Page 34

“I understand what it feels like,” I said quietly.

His brows rose, ever so slightly. “Do you?”

“To be on the outside,” I continued. “To walk through your own life like a stranger. As if you’re speaking a language no one else seems to understand. I was married to someone who made me feel that way for years.”

Gideon watched me with the stillness of a hunting cat. “And yet, here you are, glowing with purpose, cloaked in magic, walking through the fog like you own it.”

I shook my head. “I don’t own anything here.”

“No?” His smile curled faintly. “Then what do you call what you’ve done to Stonewick? To the Academy? The Wards bend for you. The old magics stir again. That’s not a coincidence.”

“I never asked for that,” I said, pulse flickering in my throat. “But I’m not going to run from it, either.”

The words hung there between us, taut and shivering.

Gideon stepped closer, boots brushing the mist that clung to the street like breath.

“You think this is about fear of being an outsider?” he asked, and for the first time, his voice dipped into something more—something brittle, barely masked by arrogance.

I stared at him, pushing back the fear and mysterious pull that was slowly winding through me.

“You think I turned my back on Stonewick because I wasn’t invited to the harvest dance or didn’t get chosen for a coven seat?”

“Then tell me why.”

He stared at me for a long beat. The silence between us swelled until it became something strange and humming.

“You want to know?” he asked at last, quieter now. “Why I cursed Stonewick?”

“Yes.”

Because it was time. I had to understand. Not excuse, not forgive, but understand.

Gideon turned slightly, gaze sliding toward the mansion behind us. The ivy on its stones twitched, as if stirred by his thoughts alone.

“It wasn’t one moment,” he said. “Not one betrayal. Not one slight. It was the weight of being told, over and over, that I wasn’t enough. That my blood was wrong. That my way of seeing the world was dangerous, and that what I needed wasn’t possible.”

He looked back at me, and for a moment, there was something vulnerable in his expression. Something cracked.

“What did you need?”

“What does it matter?” He shrugged. “I was told it doesn’t exist.”

My eyes narrowed on him, and I shook my head. “Maybe you asked the wrong person.”

He ignored my statement.

“Have you ever been called dangerous just for asking a question?”

I swallowed. “Yes.”

He tilted his head. “Then maybe we’re more alike than you think.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But I didn’t turn that pain into poison.”

His eyes flared. “Didn’t you?”

That caught me off guard.

“I’ve seen the way you hold your power,” he continued. “Tightly. As if you’re afraid of what will happen if it gets out of your control. You burn with fear, Maeve. You keep your memories locked. You hide dragons beneath stone. You tell yourself it’s for safety, but it’s control.”

A beat passed when I realized what he’d said, and I forced that word out of my mind. It was just a metaphor he used. He didn’t know about them .

“And control,” he whispered, “is the first seed of a curse.”

My breath caught because it wasn’t entirely wrong. I had held so tightly to everything—my daughter, my grief, my second chances. I’d built walls to protect others but also to protect myself.

“Maybe,” I said again. “But I’m trying to learn. To do better.”

Gideon’s smile vanished.

“I tried to do better,” he said. “And every time, they pushed me back. They called me power-hungry. They mocked the magic I found beyond their precious Wards. They didn’t see what I was trying to build, but Shadowick always understood.”

He looked at the fog around us.

“So I broke it. I broke the old rules. I gave the Veil a reason to open that one fine day, when your dad learned to bark and your boyfriend learned to shift when I tell him to.”

“You didn’t just open it,” I said, voice shaking, “you hurt people. Families. You shattered what they loved. You fractured ties between magical folk. Shifters and fae no longer joined hands. Magic became an impossibility.”

“I freed them,” he said, almost gently. “They just don’t see it yet.”

“No,” I said. “You caged them in shadows.”

His jaw tensed.

“They don’t belong in the dark,” I said. “And neither do you.”

He stared at me as if waiting to see if I meant it. As if waiting to be proven wrong.

