Page 35 of Magical Mirage (Stonewick Magical Midlife Witch Academy #6)

By the time we popped out of the shed in my backyard, the cottage roof should’ve been alive with stone wings and disapproval.

It wasn’t. No Karvey crouched at the eave, no Flanky with his noble tilt, no Horny pretending his missing horn tip was an artistic choice.

“Where are they?” I asked, breath catching on more than the hike.

Twobble shaded his eyes with one small, grubby hand. “Either patrolling or sulking.”

I laughed despite myself, then stopped, because the back door stood unlatched. Not ajar. Unlatched.

“Stay behind me,” I said.

“Absolutely not,” Twobble said, and slipped past my elbow with a goblin’s talent for finding center stage.

The cottage air met us warm as a bakery, with firelight pooling across floorboards that still bore the scars of the battle.

The curtains had been rehung, the worst of the glass swept, the rugs nudged back into honest shapes.

Miora had done a marvelous job all around.

The floor just needed a bit of polishing.

But there on the couch by the hearth, Keegan sat with Karvey looming beside him like a sentinel who’d agreed to try tenderness without promising lasting change.

Keegan’s forearms were braced on his thighs, hands knotted, head bowed. Karvey rested a granite palm on his shoulder, claws careful as prayer. The picture struck me in the chest.

Wolf and stone, power and patience, each pretending the other wasn’t offering comfort.

Keegan felt me before he saw me. The line of his back went taut, the kind of tension that lives in bone long after battle ends.

He lifted his head. When his gaze found mine, the world narrowed to a point bright enough to hurt.

“Maeve.” My name in his voice burned low.

Karvey didn’t turn. “Told you she’d come home before I finished frightening the soot back into the flue.”

Miora clapped her hands and smiled. “He was worried.”

“We all were,” Karvey added.

Keegan stood too fast, winced, then stilled as if any sudden motion might undo him. The wolf in him is all velocity and heat, but the man had learned restraint like a second language.

“I’m fine,” I said, because the words were true enough for the moment. “You should be resting.”

“I have been, but not by choice,” he said, as if that were both explanation and defense. His voice was husky from smoke and stubbornness.

“How are you feeling?”

“You did it on purpose,” he said, as if needing to hear the confession aloud. “You pushed me through.”

“I did.” The truth tastes better when you stop trying to dilute it. “I wasn’t going to let that place eat you.”

“It wasn’t eating me.”

“Keegan,” Karvey said in a tone that could sand beams smooth, “your bones sounded like a bag of gravel when you tried to stand.”

Keegan shot him a look that would’ve made a lesser statue crumble to dust. Karvey remained cheerfully granite.

“You need to rest,” I said, worrying even standing was too much.

“I was going to…”

Karvey’s stone fingers squeezed together. “He was not going to.”

Keegan brought his gaze to mine. “Now that you’re here, we should go to…”

“Over my cracked and handsomely weathered body,” Karvey said, finally turning his head to me with a look that translated to please control your wolf before I have to sit on him .

I crossed the room quicker than my common sense advised, and the tonic in my blood allowed. The hard set of pain around Keegan’s mouth softened, and a heat in his eyes that had nothing to do with fever locked on me.

Skonk snorted, and Twobble, blessedly opportunistic, cleared his throat.

“Well. This is touching. I’m going to gather all the nonessential personnel,” he threw a meaningful glance toward the kitchen doorway where Flanky and Horny were leaning, “and escort them to a location where they can gossip about this later.”

“I appreciate the…”

“Privacy,” Twobble added, with a wink so large it made me chuckle. “You’re welcome.”

The gargoyles trudged toward the back door, grumbling on the way.

Karvey stood with the reluctant drama of a cathedral deciding to stretch.

“If he bolts,” he told me, “call my name, and I’ll handle the rest.” He levelled a granite brow ridge at Keegan. “No heroics, pup. Not while you’re still stitched together with stubbornness and bandages.”

Keegan’s jaw tightened. “I’m not—”

“Mm,” Karvey said, and took himself, his disapproval, and a surprising amount of paternal affection out the door.

The cottage shifted when they were gone. Quieter, yes, but not empty.

And Keegan, and the look on his face, filled the room like weather.

I reached for him, and he caught my hands in his and drew me closer, slowly, like he was giving me time to change my mind.

His palms were hot, callused, trembling just enough that I felt it in my wrists. He was not well.

