Page 32 of Magical Mayhem (Stonewick Magical Midlife Witch Academy #7)

Keegan didn’t look at the students or the Academy grounds. He kept his gaze leveled on me.

Close up, he still looked worn with edges dulled by fever and a thousand invisible battles, but there was steel under the weariness. The kind you only find when you’ve been to the bottom and kept digging until you hit something that didn’t break.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked softly, as if the question wasn’t for the crowd at all but for the two of us, hidden in plain sight at the center of the courtyard.

“Why are you trying to taunt Malore when you know his power? You know what he can do.” His jaw tightened, and for a heartbeat, he seemed to sway.

My dad shifted closer on my other side, ready to steady him, but Keegan lifted a hand. “Don’t.”

I glanced at my dad and back at Keegan.

“You know,” Keegan went on, voice rough, “we almost lost the fight that night if it hadn’t been…”

He let the words fray and drift. He didn’t have to finish them.

“For the Silver Wolf,” I said, the name leaving my mouth like a key that had always fit the lock. “Your mother.”

He nodded once, a short, pained motion, and the courtyard seemed to breathe around us, as if the land itself remembered the night she returned.

I took a breath and let it steady the thud of my heart.

“So, why?”

“Because Malore does not control destiny,” I said.

“He never did. He’s a bully who mistakes fear for fate.

His brute force will not contain the magic in these streets, or the song in the Academy’s Wards.

If he sees that we’re not afraid to stand in the open, he’ll have to stop sending whispers and send his best. Then it’s finished. One way or the other.”

Keegan’s eyes searched mine. Whatever he saw there made his mouth hitch into something that wasn’t quite a smile and wasn’t quite surrender.

“You plan to invite the storm,” he murmured.

“I plan to schedule it for the afternoon and serve tea,” I said. “We’re not mice scurrying in the walls. We’re Stonewick.”

A laugh slipped from him that was raw, incredulous, and warm. It rang quietly in the gray air, and I tucked it away greedily like a charm.

“By moon and marrow… I can’t believe your strength.” He paused, and the humor thinned into something softer. “I can’t believe your resilience.”

“Must be a wolf saying.”

He smiled.

“That just means I’m too stubborn to go down,” I said, trying for lightness and almost making it.

He didn’t let me deflect.

“No,” Keegan said. “It means the Academy chose right.” He swallowed hard. “Now I fully understand why it chose you.”

I felt the words like a warm hand between my shoulder blades, holding me upright.

A part of me wanted to look down, to change the subject, to joke about how the Academy also chose Twobble to run tea errands and that surely counted against its judgment.

But I didn’t. Not this time. I let the praise land.

Then I breathed around the strange, glowing ache it left.

“Good,” I said, softer than I meant to. “Because I need you to believe it, too.”

We stood there a moment as the clatter and murmur of the courtyard shifted behind us, and groups formed and instructors began to guide students to the edges.

Keegan watched them all, and I watched him, and in that tiny sliver of peace, I let myself remember the kiss in his room. The heat and tenderness, the way his hand trembled when he pulled me closer like a man clinging to something solid.

“You shouldn’t be out of bed,” I said again, quieter.

“You shouldn’t be in a storm,” he answered. “And yet here we both are.”

“Fair.”

“Where’s Twobble and Skonk?” he asked.

I froze, knowing they were with Gideon.

“Who knows with those two?”

He leaned his weight very slightly toward me, not touching, but close enough that his warmth breached the cool.

“What you said out loud,” he added, “about turning weakness into strength, about making Malore watch us do it.”

I smiled. “It wasn’t just for show.”

“I know.”

He didn’t say I was brave. He didn’t call me reckless. He didn’t tell me to stop. He only stood with me, and sometimes that is the loudest speech love knows how to make.

The Academy thrummed under us, low and pleased, like a cat purring against a boot.

Across the courtyard, Twobble marched past in a borrowed prefect sash three sizes too big and barked commands.

“Form an orderly line! And if anyone steals my muffin, may your toes itch forever.” A cluster of students giggled; one of the sprites, scandalized, hurled a sugar cube at his head. It bounced off his sparse hair. He looked personally offended and then pocketed it for later.

