Page 13 of Magical Mirage (Stonewick Magical Midlife Witch Academy #6)

The Maple Ward always felt like late afternoon, no matter the time of day. The tall arched glass let in filtered light, casting everything in a summer glow. The sweet scent of leaves and earth floated in the air, and the weight of old magic rested thick between each stone.

I stepped in quietly, the echoes of my sandals softened by the moss-laced stone path that wove its way beneath the towering maple at the center of the Ward.

Its leaves, so bright and impossibly vivid, fluttered with a sound that was more whisper than wind.

And just beyond the trunk, in a circle of careful stone, stood the sapling.

It had grown so much.

I blinked. No, not just grown… stretched . The tiny maple, planted in hope, had extended its delicate limbs upward as if reaching for something just beyond the glass dome above. As if it knew something. Or sensed a need.

Maple Ward was strengthening.

“You see it too,” Nova said.

Her voice was always unmistakable, calm, and grounded in a way that made the bones of the world seem younger by comparison. It brought me back to the night I first met her with the reassurance in her gaze, the serenity in her voice.

She stepped from the alcove, with her long coat brushing over the moss as though she floated rather than walked. Being half elfin seemed to give her a grace I’d never obtain.

The light caught the green threads in her braid, turning her raven-dark hair into a living spell.

“It wasn’t that tall last week,” I said, staring at the sapling. “What does it mean?”

“Something’s answering,” she said, folding her arms as she studied it with a wary eye. “Whether it’s the land or the Ward’s own memory… I don’t know yet. But it’s growing for a reason. The sapling only thrives when hope is present and danger lingers close.”

“Comforting…a twofer,” I muttered, then added, “Keegan’s resting. Why do you think he’s been watching the sky at night?”

Nova’s gaze didn’t waver. “He’s listening.”

“To what?”

“To what comes next,” she said. “He’s always been the first to step in front of danger, Maeve. You know that. But this is different. This time, he’s not shielding someone else. He’s trying to protect you. And I think the fact that he’s weakening worries him more than anything.”

I swallowed hard, watching the sway of the maple’s branches. I wasn’t sure it was that simple.

“I know what you feel for him,” Nova said gently. “It’s as visible as the Ward lines carved into this place. You’d burn the earth to protect him.”

“I would,” I said, no hesitation. “And I don’t think that’s wrong.”

“No,” Nova agreed. “But you must be careful not to confuse your bond to him with your bond to this land.”

I turned to her, my voice tighter than I meant. “You think I’m choosing him over the greater cause?”

“I think,” she said slowly, “you’re beginning to make him the cause. And that’s dangerous.”

“How?”

“Because love is blinding,” Nova said. “It clouds judgment. You won’t see the trap until it’s around your throat. And Gideon knows that. So did Malore.”

I felt that in my ribs like a low thud to my gut.

She moved closer, reaching out to touch one of the sapling’s leaves. “This tree thrives on balance. On truth. It won’t grow if you anchor yourself in a single thread of fate. You must see the whole weave. That’s your job as the Hedge witch.”

I closed my eyes for a breath. “And if I lose him?”

Nova’s hand dropped. “Then you keep going.”

My heart twisted. “That’s not an option.”

“It may be the only one,” she said softly.

The maple above us stirred as if echoing her words, casting shifting shadows along the floor. I watched them move like waves across the stones as my stomach twisted into knots. Keegan was a good man and didn’t deserve this, any of this.

“I don’t know how to do this without him,” I admitted. “Not just the fight. All of it. The days. The quiet. The hope.”

“You can,” Nova said. “You already have. You forget that before your feelings for him, you still stood here. You still opened the Academy. You still answered the call when the Wards began to stir.”

The truth was that I had fallen for him the moment he handed me the envelope because I remembered the kind boy that he was.

“But it’s different now,” I whispered.

“Yes,” she said. “Because you’ve remembered how to love. And how to be loved in return.”

I glanced at her. “That’s not a weakness.”

“No. But it’s a vulnerability. And that can be exploited.”

The silence stretched between us. I felt the ache in my chest settle deeper, heavier, as if the Maple Ward itself had placed something on my shoulders I didn’t know how to carry yet.

“But that doesn’t mean you turn your back on love,” Nova added, her voice warming. “It means you hold it in one hand… and carry your purpose in the other. You are both.”

I let that settle. The idea that I wasn’t meant to choose one path or the other, but to walk them both. To be heart and Hedge. Flame and duty. Magic was based on duality, so why couldn’t this be?

Nova tilted her head toward the sapling. “This tree believes in you. The Ward does too. But belief isn’t enough.”

“What is?”

“Action,” she said. “And sacrifice. Maybe not the one you fear… but some kind.”

I nodded, feeling the truth of her words curl into the edges of my magic like a thread being stitched into fabric already halfway woven.

“I’m going to find the answers,” I said, steadier now. “In the library. In the Wards. Wherever they are buried.”

Nova smiled faintly, a rare flicker of approval. “Then go.”

As I turned to leave, the maple’s leaves brushed against my shoulder, with merely a whisper of touch, but I felt it in my core.

A blessing.

Or a warning.

Maybe both.

“I haven’t told anyone else,” I murmured, still facing the sapling.

The way its bark gleamed in this light reminded me of that strange moment after Malore had fallen when silence had returned, but not peace.

Nova didn’t press. She simply waited.

“If it hadn’t been for the other wolf,” I continued, “I think… I think the ending would’ve been very different.”

Behind me, Nova’s breath stilled.

