Page 67 of Magical Moonbeam

I watched him go, and I was left unsettled.

Then I turned back toward the kitchen, where my soup had gone lukewarm and the fire had dimmed.

I still had a lot to learn, but I was certain of one thing.

Leaky dreams could become something powerful, especially in the wrong hands. I needed to get better at keeping my thoughts to myself.

The halls of the Academy had grown quiet again, and I wandered them now with soft steps, as I thought about leaky dreams still clinging to me like fog to a window.

Skonk had said it so casually, like it was just a quirk, an oddity. But the more I sat with the idea, the heavier it became. Hedge witches were tied to the liminal, the in-between. Dreams, intuition, tethered magic that didn’t always obey boundaries. If something in me was leaking, was I putting everything at risk? Were my thoughts drifting out where others could snatch them up?

I paused near the west wing and placed my left hand on the cool stone. I needed help.

And I needed it soon.

Nova would know something. If anyone understood the blurred edges between dream and reality, it was her. And Ardetia… well, she came from a people who practically breathed the unspoken.

But I had to ask without revealing the dragons. Their safety depended on secrecy, and I couldn’t risk one errant image, one slip of a word. The Academy had kept them hidden for a reason.

I turned toward Nova’s chamber first. Her door was slightly ajar, candlelight flickering in strange angles against the wall, shadows dancing like they were listening. I knocked once, lightly.

“Come in, Maeve,” she said before I could speak.

Nova sat cross-legged in a circle of runes and sea salt, a scrying bowl cooling nearby, and her raven hair braided back in a crown. Her green eyes lifted to mine, calm yet uncurious.

“I was hoping you’d stop by,” she said.

“How do you always know?”

She smiled faintly. “Because you’re always thinking loudly.”

I chuckled, then sobered. “Is… is that a problem?”

Nova tilted her head slightly. “Come in. Let’s sit with that.”

I stepped inside and took a cushion opposite her, curling my fingers together in my lap.

“I’ve been wondering about Hedge magic. About dreams, specifically. And thoughts that don’t always stay inside. I was hoping you or Ardetia might know how to... protect that.”

Nova didn’t answer immediately. She simply looked at me, really looked, like she was reading through a window instead of a face.

A rustle to my left broke the quiet. Ardetia stood in the shadowed corner of the room, having stepped in through one of her silent entrances, as she so often did. Her fae glow shimmered faintly along her collarbone, pale like starlight.

“You’re worried about someone listening in,” she said softly.

I nodded. “Yes. I don’t want to block the magic entirely. I just need to… know what’s mine is mine.”

Both women stilled. Not in surprise, but in a kind of shared pause. Like two musical notes suspended, waiting for the downbeat of a new verse.

Nova reached for a candle beside her and snuffed it with her fingers, plunging half the room into deeper shadow. The flame left a faint curl of smoke in the air.

“Then I think,” she said slowly, “we need to go somewhere we haven’t in a very long time.”

Ardetia folded her arms across her chest. “You’re sure she’s ready?”

Nova met her gaze. “No. But it’s not about being ready any longer.”

A pulse of something cold touched the base of my spine. “What are you talking about?”