The world tilted toward ordinary for a heartbeat, and I let it. I let the ordinary be a spell in itself.

But who was watching Gideon?

“What you said about destiny,” Keegan murmured. “Do you believe it? Truly?”

“I do,” I said. “I believe destiny’s just a map you redraw every time you choose to stay or go.”

He was quiet. His gaze flicked to the sky where Malore’s face had been, then down to the teachers, then back to me. “If you called my mother,” he began, voice a notch rougher, “if you… lured her…”

“I intend to do more than lure,” I said, and his eyes darkened at the promise in my tone. “I intend to give her a reason to walk through these gates with her head up. Not because Stonewick demands it, but because Stonewick is finally strong enough to forgive it. That call was for her.”

His throat worked. The Silver Wolf’s absence had been a scream waiting to escape from him for years, and the truth was that the thought of her return was a tender, dangerous thing. “What if she doesn’t come?”

“Then we do it anyway.” I nodded toward the clusters. “With or without her, this is the beginning. And if she does come,” I tried to keep my breath steady, “then it’s not just a beginning. It’s a return.”

“Return,” he echoed, as if tasting the word. “I want to hate it. But I don’t.”

“Good.” I bumped my shoulder lightly against his arm. “Save the hate for Malore. It looks terrible on you.”

He snorted softly.

My dad cleared his throat in the gentle parental signal for I’m here for you, and I will break anyone who hurts you, even if it’s Keegan. I smiled and nodded.

“I’ll make a sweep,” my dad said.

“Thanks, Dad.” My voice shook and steadied in a single breath as my mind cratered to Gideon, and my dad melted into the moving crowd with surprising stealth for a man built like a tavern door.

The moment he was gone, Keegan’s hand found mine.

“I can stand a while,” he said. “But if I start listing like a ship, do me the favor of pretending I’m dignified.”

“You’re the definition of dignity,” I said solemnly. “You’re practically a brochure.”

He huffed. “A brochure?”

“For Stonewick. ‘Come for the cobbles, stay for the sexy wolf.’”

“Ridiculous.”

“Accurate.”

Twobble walked over and smiled while I tried to give him the eyes.

“You’ve got an itch there, Maeve?” Twobble asked, cocking his head.

“No, just curious why you’re here and not there.”

“There, as in where?” Twobble asked.

My eyes widened.

“Oh, right. The vamps are on it. Those old gals…”

Keegan scowled. “On what?”

I cleared my throat, hating the lies. “Long story.”

“I’m not sure I have the strength,” Keegan said, shaking his head.

“Well, that’s the best news I’ve heard all day.” Twobble grinned, and I shooed him away.

The wind worried the lanterns again, but they held. Shadows bruised the clouds, but they didn’t break. Around us, instructors took their corners.

Nova dipped a sprig of rosemary into a bowl and let the water bead into stars. Ardetia coaxed the ash trees to sway in time with breath.

Lemonia’s runes drew clean edges around panic and filed it neatly into boxes labeled later. Stella taught a knotting charm that turned anxiety into something you could hold and then, when you were ready, untie.

Ember spoke names aloud, a litany of losses and loves that made the air warm enough to remember you were more than your fear. Bella stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled; somewhere, a stray ribbon of wild magic slunk closer like a shy cat and sat, unexpectedly obedient, at her feet.

Keegan watched, and so did I. For a while, we didn’t speak.

When we finally did, it was because the ground gave a small, warning thrum. The Wards signaled movement along their perimeter.

Not a breach. Attention. Somewhere between the orchard and the lane, something passed…too quick to taste, too measured to be a tourist.

Keegan’s nostrils flared, the wolf sharp in the man. He went still. “Smell that?”

I inhaled. Wet rock, rosemary, old iron. Under it: silver and pine and a colder thread, like moonlight cut on glass. It tugged at the edges of memory.

“I do,” I said.

“It isn’t Malore.” He didn’t sound relieved.

“No,” I agreed. “It isn’t.”

He shifted his weight and almost winced. I slid a hand against his back as if smoothing a wrinkle in his cloak, and he let me hold him up for exactly three beats before easing away, pride satisfied that he hadn’t collapsed.

