Page 33

I trailed my hand along the stone walls of the Academy as I walked, pausing here and there to press my palm flat against the cool grooves, as if I could absorb a little of the building’s strength through osmosis.

The Academy always felt alive, more than stone and stairways and drifting candlelight. It breathed, and it remembered.

And now it was watching once again.

I paused beneath a carved archway, the morning sun slanting through the leaded glass, painting a dozen pale colors across the floor like spilled hope. My heart thudded against my ribs, a dull percussion of nerves and resolve.

Moonbeam didn’t care for calendars or mortal certainty. It had risen already. Which meant… everything had shifted.

My fingers tightened along the edge of a windowsill as I stared out toward the edge of the grounds.

I wasn’t ready. But maybe that was the point. No one ever truly was.

A sound broke my spiraling thoughts, a gentle pop of magic to my left. I turned to see two midlife students standing in one of the side chambers, their fingers outstretched as a web of tiny golden lights sparked between them.

“I told you it wasn’t in the wrist,” one of them laughed.

“No, you told me to visualize the spell like I was spreading marmalade on a scone. ”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

Their laughter followed me down the hall, and I caught a few more glimpses of others as I walked.

Two women practiced protective sigils on the walls of the herbarium, and a group sitting cross-legged near the eastern staircase exchanged stories of the first time their magic showed up again after years of dormancy. The joy was subtle, but potent.

They weren’t just surviving here.

They were blooming.

It was hard not to feel that energy seep into my bones. Despite the fear riding shotgun in my chest, there was something steadier beneath it now. A hum. A purpose.

My boots clicked down the steps as I headed toward the front hall, the sound strangely grounding.

I’d told myself that when the time came, I would feel it.

Some kind of shift. Some knowing. And maybe I had felt it.

Maybe the tremor beneath my ribs and the weight behind every breath was the Moonbeam pressing in already. Calling me forward.

I paused near the entryway, staring through the open door toward the rolling garden path.

The others were already gathering. I could feel it like a thread pulling taut in my chest.

So I stepped outside, knowing it was time. There was no dramatic call or shuddering of the earth.

I just knew in my bones that it was the moment.

The scent of wild herbs and flowering vines curled in the air, and down the path, just beyond the cemetery gates, I saw them.

And that was when I wondered, would this be the last time I smelled the sweetness of the air or witnessed my friends smiling?

I shook the thought away and trudged forward.

Skonk was draped over a headstone, as if posing for a moody portrait.

Twobble paced in tight circles, muttering to himself and flinging tiny bits of chalk at a nearby vine that dared creep too close.

Bella, already in her fox form, trotted once in a lazy loop and then shifted back to human as if it were nothing at all.

Ardetia stood poised and silent, with her hands clasped behind her back, wings tucked and iridescent in the filtered light. She didn’t move, but when she sensed me, her gaze shifted just slightly. There was no fear in her face, just intent.

Stella was dressed like she’d wandered straight out of a gothic fairytale, her cane tapping lightly as she scolded Skonk with a sharp look and a smirk.

“Do not perch on gravestones. You’re attracting ghosts, darling.”

Nova and Lady Limora stood near the boundary line, whispering in low tones. Nova had her deck clutched in one hand, her gaze drifting skyward every few moments as if trying to read the clouds like parchment.

Vivenne, Mara, and Opal stood near the cemetery’s wrought-iron gate, their hands linked briefly in a moment of shared grounding. Whatever had brought them here, they were committed now.

And Keegan—

He was the last one I noticed, leaning against the old mausoleum wall, arms crossed, eyes already on me.

Something in me went quiet when he looked at me like that. It was like my storm of emotions couldn’t wait until after this next breath, so I looked away briefly and gained better control.

I joined them, my feet crunching over the gravel. No one spoke right away, but the hush was different than the one inside the Academy. This silence hummed. It brimmed.

“We’ll follow your lead,” Nova said finally, her voice soft but certain.

I nodded, swallowing the knot forming at the base of my throat.

“We step through the Veil of the Moonbeam and into Shadowick,” I said, glancing toward the streak of light from the moon. “We remember our steps. We hold our spells close. And I make myself seen.”

“You sure about that?” Keegan asked, his voice low beside me.

“No,” I admitted. “But it’s the only shot we have. And it wasn’t just my plan. We all came up with it.” I chuckled and let out a deep breath.

Skonk flung a pebble into the grass. “Well. Let’s make history then, eh?”

Stella raised a brow. “Let’s make it memorable, at least.”

Twobble cracked his knuckles. “Let’s make it fast. I don’t like the way the trees whisper over here.”

“Let’s just… make it,” I said, more to myself than anyone else.

And then I turned toward the Moonbeam, its edges flickering faintly in the still air like a dream barely held together.

The moon was no longer content to wait.

Its glow painted the earth in an unearthly silver, sharp and soft all at once, threading through the trees like a call and bouncing off the tombstones.

My skin prickled where it touched me, as though it were pulling something deeper from my bones. I looked to the others, my friends, my strange and fierce little family gathered near the boundary between the Academy and the grave-shadowed edge of the cemetery.

We weren’t stepping into the false illusion of Shadowick anymore.

We were tracking the real moon—the real doorway.

It would act as a portal and a place where the truth called.

“Does everyone remember their stations?” I asked, my voice steadier than I felt.

Twobble gave me a solemn thumbs up. Skonk tried to salute but ended up flinging a biscuit crumb into Bella’s hair. She gave him a look that could melt varnish.

