His smile was precise.Calculated.
“Oh,” he said softly.“You came back.Good.We finish together.”
Owen’s body went rigid beside me.“Back off.”
Garrat’s gaze slid to the Disk clutched in my hands, and something hungry sharpened in his expression.“Clever.”He tilted his head.“Your mother did love her safeguards.”
My stomach lurched.
I tightened my grip.
The talisman flared.
Not light like a flashlight.Light like a boundary.
A pulse rolled out from my hands into the ground—down, down, down—into the roots of the hickory tree.The earth answered, a low vibration I felt in my teeth.
Garrat took a step forward—
—and stopped short.
His smile faltered.
He pressed his hand forward as if testing invisible glass.The air in front of him rippled.He hissed under his breath, jaw tightening like he’d hit resistance he hadn’t expected.
“What is this?”he snarled.
I didn’t know.Not fully.
But the words bubbled up anyway, older than my fear, steadier than my shaking hands.
“The land answers to only one,” I heard myself say.“The Guardian.Not you.”
Owen’s head snapped toward me, shock rolling off him.
Garrat’s eyes widened a fraction—then narrowed, furious.“So it’s true,” he murmured.“The Crossroads chose.”
The Disk flared brighter in my grip, the hum beneath my skin tightening, pulling downward—into the earth.
Garrat tried again to step forward.
The boundary held.
He recoiled as if burned.
His gaze lifted to mine—still hungry, but now edged with something colder.
Calculation.
“Very well,” he said softly.“Keep your pretty little key.”
The sludge behind him bubbled harder, throwing off a stink of rot and sulfur.
He smiled again, slow and obscene.“This isn’t the end, Piper.It’s only the beginning.”
Then he stepped backward—into shadow, into the wrongness at the edge of the crossing—and vanished.
Silence rushed in to fill the clearing.
