Page 27 of Magical Mayhem (Stonewick Magical Midlife Witch Academy #7)

I pressed my palm flat against the door, the frantic knocking vibrating into my bones, but I didn’t open it right away. My breath came in shallow bursts, my body still caught between the nightmare and the waking world.

I turned, and my gaze landed on Keegan.

He was still asleep, chest rising and falling, his lips parted in a quiet, uneven breath.

Keegan did not deserve any of this.

His hair clung against his forehead, the fever not fully broken, but steadier than it had been hours ago. He looked fragile, breakable, in a way that made my chest ache.

And that’s when the guilt rushed in.

Why couldn’t I dream of him? Of his strength, his touch, the way his lips had tasted of kindness and longing only hours before? Why was it that the moment I closed my eyes, Gideon was the one clawing into my mind, his voice raw and broken, his fears seeping into my bones?

It felt like betrayal.

I pressed my fist against my chest, as though I could scrub the guilt out.

But his words clung like burrs: If I die, no one will care.

I hadn’t expected it to echo like that. I hadn’t expected it to matter. And yet, it did.

Because if he was right, if no one ever cared, if his family had turned their backs, then wasn’t that exactly how Malore had sunk his claws in?

I’d always told myself Gideon was arrogant, ruthless, and cruel for the sake of cruelty. But what if that wasn’t the whole story? What if loneliness had been the soil Malore planted his seeds in?

What about his family?

I didn’t know. I realized with a jolt how little I actually knew of Gideon’s past. He was legend, rumor, and nightmare, but never flesh-and-blood memory. Had he been abandoned? Forgotten? Had he spent his youth watching the people around him thrive while he withered, unseen?

And was that why Malore had been able to manipulate him so well?

The thought made my skin crawl. Because if that was true, then Gideon wasn’t just an enemy. He was proof. Proof that Malore didn’t just prey on power. He preyed on the lonely, the discarded, the ones who feared they didn’t matter.

And hadn’t I felt that way, too, in the quiet after Alex left? In the aching silence when Celeste pulled away into her own life? In the long nights when I wondered if I had already faded, already become invisible?

The knock rattled again, sharp and insistent, pulling me back.

I rubbed my face, trying to shake off the dream. I didn’t have the luxury of pity. Gideon’s choices had cost Stonewick decades of suffering. But still, the thought gnawed at me: what if things could have been different?

I looked back at Keegan, his body curled into the quilt, the faint crease in his brow even in sleep.

I should have been dreaming of him.

Instead, I was haunted by the man who had almost destroyed us all.

And I couldn’t decide which truth scared me more.

The knocking rattled again, sharper this time, and a voice hissed through the wood.

“Maeve! It’s me. Skonk. You gonna open this or you want me to break the handle off?”

I let out a breath, released the latch, and pulled the door open.

There he was, leaning casually against the frame as if he hadn’t just threatened to maul Academy property. His grin stretched wide, devilish as ever, though the twitch in his left ear gave him away. Skonk never twitched unless something was wrong.

“You look like you’ve been dragged backward through a chaotic bush,” he said, cocking his head. “Not a pretty shrub, either. One of those gnarly ones with thorns and squirrels plotting murder inside.”

“Skonk,” I warned, my voice already trembling, “what is it?”

His grin slipped, and just like that, my stomach plummeted.

“It’s Gideon.”

The words hit me harder than any shove.

“He’s slipping away,” Skonk went on, the twitch in his ear faster now. “Twobble already wrangled Nova and Ardetia over there, trying to keep him tied to this plane, but…” He trailed off, shrugging, as if the weight of the truth pressed even against his goblin mischief.

I staggered back a step, one hand gripping the doorframe to steady myself. “No. He can’t. Not now.”

Skonk’s expression softened a fraction, though his grin never vanished entirely. “Trust me, I don’t make a habit of running across the Academy at night to share bedtime stories. This is the real thing.”

