Behind me, the witches tightened formation. Lady Limora drifted closer to my left, her gaze fixed below, expressionunreadable. Stella came up on my right, and even she had stopped making comments. That alone was enough to worry me.
Twobble’s voice came softer this time. “It’s worse than I thought.”
“It feels different, doesn’t it?”
The path below curved around the village, refusing to go through the square, and my broom followed it. The land beyond Shadowick rose into low hills, gray and uneven beneath the moonlight. Scraggly growth clung to the slopes in patches, stubborn little things that looked like they’d lost the will to be green. Exposed rock glistened here and there with a slick, dark sheen, and faint residual spells glowed in the ground like old ink stains no one could scrub away.
“Maeve,” Stella called over the wind, her voice carrying strangely well. “Do you feel that?”
I nodded, though I didn’t know if she could see me.
The magic ahead moved in pulses, irregular and unsettling, like something beneath the hills had flipped a switch.
Nova flew a little ahead, her broom unnervingly steady. Her dark braid whipped behind her, and the crystal at the top of her staff glowed where she’d strapped it across her back.
She looked over her shoulder at me.
Even from here, I saw the warning in her eyes.
Coming from her, that was never ideal.
The moon slipped behind a cloud, and for a moment, the world dimmed while the hills ahead seemed to grow taller in the dark.
When the cloud moved, I saw it.
Her compound looked like part of the hillside, a shadow among shadows, tucked into the slope as if it had grown there out of spite, just as I remembered with its dark stones and jagged edges.
The Priestess’ compound sat ahead, low and severe, part fortress and part manor, with old walls spreading out in uneven arms along the ridge. Iron gates curled around the front, high and black and intricate, their spikes catching the moonlight like teeth. Beyond them, a courtyard stretched wide and empty, except for the dark shapes of statues standing too still along the path to the door.
The last time I’d come here, I’d been chasing Gideon’s thread through fear and urgency.
Now, it almost felt like the place was waiting for me, like it had called me here.
That was worse.
The broom slowed beneath me, as if even it understood that charging directly into the teeth of the thing was no longer charming.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and my entire body jolted.
I almost fumbled the broomstick, which would have been a terrible time to discover whether phones or midlife witches bounced.
Twobble made a strangled sound. “Please don’t answer texts while flying.”
“It’s Keegan,” I said.
“That is the only acceptable exception, and I hate that too.”
I pulled the phone out with one hand and glanced at the screen as the broom hovered in a slow, cautious arc.
Found a mark scratched into a stone from Celeste. Her initials.
A sob caught in my throat before I could stop it.
Celeste was leaving signs.
My girl was scared, probably terrified, but she was thinking.
She was fighting in the ways she could.
