Page 37

My head was spinning.

Not metaphorically, not poetically, truly spinning.

It was as if someone had opened my skull and poured chaos inside.

I could barely control my breath, let alone a single coherent thought, and every thread of magic I’d tried to weave earlier that day now felt like soggy parchment crumbling in my hands.

I hated being this new at Hedge Magic. Hated the way my power still stuttered and surged unpredictably. I could whisper to mirrors and track feelings through soil, sure, but when it came to the gritty, spine-stiffened spellwork I needed right now?

I was a puddle.

A panicked, utterly human puddle.

Gideon’s eyes never left mine.

He saw all of it. The shaking in my knees. The tremor in my jaw I couldn’t clench away. The way my fingers twitched against my thigh, itching to cast something , anything , but knowing it wouldn’t be enough. He saw the cracks.

And he smiled.

Then, with a snap of his fingers, the fog around us surged inside. It bloomed like a living thing, creeping, curling, pressing in against my ribs. The shadow dancers stilled, as if waiting. The whole village stilled.

Gideon lifted his chin slightly toward Darren.

“Take her across the street for coffee.”

The words didn’t register at first. My brain refused to make sense of them.

Coffee?

Darren turned toward Celeste with a soft nudge, like they were headed for brunch. Like this was any normal morning on campus, not the shattered edge of a cursed world.

“No,” I snapped, stepping forward.

Gideon’s hand lifted.

I froze.

“Stay back,” he said—soft, like a lullaby laced with iron. “You’ll only scare her more.”

“She’s my daughter ,” I growled.

“And she will stay that way,” he replied, almost kindly. “If you let her walk for five minutes with the boy she trusts.”

Celeste turned to me, confused, brow pinched. “Mom, it’s okay. Darren just wants to talk.”

“No, it’s not okay,” I said, my voice cracking.

Darren reached for her hand.

I stepped between them.

“Make me a vow,” I hissed to Gideon. “She doesn’t get touched. She doesn’t get harmed. She doesn’t get turned into anything or influenced or—”

“She already is influenced,” Gideon said, almost with pity. “She’s a young woman with a curious mind and a trusting heart. All I’ve done is let her walk where she chose to walk.”

“You manipulated her.”

He arched a brow. “Did I manipulate her? Or did you fail to tell her the truth early enough?”

My breath caught.

His words were a scalpel, slicing away at our truth.

“She came to find you, Maeve. That’s what daughters do, even if they don’t know they’re doing it. And she found him along the way.” He nodded toward Darren. “Now she’ll find her answers. Let her go.”

I looked at Celeste. Her eyes still held confusion, but her mouth was drawn now. She sensed it. Not the danger. Not fully. But the shift.

She wanted to believe she was safe, and I couldn’t blame her.

I closed the distance between us, my hands wrapping around hers.

“You come right back to me,” I said, not caring how desperate I sounded. “I’ll be standing right here. No matter what he tells you, question it.”

She smiled, though it trembled. “It’s just coffee, Mom.”

I almost told her that nothing in Shadowick was just anything.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I turned to Gideon.

“I want your word,” I said. “Your vow. Whatever twisted rules govern this place, but I want you to promise she returns to me untouched .”

His head tilted slightly, and for a heartbeat, I thought he might laugh. But he didn’t. His expression flattened into something ancient and sharp.

“I vow,” he said quietly, “that Celeste Bellemore will return to you with no hand laid against her, no spell binding her, and no shadow wrapped around her throat.”

The words settled into the fog, a strange heat curling at the edges of the vow.

I hated how much I needed to believe him.

Darren’s hand brushed Celeste’s lower back, guiding her out the door and across the street toward the café. The cracked windows glowed with candlelight.

And then they were inside.

I turned back to Gideon, jaw tight. “If she comes back different—”

“She won’t,” he said smoothly. “I gave you my vow.”

“You’ve broken plenty of things before.”

“Not my word.” He lifted one shoulder. “Everything else, perhaps. But not that.”

I stared at him, trying to see past the charm and the cruelty. Trying to glimpse whatever truth might lie beneath it all, whatever unbroken shard might still exist in the man who cursed a village just to prove a point.

“Why her?” I asked again, softer now.

He looked at the café across the street. “Because you’ll never give up while she’s in play. And I need your whole heart in this, Maeve.”

“And if I don’t play?”

He smiled faintly. “You’re already playing.”

I closed my eyes for a moment.

The fog pressed close, brushing my skin like silk made of ash. I could feel the pull of the Moonbeam behind me, and I could sense my friends nearby in the hidden pockets of Shadowick, holding their breath.

There was no going back.

And I had never felt less prepared.

But I would not lose her.

Not my daughter.

Not my reason.

I opened my eyes and stared down Gideon with everything I had left.

“Then let’s see how well I play,” I whispered.

And he bowed his head in mock deference, the king of his own twisted stage.

The curtain hadn’t fallen yet, but I had a feeling the final act had already begun.

He watched me closely—too closely.