“So, you think because fae and shifters have reunited in Stonewick that you have the power to save me.”

“I’m not here to save you,” I added, voice firm. “But I am here to end this.”

A flicker of something passed through his gaze. It wasn’t fear or anger but resolve.

“You won’t survive what’s coming,” he said, low and steady. “You think your friends can shield you? That your fire-forged spells and Hedge tricks will keep you whole?”

“I don’t need to be whole,” I whispered. “I just need to be willing to see the truth.”

He studied me.

Then nodded once.

And behind him, the mansion shuddered, as if it too had been listening.

The first echo of the Moonbeam’s full light spilled across the rooftops like spilled silver.

And I knew the time for words was nearly over.

I kept my breath steady, even as the moon’s glow deepened.

It moved like a tide, spilling down the crooked streets and stone-walled alleys of Shadowick with eerie grace.

Each corner shimmered faintly, not with warmth, but with something old and waiting.

A pulsing hush had settled, pressing into my ears like cotton.

I could feel them.

My friends. My allies. Each one tucked into their hiding places like pieces on a chessboard, waiting for the queen’s move.

Keegan’s presence tugged against my heart—solid, protective, so close and yet unseen. Somewhere, he was guarding my father, keeping Frank safe, probably with that familiar tightness in his jaw when things veered toward danger.

Ardetia’s magic hummed faintly through the Veil like a harp string just out of reach. Stella’s particular flavor of focus, sharp, amused, and waiting for an excuse to cause mischief, skipped along the edge of my consciousness like a whisper of cloves and rosewood.

But they were growing restless.

The longer I held Gideon’s attention, the more I could feel their anxiety building like a static charge. And the more I felt it, the more afraid I became, not for myself, but for the plan. For the precision we needed.

Don’t move, I thought. Not yet.

I tried to breathe.

Tried to ignore the sweat gathering along my spine despite the chill air.

I tried not to look too long at the shifting silhouettes just beyond the streetlamps. They were moving now. Those strange, trailing shadows clung to the buildings and stretched toward the cobbled streets, as if made of smoke, breath, and nightmare.

They weren’t just tricks of the fog anymore.

They danced, not with joy or even menace, but with purpose.

Gideon’s shadows always had purpose.

He hadn’t moved since our last exchange. He just stood there, in the same patch of moonlight, watching me as though we were the only two souls in this fractured mirror of Shadowick. But I could feel the threads pulsing out from him, like a puppeteer with a thousand threads woven through the air.

One of the shadows slid along a wall to my right.

And stopped.

Its head tilted, just a fraction, as if it were listening.

Another crept across the stones near the bakery’s clouded window.

And I realized, with a cold twist in my stomach, that they were searching.

No— scanning .

For movement. For spells. For anything that didn’t belong.

If even one of my friends lost control for a second, if someone shifted wrong, if a charm flickered or an illusion slipped…

We’d be exposed.

I let out a breath through my nose and focused on maintaining a casual posture. One slip-up, and he’d know. My pulse pounded like a war drum in my ears.

“Your spell’s clever,” Gideon said suddenly, voice smooth again, too smooth. “The way you cloaked them. Very Hedge witch. Very on brand .”

I didn’t answer, but my fingers curled slightly at my sides.

“I can feel them, you know,” he continued, stepping closer.

The fog parted just enough to let me see the gleam in his eyes—bright and silver-edged now, like moonlight caught in a wolf’s snarl.

“Like pins on a map. Each of them tucked away, thinking they’re safe.”

“They are safe,” I said.

His smile returned, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Are they?”

And that’s when I saw it.

Just past his shoulder, near the edge of the square, something moved.

Not a shadow.

Not a villager.

Something else .

At first, I couldn’t make sense of it. It didn’t move like a person, or even a creature. It was too fluid. Too… detached from form. It was as if someone had carved a hole into reality and filled it with slithering night.

It shimmered, then vanished behind the old clock tower.

A chill crawled across my skin.

“What is that?” I whispered, before I could stop myself.

