Page 125 of Magical Mayhem

I glanced instinctively toward Keegan. His hazel eyes were still wild, his fists clenched, his jaw locked tight. He hadn’t spoken, but I could see the way the wordMalorehad landed in him like salt on an open wound.

“And that’s not all,” Stella went on. Her gaze flicked to the end of the hall, toward the inn, toward the secret I’d already confessed to Keegan.

My mouth went dry. “What else?”

She hesitated, and that hesitation terrified me more than her words. Stella never hesitated.

I forced my voice steady. “Stella. What else?”

Her eyes met mine. The usual wry sparkle was gone, replaced by something grim and unyielding.

“Gideon is getting restless, too,” she said.

The words punched the breath right out of me. My stomach clenched so hard I doubled forward slightly, pressing my hand to it as if that could stop the ache.

“Is he…?” My voice faltered. I tried again, swallowing past the lump in my throat. “Is Gideon weakening?”

For half a heartbeat, I prayed she’d say yes. That the curse was simply wearing him down, that whatever Malore had tethered inside him was failing at last. That we had more time.

But Stella shook her head, the sharp movement of it slicing through any hope I had left.

“Worse,” she said.

The corridor seemed to tilt, the air thick with waiting. I heard Skonk swallow loudly, Twobble muttering what sounded suspiciously like a prayer to baked goods.

“Worse?” I whispered.

Stella’s eyes didn’t leave mine. Her voice came steady, but the weight of it hit like thunder.

“He’s awakening.”

I eyed Keegan and realized he was strengthening, too.

The silence that followed was deafening. My skin went cold, my heart hammering as the words rooted into me like thorns.

“Who is with him?” I panicked.

“Ember and Lady Limora.”

I nodded.

Awakening.

Not dying. Not slipping away. Not breaking under the weight of Malore’s curse.

Awakening.

And I knew, with a certainty that made my knees weak, that this was worse than any weakening. Because if Gideon was awakening, it meant the darkness Malore had sewn into him was stirring, stretching, ready to rise again.

Gideon and Keegan were merely the puppets, but I didn’t know what would happen if the string snapped.

I gripped the wall harder, as my thoughts spun like loose threads, fraying at the edges. Keegan’s mother inhaled sharply, my grandma’s gaze steadied on me, and Keegan himself growled low in his throat, the sound sending chills down my spine.

Gideon was awakening.

And whatever that meant, Stonewick wasn’t ready.

Not yet.