Trust the flow, Merodach's voice echoed in her memory. Water doesn't force. Water finds.

  The four crystals lay where the Crones had placed them – fire and water, earth and air. Four elements, four Crones, four dragons circling the mountain above. The symmetry of it sang through Marjie's bones.

  Marjie closed her eyes and let her intuition guide her.

  “The crystals need to touch,” she said, and her voice came out layered, resonant.

  “Are you sure?” Agatha asked.

  “I'm sure.” Marjie opened her eyes and smiled gently. “I can feel it.”

  The thrill of dragon flight still tingled through her limbs. She had been water – not just wielding it but being it, flowing through Merodach's veins, tasting magic on a forked tongue older than empires. That kind of knowing didn't fade quickly. It changed you.

  She released Agatha's hand – just for a moment – and knelt beside the crystals. The fire crystal pulsed warm and welcoming. The water crystal cool and familiar, humming with recognition as she drew near. The earth stone solid and patient. The air pendant swirling and restless.

  Marjie reached out, not with her hands but with her magic, and began to guide the crystals together.

  It was like coaxing streams to merge into a river. Each crystal had its own current, its own nature, its own way of flowing. Fire wanted to leap and consume. Water wanted to find the lowest path. Earth wanted to settle and root. Air wanted to scatter and explore.

  But Marjie had spent decades learning to read the currents of things – tea leaves and tarot cards, emotions and intentions, the subtle flows that connected all living things. She knew how to find the place where different streams could meet. And now, with Merodach's wisdom still singing in her blood, she could see those currents more clearly than ever before.

  There, she thought, nudging fire toward water, earth toward air. Yes, like that. You're not enemies. You're family. You've been apart so long you've forgotten, but you belong together.

  The crystals resisted at first – old habits, old separations – but Marjie was patient. Water was always patient. She thought of Merodach diving into trenches so deep that light had never touched them, waiting centuries for the right moment to surface. She thought of rivers carving canyons not through force but through persistence.

  And slowly, slowly, the crystals began to drift toward each other.

  “Marjie,” Ingrid breathed. “Look.”

  The crystals were glowing brighter now, their individual colours bleeding into each other at the edges. Red-gold fire touched blue-silver water and instead of steam, there was light. Green-brown earth met pale swirling air and instead of dust, there was warmth.

  Yes, Marjie thought, tears pricking her eyes. Yes, that's it. That's what you were always meant to be.

  She could feel the others through their connection – Delia's fire burning steady and bright, no longer afraid of its own heat. Ingrid's earth magic thrumming with the deep patience of mountains. Agatha's air crackling with the energy of storms yet to break. All of them transformed by their time in dragon consciousness, all of them finally, fully, what they had always been meant to become.

  The four crystals touched.

  Light exploded through the chamber – not harsh, but warm. Golden, like sunlight through honey, like the first dawn after a long winter. It filled every corner, chased away every shadow, made the very stones sing with resonance.

  Delia gasped. Agatha swore. Ingrid stood firm, but even she swayed slightly under the weight of what they were witnessing.

  The crystals were merging.

  Not physically – they remained four distinct stones – but magically, elementally, essentially. The barriers between them dissolved like salt in warm water, and what remained was something greater than the sum of its parts. Four voices becoming one song.

  Marjie felt it before she understood it – a pulling sensation, like being caught in a current far stronger than anything she could resist. Not frightening, though. It felt like being guided home. Like Merodach's currents carrying her exactly where she needed to be.

  “Join hands!” she called out, reaching for Delia and Agatha. “Now!”

  They formed a circle just as the light reached its crescendo. Marjie felt the chamber falling away beneath them – not physically, but dimensionally, as though reality itself was folding to make room for them to pass.

  The merged crystals rose from the floor, floating at the centre of their circle.

  “Now!” Marjie said.

