**Chapter 42 – Homeward**
**Monday, June 9, 2028 – 11:11 a.m. (Shambhala local)**
We leave the way we arrived: unannounced, overpowered, and way too pleased with ourselves.
The First Wizard "One" meets us at the jade runway with thirteen Candles lined up behind him like repentant kids caught sneaking cookies.
He bows (deeper this time).
**One (voice softer than colliding stars now):**
"The treaty is rewritten.
Shambhala stands with the Queen of Sea and Storm.
Our libraries, our gates, our lives—yours to call."
I nod once.
**Celeste:**
"Cool.
Send the paperwork to Hot Springs.
And maybe some of those crying momos."
Rowan hands One a single blackbird feather (Remy's gift).
**Rowan (deadpan):**
"Return address.
Don't lose it."
Seras waves like she's on a parade float.
**Seras:**
"Tell the kitchen we're taking the good tea to go!"
Kayo opens a golden portal that smells like Arkansas pine and geothermal steam.
We step through.
And we're home.
The Ohio Club basement, exactly where we left it.
Al Capone is mid-pour when the portal snaps shut behind us.
He doesn't even flinch.
**Al (grinning around his cigar):**
"Took you long enough, Morau kid.
Valley's been too quiet without its storm queen."
Holly leans over the bar, copper curls glowing.
**Holly:**
"You broke a hidden city in four days?
New personal record."
Mom and Dad are already waiting upstairs (Mom holding a fresh tray of papanasi, Dad pretending he wasn't pacing).
Mom takes one look at me (sixteen, symbols hidden, crown spinning lazy and happy) and bursts into tears.
**Mom (crushing me in a hug):**
"My baby just rewrote the world and still came home for lunch."
Dad ruffles my hair, eyes suspiciously shiny.
**Dad:**
"Welcome home, kid.
Try not to drown Arkansas while you're at it."
Remy laces his fingers through mine.
**Remy:**
"Valley's breathing easier already."
Seras flops onto the stage, arms wide.
**Seras:**
"I missed gravity that doesn't bow to Celeste."
Kayo's tails vanish as she steals three papanasi in one swipe.
**Kayo:**
"Home smells better than any hidden kingdom."
I breathe in ghost jazz, bacon, and the faint sulfur of the springs.
The crown settles, warm and quiet.
```
HOME: Hot Springs, Arkansas
Status: Safe
Threat Level: Zero (for now)
Next stop: Atlantis (whenever they're dumb enough to surface)
```
I grin at my ridiculous family (living, dead, shifter, fire, fox, monk, queen).
**Celeste:**
"Summer break officially starts now.
Pool's open.
Ghosts are bartending.
And the world can wait another week before we drown it."
Al raises a glass of something definitely not legal.
**Al:**
"To the Morau kid and the best damn court this valley's ever seen."
We drink.
The valley exhales steam like a sigh of relief.
We're home.
Monsters, gods, and ancient empires can get in line.
Right now, the storm queen is sixteen, sunburned, and eating papanasi on the floor of a 1920s speakeasy with the people who would burn the oceans for her.
Life's pretty perfect.
Let Atlantis sleep a little longer.
We've earned this summer. *Tsatoke Blood**
June 10th 2028, full moon night on the ridge**
We're lying on the hood of Remy's Suv, parked at the highest point above the valley, watching the moon rise huge and orange over the Ouachitas.
He's quiet tonight (the kind of quiet that means something's heavy on his chest).
I nudge his shoulder.
**Celeste:**
"Talk to me, coyote boy."
He exhales, long and slow, then rolls onto his side so we're face to face.
**Remy (voice low, careful):**
"You ever wonder why my last name's Tsatoke instead of Calder?"
**Celeste:**
"I figured it was the side that gave you the good hair."
He huffs a laugh, but it's thin.
**Remy:**
"My mom's side. Caddo.
Tsatoke means 'blackbird' in Caddo.
Monroe Tsatoke was my great-great-uncle—one of the Kiowa Six painters.
But the blood that made me shifter? That's straight Caddo, from the Hasinai band.
The ones who used to live right here, before the Trail of Tears, before the government decided we didn't belong on our own land."
He traces a finger over the locket, then over the faint scar on his collarbone (one I gave him by accident the first time we shifted together).
**Remy:**
"My mom used to say the coyote came to the Caddo because we knew how to laugh at trouble.
Trickster spirit liked our sense of humor.
So he stayed.
Married in.
That's why the pack sings in Caddo on full-moon nights—old songs about stars and rivers taught us, about fire that dances instead of destroys."
He sits up, pulls me with him so we're both facing the moon.
**Remy (voice stronger now):**
"Calder's the loud name—the one everyone knows.
Tsatoke is the quiet one.
The one that remembers weeps when the valley weeps.
The one that taught me if you're gonna howl, howl something worth hearing."
He turns to me, eyes glowing soft gold.
**Remy:**
"I never told you the full song my mom sang the night I first shifted.
It's about a girl with lightning in her veins who came from across the water and taught the coyotes how to love something bigger than the pack."
My throat closes.
**Celeste (whisper):**
"That's… me?"
**Remy (smiling, shy and fierce):**
"Always was.
Even before you got here.
The valley knew.
The songs knew.
I was just the dumb kid who got lucky enough to be born when the storm queen finally came home."
He pulls a small leather pouch from his pocket, opens it.
Inside: a single blackbird feather and a tiny clay bead painted with the same river-wolf symbol that's been appearing on my palm lately.
**Remy:**
"Mom made this the day you moved to town.
Said 'Give it to the girl who makes your heart beat in two places at once.'
I've been carrying it for two years waiting for the right night."
He ties the bead into my left twin tail, fingers gentle.
**Remy:**
"Tsatoke blood runs quiet, Celeste.
But it runs deep.
And it chose you before I did."
I can't speak.
I just lean into him, let the tears come.
The moon climbs higher.
Somewhere below us, the pack starts singing in Caddo (old voices, new voices, coyote voices).
Remy's voice joins them, low and perfect, the song about the storm girl who taught the trickster how to stay.
I don't understand all the words.
But I understand the feeling.
Love that's older than countries.
Roots that go deeper than blood.
And a boy who carries his mother's songs in his heart like armor.
When the song ends, the valley is quiet again.
**Celeste (whisper):**
"Teach me the words."
**Remy (smiling against my temple):**
"Every night.
Starting tonight."
The crown above my heart spins once, warm.
Forty-three pieces.
One new song.
And a heritage that just claimed me as thoroughly as I claimed it.
Tsatoke.
Blackbird.
The storm queen has a new name to carry.
And it sounds like home.