Page 76 of Magical Moonbeam

Now it just felt like home.

I crossed in front of the bookstore, then turned the corner toward the square. There it was. Keegan’s boutique hotel, with its dark shutters and ivy-wrapped columns, the flicker of candlelight still dancing in the front windows. I smiled without meaning to. He’d stepped into Stella’s tea shop all brooding intensity, and rough charm, and I’d thought,Nope. Absolutely not.

I’d been wrong, of course. About a lot of things.

A familiar sound caught my ear, and I turned, expecting a neighbor or a late-night baker…

But it was him.

Keegan.

He stepped out from the shadows just beside the inn, hands in his coat pockets, his hair wind-tousled, eyes shadowed in the soft glow of the streetlamp. He stopped when he saw me as a slow smile crept across his face.

“Wandering the town alone?” he asked, voice low, teasing.

I shrugged, suddenly aware of the heat in my cheeks. “Couldn’t sleep. Needed the quiet.”

He nodded. “It’s different at night. Feels older somehow.”

I smiled faintly. “I was just thinking that.”

We stood there a moment, the space between us thick with unsaid things. The night hummed. Stonewick, for all its softness,was pulsing with magic beneath our feet. And maybe that’s why I didn’t speak, not right away.

Keegan tilted his head, studying me. “You look tired.”

“I’m holding it together with tea and sheer willpower,” I admitted.

He chuckled. “That’s one way to run a school.”

“I’ve got two days to figure it all out.”

“Then I’ll walk with you,” he said simply.

The air had taken on that faint chill again, spring just barely brushing her fingers across the cobblestones before letting go. Keegan walked beside me in comfortable silence, his hands tucked into his coat pockets and his steps falling just slightly slower than mine, as if he was holding space for whatever I was about to say next.

Which was a problem.

Because the thing Iwasabout to say was… well, reckless.

I glanced up at him under the streetlamp’s golden glow. His face was angled just enough to catch the light, and even in the quiet of night, he radiated that low, steady calm that made my stomach tighten. I cleared my throat.

“So,” I started casually, too casually, “what are your thoughts on sneaking off to false Shadowick for a little practice?”

He stopped walking like someone had hit pause on his whole body.

I took another two steps before realizing I was alone and turned back toward him. His brows had lifted, one more skeptical than the other.

“Metaphorically speaking?”

I smiled. “Kind of.”

“Maeve.”

“It’s not the real Shadowick,” I said quickly, holding up my hands. “I meant the illusion. The one we conjured in the cemetery.”

He exhaled, tension visibly easing in his shoulders. “You never settle down.”

“No,” I said, half-laughing, “but it’s not like I’m packing a satchel and heading through the Veil.”