The Cloak Before the Storm

Starlinghold Academy sat at the bend of the Ashriver, its towers leaning at angles that made no sense and its bridges connecting buildings that floated just slightly too far apart.

Penelope Starwrite crossed one of those bridges, hugging her sketchbook to her chest and watching her rainbow cloak ripple in the cool morning breeze. She was late. Again.

"Penelope!" called a voice below. Her classmate Bren leaned out of a second-floor window, his brass-rimmed goggles pushed up on his forehead. "Professor Aldwyn moved class to the Tide Hall. Third floor. The one that's backwards today."

She glanced at her phone. Seven minutes. She could make it.

The Tide Hall smelled like river water and old paper. Students filed in around long stone tables, some human, some not — a girl with moth-wing patterns on her arms, a boy whose shadow moved two seconds behind him.

Penelope slid into a seat and opened her sketchbook, already drawing without thinking. She didn't notice what her pencil was drawing until the lines were already there.

A pair of wings.

The Parrot Who Knew Too Much

Professor Aldwyn hadn't even finished calling roll when it happened.

A parrot landed on the stone table in front of Penelope. Not a small, ordinary one — this bird was the size of a house cat, with feathers the color of thunderclouds and eyes like two copper coins.

Every student went quiet.

"That's Mosswick," someone whispered. "He belongs to nobody. He shows up when something's wrong."

Mosswick tilted his head at Penelope. Then he opened his beak and said, very clearly, "She's got the Beacon."

Penelope looked up from her sketchbook. "Sorry — what?"

"The Beacon of Tethering," Mosswick announced, loud enough for the whole hall to hear. "Every magical creature within six miles will feel it. They will come."

The moth-wing girl two seats over pulled her arms close to her body and stared.

Bren leaned across the table. "Penelope. Your drawing."

She looked down. The wings she'd sketched were glowing faintly — and they were moving, slow as breathing, as though the paper itself had come alive.