Page 23

By the time we finished for the night, I was wrung out.

My body was heavy, and my mind was sore in that deep, unfamiliar way that only magic could manage. The forge had taken more than I expected, and I’d given it everything I had while giving it nothing at all.

Nova and Ardetia didn’t linger. A quiet nod from one, a small smile from the other, and they each vanished into the growing dusk like the night belonged to them, and I was left to my thoughts.

I murmured goodnight and let my boots carry me past the gates, past the alley leading back to the Academy, and down the cobblestone walk that wound through Stonewick. The breeze had softened to a hush, pulling at the edge of my cloak as if urging me on.

And who was I to resist?

The streetlamps flickered to life one by one, casting warm, golden halos across the sidewalk.

I passed Luna’s yarn shop, its window still glowing, a soft skein of cloud-colored wool partially knitted into something lovely on display. I remembered the first time I walked past this storefront, how foreign it all felt as if I’d stumbled into a postcard meant for someone else.

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 I was about 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.”

He caught up to me, his gaze searching. “You’re serious about this.”

“I need to be ready, Keegan. Moonbeam’s Eve is practically breathing down our necks, and I can’t afford to be caught off guard when Gideon shows.”

His jaw tightened at the name. That didn’t surprise me. He never liked hearing it. Honestly, neither did I.

“I just thought,” I added softly, “that it wouldn’t hurt to walk the streets again. Let the illusion settle into my bones. See if anything new comes to me.”

Keegan didn’t respond right away. His expression had shifted. It went from skeptical to something more complicated, and his mouth tugged downward, but not in disapproval. It was more thoughtful and calculating.

Then he sighed, shaking his head slowly. “I’d prefer if you didn’t go at all.”

I arched a brow. “Is that your official shifter opinion or your overly protective male opinion?”

He smirked. “Both.”

I nudged him with my elbow. “Noted. But I’m still going.”

Another beat of silence passed before he said, “Then I’m coming with you.”

My heart jumped. “You don’t have to—”

“I know I don’t,” he said, cutting me off gently. “But I will.”

Something in his tone softened the knot of nerves I hadn’t even realized was tightening in my chest.

“I didn’t mean for this to be a thing,” I said. “Just a quick walk through our illusion. A little solo brooding. Maybe a dramatic monologue.”

He rolled his eyes. “You want dramatic? You should’ve let Skonk lead the exercise.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

Keegan fell quiet for a moment, then said, “You sure you’re up for it tonight? You look like you’ve fought off three sprites and half a cauldron of boiling anxiety.”

I shrugged. “Only two sprites. The third got a memory about my first kiss.”

His eyes widened. “Should I be jealous?”

“It was sixth grade. He cried.”

Keegan chuckled low in his throat. “Guess that answers that.”

I looked up at him again, this time more seriously. “You don’t have to come, you know. I’m not doing anything risky.”

“You’re walking into a place built from your worst fears and your strongest memories,” he said. “Even if it’s just an illusion, that’s dangerous magic. You don’t need to face that alone.”

I swallowed hard. “I think I need to do this by myself.”

The first time I stepped into that conjured Shadowick, I felt like it knew me. The fog, the way the buildings tilted just so, the shadow-thick air, it all hummed with too much familiarity. Too much truth. And truth was slippery in a place like that.

Keegan nodded and finally responded. “I respect that.”

We walked back toward the alleyway that no longer hid from me, leading back to the Butterfly Ward and the Academy.

I felt Keegan’s fingers brush against mine. It wasn’t a full handhold, just enough contact to let me know he was still there.

“I’ve been thinking about that kiss,” he said suddenly, voice low.

I blinked. “Which one?”

He gave me a look. “The one with me, Bellemore.”

“Oh, right. That one.”

“You’re infuriating.”

I shrugged. “You’re broody.”

“You like it.”

I smiled. “Maybe.”

He tugged my hand the rest of the way into his, and I let him.

Moonbeam’s Eve might be two days away, and Gideon might be watching from the edges of every spell I cast, but for this moment, in this quiet stretch of path beside the man who had become something I didn’t yet know how to name, I felt steady.

“If I hear that you’re not back by morning, I’m going in after you,” he said, letting my hand go.

“I would expect nothing less.”

His eyes stayed on mine for a beat longer than necessary, and I felt that flutter before taking a deep breath.

“Thanks, Keegan.” I shoved my hands into my pockets. “For everything.”

“Always and forever,” he said quietly and turned to head back to his hotel.

