Page 10

I was halfway down the moonlit corridor as my thoughts tangled around the lavender-hued eggshell and the heat of sleeping dragons, when I heard footsteps behind me.

I didn’t startle. The Academy had its way of telling you when someone meant no harm.

And this someone?

I felt him before I saw him. I always did. There was just something about the guy who made me feel.

Keegan stepped into the soft, flickering light. He looked like he belonged here, and I was beginning to think he always had.

His eyes met mine with that steady, half-storm gaze that somehow made the rest of the world fall quiet.

“Well,” he said with a deep and velvety tone. “You’ve got the look.”

“What look?”

“The one you get when you’ve just done something secret and probably magical and you're definitely not planning on telling anyone about it.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You’re imagining things.”

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 was nestled.

His broad body tucked tight beneath the crook of her leg, snout pressed to her knee, ears twitching gently in sleep. And Grandmother Elira, his mother, 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.”

He said nothing else, but the way he looked at them held that rare softness in his eyes again. Not pity. Just reverence. Understanding.

It made me wonder if he thought back to his family often. He didn’t mention them much, but I knew the betrayal and abandonment weren’t something easily forgotten.

I turned back to the moment in front of us, anchoring it into memory. My dad, who had followed me like a shadow for months, whose loyalty was legend. My grandma, who had carried her loss in silence so heavy it ached in the air around her. And now, here they were…together and whole.

We didn’t speak or interrupt.

Instead, we slipped past like ghosts. Keegan opened the heavy door with care, the hinges silent as breath.

Outside, the Butterfly Ward glowed in the distance like always, with soft and steady colors blooming faintly beneath the moonlight.

But behind us, on the bench in the corridor, something far more magical was unfolding.

And for once, I didn’t need spells or ancient bloodlines to believe in magic or miracles.

I just needed them together again, mother and son.

Finally home.

The Butterfly Garden always felt like a breath held in the dark. Still, soft, expectant.

It had fully recovered from the energy depletion it had experienced not so long ago and felt like a summer refuge in the midst of transition. It wasn’t quite winter anymore, and it wasn't quite spring.

Keegan and I stood beneath the flowering arches, the stars low and stubborn overhead. The night was filled with the scents of warm earth and the faint tang of magic, like ozone just before a storm. It smelled like the beginning of something. Or the edge of it.

He was quiet, hands tucked into his pockets, one boot scuffing softly at the stones beneath us.

It was the kind of silence I liked. It wasn’t heavy or awkward. It was merely a patient pause.

“So,” he said after a while, not looking at me, but close enough that I felt it when he spoke. “You’ve done it. It’s open.”

I let out a breath and tilted my head back, watching a winged light flicker through the branches.

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess it is. But it would be foolish to give myself an ounce of credit. The Academy does what it does when it wants to do it.”

He laughed and shook his head. “So, you’ve fully grasped that, huh?”

I chuckled and shrugged. “She’s not subtle about it.”

“Indeed.” He made a low noise in his throat, thoughtful, and holding back all the things he could’ve said. Keegan had always been better at silence than speeches.

“I didn’t think I’d be the one to do it,” I admitted, folding my arms. “If you told me a year ago that I’d be the one standing at the center of it all…” I shook my head. “I’d think everyone needed to see a doctor. To even think that magic is real. I don’t even know what I would have done.”

“You’d have laughed,” he finished.

“No,” I said, smirking. “I would’ve choked on whatever pastry I was eating and then told you to get your head checked.”

He chuckled.

The garden was glowing just a little brighter tonight.

Keegan turned to look at me, but his expression quieted.

“Are you proud of it?” he asked.

The question caught me off guard.

“Proud?” I echoed. “Yeah. I think so. I mean, yes. I should say yes. Right?”

“There’s no quiz,” he said. “You can just tell me.”

I looked down at my hands. At the faint scuffs on my sleeves. At the ink stain on my thumb, I hadn’t noticed until now.

“I’m proud,” I said slowly. “But I’m also scared.”

His brows knit together. “Of what?”

I hesitated.

This was the part I hadn’t said out loud. Not to Nova. Not to my grandma. Not even to myself, really.

But with Keegan standing here, steady and quiet, I felt the words rise like a tide I couldn’t push back.

“Gideon,” I said finally.

His name made the garden chill.

Keegan’s jaw tensed. “What about him?”

“He knows,” I said. “He’s known since the moment the Wards brightened and strengthened. The moment the students arrived. He felt it.”

“Let him.”

I shook my head. “You don’t understand. He wants this place. Always has. Not for what it is, but for what it can be.”

Keegan stepped closer, just enough that I felt the warmth of him.

“He’s always wanted power,” I said. “Control. And now that this place is breathing again, he’ll try to take it. Imagine if Shadowick had Stonewick under its power…”

“Then he’ll have to get through you.”

I looked up at him as frustration tightened in my chest. “I’m not invincible, Keegan. I’m still figuring this out as I go. I don’t have all the answers. Some days I don’t even have the right questions.”

He searched my face like he was trying to read between the lines.

“You think he’ll try something soon,” he said.

“I know he will. He’s not the type to let magic slip through his fingers without grabbing for it again.”

Keegan was quiet for a long moment. “You’re not alone, you know.”

“It feels like I am, sometimes. I’m the one everyone looks to. The one everyone expects to have a plan. And I barely figured out how to get the dining hall open.”

He didn’t laugh at that. Just reached out and gently tugged the edge of my sleeve.

“I don’t think the Academy opened for someone who had all the answers. I think it opened for someone who wouldn’t give up on it. And it picked right.”

His words hit something deep in me.

I let out a slow breath and dropped my arms to my sides, suddenly tired in a way I hadn’t let myself feel all evening.

“I want to believe that,” I said. “I do.”

“Then believe.”

We stood there in the hush of the garden, with only the rustle of leaves and the occasional chitter of something small and winged above us.

After a while, I looked back toward the tall hedge of roses that marked the far end of the garden.

“He’s out there,” I said softly.

Keegan followed my gaze.

“Then we’ll be ready,” he said.

I looked at him again, and something in my chest eased. Not all the fear. Not the weight of responsibility. But something small and sharp that had been lodged there since the day I first set foot on Academy ground.

I didn’t have to carry it all alone.

Not anymore.

It wasn’t just my grandma and I wandering the Academy halls.

“We’ll need more teachers,” I said, half-laughing, half-serious. “More allies. More wardens. More everything.”

“And we’ll find them,” he said. “Or they’ll find us.”

I tilted my head. “You sound awfully confident.”

He gave me a small smile. “I’ve been watching you, Maeve. Since before this started. And I’ve learned something.”

“What’s that?”

“When you believe in something—really believe—you move mountains.”

I blinked. “That’s very poetic of you.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

I smiled then, but not because the fear had gone, and not because Gideon had disappeared.

But because I remembered who I was.

And more importantly, who I had standing beside me.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I said, smiling up at him.

He looked at me like that mattered. Like I mattered.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said.

And as always, I knew he was telling me the truth.