A pull.
It was subtle at first, and I stilled.
“What is it?”
I glanced around the cottage.
“Do you feel that?”
He went still, senses shifting, wolf beneath the skin listening.
“Feel what?”
The pull strengthened to something insistent. It didn’t come from outside the cottage. It came from within it.
I felt it coming from below, underneath the floorboards.
My birthmark warmed in answer, a slow, deliberate pulse.
“The pedestal,” I whispered.
Keegan’s eyes sharpened instantly.
The cellar had held too many truths already. The pedestal beneath the cottage was older than the Academy, older than most of Stonewick. It didn’t call idly. The pedestal introduced me to a magical library that I couldn’t even dare to dream ofuntil I entered it…but it had shown it to me long before I knew it existed.
The fire crackled behind us, deceptively normal.
The pull tightened, a quiet, steady beckoning.
Keegan’s hand slid from my waist, but didn’t leave me entirely. He kept one palm at my back as he rose with me from the couch.
“Don’t go down there alone,” he said quietly.
I shrugged, unsure that I agreed with that.
The cottage seemed to inhale around us as we moved toward the trapdoor in the floor. The boards creaked under our steps, familiar and unchanged, which somehow made the pull feel sharper.
I knelt and pressed my hand flat against the wood.
The warmth beneath my skin answered.
It wasn’t frantic.
It was awake.
Keegan crouched beside me, close enough that his shoulder pressed against mine.
“We play smart,” he reminded me softly.
I glanced at him, at the steadiness in his gaze, at the man who had just kissed me like the world wasn’t ending, and then shifted without hesitation when it threatened to.
“Always do,” I teased.
The pull from below steadied into something unmistakable.
It was an invitation.
Or was it a warning?
