Page 44

The Academy roared around me.

Not with sound, but with feeling . Its walls shivered with magic. Its windows quivered with unshed light. The shadows pulsed along the edges of the stonework like breath from a sleeping creature about to wake.

Or worse—suffocate.

I planted my feet at the center of the corridor, where Stella’s barrier was thinning. The shadow threads had teeth now, snapping at her light like starving things. And through the rippling blackness, I saw it.

Darts of movement.

A shimmer of something wrong .

Gideon.

Not him, not completely. But a fragment. A tether. A venomous sliver of what he left behind, still seeking, still hungry.

He was somewhere in the Academy.

My fingers twitched, aching for familiar tools. My chalk, my spell thread, my comfort talismans, but I didn’t need them.

Not anymore.

I was a Hedge witch now.

Not the kind who waited in corners, brewing potions by candlelight. No, my magic bled into the earth, fed by instinct, bound to truth.

I dropped to my knees and pressed my palms flat against the cold stone.

It didn’t resist.

It welcomed me .

The Hedge flooded my senses like wild wind through cracked windows. The corridors of the Academy melted away for a moment, and I was in the in-between.

The light curled gently against my skin, recognizing me now, not as an intruder, but as kin.

I reached down, deep, calling not for power…

But for truth .

“Show me,” I whispered.

The Hedge answered.

A bit of Moonbeam light burst beneath my hands. Not full. Not whole. But enough. I felt the lingering silver of the night’s power, the last thread of the Moonbeam still shimmering on the root-lines of the Butterfly Ward, tangled through the Academy like delicate lace.

It hadn’t fled.

It had waited .

For me.

For truth.

I pulled it up, slowly, carefully, letting the glow curl around my arms like a cloak. It was cold, sharp, true . The Moonbeam’s power wasn’t soft.

It was ancient clarity and everything sacred.

With it in my hands, I rose.

The corridor pulsed with dark magic, and from it, he emerged.

The Moonbeam wasn’t about breaking the curse. It was about finding the truth.

Gideon’s silhouette, slick as oil, flickered in and out of the shadow threads. His face half-formed, his voice a smirk without lips.

“Still trying to sweep up moonlight, Maeve?”

My heart stuttered, but I stood firm.

“I don’t need all of it,” I said. “Just enough to cut you out like the rot you’ve become.”

He laughed.

The shadow behind him twisted, and he charged, faster than thought.

His form shifted, sleek and hungry, a predator made of smoke, charm, and teeth. I threw the Moonbeam forward like a net, catching his fear.

It flared silver, searing into the dark mist of his body, and he screeched , a sound like broken glass being inhaled.

Keegan snarled beside me, blade at the ready. “You sure you don’t want help?”

“Cover the others!” I shouted. “This part’s mine for now.”

He hesitated, but nodded once. He turned to guard the corridor behind us, where Stella and Lady Limora scrambled to reinforce the fading spells.

Gideon’s shadow darted left, slicing toward me like a whip.

I dropped low, slammed my palm to the floor, and called the Hedge.

Light erupted from the stone, thorned and coiling, wrapping around the smoky tendrils of Gideon’s form. He twisted, shifting into something less man and more shadow-beast, but I held fast , pouring truth through the aura.

“Your lies don’t grow here,” I said through clenched teeth. “The Hedge only honors what’s real.”

“I am real,” Gideon snarled.

“No,” I said softly. “You’re what’s left .”

I flung the Moonbeam light in a wide arc, sweeping across the corridor like a blade. It met his form mid-shift and burned . He screamed again, not like a man, but like the echo of something that knew its time was ending.

The corridor shuddered as the dark began to shrink.

And then—

He lunged again.

Too fast.

Too close.

His shadow hand reached through the vines, through the light, and grabbed my wrist.

The chill was immediate and paralyzing. It wasn’t cold like ice. It was an absence of being, which was far more chilling than anything I’d ever encountered. He was reaching inside to pull me apart.

“You still don’t know what you are,” he whispered, eyes gleaming. “You think Hedge magic is light, roots, and whispers? You don’t even know what you can break. What it feels like to dance in the in-between.”

“I don’t want to break things,” I gasped. “I want to protect them.”

And that, more than anything, gave me strength.

I twisted in his grip, called up the full force of the Hedge. It wasn’t gentle and certainly not slow. It was wild.