  The Crones raised their joined hands, propelling the crystals towards the veilstone – the fifth piece. A bright white light burned through followed by cracking sound. Marjie raised a shield around the chamber, a bubble of water, feeling the other Crones join her with their magical elements in protecting them as the great stone began to crack and crumble.

  “Nooo!” Breag cried. Franwen wailed too. But it was too late. The Sisterhood had fallen. The Veilstone would be no more. The Order was in tatters outside. They had done it.

  Mathilda's face was pale against the pillar where she rested, freed at last from the crystal's grip but barely able to hold herself upright. Her eyes found Ingrid's across the crumbling chamber, and the look in them was one of weary surrender, as though she had given everything she had and could give no more.

  Ingrid broke from the circle.

  “Ingrid!” Agatha barked. “The ritual – “

  But Ingrid was already moving, her earth magic anchoring her steps even as the ground shook and fragments of the Veilstone rained down around them. She reached Mathilda in three strides and gathered her sister into her arms. Mathilda weighed almost nothing, her body wasted from feeding the crystal, but she was warm and breathing and alive.

  “I've got you,” Ingrid said fiercely. “I'm not leaving you again.”

  Mathilda's fingers curled weakly into Ingrid's coat. “Bossy,” she murmured. “You were always bossy.”

  “And you were always stubborn. Hold on to me.”

  Ingrid carried her back to the circle. Marjie and Delia shifted to make room, and Agatha, for once, said nothing at all. Ingrid knelt with Mathilda cradled against her, one hand still clasped in Delia's, and the circle closed around them both.

  Then everything was golden light and rushing wind and the sensation of travelling very fast, through spaces that had no names...and the scent of elderflower.

  They landed softly.

  Marjie opened her eyes and found herself standing on moss, thick and green and springy beneath her feet, the kind that only grew in places where magic ran deep and old.

  Giant elder trees surrounded them – trunks as wide as cathedral pillars, bark shimmering with magic, branches reaching so high they seemed to brush the sky itself.

  “The elder grove!” Agatha said in awe.

  Beside her, Ingrid was already lowering Mathilda onto the moss, arranging her with the brisk tenderness of someone who had spent decades tending gardens and understood that fragile things needed gentle handling. Mathilda's eyes were open, taking in the canopy above with an expression of quiet wonder. Colour was returning to her cheeks, faint but real, as though the grove's magic was doing what no amount of rest could – feeding her something the Veilstone had been stealing for twenty-three years.

  “Is this...” Mathilda's voice was barely a whisper. “The elder grove?”

  “It is,” Ingrid said, smoothing the white plaits back from her sister's face. “You're safe now, Thilda.”

  The scent of the blossoms, sweet and heady, filled the air with perfume that seemed to seep directly into the soul. The grove hummed with power.

  Golden light filtered through the canopy above, dappling everything in warmth.

  Marjie breathed in the elderflower air and felt her intuition unfurl like a flower opening to the sun. For now, they were exactly where they needed to be.

  The four Crones sat in a circle at the grove's heart, Mathilda resting with her head in Ingrid's lap, and the crystals – united into one – floated serenely between them. They weren't the only ones there.

  Chapter 37

  Delia

  Delia pushed herself upright, one hand steadying Agatha.

  The Grove of Elders’ Blaze…

  Beautiful, peaceful, strange voices drifted through the air. Not quite singing, not quite speaking – more like the grove itself was breathing words. The harmonics made her teeth ache slightly, made something deep in her chest respond with recognition she couldn't name.

  Threads of light stretched outward from the clearing like roots seeking water, searching for those still bound to the ancient wound.

  Golden light bloomed amongst the trees, soft as sunrise.

  Covvey appeared on the moss, blinking, one hand still raised as though gripping dragon scales that were no longer there. He looked around in bewilderment, the fight draining from his posture as the grove's peace settled over him. Then his gaze found Ingrid cradling Mathilda, and his expressing softened even further.

  Declan materialised a heartbeat later, the golden light releasing him gently onto the soft ground. His dark eyes found Delia's, and the relief that passed between them needed no words.

