened his grip on the broom.
But I didn’t move.
My eyes stayed locked with Rendel’s.
Waiting.
The wind stirred the leaves overhead.
He didn’t explain.
Didn’t elaborate.
He simply held my gaze like the answer was already there if I was brave, or foolish enough, to follow it.
And for the first time since stepping into the clearing, I had the strange feeling that the real problem wasn’t the man standing in front of me.
It was the choice waiting behind his words.
The kind of choice that changes everything once you hear it out loud.
Neither of us spoke.
The forest held its breath.
And somewhere far behind us, beyond the trees and winding road, Stonewick waited, completely unaware that Keegan’s past had just stepped back into the world.
Chapter Thirty-Two
