Page 87 of Magical Mission

There was magic here. Not just in the ground, or the trees, or the wards. But in the waiting. In thebetween.

This was the kind of place where secrets liked to bloom. Where the past and future sometimes met in the shape of a butterfly’s wing, soft and unnoticed until it moved.

I tilted my face to the sky and let the breeze kiss my cheeks. Let myself breathe.

And then I whispered aloud, because sometimes the best magic needed voice.

“All right,” I said. “I’m listening.”

Chapter Twenty-One

I waited until the light truly awakened, and the sun turned everything bright. That quiet time in between as the sun shifted and the world expanded.

Hedge witches were meant for the in between.

I walked alone to the garden’s farthest edge, to where the Butterfly Ward faded into untamed brush. I moved past the carefully pruned paths and charming herb beds, and went into the sloped, half-forgotten stretch of thicket and ivy that had always been left alone.

I’d never thought much about this space before, but now it called to me.

I stepped carefully, pressing into damp soil. The air changed as soon as I crossed the threshold. Warmer. Wilder. Less curated by the Academy’s hand. The vines here didn’t wind politely. The moss glowed faintly in places it had no business glowing.

And the boundary was strong.

I could feel it.

It felt like the outermost ring of a Ward that I hadn’t cast but somehow belonged to. This was the edge of something, wherethe meeting place between what was held and what was not claimed itself.

The Hedge.

A breath caught in my throat.

Okay.Now what?

I closed my eyes and reached, not with my hands, but with something older. Something in my bones.

I didn’t call a spell since I was horrible at them, and I didn’t whisper a charm. I just let the energy around me rise.

Letting out a deep breath, I pressed my presence into it like a finger against glass.

And it responded.

The world tilted.

Not outward.Inward.

Not violently, but with weight.

It felt like I was stepping into a memory that wasn’t mine and a hum of ley lines beneath my feet pulled at me.

The mix of the Academy’s steady pulse of magic and the wild just ahead created an awareness of how little control I had.

This wasn’t the kind of magic you controlled. This was the kind that watched back.

I thought of the message.

The circle was never broken. Only bent.

And suddenly, I could sense the energy in that strange inner way that dreams made sense when you’re in them, but not outside of them.