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Nerissa tapped her fingers lightly on the table. “So… inheritance, huh?”

Delilah groaned, laying her head against the glass. “You heard.”

“This is Celestial Pines,” Nerissa replied. “I knew you were here before your boots hit the moss.”

“They think I came back for a payout,” Delilah said. “Like I haven’t been busting my knuckles in the sanctuary and staying up nights with Wren’s spells gone sideways.”

Nerissa tilted her head. “People say things when they don’t know the whole story. Especially when they’ve made peace with your absence.”

Delilah blinked. “Peace?”

“They made you a ghost,” Nerissa said gently. “And now you’re back, real and radiant and not fitting the story they told. So they poke. That’s not about you. That’s aboutthem.”

The words hit deep. Right in that sore, cracked-open spot she’d been ignoring.

Delilah lifted the mug and took another long sip. Her pulse slowed.

“You always this wise?” she asked, eyes narrowing playfully.

“Only between moon phases and gossip drops,” Nerissa replied with a wink.

There was a pause, comfortable now. Then Nerissa smiled sly. “So… you and Rollo?”

Delilah choked slightly. “You don’t waste time, do you?”

“Not when people start glowing like you did walking in here, despite the rumors.”

Delilah flushed, but smiled. “We’re… figuring it out.”

“Figuring it out while twining moonvine in a greenhouse with your shirts off?”

Delilah laughed outright, the warmth breaking through her fog. “Okay,thatwas not intentional. Magic happened.”

Nerissa smirked. “It always does, with the right people.”

Delilah nodded slowly. “He’s different. Softer. Still growly, but heseesme now. All of me.”

Nerissa’s smile turned wistful. “I’m glad. Honestly. Rollo took it hard when Garrick fell. They were close.”

Delilah blinked. “Garrick?”

Nerissa’s brow furrowed. “You didn’t know?”

“I remember him. Sort of. He was older. Quiet. I knew him and Rollo were close, part of the same clan once upon a time. But I didn’t realize anythinghappened.”

Nerissa leaned in, voice dropping low like the truth itself was sacred and dangerous. “After you left, Garrick got twisted up in some dark magics. Real boundary-pushing stuff. He started talking like the Pact was a leash, not protection. That the town was going soft. He poked at rituals we weren’t meant to dig up. Started claiming the forest owed him something.”

Delilah’s jaw tightened. She didn’t interrupt, but something sharp and hot bloomed under her ribs.

“Things escalated fast,” Nerissa continued. “He lost control during a shift. Hurt someone. Said shedeservedit—said the land would cleanse itself through him. It was… ugly. Real ugly.”

Delilah’s fingers curled around her mug. “And the Council exiled him?”

“They had no choice,” Nerissa said softly. “He broke the Pact. And not just in spirit. In blood.”

Delilah blinked slowly, fury and confusion dancing behind her eyes like lightning waiting to strike. “And Rollo never told me.”

Nerissa didn’t flinch. “Because it wrecked him.”