Page 47 of Magical Mayhem (Stonewick Magical Midlife Witch Academy #7)

The courtyard still smelled like smoke, but the battle had shifted into its awkward aftermath. People sat in clusters, murmuring, laughing too loudly, or just staring at the sky as though waiting for it to break again. The stars held steady, bright and strange.

Nova brushed down her cloak, her raven-dark hair catching starlight as she strode toward me. Ardetia wasn’t far behind, her fae grace still pristine despite the chaos. They both looked like women who had not only survived a war but were already drafting its report.

Nova’s green eyes landed on me. “We’ll fetch Stella.”

Ardetia tilted her chin. “And the others.” Her lips curved faintly, dry humor glinting in her voice. “I’ll come with you.”

I almost laughed, but the sound caught in my throat. “Skonk, is she… still on the ceiling fan?”

He piped up, ever helpful. “Spinning. Like a very angry chandelier.”

Ardetia’s brows lifted in amusement while Nova simply nodded as though this was the most ordinary battle report she’d ever given.

Keegan sat beside me, his shoulder steady against mine, though his breath still came too ragged for my liking. His eyes were trained not on Stella’s predicament but on something else entirely—his mother, the Silver Wolf.

She stood a few paces away, arms crossed, watching him in silence. For the first time, there wasn’t a wall of fury between them. It wasn’t forgiveness, but it wasn’t rejection either. Just… a spark. A flicker of recognition, of grief, of two people realizing they’d lost the same woman tonight.

My chest tightened, the ache pressing deep.

Across the steps, I caught sight of my father. He sat slouched, torch discarded, his hand resting loosely on his knee.

Beside him, my mother. She didn’t hover, didn’t bark at him, didn’t try to command the moment. She just… sat. Quiet. Their shoulders touched, and neither pulled away.

That sight rattled me almost more than the shadows had. My parents, side by side, in the same place. For so long, that had been impossible. For so long, my mother had kept herself oceans away from this magic, this town.

But she was here.

And suddenly I remembered that she’d wanted to tell me something.

The thought wedged itself into my chest, hot and insistent, louder than the hum of the students comparing scars and cracked wands. My grandmother’s sacrifice still echoed in my bones, and yet my mother’s silence pressed just as sharply.

Why now? Why had she come back? Why was she here at the very moment when everything was splintering and stitching at once?

My hands clenched in my lap.

Nova and Ardetia shared a look, their decision made without another word. “We’ll return with Stella and the others,” Nova said, her tone final, brooking no argument.

“I’m really sorry about Gideon,” Skonk said, and I nodded.

“You did your best. We all did.”

“Off we go,” Ardetia said.

“Do hurry,” Twobble added.

Ardetia rolled her eyes, though I caught the twitch of a smile. “Rest. Regroup. We’ll handle this.”

I nodded, my throat tight. “Thank you.”

They slipped into the shadows, their forms gliding through the courtyard with the kind of assurance that made me believe Stella and the others would be home soon enough.

But Luna.

Luna had betrayed us.

The yarn witch. The quiet shopkeeper who had always seemed harmless, eccentric in her way but safe, woven into Stonewick’s tapestry like a cozy, permanent stitch. She had smiled at me, brought skeins to the Academy as donations, and encouraged students to take up fiber arts for focus and spellwork.

And she had walked into Keegan’s hotel and tied up my family. My friends. She had walked out with Gideon.

My heart stuttered with the weight of it. The sting of betrayal pressed into my ribs until I wanted to claw it out.

“Maeve.”

Keegan’s voice pulled me back. I glanced at him, saw the way his gaze had shifted toward his mother again. She hadn’t moved, but her expression had softened.

And he hadn’t looked away.

Something fragile passed between them, some shared wound I couldn’t reach.

I pressed my hand against Keegan’s, grounding us both, but my eyes wandered back to my parents. My dad leaned heavily against the step, my mom quiet beside him. And the memory struck hard, her hand on mine in the cottage.

The words she’d almost spoken in the Academy before the skies cracked and tore everything apart.

She still hadn’t told me.

And I realized, with a hollow certainty, that I needed to hear it. Whatever it was, whatever truth she had buried all these years, it mattered now.

Because if tonight had taught me anything, it was this: nothing stayed hidden forever. Not curses. Not betrayals. Not family secrets.

I drew in a breath, steadying my pulse as the summer air wrapped heavy and warm around us. Keegan’s hand was strong in mine, Twobble leaned close, Skonk muttered something about “blasted yarn,” and the courtyard hummed with broken laughter and quiet tears.

But my gaze stayed locked on my mother.

And the words echoed, louder than ever.

She wanted to tell me something.

And I couldn’t wait much longer to know what it was.

“Mom,” I said, my voice steady though my insides felt like the shifting staircases in the Academy. “You wanted to tell me something before everything erupted.”

The courtyard chatter softened around us. Students still whispered, teachers still compared their battle wounds, but in that moment, the air seemed to sharpen, every sound a little distant, every breath a little too loud.

My mom stilled. She glanced at my dad, then at Keegan’s mother, as though measuring how much of herself she wanted on display. Finally, she nodded and let out a long, slow breath that seemed to empty her of everything she’d been holding.

“I think,” she said, her voice softer than I’d ever heard it, “we should go somewhere private.”

