Page 8 of Magical Mirage (Stonewick Magical Midlife Witch Academy #6)

I stood, breath jagged. Every bone in me wanted to stay at Keegan’s side. But every spell I’d ever cast, every breath I’d drawn since waking the Academy, screamed at me to move. To meet this storm. To become the Hedge and the hearth. Not run from it.

“You’re not alone,” I said.

He smiled. “I keep trying to tell you that’s my line.”

I kissed his forehead and rose. My wand slid easily into my palm as I stepped onto the wreckage of what had once been a cottage porch, now more jagged kindling and rain-slick stone than shelter, but Miora was doing her best, and the Ward would rise again.

The garden was a battlefield.

The enchanted herb beds were shredded, vines torn, rosemary flattened. Sage leaves fluttered in the churned mud. Fireflies hovered, unsure where to land. And in the center of it, Malore and the silver wolf circled again.

Both were bloodied now. Malore’s black pelt gleamed red in the rain, his shoulder matted with what looked like bite marks. The silver wolf bled from one ear, jaw gaping slightly on one side as if something had snapped.

But neither backed down.

They moved like mirrors with bottled rage in motion, matching each other with unnatural precision. Not just a fight for dominance.

A fight to claim.

I stepped to the garden edge and pressed my free hand to the soil.

“Not fire this time,” I whispered. “Something older.”

The roots answered. Even in the torn earth, they were there.

Waiting.

I let my power drift downward, not to burn, not to bind, but to listen .

A warmth, subtle but steady, returned to me. The land knew this battle. It remembered every claw mark, every broken branch as if it had happened once before.

And it remembered me, the one who enchanted thyme and sang terribly to the foxglove, who whispered secrets to mint leaves and left offerings for the worms.

“Help me,” I whispered. “Not to kill. Not to maim. But to end it.”

The soil shifted beneath my bare feet as a pulse went through the ground. A breath.

The silver wolf turned its head for a fraction of a second.

And Malore lunged.

But this time, the vines didn’t lash or burn. They rose soft and silent and met Malore mid-leap, not as weapons, but as an unheard truth , a different history.

They shimmered greenish gold in the rain, wrapping around his limbs like something remembered. Something he had once belonged to, as I held my breath.

His body slammed to the earth. Not from violence. He stilled.

The silver wolf didn’t move.

Malore writhed once, and then went very, very still.

Not dead.

But bound.

Not in chains.

In memory.

Bound in the Hedge.

I stood, wand still raised, heart pounding.

And somewhere behind me, Keegan breathed out one long, shuddering breath.

Still alive.

Still mine.

The silver wolf didn’t howl in triumph. It didn’t snarl or snap or linger either.

It just looked at me, with those pale, frost-colored eyes locking with mine through the storm-slick dark, and then it turned.

No flourish. No farewell.

It vanished into the trees like a ghost of muscle and power slipping between trees without a single broken branch.

By the time I blinked, it was gone. As if it had never come.

Malore, though, he remained.

His massive body lay in the center of the ruined garden, sprawled in a ring of crushed herbs and torn earth. Vines coiled around him, not in violence, but in command. My command. The Hedge had accepted my will and responded not with fury, but help.

I felt the spell shift in my bones as the ground pulsed beneath him, and then it opened.

Not in a violent crack or gaping maw, but in a slow, deliberate parting of soil and root. The vines didn’t strangle him. They ushered him down, wrapping around his limbs like guardians and jailers.

It felt as if the land had tired of being trampled.

Malore’s eyes were open, golden and dimming, but not lifeless. He growled low, deep in his chest, but his strength had been bled out by tooth, fire, and memory.

His body sank inch by inch until only a glimpse of fur remained above the earth, then even that was gone, swallowed by soil and moss, leaves and rain.

Not dead, just not welcome here.

The Stone Ward thrummed once, loud enough to feel in my soles. It had accepted the judgment.

Keegan sat in the open threshold, bare-chested, blood-streaked, rain plastering his hair to his face. He watched the earth close over Malore, with half relief and half disbelief.

Truthfully, I couldn’t believe it myself. I knew he wasn’t gone, but he was gone for now, and that was precisely what we needed.

“Maeve…” His voice broke around the edges. “What did you do ?”

“I didn’t banish him,” I said quietly. “The land did.”

He shook his head. “That’s not possible.”

“It is now.” I lowered my wand. “Hedge magic doesn’t just live in spells or books. It lives in roots. In stone. In the here, then, and beyond. And it knows what doesn’t belong.”

Keegan stared at the muddy earth where Malore had vanished. His lips parted, but no sound came. Then he looked at me, really looked, and I saw the worry in his eyes, sharp and wet and raw.

I knelt in front of him, placed my hands on his face, and let the silence say what words never could.

We were still here, but I had to ask.

My eyes stayed on Keegan’s as the words slipped out.

“Who was that?”