“I meant what I said,” he murmured after a moment, his voice so low that only the space between our shoulders heard it. “About the Academy choosing you.”

I glanced up at him.

“I fought it at first because I didn’t want you hurt,” he admitted, a rueful smile cutting one corner of his mouth.

My brows lifted in surprise.

“Of course I did. I’ve fought everything good as if it were a trap.” His eyes softened. “But the Wards chose. The Academy chose.”

“I’ll try not to get a big head,” I said.

“Do,” he said dryly. “And you’ll float off, and I’ll have to lasso you by the ankle.”

“You’d never catch me.”

He didn’t answer, because we both knew he would.

Footsteps approached that were light, quick, and decisive. Ardetia, her braid a neat line down her back, stopped just inside our circle of quiet.

“The students are steady,” she reported.

“Nova says the scrying bowls show choppy water but clear stars. Lemonia has a queue. Stella has a queue and a waiting list, because naturally she does. Ember’s group is singing and crying at once, which I am told is intentional.

Bella is allegedly training a wayward ribbon to heel.

” Her mouth twitched. “I think we are… oddly all right.”

Oddly, all right. I liked the phrase so much I wanted to embroider it on a pillow.

“Anything along the Wards?” I asked.

She tilted her head, listening inward where fae do when the land hums. “Something brushed them. Not a clawing. A pass. Curious, but not probing.”

“Silver,” Keegan said quietly.

Ardetia’s eyes flicked to him, then to me. She didn’t ask. Wise woman.

“Keep the groups moving,” I said. “Short lessons, little wins. Confidence breeds confidence.”

She inclined her head. “And you?”

“I’ll promenade,” I said breezily, because if you can’t say promenade when the world tilts, what are you even doing. “Smile at the right people, drop three cryptic phrases, look purposeful.”

“You do that very well,” Ardetia said gravely, then departed with a whisper of leaf.

Keegan’s hand brushed mine once more—unseen, warm, necessary.

“Please,” I murmured. “I’m planning to lure your mother with that chorus.”

“The chorus that was already sung,” he said, resigned to my madness, which was to say resigned to me.

He started coughing wildly, and my heart ached. When he finished, his eyes stayed on mine.

“And you think that will call her.”

“I think it already did,” I said, eyes skimming the orchard edge where the Wards had pricked like a cat’s ear. “We just need to give her something worth stepping toward.”

His breathing turned heavier, “And if she comes?”

“Then we welcome her.” I met his gaze. “Not as a tool. As kin.”

I walked him to the steps and sat next to him. This was more difficult on him than he dared show.

“I’m afraid I won’t be standing next to you when this is all over,” he said finally.

“Me too,” I answered, because honesty is the magic that doesn’t backfire.

He nodded once.

“Good. Then we’re on the same page.” He glanced at the sky, then back to me. “Be careful.”

“You too.”

Unity.

Sacrifice.

The overwhelming sadness swept over me, and I stood and started to move when he caught me by the wrist, gentle as a ribbon.

“One more thing,” he said.

I tilted my head.

“I don’t know how this ends,” he said quietly, “but when Malore brings his best, I intend to be at your side.”

Emotion rose quickly and inconveniently in my throat.

“Don’t be dramatic,” I managed, and he smiled, relieved to have the humor to hold as a shield.

“Never,” he lied.

He let me go, and I stepped forward into the soft mess of our afternoon. I made my rounds, dropping my cryptic phrases…“good,” “again,” “together”… touching shoulders, steadier than I felt. The sky did not break. The face in the sky did not return.

A summer breeze moved through the trees, smelling like pine and something older: a wildness that wasn’t Malore’s, a promise the land makes when it recognizes its own.

At the edge of the Butterfly Ward, a single white hair snagged on a branch glinted like frost in shadowed light.

I didn’t need to pluck it to know it would smell like snow and midnight and the first breath you take after you stop running.

I didn’t need to show it to Keegan, either, not yet.

His eyes were already on the line of trees, narrow and knowing.

We were not alone. We had never been.

I squared my shoulders and lifted my face to the dark summer sky.

“All right,” I whispered under the noise and the ordinary and the not, a prayer and a dare at once. “Bring your best.”

And somewhere, beyond the Wards, a wolf answered without sound.