Page 84 of Mane Brew

“We broke the Severing.” Zeph sounds wondering, like she still can’t quite believe it. “We actually broke it.”

“You did.” Peach sets the cobbler on the table. Peach cobbler, today. Something sweet always finds its way into her hands before she does. “Four partnerships, working in concert. Exactly what I hoped for when I started waiting.”

“Two hundred fifty years of waiting.” I study her face, searching for signs of the exhaustion she must feel. “That’s a long time to hope.”

“It is. But hope is patient, when it must be.” She takes the seat Leire vacates for her, settling with the careful movements of someone who’s been standing for far too long. “The Severing is broken. My duty is done.”

Something shadows her eyes. A flicker of concern quickly hidden.

“What aren’t you telling us?” Zeph leans forward. “You have your cryptic face on.”

“I always have a cryptic face, dear. It comes with the centuries.”

“Grandmother.” The authority of an alpha enters my delivery, though she’s far beyond any authority I could claim. “Please.”

She sighs. Looks at each of us in turn—the four couples who changed everything. Her gaze lingers on me, and I see recognition in her expression. The echo of a mate lost two hundred fifty years ago.

“The seal held,” she says finally. “More than held. Your combined magic didn’t merely reinforce what the breaking weakened—it transformed it. Four partnerships channeling through the original site have done what two hundred fifty years of solitary guarding could not.”

“But?”

“No but.” Peach’s smile carries something vast and unburdened in it. The cryptic sharpness is gone. “The Withering spent years feeding on grief and rage. What you channeled through that chamber was the opposite—four pairs who chose each other freely, whose magic is built on partnership rather than severing. The seal is stronger now than it has ever been. The Withering is quiet.”

A breath moves through the room. Collective. Released.

“The shadows I saw during the attack,” I say carefully. “The hunger pressing against the barriers⁠—”

“Still.” Peach’s certainty is absolute. “What was trapped beneath that chamber was not destroyed—nothing that old destroys cleanly—but it is contained. The energy of a thousand broken bonds has been met with the energy of four whole ones. It will not press against those barriers again in any of our lifetimes.” Her gaze finds Sakura’s belly. “Not in the lifetime of that child, either.”

“You’re certain.” Caius goes quiet with the effort of trusting this.

“I have been guarding that seal for two hundred fifty years,” Peach says. “I know what it feels like when it holds. I know what it feels like now. My duty is done.”

“My ancestor.” The words feel strange in my mouth. “Your mate.”

“My mate.” Two hundred fifty years of grief and love and loss in two simple words. “He would have liked you, I think. You have his stubbornness. His dedication to procedure.” Her smile softens. “And now you have a chaos witch of your own, just as he did.”

I look at Zeph. She looks back.

“History repeating,” I say.

“History healing,” Grandmother Peach corrects.

She rises, slower than she sat. The centuries show in her movements—the weight of two hundred fifty years of waiting finally lifting.

“I should return to the Registry.” She touches my shoulder briefly. “The building took as much of a battering as the rest of us—the east wing’s still not stable, and someone needs to coax the wards back to full strength. Might as well be me. There are things to monitor. Observations to make. Take care of her, Rhodes. The Blackthorn lions have always been steady. She needs that steadiness.”

“I will.”

“I know.” She turns to Zeph. “And you—take care of him. He’s spent so long being useful that he’s forgotten how to be wanted. Remind him.”

Zeph’s hand finds mine under the table. Squeezes. “I will.”

Grandmother Peach nods once. Then she’s gone—simply vanishing the way she always does, leaving only the cobbler behind.

The room is quiet for a moment.

“Well,” Leire says eventually. “That was... actually reassuring. From Grandmother Peach. I wasn’t sure she had those.”