Page 37 of Magical Mission

He gave me a slow smile with only the corner of his mouth. Most wouldn’t pick up on it, and yet it was full of knowing.

“Am I?” I shrugged, walking past him like I hadn’t just been in a hidden dragons’ den sealed by ancient magic. “I was just checking on some headmistress things.”

He fell into step beside me, and his shoulder brushed mine. It was hard to ignore the bit of electricity that pulsed through me.

Keegan eyed me. “Very official business, then.”

“Extremely.”

He didn’t press. But when I glanced sideways, his expression held something unreadable. Not suspicion because it was never that, but the kind of quiet understanding that always made me wonder what, exactly, he sensed beneath the surface.

My surface.

Before I could try and change the subject, he asked, “You want to go out to the Butterfly Ward?”

I hesitated for only a second.

“Yeah,” I said, softer than I meant to. “I do.”

We moved through the corridor together, the laughter from the banquet growing distant behind us. A few kitchen sprites zipped past us, carrying saucers of rose custard and muttering in their high-pitched clicks about napkin enchantments. One even saluted Keegan. He blinked at it like he wasn’t sure how to salute back.

“They already know you,” I teased.

“They’re probably just glad I haven’t stepped on one,” he muttered.

We turned the corner just before the garden hall, and that’s when I saw them.

Grandma Elira sat on a stone bench, her silhouette framed by the golden wall sconces, silver hair catching the light like moonbeams. Her eyes were closed, face tilted up as if letting the warmth soak in.

And curled up beneath her robes, half-covered in the soft folds of her cloak, was Frank.

My breath caught mid-step, not because he was there. My dad went wherever he wanted, but because of what I was witnessing.

My dad wasn’t simply curled at her feet.

He wasnestled.

His broad body tucked tight beneath the crook of her leg, snout pressed to her knee, ears twitching gently in sleep. And Grandmother Elira, hismother,rested one hand lightly on his back as her fingers traced tiny, slow circles through the folds of his fur.

It was tender.

It was holy.

It was a reunion cloaked in silence and old grief, stitched back together without fanfare. All it took was just touch, just closeness.

After all this time apart.

After decades locked away from him.

After curses, heartbreak, and all the lives they’d both lived between, they had found each other again.

And my heart could barely contain it.

Keegan slowed beside me, following my gaze.

“That’s…” he started, then stopped.

I nodded with my throat thick. “I know.”