  Gwyneth appeared, steadying herself against an elder trunk, her white robes stained with ash from the battle. Papa Jack was there too, reaching instinctively for where Marjie sat. He crossed the clearing without a word and settled at her side, solid and warm and exactly where he belonged.

  Mephistos strolled into the middle of the clearing as if he owned it. Which, knowing him, he probably thought he did. Without a word of his usual commentary, directly under the floating crystal, he found a shaft of sunshine breaking through the canopy and stretched luxuriously there.

  They all gathered loosely in a circle around him, like children to a storyteller. Delia found it oddly touching, this moment of simplicity after all the chaos. Just them, in a circle, watching a demon-cat prepare for a nap.

  The Crones moved to hold the space with their magic, and Delia felt the shift happen. Marjie's empathy opened like a flower, making emotion visible as actual silver threads in the air. Ingrid's earth magic sank deep, stabilising them all. And Delia's fire rose to hold boundaries, not destructive but protective, marking the sacred circle with passion and resolve.

  The stones beneath their feet began to glow softly, responding to their combined power.

  Mephistos curled up tighter in his patch of sunshine. His yellow eyes opened once, finding hers with an expression she'd never seen before – something almost vulnerable.

  “It's time for me to go,” he said, voice drowsy but carrying odd harmonics. “It's been a nice holiday.”

  Her throat tightened. Despite all his dramatics, his barbed comments, his theft of cream from every possible source – Mephistos had become part of their odd family. The thought of losing him made her chest ache.

  “Don’t cry…I can always come back to torment you, anytime I want…” He yawned, showing every fang. Stretched again, theatrically. Then his form shivered –

  – and dissolved.

  Light poured out. Delia raised a hand to shield her eyes but couldn't look away. Through her fingers, she watched the impossible unfold. The demon-cat they'd grown to tolerate – even love – was dissolving, releasing something that had been trapped for centuries.

  “The crystal,” Ingrid whispered.

  “Oh, so it was always bound to Mephistos!” Agatha said. “That’s why he was trapped here. Now…he’s free.”

  Perhaps he could come back, but there was something sad in the ending and tears fell from Delia’s eyes. She wasn’t alone. Gwyneth passed a handkerchief to Ingrid.

  Mephistos’ voice broke through the bright light still hanging in the air. “Stop your blubbering. The show is just about to start.”

  The brightness faded enough to see properly, a woman floated in the air.

  Demelza. It could only be Demelza. The witch. The old prophecy…

  She hovered, translucent but powerful, dark hair falling to her waist, eyes holding the kind of sorrow that came from watching centuries pass while frozen in one terrible moment. But underneath the sorrow was love. So much love it made Delia's own heart clench in empathy.

  Demelza's gaze lifted, looking past Delia, past the Crones, towards the far edge of the clearing. Her expression shifted – sorrow deepening into something raw and full of recognition.

  Delia turned to follow her gaze.

  Golden light was gathering between the trees again, but struggling this time, flickering and straining as though whatever it was trying to bring through was fighting the passage. The elderflower air turned sharp with something metallic. Something wrong.

  A figure materialised on the moss. Red robes, torn and filthy from the battle on the mountainside. He was on his hands and knees, head hanging, his body shuddering with each breath. Darkness flickered beneath his skin in dying pulses, like embers that refused to go out.

  Delia's stomach lurched with the force of recognition. Not because she could see his face – she couldn't, not yet, not with his head bowed and his body curled in on itself. But she knew him.

  Jerry.

  All those years of marriage had written his shape into her bones. The set of those shoulders. The way he braced his weight on his hands as though the ground might betray him. She had watched him hold himself exactly like that once, backstage at the Adelphi, after a show had gone catastrophically wrong and he thought nobody was looking.

  But this wasn’t just any failed production. This was a man coming apart.

  He raised his head, and Delia saw two people looking out of the same face. Jerry's eyes – the pale, calculating eyes she'd known across dining tables – were there, but behind them, something far older moved.