I shook my head quickly, my pulse thrumming. “Everyone here is friends and family. Anything you tell me, I’ll tell them.”

Her eyes softened, but the worry stayed, building in the corners like storm clouds. Worry wasn’t exactly what I needed right now, especially not with Gideon missing and a rogue yarn wizard running about. But there it was etched across her face.

“Maeve…” she started, and something like embarrassment flickered in her gaze. It startled me; my mother was not a woman who embarrassed easily.

She looked down at her hands, then back at me. “It’s something I should have told you long ago. It’s something I never should have run from.”

I frowned, my arms crossing. “That you’re a witch, you mean?”

Her lips pressed together, then curved into a tiny, sad smile.

She nodded. “Partially that. But there’s more. Much more.”

My brows knit together, confusion prickling sharp at the edges of my exhaustion. “Okay,” I said slowly, narrowing my eyes at her. “Then why did you leave exactly?”

My dad shifted beside her, his hand sliding over hers, fingers curling around like an anchor.

“Because she knew your grandmother would be looking for you,” he said, his voice low, solemn. “Hoping that you would be an heir.”

I blinked, stunned. My grandmother. Elira. Of course.

I looked around the Academy grounds and saw the ancient stone walls, the glowing lanterns, the arches that seemed to hum with quiet magic. It was so beautiful here at night, the kind of beauty that begged to be eternal.

“Grandma Elira wasn’t wrong about that, I suppose,” I whispered.

But my mother was shaking her head before I even finished.

Her face was pale, and her lips parted in a way that made my stomach drop. “Not that Grandma. Not Elira.”

Her voice was barely above a breath, but it hit me like thunder.

I froze. My mind scrambled, clawing for an explanation.

“What do you mean? I thought your parents…” My words trailed off, tangling uselessly in my throat.

She met my eyes then, her gaze full of sorrow, full of weight. Full of something she had been carrying her entire life. Concern etched every line of her face as though she knew exactly what the next words would do to me.

“My mother,” she said, each word deliberate, heavy, unshakable. “Your grandmother… is the High Priestess of Shadowick.”

The ground tilted.

For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. The courtyard spun, the stars blurred, and all I could hear was the echo of her words, pounding in my skull like a second heartbeat.

The High Priestess of Shadowick.

Not Elira. Not Stonewick.

Shadowick.

My blood went cold, even as the night air stayed warm. The world shrank to her face, her words, the implication unfurling like a shadow across my chest.

I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.

Keegan’s arm tightened around me instinctively, his eyes filled with concern, searching my face as though he could anchor me by sheer will.

His mother’s eyes narrowed, watching. My dad’s hand squeezed my mom’s tighter, a silent show of solidarity, even as the revelation shattered everything I thought I knew.

The High Priestess of Shadowick. My grandmother.

That made me…

My throat burned. My heart thundered.

What did that make me?

What did that mean for Stonewick?

What did that mean for everything I had fought for, everything Grandma Elira had died to protect?

I stared at my mother, searching her face for a sign of denial, a smile, or some indication that this was just another one of her eccentric barbs, the kind meant to make me roll my eyes.

But her eyes were serious, weighted, tired.

She wasn’t lying.

And the world would never be the same again.

The words echoed in my skull until I thought they might crack me open.

The courtyard blurred at the edges, my vision tilting and swaying as though the people around me were moving, pacing, whispering, rearranging themselves, when in truth, everyone was exactly where they had been.

Students slumped on the steps. Teachers held one another upright.

My parents sat side by side, closer than I had ever seen them.

And Keegan’s arm stayed firm around my shoulders, grounding me even as the world spun out from under my feet.

I turned to him, searching his face, my voice breaking into the silence. “Did you know?”

His eyes widened, shock carved into every line of his face. He shook his head, sharp and certain. “I had no idea.”

The air left my lungs in a rush. My stomach gnawed with a hollow ache. I didn’t understand what it meant for Stonewick, for my place here, for Gideon.

Gideon.

Is that why he always told me I didn’t belong in Stonewick? Had he known I was tied to Shadowick all along? Had he known I had a different place…one he was trying to warn me of even as he fell further into darkness?

And Luna. Her family never rooted here; they always hovered at the edges. She’d probably been a spy all along. The missing puzzle piece had been under our noses, knitting shawls.

I looked at my family, my father’s clenched jaw, my mother’s shadowed eyes, Keegan’s mother standing proud despite her grief, and then at Keegan himself, the witches, the fae, the shifters who had all bled tonight for Stonewick.

I forced the words out, barely a whisper. “So Malore wasn’t the one pulling the strings, was he?”

My mother’s gaze swept from Keegan to his mother, to my dad, and finally back to me. Her voice was low, certain. “I don’t think he was. I think Malore was a pawn.”

My head shook violently, my pulse hammering. “Like Gideon.”

But look who was still standing.

Twobble let out a long, tragic sigh, then collapsed across my lap as though slain by truth itself. “Then this has just exponentially complicated getting you four into a circle. Let me just say that right now.”

A broken laugh escaped me, but it died quickly as I looked around at my family, my friends, at the Academy glowing under a sky scrubbed clean of shadow. We had come so far.

But the fight was just beginning.

And for the first time, I understood that Malore was never the storm. He was only the thunderclap before the true tempest broke.

***