Panic clawed up my throat. If Gideon went now, if he bled out of this world before I could pull him into the circle with Keegan, with my dad, with me, it was over. All of it.

The old rites, the true rites, the only ones strong enough to crush Malore’s false teachings, would die with him.

We could end Malore, but we needed Gideon to end what Malore already started.

The unity we were barely scraping together, the fragile threads tying Stonewick back into itself, none of it would matter. The circle demanded all of us. Witches, shifters, bloodlines, and betrayals alike. Without Gideon, it was only fragments pretending to be whole.

“He can’t die,” I whispered, almost to myself.

“Well, you could try telling him that,” Skonk offered. “Maybe he’ll sit up and say, Oh, pardon me, didn’t realize Maeve said no. I mean, it’s worth a shot.”

I shot him a glare, though it didn’t stick. My heart was pounding too hard.

“We have to get there,” I said, already pushing past him into the corridor.

Skonk fell into step beside me, short legs moving with surprising speed. “I’ll admit, this isn’t how I planned to spend my evening. I was halfway through a very complicated poker game with a couple of sprites in the hotel lobby. Stakes were high. One of them had wagered a stack of sugar cubes.”

“Skonk.”

“All right, all right,” he muttered, though his grin widened again. “Just trying to lighten the mood. You humans look like you’ll keel over if no one cracks a joke.”

I barely heard him. My mind was spinning, tallying up every failure, every choice. If Gideon slipped now, Malore wouldn’t even have to lift a finger. He’d win by default, by absence.

The Academy’s halls blurred as we rushed through them, candlelight flickering over stone and shadow. Skonk kept pace, skittering around students who blinked blearily at us, too tired to wonder what crisis this time.

“He’s not like Keegan,” I whispered as we turned a corner. “Keegan’s strong. He’ll hold on. But Gideon… he’s…”

“A pain in the goblin backside?” Skonk offered.

I bit back a laugh, though it came out sharp, more desperate than amused. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Yeah, I know.” His voice softened, rare enough to make me glance at him. “He’s brittle. Always has been. All shadows and spit, no marrow.”

The words chilled me.

We crossed the courtyard, the night air biting, the shadows overhead thicker than ever. They swirled across the sky, pressing low enough to make the lanterns flicker uneasily.

“It’s like they know,” I murmured.

“They always know,” Skonk replied. “Shadows are nosy like that. Eavesdroppers. You can’t trust ‘em.”

His words didn’t help. My pulse quickened as we reached the alley leading into Stonewick proper. The inn stood just beyond, its lanterns glowing weakly against the creeping dark.

Every step closer felt like a countdown.

I thought of Gideon in the dream, his voice raw, admitting he didn’t want to be forgotten. I thought of his body slumped in the Wilds, shadows curling over him like chains. I thought of Keegan, pale and sweating, his fire dimming day by day.

If I couldn’t hold them both, if I couldn’t keep them breathing long enough to stand at the circle, all of this, all of Stonewick, would crack apart.

“Maeve,” Skonk said suddenly, his tone lighter, teasing again. “You should’ve seen Twobble trying to keep Nova calm. He looked like a duck trying to herd dragons. Nearly tripped over his own ears twice. Quite the performance. I’d have brought popcorn if goblins believed in sharing.”

I huffed out a breath, half a laugh, half a sob. “You’re impossible.”

“And you’re lucky I am,” he shot back with a grin. “Otherwise, you’d be facing this alone.”

We reached the corner, the inn’s shadow looming ahead. Its windows glowed, but faintly, as though even its hearth was afraid to burn too brightly.

I stopped, pressing a hand against my chest. My heart hammered so hard I thought it might tear free.

Skonk turned, his grin fading again. “Ready?”

“No.”

“Good. Neither am I. That means we’re doing it right.”

The inn door loomed, just steps away, and with it, the truth I wasn’t sure I was ready to face.

Together, Skonk and I moved into the inn and wound our way to Gideon’s room.