  Von Cassel.

  The presence that led the formation of the Order over so many years, had raised Jerry, had hollowed him out and worn him like armour. Only now the armour was cracking, and both of them were exposed.

  His gaze found Demelza, and a sound tore from his throat – not Jerry's voice, not Von Cassel's, but something between the two that held centuries of grief in a single, broken note.

  “This is where we fell in love,” Demelza said, her voice carrying harmonics that belonged to no living throat.

  “Love?” Agatha muttered. “I know Mephistos remembers it differently but that’s now how the old stories go – he tricked you, didn’t he. The power-mad mage – tricked you to steal your power.”

  Demelza shook her head sadly. “That may be what the tales say, but history has a way of warping and perhaps no one else knew the full story. My coven were against us, and I understand why…but it was love that brought us together.”

  Jerry trembled, rage flaring through Von Cassel’s soul that twisted inside him. Anger followed by agony – all the stages of grief flashed through him as he hobbled towards the group.

  “Our love made you vulnerable,” Demelza continued, focusing on the struggling figure. “There was a part of you that never belonged, never trusted, never felt loved and cared for. And then we fell in love. That scared the young part of you, opened you up to all that terror. You had been so powerful, and the terror split you open. You wanted to control me – control the whole world – to make the fear go away. Because you were raised to believe being brave, strong and powerful was everything. That's just not true, my love.”

  The tenderness in those last words made Delia's eyes burn. After everything – centuries of separation, betrayal, death itself – Demelza still called him 'my love.'

  Von Cassel's voice tore from Jerry's throat, raw as an old wound. “I was raised to believe only strength mattered. Vulnerability was forbidden. And yet you loved me. After everything I did, how can you still love me? You betrayed me…”

  “I sacrificed myself to stop you. I had to. Not to punish you, but to stop our love from twisting into hatred. Magic was leaking out of the world. You sought to control it all. You tried to control me. I saw what you were doing. I had a vision, and even the dragons saw it too. Before they left this world, they made a pact with my coven to keep magic alive so they might one day return.”

  The Order and the Sisterhood, both born from this ancient rift. The dragons leaving. Magic fading. All of it stemming from this moment, this grove, this terrible choice between love and power.

  “I tried to stop you,” Demelza said. “I tried to make you see that love was enough, that you could not control it…But your fear festered. Old wounds always do unless they are understood and healed. I had to stop everything.”

  Von Cassel's voice broke. “I lost you. I wanted everything to burn.”

  The raw honesty of it made Delia think of her own rage. That burning need to destroy what had hurt you. What did you do with that rage when you had nothing left?

  “You didn't lose me. Our souls are here. But I could never bind myself to you, not in the way fear demanded. Fear devours everything you offer it. It cannot be satisfied. The world cannot be pacified without its own consent. There is no greater good outside the harmony of all life. Each being fulfilling its course, loving, grieving, growing, dying. The eternal cycle. That is the true order.”

  The words resonated through the grove, through Delia's bones.

  Jerry's body jerked violently. Von Cassel slammed forward, a shadow leaving him and floating into the sky towards Demelza.

  “Your guides are waiting,” she said, softly. “Waiting to guide you home, to heal your broken soul, and I will join you soon, my love.

  “He doesn’t deserve your compassion,” Ingrid grumbled. “Or your love.”

  Demelza looked down upon her, sadly. “Perhaps not, but who is to decide what is deserved? To love at the level of souls is not confined to one mortal life, or even to centuries of festering bitterness. It simply is. Our souls do not always learn their lessons here in the great pressure and weight of the teachings of this world. His soul may be too damaged to repair…” A shining tear slid down her cheek, falling to the centre of the circle gathered below her. It landed in the grass and a shoot sprang up – a tiny elder bush the size of a dragon’s egg grew and began to bloom. “But he will no longer burden this world with his pain, his fear, his hatred. And beyond this world, all is love.”