“You were gone too long,” he said, words careful, as if care could keep them from coming out wild. “I came here, and you weren’t back.”

“I couldn’t stand the thought of you there.”

“I would have been fine. I could have handled it.” Keegan’s brows furrowed. “I’m not weak.”

“No, you’re not. You’re the strongest man I know, but I don’t want to lose that.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“We don’t know that,” I said carefully, feeling the knot inside my chest tighten. “And I went to Shadowick.”

“You what?”

I nodded, licking my lips nervously. “I had to. That’s where a Keeper tree had captured Skonk.”

“You went there by yourself?”

“I had Twobble.”

“He’s a goblin. You can’t trust him with your life.”

“I do.”

“And that’s a problem. They’re known to trade, barter, and bend to get ahead in life.”

“But Twobble has been known to risk his own life for others, hand us secrets about other worlds, help us fight the curse…” I shook my head. “Stonewick is about working together. He stopped worrying about the cottage and started worrying about me.”

A smile traced his lips. “You are too good, Maeve. I don’t deserve you. Your heart is so kind.”

“So is yours,” I said softly.

“I know the thoughts I’ve had.” He shook his head. “And what I want to do to Malore and Gideon and…”

“But that takes too much energy. Youneed to save everything you have while we fight this thing inside of you.”

“You shouldn’t have pushed me.” His voice turned gruff.

“Keegan… I was afraid.” I shook my head. “Darkness takes too much from a person, and whatever this is, is already—”

“Hollowing me?” he supplied, gaze steady.

I nodded, relief and dread tangling.

“You think I wanted to push you? That wasn’t strength, Keegan. That was terror with good reflexes.”

His mouth softened. “But it saved me.”

I narrowed my eyes on him. “So you agree?”

He laughed and let out a sigh. “I don’t know what I think, but I’m grateful you had enough sense. I want to be angry. I’m used to being the alpha.”

“You still are.”

He shook his head. “You’ve got this, Maeve. Your instinct is better than all of ours.”

“That’s up for debate,” I said lightly, because if I didn’t, my throat might close. “Twobble credits the tea. He seems to have thought that I was a wreck before his cleansing.”

He huffed, which in Keegan is almost a laugh. The motion pulled pain across his shoulder, but he didn’t hide it fast enough.

I pressed my fingertips just above the bruised sweep of muscle through the thin shirt he’d thrown on.

“That helps,” he murmured, leaning into my touch like a man who’s done pretending he doesn’t need the thing being offered.

“You look a thousand times better with Maeve on the premises,” Karvey’s voice called from the kitchen.

“Out,” I said, not turning. “All of you.”

Little feet slapped the floor, and the door closed with a thud, but I honestly wasn’t sure when they’d even snuck back in.

Keegan lifted our joined hands and pressed his mouth to my knuckles, one by one, as if he were counting.

I steadied my gaze on his and sighed.

“Gideon said he hadn’t done anything new to you. That if you were crumbling, it was your own weight.”

“You saw Gideon in Shadowick?” His voice lowered.

“He appeared when the Keeper was debating about letting Skonk go.”

“Why would you think you can trust what he said?”

“What happened to me having good instincts?” My brows raised.

“That’s what I’m wondering.” But the twinkle in his eyes remained.

“I don’t trust what he said. I trust how he said it.”

“How so?”

“He said the curse is broken. That I should be gloating.” My finger circled his palm. “But he’s weak. He looks weak. He acts weak. It was almost like he just wanted me out of his hair.”

“Then why cast a mirage for Skonk?” Keegan questioned.

“Maybe, he didn’t.” I shrugged. “Honestly, Gideon looked like you feel.”

Keegan’s low laugh rumbled through me, and I smiled.

“If I were into conspiracy theories, I’d say you two are almost experiencing the same thing, which would align with what he’s saying.

” I bit my lip for a split second while I thought about how to phrase what came next.

“I do believe the curse broke the night of the Moonbeam. All signs do point to it. The Wards had strengthened. My dad is back in human form when he chooses. The Academy is putting out the call. But I didn’t truly see it because I know what’s happening to you. ”

“It’s not like before,” he admitted, voice low.

“It’s different,” I added, knowingly, not wanting to say the truth that had been nipping at me since I saw Gideon. “And it seems somewhat similar to Gideon.”