And just before I reached for the handle, I whispered to myself, “Not tonight.”

Skonk pushed the door open ahead of me, and I followed, my pulse drumming in my ears.

Inside, the scene was chaos and stillness blurred into unease.

Nova stood at the foot of the bed, her staff braced like an anchor, her green eyes glowing faintly in the dim light.

Ardetia hovered by the window, her hands spread as if she could push the shadows back with sheer will, her hair gleaming like a halo.

Twobble paced furiously at the bedside, muttering about how this wasn’t in his goblin job description.

Stella perched in a chair, her shawl wrapped tightly around her shoulders, her expression taut and worried despite the feigned calm.

And Gideon lay in the center of it all, slumped against the pillows.

His skin was sallow, drenched in sweat, his chest rising in shallow gasps. His dark hair was matted against his brow, and his lips parted around a breath that rattled far too close to the edge.

Every eye turned to me as I entered.

For a moment, the weight of their gazes nearly drove me back. They expected me to do something—save him, condemn him, decide. And suddenly, clarity struck me, slicing through the haze of panic.

I knew what I had to do.

“Everyone out,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt.

They blinked, the silence thickening like smoke.

“Out,” I repeated, firmer this time. “I need to do this alone.”

Twobble stopped pacing, his mouth opening and closing like a fish. “Are you out of your…”

“Twobble,” Stella cut in. “She’s right. We give her space.”

Nova’s eyes narrowed, her staff tapping once against the floor. “You’re certain?”

“No,” I admitted, because lying to Nova never worked. “But I know I have to try.”

Ardetia tilted her head, studying me with those piercing fae eyes, before finally nodding. “We’ll be just outside the door.”

One by one, they filed out. Twobble grumbling under his breath, Stella brushing her shawl dramatically against my shoulder as if bestowing some blessing, Ardetia gliding like moonlight, and Nova, last of all, pausing in the doorway.

Her gaze was heavy with warning and trust all at once.

Then she was gone, and the door clicked shut behind her.

The silence that followed was suffocating.

I turned back to Gideon.

Even now, in weakness, there was no denying his features. Handsome, cold, carved in angles that spoke of command. But beneath it all was something else…something I’d always known, even when I tried to bury it.

The images I’d seen through the Hedge, flickers of a boy staring longingly into Stonewick, wanting, needing. Not yet twisted by shadows, not yet hardened into cruelty.

Something had made him turn. Something more than hunger for power.

I drew closer, my heart hammering.

This was it. The moment to peel back every illusion, to strip away the fog. He was too weak to resist now, too close to the edge to play games. If I could open the Hedge to him, if I could show him truth without the tricks or the half-glimpses, maybe I’d find the answers.

Perhaps it would be enough to make him strong enough to survive.

Because that was the question, wasn’t it? Keegan was cursed too, but he was holding on, faring better, still burning like embers under ash. And Gideon? He was nearly gone.

They were both strong men, forged by battle and burden. So why was one slipping faster than the other?

I lowered myself into the chair beside his bed, reaching for his hand. His skin was clammy, too cold, his fingers twitching faintly under mine.

My throat tightened. “You’re not leaving me like this,” I whispered.

I closed my eyes.

The world seemed to sway, a low hum rising in my ears. I pushed past the fear, past the pounding in my chest, and reached, not just for his hand, but for the Hedge itself.

That place where truth and illusion twisted, where past and present folded like paper. That realm where I had seen him before, younger, softer, not yet the man Malore had molded.

The Hedge always came with risks, always demanded a toll. But tonight, I couldn’t afford to care.

I focused on the tether between us, that strange, unwanted thread that tied me to Gideon whether I wanted it or not.

The air thickened. My breath caught.

Something shifted.

The Hedge opened.

The shadows stirred.

And I felt him.

Not just his hand, not just the rise and fall of his chest, but him, his thoughts, his memories, his fears bleeding into mine.

The room seemed to tilt as the air crackled.

And then the world fell away.