He pauses.
And for a second, I see it hit him.
The golden glow through the trees. The flower petals spinning in lazy spirals through the air. The humming pixies weaving between branches. The earth, literallyalivebeneath his feet.
His gaze flickers. He stares up at the sacred tree, still pulsing with light like it’s breathing again.
“It’s beautiful,” I whisper. “It’s real. Youfeelit, don’t you?”
He doesn’t answer right away.
For one fragile moment, his mouth parts like he might sayyes.
Like he might admit that the world is stranger and softer and better than he thought.
But then he blinks.
And just like that, it’s gone.
He straightens his coat.
“It’s… a trick of residual aura,” he says, flatly. “Likely a delayed environmental response to spell saturation. Nothing permanent.”
My heart drops.
“Youfeltit.”
“I felt a fluctuation. Nothing more.”
He brushes past me, pulling out his clipboard.
I stand there, fists clenched at my sides, as he writes down numbers that don’t mean anything and ignores themiraclehappening around him.
Because magic, to people like him, only counts if it fits inside a box.
And this?
This is too wild to tame.
CHAPTER 20
THORN
It hits like fire to bone.
Not pain.
Life.
The Grove doesn’t whisper me awake—itwrenchesme from stillness. My breath slams into my chest like I’ve been drowned and just broke surface.
I gasp.
Air burns through my lungs like lightning through dry wood.
The ward tree pulses—no longer dying, butthrummingwith ancient, reckless power. Runes blaze along its bark. Roots pulse underfoot like veins, hot and wild.
And I feel it.
