Page 35

Gideon didn’t breathe like a man.

He moved like he had been carved from the shadows themselves, less a body and more a convergence of dark magic and will.

The fog deepened around us, swallowing the edges of the buildings and curling along the cobblestone like it had a mind of its own.

I could no longer see the storefronts or the winding roads of Shadowick.

Even the mansion across the square, the place that had haunted my dreams, blurred behind a curtain of gray.

“I can tell you more if you join me,” he murmured, his voice sliding into my ears like ice water.

I didn’t answer. Not right away. My mouth was dry, my pulse a hammer trying to break free from its cage.

He moved closer, boots silent, his silhouette shifting slightly with each step, as though even the moonlight was uncertain how to touch him.

“You always had such a strong will, Maeve. It’s what made you interesting.”

I swallowed the instinct to recoil. “You don’t know me.”

“I do.” He tilted his head. His eyes, that strange silver-blue, glinted in the haze. “You’ve walked the Hedge. You’ve danced on the edge of two worlds. You ache in places others don’t even feel.”

The ground trembled slightly. Subtle, but it was there. The curse knew we were talking. The shadow dancers would be near again soon. Watching. Listening.

I steadied my voice. “Why did you curse Stonewick?”

He smiled. It was slow and wrong. “Because they told me I couldn’t. They told me I was imagining things. Because I asked to change the system, and they laughed. So I broke it instead.”

“Who are they?”

“Perhaps that’s for you to learn the hard way.”

I took a step back. “You destroyed lives. Families.”

“They were already ruined,” he snapped, and just like that, the mask cracked.

“Stonewick and its perfect order, always choosing the same bloodlines, the same traditions. Magic passed to the ones already in power. The rest of us waited in the dark. If anyone should understand that, it’s you.

Look how they turned their backs on your dad. ”

“But you cursed him to stay that way.”

“To remind everyone what they did.”

“Don’t try to make yourself sound noble,” I shot back, trying to control my anger.

“You cursed more than a town,” I said quietly. “You cursed yourself, and you can’t even see it.”

His expression darkened. “And yet, here I stand. Stronger than I’ve ever been.”

I could feel it. The magic coiled in him wasn’t natural. It didn’t move like the wind or the flame or the song of the forest. It pulsed like something starved and spiteful. Shadow-fed. Twisting.

“You’ve aligned yourself with something ancient,” I whispered. “Something even you can’t control.”

A ripple of amusement moved through him. “Control is an illusion, Maeve. Influence, that’s what matters.”

He circled me now, slow as the fog. “Tell me something. Do your friends know? The way you still wonder if I can be saved?”

I flinched, and that gave him more pleasure than it should have.

“They don’t know what you dream about,” he said softly. “They don’t feel what I do in the tether between us. The part of you that is still curious, still unsure. Do they know why you’re curious?”

I clenched my fists. “You manipulated me—”

“I met you.” He stepped closer. “In the only place you were ever honest. Inside your thoughts.”

His hand lifted, hovering just inches from my face. The cold radiating off him was a presence, sharp and unbearable. “You feel it too. That ache. That crack in the world. Why not join me and mend it in our image?”

My stomach turned. “Because I still believe in healing what can be saved, not burning it down.”

His gaze turned solemn. “Then you’re weaker than I thought.”

A movement behind him caught my eye, a flicker of motion near the edge of the square. I couldn’t see who it was. Just the faintest silhouette. Maybe one of mine. Maybe not. But the panic that rose in my throat wasn’t for me.

They weren’t supposed to move. If Gideon noticed…

I forced my gaze back to his. “You said you wanted me here. I’m here. But I didn’t come to stand beside you.”

The air around us grew thicker. The fog pressed against my skin like it wanted to peel it back.

“You’re going to make me kill you, aren’t you?” Gideon asked softly.

“No,” I said, voice steady despite the fear curdling my spine. “You’re going to make a choice. Right here. Right now.”

He laughed. “And what do you think you’ll do if I choose wrong?”

“I’ll end this.”

His eyes narrowed. “You think you’ve learned enough to stop me?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “But I know I’m not alone.”

The ground pulsed again, and this time I knew what it was.

The dancers were drawing closer. They didn’t like the idea of choice. They didn’t believe in it.

Gideon turned, just slightly, as if hearing the beat of their approach. “You feel them, don’t you? The dancers. They’ll protect me. Not because I control them, but because I’ve become part of the curse.”

A swirl of fog spun behind him, and for just a moment, I saw one of them—a dancer in full form. Its limbs too long. Its movement too graceful to be human. And its eyes were empty hollows that still somehow watched .

Gideon’s voice lowered. “You’ll have to decide, Maeve. Is your heart strong enough to risk it all? Or will you bend, like the rest of them did, when the moonlight falls?”

I breathed deep, feeling my magic pulse beneath my skin.

The Moonbeam was rising, time was folding, and whatever came next… it would change everything.

The fog thickened at his back, a curtain of shadow that curled and twisted like it was listening. Maybe it was. Perhaps everything here was made to be heard by him. Shadowick wasn’t a village anymore. It was a stage, and I was trapped in the play he’d written long before I ever showed up.

