Page 41

The staircase trembled beneath their feet as the retreating students stampeded, robes whipping past, spells fizzing in the air like startled fireflies.

I took them two at a time, Keegan just ahead of me, Twobble clinging to the banister in bursts and hops as he muttered obscenities about witches running in every direction except the right one .

The third-floor landing loomed just ahead. The library’s arched doors pulsed with faint blue light. Active charms, yes, but dimmer than they should have been. The normally warm stone hallway felt chilled now, as if someone had opened a window between realms.

And then I saw it.

Just beyond the arc of the windowlight where the corridor narrowed, a shape moved.

The being wasn’t fast nor skittering.

It glided.

A tall figure, more outline than body, trailing something like smoke behind it, moved in front of us.

I froze at the top of the stairs.

Keegan saw it a breath later and instinctively threw his arm in front of me, his other hand already shifting.

His eyes gleamed faintly, as canine energy vibrated through his posture.

Twobble let out a curse under his breath, sharp and ancient.

“That’s the same shadow I saw the other night,” he hissed. “The one Nova told me not to tell you about yet.”

My heart stopped for a beat.

Krina.

Her ex.

The man who’d shown up at Keegan’s inn under the guise of nonsense and magical curiosity.

The sisters we’d tried to help, and the tether we thought we’d broken, came back to haunt us.

We’d been too quick to move on, too eager to feel safe again.

Keegan’s voice dropped low. “Do we engage?”

“No,” I said, my eyes tracking the shadow as it slid into the deeper dark beyond the library doors. “We follow. But quiet.”

Twobble gave a theatrical sigh. “Ah, yes. The classic plan: follow the unspeakable horror into the library with no backup and very little strategy.”

“Faulty plans are our specialty,” Keegan muttered.

I glanced down at Twobble. “You’re not scared, are you?”

“Of course I’m scared,” he whispered. “I just hide it behind sarcasm and excellent fashion choices.”

We crept forward, Keegan leading with slow, precise steps, Twobble trailing behind me with his hands poised for magic.

The closer we got to the doors, the more wrong everything felt.

The charms surrounding the library usually thrummed in a subtle buzz, like the quiet purr of contented books and cooperative book sprites. But now? They stuttered. Glitched. Like someone was twisting them from the inside.

The doors opened with a whisper. No creak. No resistance.

I hadn’t touched them.

They’d opened for it.

We stepped inside, and the light vanished almost entirely.

Bookshelves loomed in warped angles, the corners of the room wrapped in dusk rather than darkness. Orbs had either dimmed or fled.

And the book sprites?

They were clustered in the rafters, watching.

Dozens of them, their tiny wings tucked tightly against their bodies, their bright eyes tracking us in utter silence.

That was the most chilling part.

Sprites didn’t stop moving.

And yet here they were. Still as stone. Focused on one thing.

Us.

Or maybe what had just passed through.

Keegan sniffed the air. “Something’s wrong with the energy in here.”

“No,” Twobble said, tugging at my sleeve and gesturing up. “They’re clamping it down. The book sprites have sealed the upper layer of the library.”

“How?” I whispered.

“They have failsafe enchantments,” he explained. “For magical breaches. Their priority is the texts. Not us. They’ll let us in, but they won’t let anything else out.”

Keegan’s gaze swept the shelves. “So what’s the plan?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Find it. See what it wants. Stop it.”

“That’s not a plan,” Twobble said grimly. “That’s a wish with legs. ”

We moved deeper into the library, my boots silent on the old wooden floor, my pulse loud enough to drown out thought. The deeper we moved, the more the air pressed down on us—thick, syrupy, and cold. As if we were walking into a storm made of memories.

Then—movement.

A flicker between shelves.

Not a shape this time.

A flash.

Like light glancing off a blade.

Twobble whispered, “There—left row, third aisle down.”

Keegan nodded and moved first, low and ready.

I followed, every inch of me braced for impact.

We turned the corner…

Empty.

Nothing but books. Stacks. Dust that hadn’t been disturbed.

But I could feel it like something had just exhaled.

“Maeve,” Twobble whispered, tugging at the back of my sleeve.

I turned and saw the word burned into the spine of a book at eye level.

It wasn’t scorched or handwritten. It was etched with magic.

Soon.

My breath caught.

“Okay,” Twobble said, his voice brittle. “I officially hate this thing.”

Behind us, something slammed in the dark.

Not a real door.

The shimmer from days earlier.

But this time…

It hadn’t closed.

It had opened somewhere else.

And it had let something through.

I stared at the word carved into the book’s spine.

Soon.

It wasn’t just a warning. It was a message.

A signature, and I knew who had left it.