Gideon tilted his head. “You see it too?”

My throat tightened. “What did you summon?”

“I didn’t summon anything,” he said calmly. “Not tonight. That one came of its own accord.”

Another shape flickered between buildings, just a flash, like ink in water.

Panic fluttered in my chest.

“If you’ve lost control of your constructs—”

“Oh, I haven’t lost control,” he said. “But you might, very soon.”

He turned then, slowly, as if he were admiring his handiwork.

“There are things that feed on the edges of curses,” he said. “Creatures that thrive where the Veil thins. The longer Stonewick has been bound, the more… hungry they have become. They’ve gathered. I don’t command them. I can’t. But they know me. And they know you.”

My mouth was dry. “Why would they know me?”

“Because you’re trying to unravel what they were born to protect.”

The wind shifted suddenly, bringing with it a scent I hadn’t expected: burned sugar, iron, and something sweet gone sour. My stomach turned.

Another shadow moved, larger this time, and I heard a door creak open somewhere deep in the village.

It wasn’t an illusion or a memory; it was a real door to a real house, and someone stepped outside with footsteps falling.

Not one of my friends.

A woman in a long gray cloak. Her eyes were black as ink, and her mouth was sewn shut with silver thread.

She didn’t look at Gideon.

She looked straight at me.

And smiled.

I took a step back in horror. It was what nightmares were made of.

“Your town,” I whispered. “It’s alive with those who...”

“Oh, Maeve,” Gideon said. “You don’t break a place like this without waking something. It’s how I keep things…in control.”

His words pulsed in my bones like a warning.

And suddenly, I wasn’t afraid of the shadows anymore.

I was afraid of the depth of this place. Of how far the curse had reached, and what it had grown while it waited. It wasn’t just a curse rolling over Stonewick. It had crept back into Shadowick to feed the shadows.

The shadows drifted like smoke caught in a dream, slipping through the cracks between buildings and curling around stones older than memory. I’d seen fog before. I’d seen illusions, specters, nightmares pulled from the forges of memory and magic. But this was different.

These were the shadow dancers.

And they were watching me.

They didn’t have faces. Not ones you could name. They wore the outlines of people like cloaks, with long coats that whispered with ash and hoods that clung too tightly to where a face should be.

But beneath the illusion, wrongness caressed my soul like the echo of a scream held just behind glass.

They moved in time with the curse.

Every footfall, if you could call it that, sank into the cobblestone with a sound like breath pulled too slowly.

I counted them as they passed in the periphery of my vision.

One, two, five, seven. There was no pattern to their route, but every time I blinked, one seemed closer.

I didn’t think they walked toward me. I think the world bent to bring them near.

Was bent, not broken…

According to Gideon, they were drawn to disruption.

And I was a spark in the middle of a drought.

“The curse has guardians. You think it's just a tangle of old words and binding knots? No, Maeve. It has guardians. Dancers. Keepers.” His brows lifted in anticipation.

They didn’t speak, the dancers, not with words.

Their language was older. Body and sway.

They moved like rituals being repeated. Spells encoded into motion.

Every twist of their arms, every flicker of their drifting shapes left marks in the fog.

Runes I couldn’t translate. Patterns I couldn’t unsee.

One of them stilled when I met its gaze, or where a gaze should’ve been.

And I swear I felt it lean into my thoughts. Not fully. Not like the sprites in the forge. But enough. Enough to make the back of my throat tighten and my birthmark burn.

These weren’t shadows left behind by people.

These were the shadows of the curse itself.

As long as Shadowick lived in limbo, between broken and reborn, they would dance. They would keep . They would guard the curse like it was a crown, and I was the thief with her hands too close.

I took a step back.

The fog shifted. They vanished.

But not really.

I could feel them now. Not just in this village, but in the corners of memory. In the hesitation behind every spell. They were stitched into the curse, waltzing endlessly through the seams of what Gideon broke.

The shadow dancers had no master.

Only duty.

And tonight, they would know my name.