Page 46 of Magical Moonbeam

“That explains the questionable waistcoats.”

Despite myself, I smiled.

Lady Limora gestured toward the center circle.

“We thought this would be the best place to begin. Here, among the ones who came before.”

“Their magic lingers,” Nova added, her voice soft and clear. “Not in a haunting way. In a… protective way. It wants to help.”

I looked around at the others. Their expressions were solemn but hopeful. These were my people now. This strange, magical, messy group of midlife witches, creatures, guardians, andgoblins. They had followed me this far, or I had followed them. Either way, they felt like home.

“We’ve never done anything like this,” I said. “This kind of preparation. This kind of magic. This kind of…faith.”

“And yet here we are,” Lady Limora said, stepping beside me. “This place shows the cost of magic done poorly. It also remembers what it means to fight for something worth saving.”

I felt Keegan’s presence behind me—quiet, grounding. I didn’t need to look to know his gaze was fixed on me.

“Tonight, we walk the boundaries,” I said aloud. “We let Shadowick settle into our bones. We learn the names of the streets we’ll shape tomorrow. We hold onto the light while we step toward the dark.”

Twobble stood on a mossy stone and shouted, “And I vote Skonk gets stationed at the least important crossroad!”

“We’ll rotate him,” Bella said dryly.

“Can we put a glamoured bucket on his head?” Ember asked, barely hiding her grin.

“I’m standingright here,” came Skonk’s voice from behind a gravestone.

I turned toward the group, trying not to chuckle. “Let’s begin.”

Lady Limora raised a hand, and the candles rose higher into the air. The weeping willow’s branches swayed, though there was no wind.

“We each walk a path,” she said. “Let it settle in you. Let it show you what you need to see.”

One by one, they began to move. Nova stepped barefoot down the eastern line of stones. Ardetia vanished between the trees, following a path only the fae could see. Bella and Ember moved together, mapping intersections and alley points from memory and imagination. Twobble bounded off with a map of Shadowick in one hand and a charmed quill in the other, grumbling instructions to the sprites who fluttered after him.

I stayed for a moment longer beneath the tree with Keegan beside me.

The night was cool and clear, and spring was fully embracing us. The cemetery shimmered in soft silver and gold. It didn’t feel like a place of death.

It felt like a place of beginnings.

Keegan reached for my hand, and I let him take it.

Three nights.

Three nights until the Moonbeam.

But tonight?

Tonight, we walked with the ones who had walked before us. And maybe we were on the right path.

Skonk barked orders like a miniature general with delusions of grandeur.

“No, no, no! Yourotherleft, Twiblet! The alley bends here, not there! You’ve just put a cursed toffee cart where the Ministry of Shadowed Plumbing should be!”

“Be nice,” I warned.

Twobble groaned from his floating perch, looking dangerously close to tipping off the levitation disc Ember hadconjured for him. “Skonk, if I fall, I’m cursing your hat to smell like troll sweat for the next decade.”