Page 168 of Magical Moonbeam

And a smell like burnt thorns.

I fell to one knee, panting, as the Hedge receded into the walls, back to its quiet waiting.

Keegan caught me before I hit the floor. “You alright?”

“Better now,” I rasped. “Tell the others that it’s gone.He’sgone.”

But I didn’t miss the way the shadows still trembled in the corners.

I had used the Moonbeam, and I understood the Hedge more.

But I wasn’t done protecting what mattered.

The shadows writhed in the wake of the Moonbeam’s blaze, but instead of fading, they gathered, pulling themselves inward like a storm’s eye forming in reverse.

I staggered back, breath ragged, heart hammering in my ears.

Oh, no….

A hiss echoed down the corridor.

Laughter. Low. Silken. Familiar.

“You always did love the chaos,” Gideon purred as he reformed, his features sharpening from smoke into a mostly solid figure. His eyes glinted like ink catching moonlight, full of that dangerous calm. “I should thank you. I wasn’t quite ready until youforcedit.”

The light I’d summoned flared again, but dimmer now. The last of the Moonbeam was flickering in my palm like a candle burning low.

He stepped out of the darkness like a man stepping into a ballroom, arrogant and too elegant for someone who’d tried to destroy everything I loved.

“Did you think light alone would unmake me?” he said. “Maeve, you sweet girl, Ilivein the spaces between. You just made me sharper. That’s what I’m tellingyou. Darling, you belong in the unknown spaces where you could twist, mold, and dance to your creation.”

I forced myself upright and summoned what I could from the Hedge that had already retreated.

The Hedge rose again, answering, not with grace, but withdefiance. Light burned through the cracks in the stone beneath us, snarling upward like wolves on command.

“You don’t belong here,” I said. “Not in this place. Not in this town. Not near my daughter.”

His grin vanished, and he struck.

“You don’t tell me where I belong.” The corridor shuddered as a wave of shadow magic surged toward me, crashing like a tidal wave.

I threw up a shield of raw Hedge power laced with instinct, and it caught the brunt of the impact. But the force sent me sliding back against the wall.

Pain flared down my arm. My knees hit the stone hard.

Gideon didn’t pause. He lifted both arms andtwistedthe air around us. The torches along the walls sputtered out, plunging the space into near darkness. The shadows writhed into shapeslike snakes, claws, and tendrils with memories stitched into them.

He was pulling from fear now. Frommine.

I would not crack.

“You can feel it, can’t you?” he hissed. “The power beneath the Academy. You think Hedge magic makes you strong, but it binds you if you don’t use it right. I’m made of whatisn’trooted. I’m the freedom between moments. You could be too.”

I stood, blood on my lip, and wiped it with the back of my hand.

“You talk a lot.” And then I lunged.

The vines of light at my command surged with me, whipping forward and coiling around him with precision. He slashed through one, two, five, but I kept sending more ropes of light. Every crack in the floor became a mouth, every seam in the wall a window for the Hedge. I was no longer just calling on the Academy’s earth—Iwasit.