Page 9 of Magical Mirage (Stonewick Magical Midlife Witch Academy #6)

The storm had passed, but its weight hadn’t lifted.

The summer rain had softened to a misty hush against the shattered window frames, and somewhere deeper in the woods, the owls had begun to sing again.

But inside the cottage, it felt like time had paused.

The smell of wet fur, scorched herbs, and old magic clung to the air like a held breath.

Miora was working frantically to rebuild the cottage, and Karvey and the others had huddled on the tip of the roof, nursing their injuries. My heart ached to see my stone buddies in such disrepair. Their loyalty always left me in awe.

Keegan sat propped against what was left of the sofa, stripped to the waist, his chest still rising too fast, too shallow.

The marks on his shoulder had stopped bleeding, thanks to Ardetia’s poultices and a blend of Miora’s magic, but the bruising beneath the skin was deep. Dark. Old blood surfacing.

Miora bustled past us for the third time, arms full of clean linen and bandages that glowed faintly. Her braid swung behind her like a tail of comet light.

“Drink this,” she muttered, thrusting a steaming mug of something bone-pale and sour-smelling toward Keegan without looking at him.

The pungent smell made my eyes water.

She chuckled. “It’ll force your body to remember it’s not dead.”

“Charming,” Keegan rasped, wincing as he reached for the mug with shaking fingers.

I knelt beside him and caught it before it could spill. He didn’t fight me.

That scared me more than anything.

Keegan never liked to be fussed over. He’d grumble, roll his eyes, grumble some more. But now…now he leaned against me without pride, without pretense, like the act of sitting upright had become a negotiation he was losing.

I offered him the mug again, steadier this time.

He drank slowly, grimacing at the taste, and let his head rest against the cushion behind him.

Damp hair clung to his temples. The gold in his eyes had dulled, the kind of dullness that didn’t come from blood loss, but from something far deeper. Drained magic. Soul-deep exhaustion.

“Keegan,” I said softly, pressing the back of my hand to his forehead. “Tell me who it was.”

His gaze fell to me, then away. “Later.”

I didn’t push. I just sat beside him, our knees brushing, and began rewrapping his shoulder with the poultice Miora had whipped up after running out of Ardetia’s.

“Your pulse is still too fast,” I murmured. “It’s like your body’s fighting something.”

“It is,” he muttered. “It always is.”

Miora passed again, muttering about breaking the Ward and structural integrity.

It should feel like normal after a battle won, but it didn’t.

Things felt…hollow.

Keegan let out a dry, threadbare laugh. “Miora really is stubborn, and that drink should be outlawed.”

“She’s also the only reason this place is still standing,” I said, tying off the bandage. “So I’m going to let her terrorize anyone she wants if it keeps them alive and the cottage upright.”

He didn’t laugh again. His eyes drifted to the ceiling beams, cracked but holding.

“It’s never been like that,” he said suddenly, voice low. “The shift.”

I paused, letting my hand rest against his forearm.

“Not even close,” he continued. “Not during the cursed shifts, not during the ten-year cycles, not even when I fought Gideon.”

“What was different?”

“This pulled everything out of me,” he said, jaw clenching. “Not just muscle. Magic. Rage. Memory. Like it knew what I needed to survive and gave it to me all at once, but then took everything else as payment.”

I didn’t breathe for a moment, just watching his chest rise and fall.

He turned toward me, eyes bright again with something I couldn’t name. “Maeve. It took weeks from me. I can feel it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean my bones… ache like they’re older than they should be. My magic feels like it’s running from something instead of toward something. I think,” he exhaled, slow and shallow, “I think I lost time.”

His voice broke on the last word, but not as much as my heart.

Miora’s footsteps paused. I looked over, saw her watching us silently from the hearth, a crystal in one hand glowing blue. She didn’t interrupt.

I looked back at Keegan. “How much time?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. A couple of weeks, maybe.”

I placed my hand over his, steady and firm. “We’ll get it back.”

“You don’t get time back.”

“Then we make it mean something,” I said. “And we stop the curse before it takes more.”

He closed his eyes. “What if it’s already too late?”

“You’ve never let me think like that, and I’m not going to let you.”

He let out a sound, a breath, almost a laugh, but it caught halfway and became a wheeze.

“I can’t keep shifting like that, Maeve. It’ll kill me. The magic… it’s getting greedy. Every time it takes a little more.”

“Then we stop feeding it.”

He opened his eyes again. “How?”

I swallowed hard. “We start with the truth of that matter. We let you rest. We don’t let you fight.”

He didn’t answer right away. Just stared into the ruined space around us with the broken beams, the shattered shelves, the herbs scattered across the floor. The cottage had survived the worst. But we hadn’t.

Not yet.

We both knew the worst was yet to come.

“You said it once,” he said, voice quieter now. “That this place, this town, needs people willing to stay. People who don’t run when it gets hard. I never have and don’t plan to now.”

I nodded. “And?”

He looked at me, really looked at me, his gaze settling somewhere between hope and resignation. “I can’t stand by and do nothing.”

“But that doesn’t mean you should be on the frontlines right now.”