Ardetia touched her temple and nodded once. Lady Limora's eyes were already closed, her fingers flicking the air in patterns only she seemed to understand. Vivienne held her staff like a spine, firm and unshakable. Mara crouched low, breath synced with the wind.

I looked at Keegan last.

He didn’t speak. He just took my hand and pressed it to his chest for a beat. “I’ll guard your father with my life.”

It wasn’t poetic.

It was just true.

He always had, and he always would.

I let the moment burn into memory before turning back toward the Moonbeam. It spilled down in a perfect shaft, cutting across the long grasses of the cemetery like a divine arrow. The light shimmered along the headstones, making everything look suspended between this world and the next.

This was the moment. There would be no second whistle. No do-over. No last-minute cup of tea or second spell check.

Just this.

And us.

And the Hanged Man tarot card in my pocket as a reminder.

“Hide like your lives depend on it,” I whispered, not to scare them but because it did .

Then I stepped forward into the light.

The breath I took felt ancient, and it filled my chest with something more than air, more than magic…conviction, maybe. Or courage disguised as desperation. The second my foot touched the circle of silver, my heartbeat echoed like a drumbeat through my ears.

The Veil rippled, and I stepped through.

Shadowick breathed.

This time, it wasn’t an illusion.

It wasn’t the spell-spun shadow cast by us or a training ground dressed in nightmare clothes.

This was real.

I knew it the moment my boots touched the cobblestones.

They felt damp. Not metaphorically, not as if painted with a spell, but truly soaked with the moisture of fog that had lived here too long.

The air carried weight, brackish, metallic, and spiced faintly with smoke and something acrid I couldn’t place.

And then there were the people.

I froze.

They moved along the narrow sidewalks with their collars pulled up and their gazes low.

No one smiled. No one lingered. A woman with a leather-wrapped basket crossed the street and didn’t look up.

A man dragging a wheeled cart grunted under his breath at some invisible weight and passed without acknowledgment.

It felt like a different time and place.

The shops were lit. Dimly.

And behind those smudged windows, I saw motion, figures hunched over books, candle flames flickering, silhouettes pacing.

This wasn’t the empty village I’d wandered through in illusions and dreams.

This was Shadowick alive in the shadows.

I turned quickly, expecting to see Keegan or Twobble or someone, anyone , from our group, but the mist was too thick now, curling up from the ground like sea spray. My heart hammered. I should’ve heard someone. I should’ve seen a signal.

But I didn’t.

They were doing what they were supposed to do.

Staying hidden.

I swallowed hard and steadied my breath.

Trust the plan. They’re here. They’ll do what they came to do.

Protect and fight, if need be.

And that meant I had to do the same.

I took a few steps forward, deeper into the street. The air pressed in tighter the farther I walked, like I was moving through something thicker than fog. A low humming began in my chest, faint but persistent, as if the magic here recognized me.

Or maybe recognized what I’d come to do.

The buildings stretched tall and narrow, all slate, iron, and soot.

Even the paint on the walls looked tired.

But there was a rhythm to this place, a pulse under the gloom.

People still lived here, even under this eerie light.

They moved in the in-between alleys, forgotten shadows, and hidden feelings.

I passed an apothecary and saw jars of dark herbs lined up in neat rows. A child peeked from behind a curtain in the flat above it, pale-eyed and quiet.

Children. Families.

Every instinct I had screamed that I shouldn’t be seen.

But I’d already been seen. I could feel it.

And then, past the curve of the lane, it rose above the rooftops like a wound in the clouds.

The mansion.

His.

No matter how many times I’d seen it in dreams or illusions, nothing prepared me for the way it loomed here, massive, silent, mostly consumed by ivy that curled like talons around its stone bones.

It was set back behind a wrought-iron fence and a path lined with crooked hedges. The windows were all dark, but I somehow felt watched, as if the house itself had eyes.

My steps slowed, and my breath clouded before me. I reached for the edge of my magic without drawing too much attention. Just enough to anchor me.

I was almost to the gate when the air behind me changed.

I didn’t hear him, but I felt him.

The weight and the cold enveloped me, pulling me in all directions.

The way the shadows lengthened with something more than fog.

I didn’t turn. Not yet. I couldn’t let him see how much my fingers trembled.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” said a voice I hadn’t heard with my ears in days, but had heard in my dreams for far too long.

Gideon.

It was smoother than it should’ve been. There was no overt threat in his tone, just warmth bleeding onto a sharp blade.

I turned slowly.

He looked the same and entirely different. Handsome in the way danger often was with his dark coat, blue eyes, and that smile that never quite reached his gaze. His presence made the space feel tighter and colder. But not dead. Not this time.

He stepped forward, hands behind his back like we were about to take a stroll.

“Did you come to understand me again?” he asked, voice rich with mockery.

I lifted my chin. “No. I came to end it.”

His smile grew. “Brave.”

I swallowed hard and let the words settle. The last time I’d spoken with him like this, I hadn’t been sure what was real. Now I was certain, and I knew what was at stake. I had to hold my ground. I had to be more than brave.

I had to be right.

“You can feel it, can’t you?” he asked, voice low. “The way this place answers to you now. As if it’s been waiting.”

“I don’t want it,” I said. “I don’t want your darkness.”

He tilted his head. “But it wants you.”

The fog thickened between us, coiling at our feet like a living thing.

I didn’t move.

Neither did he.

Because this was only the beginning.