Page 146 of Magical Mischief

I wrapped my arms around myself, not from cold, but to try and hold the questions still.

Would opening the Academy too soon, before the Wards were fully stable, before the teachers were all in place, risk it all?

Or was that exactly what the cursewanted? For us to hesitate. To stall. To second-guess ourselves until we miss the moment entirely.

I thought back to the pedestal in the cellar, glowing when Bella reached through. The moment I’d seen her image hoveringwithin it, asking for help. That hadn’t been a coincidence. That had been a door opening. A choice was being offered.

The Academy had always responded to those willing totry. Not those with answers, but those with courage. Action. Hope.

Maybe the curse wasn’t a thing to destroy, but a thing to outgrow.

What if it didn’t shatter with a spell or unravel through research?

What if it just… faded, when the Academy became strong enough to eclipse it?

The Wards, the dragons, the teachers… weren’t just pieces of a plan. They were threads of life. Of magic coming back.

And what if the curse wasn’t keeping the dragons hidden? What if it were the dragons themselves,their return, that was cracking the curse apart?

I looked down the hallway, watched the faint shimmer of magic drift in the air where the torches had relit themselves.

Maybe Elira hadn’t told me everything because she hadn’t had all the answers. Maybe none of us did.

But something in my chest told me this much. We weren’t waiting anymore.

We were moving. Forward.

And if dragons were returning, whatever had frightened them into silence was beginning to lose its grip.

I just didn’t know what would happen when the last of the Wards fully fortified.

Would it be enough?

Would it betoomuch?

I couldn’t shake the image of the baby dragon I’d seen. The one with the luminescent scales, barely old enough to leave its nest, but it did and rested in an alcove while the new dragon egg stayed safe deep in the nest. And the deeper sense, like another heartbeat, distant but unmistakable, of one more on the way.

The land was calling them. Or they were answering something deeper.

I let out a slow breath and pressed my palm against the cool stone beside me. The Academy didn’t answer, not out loud. But I thought I felt the faintest hum in the wall—a pulse, quiet and patient.

It wasn’t going to give me certainty. Not yet.

But it wasn’t afraid anymore.

Neither was I.

“I won’t let fear decide,” I said out loud, to the corridor, to myself, to the waiting hush of the halls.

And something in the wall hummed back.

The Academy was ready to speak.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

The Academy hummed, but beneath that hum, it whispered.

Not in words, exactly. Not in anything you could catch with your ears or scribble down in a notebook. It was more like a suggestion.