Page 40

The cold hit first, sharp and biting, as if I'd crossed a threshold that didn't just separate land but soul. The fog clung tighter here. It licked at my boots and curled up my legs like smoke that had learned to breathe.

Gideon stood just ahead, framed by the twisted wrought iron and the looming silhouette of the mansion. He didn’t move. He didn’t need to. His presence hung thick as mist, as though the very air bent around him.

But then—

His hand shifted.

Just slightly. A flicker. A ripple like water catching a glint of moonlight.

I froze.

His fingers had shimmered. Not sparkled, not glowed, but shimmered, like glass catching firelight.

Translucent.

It only lasted a heartbeat. If I’d blinked, I might’ve missed it.

But I didn’t blink.

My breath caught.

That wasn’t Gideon.

At least—not all of him.

Not the real one, not any longer.

The realization hit me low in the gut, like a stone being dropped into my stomach, rattling around.

He wasn’t here.

Or not really.

“Why would you do this?” I asked, my voice a whisper now. “Why send an illusion?”

He tilted his head at me, expression still unreadable. “I’ve told you what I want, Maeve.”

My heart thundered. My magic pulled tight against my ribcage.

No.

This wasn’t him. This wasn’t how he moved, how he felt . Something had changed from the moment we stepped through the Shadowick gates until now.

A slow unraveling started with a gap that widened without me noticing.

He hadn’t wanted me to see it.

He hadn’t wanted me to notice .

“What is it you want?” I asked again, voice louder this time.

The image smiled. Or tried to. It cracked at the edges. His jaw flickered, too smooth in its movement.

“I’ve told you that many times, Maeve,” it said. “It’s you I want. Your power. Your might. Your abilities.”

The words echoed, hollow.

Too rehearsed. Too clean.

Not him.

A shiver crawled up my spine, and for once, it wasn’t just fear.

It was clarity .

This was no longer Gideon.

From the moment we arrived, when Celeste came down those stairs, when the fog shifted, when the buildings stopped changing, it was him.

But now, I’d felt something go still. I thought it was dread. I thought it was me being so close to the mansion.

But it wasn’t.

He’d stepped out of the game then. Or perhaps he’d never truly been on the board.

The illusion tilted its head again. “You’re stalling, Maeve.”

No. You are.

A shadow flickered above me.

I looked up, instinct, not thought, and saw the dark shapes circling overhead.

Shadow dancers.

But they weren’t gliding lazily this time. They were fast. Focused. Spiraling lower like storm clouds with teeth.

I turned in place slowly, feeling the shift of magic across my skin.

This place… it wasn’t just a battlefield anymore.

It was a trap.

I looked back at the illusion of Gideon, this carefully constructed phantasm still trying to hold its shape. It wasn’t just fog and glamour. It was laced with memory, with pieces of him from when we had stood face-to-face.

But now? It was hollow.

A reflection.

“You’re not here,” I said softly.

The figure’s expression didn’t change.

“If you wanted me to stay,” I whispered, “you’d face me. In truth. You’re not afraid of me, right?”

Silence.

“You wouldn’t send a shadow to lie for you,” I said. “Unless... unless this isn’t about me staying anymore.”

The image flickered again. It wavered once, like candlelight in a draft.

And then it spoke.

“The choice is still yours, Maeve. Stay, and you can save her. You can save everything .”

The mansion stood before me like a godless cathedral, windows flickering with moonlight and shadow. The front doors were slightly ajar. And somewhere inside, I could feel it, that pull.

Not toward Gideon.

But toward something else.

Knowledge.

Memory.

Maybe even the truth.

The Moonbeam will reveal the truth.

The shadow dancers screamed overhead.

Not words, just sound as a wail scraped across bone and threaded through teeth. It rolled across the village like a warning.

I didn’t flinch.

I wasn’t listening anymore because I was already turning.

I ran.

Not away but toward the mansion. Toward the place where I thought he would be. Where I hoped, if I was wrong, I might still find the real him waiting.

The air inside the gates grew thicker with every step. My breath came faster, but not from fear. Not anymore.

He wanted me afraid. He needed it. That’s why he’d shown me my daughter. That’s why Darren had been planted, why the dancers circled now like vultures.