“Then what about our skies? The shadows?” Keegan eyed me carefully. It wasn’t necessarily suspicion that outlined his words, but maybe…skepticism.

“Gideon knows something,” I said, glancing toward the window. “There’s a reason our skies are filling up with darkness, and if he’s not responsible, we need to find out who is.”

He lifted a hand to my jaw, as his thumb traced along my cheek.

“I’m worried it has to do with my grandfather.” I’d finally said it aloud. He’d attacked Keegan the other night, and if it hadn’t been for the silver wolf…

“And the things my dad showed me about the shifter clans, and the ancient rites…” I paused. “You add in the constant pursuit of power.”

“And you’ve perfectly explained why I don’t want anything to do with them.”

I nodded. “There’s an older pull. I’ve been reading about the rites, but my dad thinks it’s also… older than even that. Something like a, ” I reached for the word he’d used, “a hunt-call that circles and circles until it wears down the soul it chases.”

He nodded.

“There is something in particular that I haven’t been able to shake from one of the scrolls.”

“What is it?”

I began reciting from memory, “ The boy, the shadowspawn, the cursed one you fear, is no king. He is only a match I lit in the dark. He believes he uses me. But he walks where I send him. And when the flames reach the threshold, I will be standing at the end of the road. Not Gideon. Me.” A shiver ran through me.

“I can’t help but think that Gideon has been merely a puppet. ”

“Then what does that make me?” Keegan asked.

“An obstacle.” I squeezed his hand. “But you feel the pull, don’t you?”

Keegan’s eyes shuttered briefly, not to hide, but to steady. “The nights have been… louder,” he said at last. “It’s like the air has teeth and it knows my name.”

“I know,” I whispered. “I heard it in you before I heard it outside. Ember told me that you’ve been spending time outside at night.”

Keegan nodded.

“Is that part of the Hunger Path?” I asked quietly.

“If it is, there is no surviving it,” he said simply.

“You don’t know that,” I pointed, feeling my blood freeze.

“Then I’m only going to say this once. If there’s a choice between me and the town…”

“Don’t,” I said, sharper than I meant. “We’re not doing that bargain.”

“Maeve.”

“No.” I cupped his face, and he let me, pride and fear and love all trying to fit into the same breath.

“I didn’t come this far, we didn’t pull this much hope out of the ground, to start trading lives like trading cards.

We’ll break it. All of it. I don’t know how yet, but I have recipes and runes and stubbornness, and you have the sense to let me be reckless on our behalf. ”

That did it. His mouth curved slowly.

“ Our behalf,” he repeated.

“Don’t get smug. I just need a simple kiss,” I warned, and kissed him.

I meant to make it a quick kiss, but he met me with rawness and heat braided together. It wasn’t the kind of kiss that demanded, but promised. His hand skimmed the curve of my jaw, steadying me even as my mind forgot its purpose.

The world still smelled faintly of mud and ash, but all I tasted was him, the warmth, sweetness, and the spark of something that felt like home.

When we finally parted, just enough to breathe, his forehead rested against mine.

“You call that simple?” he murmured, voice roughened.

I smiled, lips still tingling. “I call it necessary.”

Twobble cleared his throat and had his most innocent face on, which is to say he looked like he’d stolen something valuable and eaten it behind the shed.

“I made tea,” he announced.

“Not like the one in Undersoot, I hope,” I teased.

“You should be so lucky.” Twobble poured two cups and left the room.

“You know he’ll be furious with you,” Keegan said after a while.

“Who? Twobble? He’s already furious with me by breakfast most days.”

“Your father,” Keegan said, smile ghosting. “For going without a proper escort.”

“I trust Twobble with my life.”

He nodded slowly.

“Next time,” he murmured, his mouth against my ear, “we go together, my Hedge witch.”

“And come back the same,” I said softly.

I turned to face him, cupped his cheek, and kissed him once more, slow and certain, a promise pressed to the place where words fail.

“Maeve?” Keegan said, drowsy now.

“Yes?”

“Thank you for pushing me.”

“Thank you for letting me.”

He closed his eyes, the lines at the corners easing. I let mine do the same, and for the first time since the sky went wrong, I allowed sleep to calm me.

Outside, the rain washed Stonewick clean.

Inside, the cottage kept watch. And under the steady beat of Keegan’s heart against my palm, I made room for the next fight, and for the simple, stubborn joy of having something like this worth fighting for.