I turned, slowly, and met her gaze. “Malore was winning. Keegan gave everything. He was already unraveling at the edges. I could see it in his eyes. You know, that moment right before someone breaks.” I swallowed hard.

“And then this wolf came out of nowhere. Big. Silver. Silent. Not just powerful— purposeful. It didn’t come for anyone but Malore.

Drove straight into him like it had been tracking him for weeks. ”

Nova stepped closer, her boots quiet on the moss-covered stone. “And then?”

“It fought Malore with everything it had,” I said. “No howls. No shifting. No hesitation. And then when it was done, it vanished into the trees. Like it had never been there.”

Nova’s face remained still, but her eyes shifted slightly. Calculating. Listening to something I couldn’t hear.

“It didn’t speak,” I added. “Didn’t even look at me until the very end. But I saw something in its eyes. Recognition, maybe. Grief, even.”

“Keegan saw him too?”

I nodded. “He wouldn’t say anything afterward. Changed the subject when I tried. Said he needed to rest or get inside the Academy. But I know he knew the wolf or knew of the shifter.”

Nova’s jaw tightened. She turned and began to pace a slow, measured circle around the sapling, fingers trailing over its nearest branch. “Describe the wolf again.”

“Larger than Keegan,” I said. “But not broader, just taller, with lean muscle and a silver coat that looked like moonlight on steel. Its eyes were pale, almost white-blue, and it moved like…” I paused, searching for the right word, “...like it had done this before. Like the wolf wasn’t afraid of Malore. Or anything.”

Nova stopped pacing.

“Do you know who it is?” I asked.

She didn’t answer at first. Her hand rested on the sapling’s trunk, fingers splayed as if feeling for something deep inside the bark.

“Nova?”

“Secrets,” she said quietly, “don’t die in Stonewick. They root. And sometimes, they grow legs.”

I stepped forward, heart thudding. “You do know.”

“I can’t say for sure, so I will say nothing at all.”

My mouth went dry. “When will Keegan tell me?”

“If he doesn’t, go to the mirrors,” Nova said, finally turning to face me.

I wouldn’t go behind Keegan’s back on this.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve used them before,” she pointed out.

“But that wouldn’t be right.” I felt the chill of it ripple through my arms.

“It wouldn’t be wrong.”

I switched the subject. “The wolf felt like it was a guardian of some sort.”

“Or a witness,” Nova said. “Or something older than either. There are things the clans buried when the Academy sealed. Things that apparently don’t want to stay buried now.”

“But why would it help Keegan?” I asked. “Why now?”

“Maybe it wasn’t merely Keegan it was helping.” Nova met my gaze. “Perhaps, Malore was more than a threat. He was a warning. And that wolf? It may be bound to something much older than we realize.”

A silence stretched between us as the maple’s leaves rustled faintly overhead. I felt the shift in the air as the Ward listened.

“You think Keegan’s bloodline connects to it?” I asked.

Nova hesitated. “I think if Keegan knows who it is, and isn’t saying… it means the truth matters. And not just to you.”

“What do we do?”

“We find out,” Nova said. “Before the secrets come knocking again.”

I looked at the sapling once more, the leaves trembling, reaching ever upward.

And I knew.

Stonewick hadn’t just awakened.

It had remembered.

The maple leaves above us rustled, soft at first, but then the sound deepened as if the very canopy were gasping for breath.

I lifted my gaze toward the glass ceiling arching high above the Ward. Sunlight had been filtering through just moments ago, dappling the stone floor in golden light. But now the light dimmed. I narrowed my eyes as something heavy had passed between us and the sun.

Nova stilled at my side.

At first, I thought it was only the clouds.

A wandering patch of shade. But the shape that pressed against the glass was too slow, too steady, and too wrong to be a trick of weather.

It wasn't dark so much as hollow , like something had drawn the light into itself and left behind only the echo of its outline.

It moved again, not like a passing shadow, but like a body carried by an unseen wind. A hulking form with limbs that didn’t quite match the natural world. Not wolf. Not man. Not anything that belonged above the canopy of the Maple Ward.

“What is that?” I asked, the words rasping low in my throat.

Nova’s eyes didn’t leave the glass. Her face had gone pale, her lips drawn tight in concentration, or was it fear?

“It shouldn’t be up there,” she said quietly. “Nothing should be able to walk the upper dome.”

It wasn’t exactly walking, though. It stretched with purpose with a slinking and deliberate pace that followed the curve of the glass as if mapping the boundaries between our world and something just beyond.

We could see only its silhouette, which was massive and unnatural. It paused above the apex of the dome, where the maple’s tallest branch nearly touched the glass, and bent toward it, slowly and reverently.

And the sapling, so proud and full of wild promise, began to tremble beneath it.

Its leaves curled, not with the resilience of summer, but with the swiftness of fear. One by one, each leaf folded inward, the limbs drawing tight against the trunk, hiding from what loomed above.

Retreating.

The roots under our feet thrummed with a pulse I didn’t understand. Not pain. Not defense.

Recognition.

The shadow overhead didn’t move again. It simply watched .

From the outside.

From above.

“Nova,” I breathed. “Tell me that’s a vision. A trick of the Wards. Something... explainable.”

But she didn’t answer.

Her gaze was locked skyward, her hand trembling ever so slightly on the hilt of the wand hidden inside her sleeve.

She’d never trembled in my presence.

And in the silence that followed, too thick to swallow, too sharp to ignore, I realized something had found us.

And it had been looking for a very long time.