Page 126 of Magical Moonbeam

He laughed. “And what do you think you’ll do if I choose wrong?”

“I’ll end this.”

His eyes narrowed. “You think you’ve learned enough to stop me?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “But I know I’m not alone.”

The ground pulsed again, and this time I knew what it was.

The dancers were drawing closer. They didn’t like the idea of choice. They didn’t believe in it.

Gideon turned, just slightly, as if hearing the beat of their approach. “You feel them, don’t you? The dancers. They’ll protect me. Not because I control them, but because I’vebecomepart of the curse.”

A swirl of fog spun behind him, and for just a moment, I saw one of them—a dancer in full form. Its limbs too long. Its movement too graceful to be human. And its eyes were empty hollows that still somehowwatched.

Gideon’s voice lowered. “You’ll have to decide, Maeve. Is your heart strong enough to risk it all? Or will you bend, like the rest of them did, when the moonlight falls?”

I breathed deep, feeling my magic pulse beneath my skin.

The Moonbeam was rising, time was folding, and whatever came next… it would change everything.

The fog thickened at his back, a curtain of shadow that curled and twisted like it was listening. Maybe it was. Perhaps everything here was made to be heard by him. Shadowick wasn’t a village anymore. It was a stage, and I was trapped in the play he’d written long before I ever showed up.

“Come with me,” Gideon said, extending a hand.

His voice wasn’t harsh this time. It was soft. Tempting. That should’ve frightened me more than all his other threats.

“No,” I whispered, but my body didn’t move. Not yet.

“You don’t have to say yes.” His eyes glinted, silver burning like frostbite. “Just follow. Just see.”

I clenched my hands at my sides. I knew what this was. A performance. An illusion. A trap.

But the Moonbeam pulsed through my veins, and something told me that this moment mattered.

Still, I didn’t reach for his hand.

He turned, as if that was answer enough, and began walking across the square. The fog shifted for him like a curtain parting. I followed, not out of trust, but because if I let him vanish, I didn’t know if I’d get another chance to end this.

My feet were nearly silent on the cobblestones, though every step echoed in my head like a drumbeat.

The town had changed since I’d arrived. Subtly, but undeniably. Lights glowed in some of the windows now, dim and flickering, but real. And behind some of those lights, movement.

People. Or what had once been people.

Shadowick’s residents were waking up.

He hadn’t lied about that.

We turned into a narrow alley. The walls closed in on either side, and the shadows danced above us like smoke. I couldn’t tell what direction we were headed anymore. I couldn’t see the others. My only guide was Gideon’s dark coat and the pulse of Moonbeam light still humming inside me like a beacon I didn’t know how to read.

“How do you live with it?” I asked suddenly. “All this darkness.”

He slowed and glanced over his shoulder. “Because it’s not darkness to me.”

“That’s not comforting.”

He smiled faintly. “It wasn’t meant to be.”