Miora finally moved again, crossing the floor to place a palm against a rune at the door. The stone thrummed once. The cottage shivered. Something settled.

Keegan leaned against my shoulder as the cottage rebuilt itself stone by stone.

And together, we sat in the quiet.

Malore was gone, buried by Hedge and will and whatever power the land had awakened in me, but the echo of him lingered. It clung to the air like smoke. Even with the rain gone and the scent of scorched sage rising from the hearth, the heaviness hadn't lifted.

And the stranger…who was it?

I sat beside Keegan, my legs curled beneath me on the warped floor, his head resting against my thigh.

He’d drifted off a few minutes ago, the weight of everything finally pulling him under.

I didn’t dare move, not even to brush the hair from his forehead.

He needed sleep. More than that. He needed peace, the kind that had been stolen from him for weeks now. Maybe longer.

But sleep wouldn’t come for me.

My mind kept circling the question I couldn’t ask out loud.

Why now?

Why Malore ?

The silver wolf had come and gone without a word, a shadow with teeth

Was this a test?

Or a warning?

If I didn’t act soon, would Shadowick send something worse?

The only person who might have answers was trapped behind the thick doors of the Academy, Elira, my grandmother, who had lived through more than her share of twisted magic and broken oaths.

If her husband were a herald of something wrong, she'd know. Or at least help me make sense of the tangled curse trying to swallow Keegan whole.

I glanced down at him.

Even in sleep, his brow furrowed, his mouth set in a stubborn line. The bandages along his side were damp, but not leaking blood. That was something.

His breathing had steadied, but the curse was still inside him. I could feel it in the way his body radiated heat, not from fever, but from the magic itself…too much of it, burning through him like a slow fire.

Could he even make the short walk to the Academy?

The thought of pushing him too hard turned my stomach. But waiting... that was a risk too. Whatever time we had left was shrinking, and the Academy provided a bit more protection.

Footsteps sounded behind me.

Miora, her presence light as ever despite the fact that she’d been cleaning up a magical brawl with only her runes and the strength of her temper for the last two hours.

“I rebuilt the final wall,” she announced casually, stretching her arms over her head. “And most of the Ward lines are resealed.”

I looked up, surprised. “Already?”

She shrugged. “It wasn’t that bad.”

My eyebrow arched. “You mean compared to the last time Malore broke through and leveled half the roof?”

“Exactly.” Miora smiled faintly. “This was barely a three on the catastrophe scale. I didn’t even have to replace the stonework, just persuade it.”

Keegan stirred and let out a dry, muffled chuckle. “Stone persuasion. Sounds exhausting.”

Miora tilted her head toward him, amused. “Sleep while you can, wolf boy. You’re still gray around the edges.”

“Flattering,” he muttered without opening his eyes. “Tell me again how charming I look when I’m dying.”

“You’ve looked worse,” she said breezily. Then she turned to me. “The cottage is safe. The Ward is stable. It’ll hold while you’re gone.”

I blinked. “Gone?”

Her face sobered. “You need to go to the Academy, don’t you? To talk to Elira.”

I nodded slowly, wondering how she knew my plan. “Yes. But…”

Keegan was listening now, awake but pretending not to be, like he was hoping we wouldn’t notice if he stayed still enough.

“I don’t know if he can make the trip,” I said, softer now. “I don’t want to rush him, but... if we wait too long…”

“I’ll be fine,” he interrupted, voice rough but steadier than I expected. He opened his eyes, meeting mine. “I can walk.”

“You can’t even sit up.”

“I’m working on it.”

His pride was a stubborn thing, and tonight had nearly torn it to shreds. But beneath that familiar grit was something else. Something quieter. A man who didn’t want to be left behind again. The scars from his family leaving him had run deep.

I reached for Keegan’s hand. “I won’t go without you. But I also won’t drag you if it’s going to kill you.”

“I don’t think it will,” he said after a long pause. “But I think whatever’s coming next... we need to face it together.”

We stayed quiet for a while after that.

Miora moved around us, muttering to the stones again. She lit fresh candles with a flick of her fingers and knelt by the cracked front wall, painting warding sigils in soft white chalk. Her presence was grounding. Capable. Comforting in a way that didn’t ask for thanks.

And me? I sat beside the man I wasn’t ready to lose, wondering if Gideon or Malore had just drawn the line in the sand or started a new game.

Maybe Elira would tell me I was wrong. Maybe she’d say it wasn’t about Malore at all, just a rogue shadow clinging to old magic and spite. But deep down, I knew better.

Gideon thought he had let Malore off his leash, but the truth was the other way.

And now they were watching to see if we’d break.

“We leave in the morning,” Keegan said softly, more to himself than to me. “If I rest tonight, I’ll be strong enough.”

I nodded. “If you’re not, we wait. But just a day.”

He didn’t argue.

Instead, he leaned his head against my shoulder again, eyes sliding shut, and I felt the weight of him like a vow.

We were going to the Academy.

And if Elira couldn’t give us answers, then we’d find someone who could.

Because whatever Malore had come to deliver...

It wasn’t a message.

It was a warning.

And someone was waiting for our reply.