Gideon’s gaze had always been like a pressure point, but now it felt invasive. Clinical. As if he were dissecting me right here in the middle of his cursed kingdom, peeling apart my grief, fear, and rage with fingers that never needed to touch skin to do damage.

I couldn’t look toward the café. Couldn’t watch the silhouette of my daughter sitting inside with a boy I no longer trusted. The part of me that wanted to storm in, grab her by the hand, and flee this twisted place was screaming louder than ever, but the rest of me knew better.

Celeste would panic. Darren would react. And Gideon… well, he’d likely smile and call it entertainment.

We could be turned to dust.

Instead, I focused on the man in front of me, the monster in finely stitched wool, shadow magic woven through the lines of his coat like a second skin.

“What do you want, Gideon?” My voice cracked as I said it, not from weakness, but from the force of keeping myself contained. “Why all of this? What is it you actually want?”

His lips curled. Not smug. Patient.

“Asking the real question now, are we?”

“I’ve been asking the real questions for months. You’ve just been enjoying the pageantry.”

He chuckled at that, and the sound grated across my nerves like glass on stone.

“Fair,” he said. “I do like theatrics. But I wasn’t lying before, Maeve. I want you at your strongest. I want you at your edge. That’s where the truth lives, after all. At the very edge of the blade.”

The truth . Moonbeam thrives off my true self.

He stepped forward once, and I stood my ground. Barely.

“I cursed Stonewick to save it,” he said.

I laughed. I had to. “You cursed it into silence.”

“I stopped it from vanishing.”

“You trapped it.”

“Preserved it.”

“Like a bug in amber,” I snapped.

“Better than a corpse in the ground,” he countered.

I couldn’t believe I was even entertaining this.

“You think this place—” I swept a hand toward the haunted alleyways, the flickering lanterns, the slow shuffle of shadow dancers gliding across rooftops like smoke on silk, “—this is saved ? There’s nothing alive here, Gideon.”

“There will be,” he said calmly. “If the curse breaks the right way.”

I stiffened. “There’s a right way to break a curse?”

“There is if you’re the one who cast it.” His voice was too smooth now, and I felt the tug in my gut, the way truth wrapped itself around manipulation. “And if I remember correctly, that was my role in all this.”

“You’re not here to lift the curse,” I said. “You’re here to transfer it. To pass it off. Who takes it next, huh? Me? My daughter?”

“That depends,” he said, and for the first time, there was something in his voice I couldn’t quite name. Not glee. Not triumph. Something closer to desperation. “On what you’re willing to sacrifice.”

The air between us pulsed, and my hands itched. My magic stirred beneath my skin, useless as ever when my emotions were tangled this tightly. I couldn’t help but think of the card in my pocket.

“Let her go,” I whispered. “Let her go, and I’ll listen.”

He didn’t blink. “You’re already listening.”

“You know what I mean.”

“And you know I can’t do that.”

I looked past him again, toward the window of the café. Her silhouette shifted as she leaned in, laughing at something. I felt bile rise in my throat. She didn’t know she was in danger. She didn’t think she was the leverage.

Or the target.

Surely someone, someone, had seen her walk by. Nova. Ardetia. Bella, even in fox form. Someone should’ve noticed. But if they didn’t know who she was…

No one expected it to be her .

No one would expect my daughter to walk straight into Shadowick with a boy who’d been planted like a thorn in the middle of our family.

And that made me feel more alone than I ever had.

I curled my hands into fists. The fury bubbling through me was electric, terrifying, and hot enough to sear through bone. I wanted to burn every stone of this twisted village down. I wanted to scream until the sky cracked open and swallowed us all.

Gideon took a breath, and I watched as the air shifted .

He was feeding on it. I could see it. The faint ripple along the edge of his shadow, the sharpness in his cheekbones as my rage strengthened him, and my pain brightened him.

I remembered back to the Academy and the chandelier.

“You want me angry,” I said slowly.

His eyes gleamed. “You’re finally catching on.”

I shook my head. “No. No, I won’t play that game. You don’t get to turn me into fuel.”

“Oh, Maeve,” he said softly. “You already are. But the question is, what will you burn with it?”

That was his trick. That was his core. He didn’t just curse cities or twist magic. He lit fires . And then he let people burn themselves to ash, thinking they had a choice.

I took a step back. Just one. But it felt like miles.

“I’m not like you,” I said.

“No,” he agreed. “But you could be.”

“I would never —”

He raised a finger. “Don’t say never , Maeve. The Moonbeam hasn’t finished with you yet.”

I clenched my jaw, heart thudding like a drum.

Inside the café, Celeste rose from her chair. My heart seized. Darren stood beside her, casual as anything. And as they moved toward the door, Gideon smiled like he’d just written the final scene of a very long play.

“What do you want?” I whispered again. “What do you really want?”

He looked me dead in the eye.

“You.” Gideon closed his eyes for a brief second. “Always you.”

And then the door behind me creaked open.

And I saw my daughter stepping out of the café with a smile still playing on her lips, and the shadow dancers looming, completely unaware that she had just walked through the mouth of a trap.

And I didn’t know how to stop it.