And maybe that was all I needed to walk back into Shadowick.

I remembered the first time I saw Stonewick and how strange and whimsical the little town had seemed.

Now it was simply home.

Or maybe it was something more complicated. A refuge. A weight. A turning point.

But I wouldn’t let Shadowick destroy it.

I should’ve gone back to the Academy and brewed some tea, curled up with my dad, probably still snoring and loyal by the hearth, and tried to chase some sleep. I could’ve rested. I probably should’ve rested.

But my feet didn’t agree.

They carried me down the side path that twisted me through the Butterfly Ward, along the Academy, and toward the old graveyard.

I knew better now. I knew how much of Stonewick’s magic curled close to forgotten places, and I’d even helped bring some of that magic back.

Still, I hesitated.

Beyond it, the illusion waited. The Shadowick recreation we’d conjured as a practice ground, an eerily accurate twin to the town none of us fully trusted. It wasn’t real, not exactly. But it was enough to give me chills.

Fog laced itself through the gravestones like it belonged, clinging low and damp to the earth.

My boots crunched against old moss and scattered leaves as I crossed to the place where the illusion was anchored.

The very air shifted there, like dipping a toe into a dream.

One step and one breath in, and I was somewhere else.

Shadowick.

Or close enough to it.

The chill was immediate, not just in temperature, but in memory as well. My body tensed before I’d even taken a step. I’d stood here before. In the Hedge. In my dreams. In visions, I still didn’t understand.

I adjusted my cloak tighter around my shoulders and pressed forward.

The streets were dark and dissolved in fog.

Lamps flickered with sour yellow light, barely illuminating the uneven cobblestones.

The buildings leaned at odd angles, with windows too narrow and doors set just slightly off-center.

Like someone had drawn a perfect replica from memory, but something inside them had been warped.

It felt wrong , but not unfamiliar.

I moved slowly as my hand brushed against the cool stone of a crumbling storefront, fingers catching briefly on cracked mortar. The illusion was convincing, down to the scent of wet stone and the faint trace of smoke in the air.

A shopfront blinked into focus to my left. The old apothecary. I’d dreamed of it once, but now, vials were shattered across the floor, and something had spilled that shimmered black and violet in the lamplight.

Why had I come here alone?

Because no one else could do this for me. Not Nova, not Ardetia, not even Keegan.

Certainly not Twobble or Skonk.

Because I had to know that I could stand in the shadow of Gideon’s domain and not let my knees buckle. That I could face the whisper of his presence and still think clearly. That I could control my thoughts. My dreams. My truths .

I kept walking.

Past a fountain nearly swallowed by vines. Past a twisted streetlamp that sparked intermittently. Past a set of stairs that led to nowhere at all.

And then I saw the mansion.

It loomed at the top of a sloping street, just as it always had in my dreams and illusions. Wrought iron fences, twisted like skeletal fingers. Gables that clawed at the sky. A front door that never stayed shut for long.

I stood at the base of the path and stared up at it.

My mouth went dry.

There was no sound. No wind. Even the fog felt like it had paused to listen.

“I know you’re not real,” I whispered.

But even that felt too loud.

I turned my back to the mansion before it could pull me in further. I wasn’t here to lose myself. I was here to test myself. To draw lines in the sand. To walk the edges of fear and still come out whole.

I made my way toward the church instead. Or what passed for one in this illusion. It had no bell. No altar. Just a hollow structure of stone and shadow.

Inside, the air was colder still.

I stood in the center and closed my eyes.

And I remembered.

The Moonbeam.

The dragons’ warning: The Moonbeam reveals what you are, not what you wish to be.

My grandmother’s voice. Besides your dad, y ou’re the first Bellemore in generations not to run.

The heat of Keegan’s hand in mine.

The terrible chill in Gideon’s voice when he whispered that he’d missed me.

All of it stirred inside me, a storm I hadn’t learned how to still.

I exhaled slowly, focusing on the way Ardetia had taught me. Not pushing the thoughts away, but containing them. Naming them. Holding them without letting them spill.

Because this was where the Moonbeam would lead me.

Into this fog, into this shadow, and into this place where dreams leaked and reality bent was where I would be.

If I couldn’t hold the truth of myself here… I’d lose more than a fight.

I’d lose everything .

A cold gust swept through the open archway, and I startled, just a little, but no one was there. Of course not. Not yet.

Two days.

Two days and I’d walk into the real Shadowick with only what I carried in my chest and what I’d forged in these quiet, terrible moments.