Binky hesitated briefly because he wasn’t wrong, and that was the problem. She was still Edith, still grumpy in the mornings, and still muttered insults under her breath when she thought no one could hear.
She was simply still Edith, just… taller and alarmingly human-shaped.
Binky sighed heavily. “I know… ARSEHOLE,” he admitted quietly.
Bas’s ears twitched slightly. “Then stop being weird about it.”
“I am not being weird about it.”
“You held a meeting.”
“This is governance. ARSEHOLE.”
“This is a hostage situation.”
Before Binky could respond, movement near the bar caught his attention, or rather caught Denzel’s. The parrot had gone very still. Even for a ghost it was unusual.
But Binky noticed Denzel remained perched exactly where he was, body angled casually toward the room, but his new singular silver feather twitched once. Binky followed his gaze.
Identical males at first glance, dressed in black, matching the description Edith had given.
The bounty hunters sat near the far side of the pub, drinks untouched for the moment as the dark-haired one, the grumpier brother, argued quietly about something.
The other one… the still and observant one. He wasn’t speaking much, just listening. Something about him set Binky’s feathers on edge.
“They’re trouble,” Bas muttered quietly, following his gaze now too. Only as Binky’s gaze skirted around the pub, it came to rest elsewhere. This time his instincts, or what was left of them, started screaming. Across the pub, half-hidden in shadow near the back booths, another figure sat alone.
Watching the twins. Gold eyes glinted briefly in the dim light, unnaturally bright and predatory. Binky stilled as he looked from one to the other like he was at a tennis match.
“Oh,” he murmured.
Bas followed his gaze and immediately flattened his ears.
“Well,” he muttered. “That seems ominous.”
And still Grundlepus snored on.
18
Maeve lovedthe new spell room. Not because it had technically been created by an explosion. Although thatwasa point in its favour. She loved it because it felt alive.
The cavern sat deeper within Merlin’s Gate, formed after the surge of magic that had swept through the Hollow during the chaos surrounding the babies’ arrival. The walls glittered faintly with trapped magic, veins of blue-green light pulsing softly beneath the stone like a heartbeat.
And at the centre, a small, circular pool connected directly to Merlin’s Gate itself. The water glowed faintly, shifting colours lazily as magic moved beneath the surface.
“It’s perfect,” Maeve sighed happily, curled into one of the oversized chairs they’d dragged into the cavern. Across from her, Arietta snorted.
“You said that about the room with the haunted ceiling.”
“That roomhad potential.”
“It had screaming.”
“Atmosphere,” Maeve corrected.
Isabeau, sprawled upside down in her own chair with a cup of tea dangling dangerously from one hand, waved vaguely toward the pool.
“This one’s better,” she declared. “Less screaming.”