This was Gideon.

The same essence that met me out of the path.

Keegan stepped beside me, silent, his arm brushing mine. His hand lifted, hesitant, and then settled on my shoulder with a gentle squeeze.

I didn’t realize how much I needed that until I felt it.

My breath came shallow. Not out of panic, but out of restraint. If I let myself feel everything right now, the fear, the guilt, the curiosity, I might drown in it.

“It’s him,” I said quietly.

Twobble nodded grimly. “I suspected.”

Keegan didn’t speak, but I felt the way his grip tightened ever so slightly. He had known too.

But it wasn’t just that Gideon had been here.

He hadn’t come in person. Not yet.

The shadow we saw, that had been something else.

A carrier.

A hitchhiker.

A tether.

“I don’t think that shadow belonged to the man who stayed at your inn,” I said slowly, turning to Keegan. “I think it used him. Hitched a ride on his presence. Used his connection to Krina. To her pain. Her magic. His own shadow work.”

Keegan’s eyes darkened. “I agree. Like a vessel.”

“Yes,” I said, a chill threading through my spine. “It followed him here. Lingered in the Academy. But now it’s delivered his message.”

Twobble’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Then it wasn’t trying to breach the library for our tomes.”

“No,” I said. “It was trying to leave something behind.”

The book that bore the word soon vibrated faintly under my fingers.

I didn’t know if anyone else could feel it, but I could. It wasn’t pulsing with danger. It was thrumming with expectation.

Like a timer had been set.

As if Gideon wanted me to know he was coming.

But what he didn’t realize was that I was going to come first.

My eyes scanned the darkened rows of bookshelves. The shimmer was gone now. The shadow vanished, but its trace still clung to the air, like ash after a fire.

The students had no idea how close this came.

And neither, I suspected, did most of the teachers.

Except Twobble. And Keegan.

And maybe, just maybe, the two students.

Krina and her sister.

I frowned.

“I think I need to talk to them again,” I murmured. “We dismissed their story too quickly. I thought the danger had passed once the tether was broken, but now…”

“Now you think the shadow was never about them,” Keegan said.

“It wasn’t,” I said, my voice flat with realization.

“It was about you. ” Twobble made a soft sound of agreement.

We turned together toward the arched door, backlit now with warm hallway light.

The silence behind us felt final.

But it wasn’t.

The message wasn’t over.

I knew that in my gut.

Keegan moved first, holding the door as I stepped back into the corridor. Students had returned, many clustered in knots of whispers, but the panic had given way to curiosity. The third floor was still under charm review, but the danger, what they could see of it, was gone.

“Soon,” I murmured again under my breath.

Twobble stepped beside me. “He wants to meet you.”

“I know.”

“And you’re going to.”

“I have to.”

Keegan tensed beside me. “Maeve…”

I turned to him, and for a heartbeat, I saw it.

The worry in his eyes.

Not the kind that coddles, the kind that knows.

Knows what it means to go where light doesn’t reach.

Knows what it means to let someone you care about walk into it anyway.

I reached out and touched his hand. “I won’t go without a plan.”

“That’s not what I’m afraid of,” he said, voice low.

“I know.”

Twobble broke the silence with a short, sharp cough. “We’re not talking about a stroll through a shadowy meadow here. We’re talking about Shadowick. ”

The word landed like a thunderclap, even whispered.

Shadowick.

A place long buried in myth and half-truths. A realm twisted by betrayal and warped magic. The place where Gideon had once found power or been consumed by it.

“The path led me toward it,” I said. “Not directly. But I saw pieces. Angles in the visions I couldn’t place. They all curved one way. Beneath the Wards. Beneath us, where the shadows dance.”

Keegan shook his head. “That place isn’t just magic. It’s hungry. ”

“So am I,” I said quietly. “For truth. For answers. For whatever this pull is to end the curse . ”

Twobble looked like he wanted to argue, but his face softened. “Then we do it the goblin way.”

“What’s the goblin way?”

He held up one finger. “Step one. Don’t go in alone.”

I smiled faintly. “And step two?”

“Leave breadcrumbs. Lots of breadcrumbs. Magic ones. And snacks.”

Keegan gave a snort. “He’s not wrong.”

My smile faded slowly as I turned back to the third floor.

The library door stood quiet now, but soon had already begun.

I’d thought the path had changed me, and it had.

But not to give me peace.

It had reshaped me for this.

For the moment that I’d have to face Gideon on his ground, where light thinned and shadows ruled.

I wasn’t ready, but I would be, because if he came to the Academy, no one would be safe.

And if I didn’t meet him in the place where he had made himself, then I would never be able to break him free of it.

Or break myself free of him.