Page 25

The orb sat between us.

As though it hadn’t just dragged me halfway into a memory that didn’t belong to me and yet somehow did.

My fingers twitched where they curled around the corner of the blanket, and I realized I hadn’t let go of it since I sat down. The edges of my room were beginning to blur in that twilight way where magic and thought overlapped, where even the lamplight flickered a little too long before settling.

My dad had moved to the hearth, curling in a slow circle on the thick rug, though he kept one eye open. He didn’t snore. He didn’t grumble.

That alone told me he felt it too.

Twobble sat on the arm of the chair across from me, his feet swinging a few inches from the floor. He wasn’t fidgeting. And for Twobble, that was deeply concerning.

“So…” he said at last, voice low. “Do you want to say what we’re all thinking, or should I?”

I looked up, eyes burning. “Say it.”

Twobble tilted his head, one brow lifting. “The vision?”

I nodded, tightening the blanket around my shoulders.

“The woman in the orb. She was here long before Gideon was born. The Academy looked… younger. Unfinished in places. And whoever she was, she didn’t survive what happened.” He watched me for a reaction.

“But she looked like me.”

Twobble’s mouth pressed into a thoughtful line. “The magic was old, then. Older than the curse on Stonewick.”

“That’s what I think, too,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “Gideon… he placed the curse, twisted Stonewick, carved at the Wards to weaken them. But that wasn’t his idea. Not originally.”

I let the silence settle between us, curling gently like smoke.

“Agreed,” Twobble said, stretching his little feet in front of them.

“I think he is a cog,” I said. “A very dangerous, very clever cog but still part of something larger.”

So why wouldn’t my grandma want me to see this? I looked back at the orb. Its soft pulse remained silent, as though it had nothing more to say. But the weight of what it had shown me lingered in my chest like frost.

Twobble’s gaze narrowed slightly, thoughtful.

“You think he was following instructions?”

“Or picking up where someone else failed,” I said. “That woman in the orb… she looked like me, Twobble. I don’t know how or why, but she did. I think she was trying to protect the circle. Maybe even the Academy itself.”

“And she failed.”

“She fell, ” I said, remembering the exact way her knees buckled, how the ward around her cracked like thin glass. “She was overwhelmed. There were too many. Or… too much.”

“And now you’re afraid you’re next.”

I looked at him sharply, but I didn’t deny it.

Twobble sighed and dropped down from the chair, crossing the room to the small tea table beneath the window. He pulled open the top drawer and rummaged until he found a tin of spice-brew.

“How did you know that was in there?” My brows lifted.

“I’m your right-hand man.”

I chuckled and shook my head.

“I’ll make something warm,” he said over his shoulder. “Your room’s gotten chilly.”

I hadn’t noticed until he said it. The hearth was still glowing, but the warmth didn’t reach me. The cozy clutter of books and quilted pillows suddenly looked… dimmer, as if the shadows were taking up more space than they had a moment ago.

Frank let out a soft huff and rested his head on his paws.

“It’s not the orb,” Twobble added gently, pouring water into the small kettle. “It’s you . Your magic’s reacting to it and processing what it saw.”

I watched the orb from the corner of my eye. “It doesn’t feel like mine. But it feels… familiar.”

“An echo,” he said, striking the flint.

I nodded. “Or a memory passed through blood.”

We sat in silence while the kettle warmed, and I stared at the orb on my bed, as if it might change again, speak again. But it stayed quiet.

“I no longer think Gideon started this,” I said finally. “I think he found pieces of something that was already unraveling. Maybe he followed its whispers, maybe he was drawn to it like I was drawn to the Hedge. But I don’t think he created the curse.”

Twobble placed a mug in my hands filled with spiced tea, warm and sweet and strong enough to anchor me back into myself.

He sat again, cross-legged this time on the edge of the rug. “Then the question isn’t merely who wanted to destroy Stonewick. It’s why Gideon’s curse only bent the circle.”

I looked up. “By design?”

“I think if someone wanted to break it, they would’ve. They didn’t. They twisted it. Bent it. Left it that way on purpose.”

“To finish it later,” I added.

“Maybe to finish it with someone else. ”

My fingers tightened on the mug.

“What if I was meant to come here?” I asked. “Not because I could stop it. But because I was always part of it. What if I were brought here the same way Gideon was drawn here?”

Twobble’s voice dropped to a murmur. “Then the circle didn’t fail the first time. It waited.”

The room went quieter still.

Outside the windows, the sky had gone gray. Frank let out a quiet grunt but didn’t lift his head.

My tea had cooled slightly, and it hadn’t warmed me up.

I pulled the blanket tighter, let the orb rest beside me, and looked across the room at the two souls I trusted most.

“I need to know who that woman was,” I said softly. “Before I can understand what’s coming next.”

Twobble gave a single, solemn nod. “Then we start with what’s missing from the history books.”

And my dad thumped his paw once, like an oath.

I should’ve been focused on the woman in the orb. On the unraveling history. On the not-so-subtle warning of magic that waited in silence until someone foolish enough like me opened the box.

But all I could think about was Gideon.

And I hated that.

