Page 160 of Magical Mayhem

I forced the words out, barely a whisper. “So Malore wasn’t the one pulling the strings, was he?”

My mother’s gaze swept from Keegan to his mother, to my dad, and finally back to me. Her voice was low, certain. “I don’t think he was. I think Malore was a pawn.”

My head shook violently, my pulse hammering. “Like Gideon.”

But look who was still standing.

Twobble let out a long, tragic sigh, then collapsed across my lap as though slain by truth itself. “Then this has just exponentially complicated getting you four into a circle. Let me just say that right now.”

A broken laugh escaped me, but it died quickly as I looked around at my family, my friends, at the Academy glowing under a sky scrubbed clean of shadow. We had come so far.

But the fight was just beginning.

And for the first time, I understood that Malore was never the storm. He was only the thunderclap before the true tempest broke.

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