“Come with me,” Gideon said, extending a hand.

His voice wasn’t harsh this time. It was soft. Tempting. That should’ve frightened me more than all his other threats.

“No,” I whispered, but my body didn’t move. Not yet.

“You don’t have to say yes.” His eyes glinted, silver burning like frostbite. “Just follow. Just see.”

I clenched my hands at my sides. I knew what this was. A performance. An illusion. A trap.

But the Moonbeam pulsed through my veins, and something told me that this moment mattered.

Still, I didn’t reach for his hand.

He turned, as if that was answer enough, and began walking across the square. The fog shifted for him like a curtain parting. I followed, not out of trust, but because if I let him vanish, I didn’t know if I’d get another chance to end this.

My feet were nearly silent on the cobblestones, though every step echoed in my head like a drumbeat.

The town had changed since I’d arrived. Subtly, but undeniably. Lights glowed in some of the windows now, dim and flickering, but real. And behind some of those lights, movement.

People. Or what had once been people.

Shadowick’s residents were waking up.

He hadn’t lied about that.

We turned into a narrow alley. The walls closed in on either side, and the shadows danced above us like smoke.

I couldn’t tell what direction we were headed anymore.

I couldn’t see the others. My only guide was Gideon’s dark coat and the pulse of Moonbeam light still humming inside me like a beacon I didn’t know how to read.

“How do you live with it?” I asked suddenly. “All this darkness.”

He slowed and glanced over his shoulder. “Because it’s not darkness to me.”

“That’s not comforting.”

He smiled faintly. “It wasn’t meant to be.”

The alley ended in a long corridor of broken lampposts and arched ironwork.

Somewhere behind one of the buildings, a clock struck.

But the hour it tolled didn’t match any I recognized.

Time was bending again. Just like it had when I’d first stepped into the Academy before it righted itself with the moon…

and like in the Hedge, and the in-between.

We stopped in front of a building I didn’t recognize. The bricks were blackened, scorched by something old and angry. The front door was warped, cracked through the center, and the windows above it were nothing but jagged mouths of shattered glass.

Gideon placed his palm on the door.

It didn’t creak or groan open.

It simply fell away as if the air had swallowed it.

“After you,” he said, stepping aside.

I stared into the yawning darkness, felt the pull of it like a tide. And even though every nerve in me screamed no , I stepped inside.

It was colder here.

Colder than fog or wind or winter.

This was the cold of things forgotten.

The inside was hollow, not empty, just… unfinished. The walls were marked with long, vertical gouges, as if something had tried to crawl its way out. The ceiling shifted as I looked at it, the beams bending as if they were breathing.

“I was born here,” Gideon said behind me.

I turned sharply.

“This is where the decision was made. Where I learned what I’d never be allowed to become.”

“Who decided?” My voice was sharper than I meant.

He walked past me, fingers brushing the wall. “The Elders. The Guardians. The people who decided what was pure and what was fractured. You’ve met one of them, but they hide behind lovely names now. Teachers. Guardians. Seers.”

My mind shifted to those I knew.

I frowned. “You think they made the curse necessary?”

“I think they made it inevitable.”

I shook my head.

“There is no spell to end it,” he said quietly, almost gently.

I stilled. “What?”

“No incantation. No charm. No ritual soaked in moonlight.” He turned toward me, his silver-blue eyes catching the low light like glass held to flame. “There’s no breaking this curse the way you were taught.”

A thick silence settled between us, the kind that made the floor feel farther away than it should be.

“I don’t believe you,” I said, even though something inside me already knew he wasn’t lying.

“You don’t have to.” His lips twitched, not quite a smile. “But you should know that this curse wasn’t woven with rhyme and candle wax. It was forged.”

I stepped closer. “Forged with what?”

“Blood,” he said. “Memory. Vow.”

My throat tightened. “Then how does it break?”

He exhaled like he was disappointed in the question. “It doesn’t. Not with magic. It has learned to bend but not break.”

I chilled at the words resurfacing.

I shook my head. “That’s not possible.”

He laughed, but there was no joy in it.

The floor tilted under me, or maybe that was just my stomach.

“There has to be a way.”

“There is,” he said, and this time, he stepped into my space.

Close.

Too close.

“Only one.”

I didn’t move. “Then say it.”

He leaned in, eyes shadowed but alight with something hungry.

“You have to take my place.”

My heart thudded once. Then again, slower. Like the world had stopped spinning just long enough for my body to realize what it meant.

“You’re lying.”

“I wish I were.”

A wind swept through the room, but it didn’t touch me.

Only him.

And that was when I saw it through the broken window, far past the iron arch outside, a flicker of movement.

A figure.

Tall. Upright. Still.

My breath caught. My heart slammed against my ribs.

I knew that shape.

That posture.

Even through the fog and the gloom and the strange way Shadowick twisted everything, I knew it in my bones.

No. No, it couldn’t be—

Gideon noticed my attention shift.

His voice snaked around me like a serpent. “You see it, don’t you?”

I couldn’t look away.

The shadow beyond the window stood completely still, waiting and watching.

Dread sliced through my stomach like glass.

Not because I feared who it might be—

But because I already knew .