I sat cross-legged on my bed, tea now cold on the table, the orb sleeping beside me as my dad snored gently at my feet, and Twobble disappeared down the hall in search of nourishment that wasn’t crumbs and dread.

I should’ve followed the line of the mystery. I should’ve been elbow-deep in research about ancient Wards and founders who looked like me. I should’ve been tracing the circle back to its first bend.

But instead…

I kept returning to that image I’d seen, not long ago, when I was trying to get my father back from Gideon.

The moment I’d stepped into the realm with him, and we traded something we shouldn’t have, and I watched a young Gideon standing just outside Stonewick, seething with something that looked too close to grief to make me comfortable.

The way he hadn’t been able to enter.

The way he hadn’t tried to hurt me.

He’d looked… broken.

And furious the moment we returned to life in the middle of Stonewick, and he’d been tricked.

There was no doubt I appealed to him as a hedge witch. The potential I represented scared even me.

But I remembered the way my breath caught in my throat that day—not out of fear, but confusion. Because for a split second, I hadn’t seen the monster who cursed a town and fractured its people. I’d seen a man exiled from something he used to belong to or always hoped to become.

And that was what unsettled me most now.

Because evil didn’t mourn.

And Gideon had mourned something that day.

Maybe still did.

I ran my fingers over the stitching on the edge of the quilt, tracing the worn fabric absentmindedly.

I didn’t trust him. Not for a second.

But I couldn’t stop wondering— what drove him to this?

Was it power?

Was it anger?

Or was it something worse?

Was it loss?

And if it was…

Who had taken something from him?

And why did he blame Stonewick?

I reached for the orb again, but it stayed dim.

Silent. It had given me all it could for now, so I stared at it and asked aloud, softly, “What happened to him?”

The room didn’t answer, but my gut whispered something I didn’t want to admit.

That maybe this wasn’t about him at all.

Maybe Gideon wasn’t the one behind Stonewick’s fractures.

Maybe he’d been used , just like the woman in the orb, or maybe he’d been twisted into something cruel by something far older.

Far colder.

Shadowick.

The name tasted wrong in my mind, like something foul wrapped in sugar.

The dark space that always seemed to exist just outside Stonewick’s magic. The place no one spoke of directly, except in the dreams I knew weren’t really mine.

Shadowick was more than a village, a person, or a myth.

It was a presence.

A pull.

A hunger.

And what if that’s what had gotten to Gideon?

What if, in trying to reach something once lost, he’d been dragged too far into the dark? What if he’d been a tool all along—a pawn in something deeper, more ancient?

What if the hatred wasn’t even his?

The thought chilled me.

Because if that were true, then breaking the circle wouldn’t just free Gideon’s magic. It would open a door to something far worse.

And if he wasn’t the one behind it all… then who was?

What was ?

I shivered and pulled the quilt tighter, even as the hearth flickered a little brighter behind me.

I didn’t want to feel pity for him, especially not after what he’d done to my father and to Keegan and countless others…not after the curse.

Not after what I saw in my dad’s eyes when we spoke of Gideon, as the betrayal dug so deep, it had changed the shape of his heart.

But pity wasn’t the same as forgiveness.

And questions weren’t the same as sympathy.

I didn’t have to like Gideon to wonder what had broken him.

Or what he’d been trying to protect before he’d become something to be feared, because nothing twists that viciously unless it starts as something that bled.

“Maybe he never meant to do this,” I murmured.

My dad snorted in his sleep, but didn’t stir.

I looked down at the orb one more time and whispered, “Maybe he tried to stop it.”

And failed.

Just like she had.

Just like I might.

I hated that thought.

But I couldn’t let it go.

Or perhaps, Stonewick failed him.

Because the more I pulled at this thread, the more it wound around things that didn’t make sense, like his silence at the boundary, the look in his eyes, the restraint he showed when he could’ve pushed harder.

Maybe the true threat was deeper than Gideon.

Maybe it was still watching.

Still waiting.

And still bending the circle.

One piece at a time.

The room was still, too still.

Even the fire had gone quiet, with its flames low and thoughtful. The orb hadn’t stirred since the last vision, and my dad curled into a tight, protective knot near the hearth like he was guarding the silence itself.

And me? I sat in the middle of it, staring at nothing, my thoughts drifting to the Hedge.

Not just the edge of the Academy, but the true Hedge. The realm between realms. The place that whispers through the cracks when no one else listens.

The place where hedge witches were born to walk.

I’d heard the warnings.

How it twisted time. How it scrambled your memory. How it changed you if you stayed too long? The hedge wasn’t a place for comfort or certainty.

But I wasn’t sure certainty was a luxury I could afford anymore.

What if this magic, this mystery, wasn’t meant to be solved from the safety of the Academy?

What if the answers I needed weren’t buried in old books or flickering orbs?

What if I were meant to cross over?

The idea sent a slow chill across my shoulders, but it didn’t feel like fear. Not exactly.

It felt like a calling.

I had walked the threshold once.

I had seen the echo of the past and the pull of something larger than Gideon or even Stonewick.

What if traveling the realms wasn’t just part of being a hedge witch?

What if it was the only way to stop what was coming?

I swallowed hard and looked toward the window.

And something, deep and old, whispered, Soon.