“Sit,” she said.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re swaying.”
“I’m leaning artistically.”
She pulled out the chair anyway, and I sat.
Keegan hovered nearby and leaned one shoulder against the wall beside the table, arms folded, his gaze sweeping the room the way it always did—quietly checking that everyone was safe.
Luna pressed a fresh compress into my hand.
“Keep that on your shoulder,” she said.
“Yes, nurse.” I smiled, and she gave me a look.
“Witch,” she corrected, which made me so happy, and I smiled despite myself.
Across the room, Stella was moving between tables with a kettle in one hand and, for some reason, the cast-iron skillet still tucked under her arm.
“Tea?” she asked a pair of shifters.
“Yes, please.”
She poured each of them a cup, then scanned the room like a general surveying the battlefield.
“If any shadows come back,” she announced, lifting the skillet slightly, “they’ll have to get through me first.”
Someone clapped while someone else raised their teacup.
The entire shop broke into a cheer, and I laughed softly and shook my head.
“This town,” I murmured.
Keegan’s voice drifted down from beside me. “Worth protecting.”
I glanced up at him, and he wasn’t looking at me.
His eyes were on the crowd—the witches, the orcs, the shifters all sharing space in the tea shop like it had always been that way, and I realized this was what he always fought for, why he stayed behind when everyone else fled.
A few hours ago, half the people in this room would’ve avoided each other on the street.
Now they were passing around sugar bowls.
Hope.
That word came back again.
Magic had always seemed complicated to me. Spells and Wards and ancient rules I barely understood.
But tonight it looked different. Unity.
The thought warmed something deep in my chest.
And then another thought crept in behind it.
Rendel.
