“You ready?” Felix asked. “The others are waiting downstairs. And I have to warn you — Posey grew flowers in the entryway and they’re definitely going to give Eleanor a heart attack.”
“Perfect,” Ramona said.
She took one last look in the mirror.
Purple hair — finally right, finally the way it should have been all along. Green dress. Clean magic humming under her skin.
No tether. No Zara. But not alone.
She took a deep breath, straightening her posture. “Let’s go crash a gala,” she said.
And followed her coven downstairs.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The ballroom was a lot.
Ramona had been to the Ostara Gala before. She’d walked these floors when she was faculty, when she was Simone’s wife, when she’d belonged to the kind of world that threw parties like this. She thought she remembered it.
She didn’t, apparently, because either it had gotten significantly more extravagant since her expulsion, or she’d spent the last several years of her attendance too busy not catastrophically ruining anything to actually look at the room.
Vaulted ceilings. Murals of Persephone rising, flowers blooming in her wake, painted so well the colors seemed to shift when Ramona wasn’t looking directly at them. Crystal chandeliers big enough to have their own gravitational pull, dripping candles that floated without any visible support, their flames cycling through gold and rose and green. The walls were gold and cream and hung with tapestries that moved — slow, subtle, winter melting into spring on a loop.
And the flowers. Everywhere. Not arranged, but growing. Vines climbing the walls, cherry trees and magnolias coming up directly from the floor, all blooming at once despite half of themhaving no business blooming in March. Daffodils and tulips and irises carpeting the ground in patterns that parted around every step and closed again in people’s wake. The air smelled like spring, earthy and wet and fresh, full of possibility.
The whole thing was gorgeous and excessive and exactly as insufferable as she’d remembered.
“Holy shit,” Felix breathed.
Gerald cooed.
“The flowers are overstrained,” Posey said, a hand over her heart and great concern in her tone. “This many species forced into simultaneous bloom?—”
“Five minutes,” Cammie said in an awed voice. “We are going to enjoy this forfive minutesbefore anyone audits the ethics of the decorations.”
They moved into the crowd.
The whispers started almost immediately. Ramona felt them before she heard them — that specific prickling awareness of being watched, of a room recalibrating around a presence it didn’t expect. She caught fragments as she walked.Is that Ramona Greenbriar?And then:Wasn’t she expelled for trying to kill the High Priestess?And then someone who was genuinely not being quiet enough:I’m telling you, it was a demon at the convergence point.Someone else, much more urgently:Is that a pigeon wearing a bow tie?
Gerald puffed up slightly at that last one. Felix looked like he might say something. Ramona put her hand briefly on his arm.
Fresh starts. New beginnings. Chin up.
She kept walking.
At the far end of the ballroom, the Magical Council occupied a raised platform in their formal robes — deep purple, silver embroidery, the works. The High Priestess stood at the center of them, her posture stiff and straight as she held a flower in her fingers, its petals shifting in color.
The High Priestess’s eyes found Ramona across the room.
Ramona went still for a half second, waiting for something inevitable, like screaming or pointed fingers or something worse, like being ignored.
The High Priestess looked at her for a long moment — steady, unreadable — and then gave one small, deliberate nod. An acknowledgment. Nothing warm, nothing formal. Just:I see you. You’re here. That is noted.
Ramona broke protocol and approached the dais where the High Priestess sat. The Magical Council went silent at her appearance, the general mood shifting to icy silence.
“May I have a word with you, High Priestess?” Ramona asked.
The High Priestess dipped her head in acknowledgment, then stood. Ramona followed her toward the back of the ballroom, her voice dropping low. “You’re wondering how I knew about the convergence point and the ritual last night.” The High Priestess seemed to tower above her now, her robes glowing from an internal light. Her eyes were startlingly light blue and seemed to stare through Ramona straight to her soul.