But the ancient creatures had told me the truth.

The Moonbeam does not create light. It reflects it.

What is anchored in truth will hold. What is anchored in fear will crack.

I wasn’t anchored in fear anymore.

I was anchored in her.

Celeste.

And my truth?

Was that I would burn this place to the ground before I let Gideon take her.

The truth was that I was a Hedge Witch, and my daughter would follow in my footsteps. She needed to see this. That was what tonight’s Moonbeam was about, and Gideon never saw it coming.

His illusion vanished without a sound.

And now the real game had begun.

The silence that followed his vanishing wasn’t silence at all.

It was a scream.

A soundless, soul-deep scream that cracked open somewhere behind my ribs and echoed through the hollow space where my breath should’ve been. The street around me pulsed like a held breath. The stone beneath my boots trembled faintly. Not from magic. Not from Shadowick.

From me.

I stared at the space where the not-Gideon had stood moments before, the echo of his last words still sharp behind my eyes.

Dragons.

Earlier, he’d said the word like it meant nothing.

Like it was casual. Tossed in like a garnish atop a poisoned truth. But it wasn’t meaningless. Not to me. Not to the Academy.

What if he knew?

The realization landed like a blow to the sternum. I stumbled back a step, one hand pressed to my stomach, trying to steady the swirling mess of thoughts in my head.

I looked up at the darkened spire of the mansion, the sky above now heavy with swirling fog and the faint glimmer of the retreating moonbeam. It hadn’t followed me in here. No, it had abandoned me. Or maybe it had done its job. Revealed what needed to be seen.

And now the truth had to be reckoned with.

This entire thing, bringing Celeste here, playing his twisted game of reunion and choice, luring me through the illusion of Gideon, what if it was all misdirection?

A sleight of hand?

He knew I’d come here.

He wanted me to.

Because he needed me gone.

Or maybe…

Maybe it was more insidious than that.

Get everyone with power and purpose here … and leave the real prize vulnerable.

My stomach twisted into a sick knot of regret and horror.

When the moon bends low and the Veil thins, what is anchored in truth will hold. What is rooted in fear will crack.

And I was cracking.

Because now I saw the possibilities blooming with horrible clarity.

Terror clawed up my throat, raw and feral.

Was this what he wanted all along? To draw my attention to the past, to Celeste, to this ghost town built on grief, while the true battleground waited back where it all began?

Or maybe that was the point.

Not to win.

Not to destroy.

But to corrupt.

My hands trembled. I clenched them into fists to stop the shaking. I had to get back. I had to get back now.

But the path was unclear. The moonbeam had faded. The Hedge shimmered somewhere behind the curtain of illusion and power that separated Shadowick from the real world, but it wouldn’t open just because I demanded it.

The Veil didn’t care about urgency.

It only answered truth.

And my truth?

I’d been fooled.

I closed my eyes. Focused on my breath. One inhale. Two.

My truth was this. I was a Hedge witch with half-learned spells and a heart full of fury, and I would not let that man win.

Not here.

Not there.

Not ever.

I opened my eyes, turned, and stepped toward the edge of the street, where the sidewalk vanished into curling mist.

“No, no, no,” I whispered, spinning in place, trying to locate any sign of the Veil’s weakness, the moonbeam’s tail, anything I could use to claw my way back through to start over.

Because Gideon wasn’t in Shadowick any longer.

He was trying to gain admission to the Academy.

He knew about the dragons.

Gideon had said it so cleanly earlier tonight.

So confidently.

Dragons.

It wasn’t a metaphor.

Maybe he needed the dragons. Not just to destroy them, but to use them.

And worse, if he reached the dragons, if he bent them somehow… if he managed to tether even one of those ancient beings to his will…

He wouldn’t just break the Academy.

He’d reshape the world.

I sprinted forward, heart in my throat, spells gathering behind my teeth, and looked through whatever thread remained of the Moonbeam.

The chill that met me on the other side didn’t belong to Shadowick.

It was the breath of something ancient.

And angry.

And waiting.

But this time?

It didn’t feel like home.

It felt like a battlefield.

And Gideon was already there.