Furious.

And alive .

The light around us exploded , sprouting thorns as long as daggers, flowers that glowed silver with captured moonlight. They wrapped around Gideon’s arm, then his chest, then his face. Electricity pulled him into the past, into the present, and tore his future apart.

The in-between.

He screamed, trying to shift, to vanish, but I anchored him to truth.

To light.

To me .

In the now.

With one final cry, I raised both hands and pulled a piece of the Moonbeam down from the air like a falling star.

It crashed through the corridor in a column of searing silver-white light.

And when it faded…

He was gone.

Nothing but ash.

And a smell like burnt thorns.

I fell to one knee, panting, as the Hedge receded into the walls, back to its quiet waiting.

Keegan caught me before I hit the floor. “You alright?”

“Better now,” I rasped. “Tell the others that it’s gone. He’s gone.”

But I didn’t miss the way the shadows still trembled in the corners.

I had used the Moonbeam, and I understood the Hedge more.

But I wasn’t done protecting what mattered.

The shadows writhed in the wake of the Moonbeam’s blaze, but instead of fading, they gathered, pulling themselves inward like a storm’s eye forming in reverse.

I staggered back, breath ragged, heart hammering in my ears.

Oh, no….

A hiss echoed down the corridor.

Laughter. Low. Silken. Familiar.

“You always did love the chaos,” Gideon purred as he reformed, his features sharpening from smoke into a mostly solid figure. His eyes glinted like ink catching moonlight, full of that dangerous calm. “I should thank you. I wasn’t quite ready until you forced it.”

The light I’d summoned flared again, but dimmer now. The last of the Moonbeam was flickering in my palm like a candle burning low.

He stepped out of the darkness like a man stepping into a ballroom, arrogant and too elegant for someone who’d tried to destroy everything I loved.

“Did you think light alone would unmake me?” he said. “Maeve, you sweet girl, I live in the spaces between. You just made me sharper. That’s what I’m telling you . Darling, you belong in the unknown spaces where you could twist, mold, and dance to your creation.”

I forced myself upright and summoned what I could from the Hedge that had already retreated.

The Hedge rose again, answering, not with grace, but with defiance . Light burned through the cracks in the stone beneath us, snarling upward like wolves on command.

“You don’t belong here,” I said. “Not in this place. Not in this town. Not near my daughter.”

His grin vanished, and he struck.

“You don’t tell me where I belong.” The corridor shuddered as a wave of shadow magic surged toward me, crashing like a tidal wave.

I threw up a shield of raw Hedge power laced with instinct, and it caught the brunt of the impact. But the force sent me sliding back against the wall.

Pain flared down my arm. My knees hit the stone hard.

Gideon didn’t pause. He lifted both arms and twisted the air around us. The torches along the walls sputtered out, plunging the space into near darkness. The shadows writhed into shapes like snakes, claws, and tendrils with memories stitched into them.

He was pulling from fear now. From mine .

I would not crack.

“You can feel it, can’t you?” he hissed. “The power beneath the Academy. You think Hedge magic makes you strong, but it binds you if you don’t use it right. I’m made of what isn’t rooted. I’m the freedom between moments. You could be too.”

I stood, blood on my lip, and wiped it with the back of my hand.

“You talk a lot.” And then I lunged.

The vines of light at my command surged with me, whipping forward and coiling around him with precision.

He slashed through one, two, five, but I kept sending more ropes of light.

Every crack in the floor became a mouth, every seam in the wall a window for the Hedge.

I was no longer just calling on the Academy’s earth—I was it.

But he was faster.

He blurred through the shadows, his movements liquid, graceful, awful.

His hand caught mine mid-spell, and the chill of his touch nearly knocked me out. He shoved me back, hard enough that my ribs screamed. The world spun.

I barely caught myself on a banister.

And that’s when I felt it, a presence…not threatening, grounding .

Keegan.

He wasn’t near, but he was close enough.

I didn’t see him. I didn’t have to. The tug of our magic hummed in my chest, steady and sure, like the anchor I’d forgotten I needed.

The bond between us sparked, not just magic, but real. Right . His heartbeat in mine.

“I’m here,” his voice whispered, though it never reached my ears. “You’re not alone.”

He knew I was in the in-between. I clenched my jaw and surged upright, power roaring up from the ground again, brighter, truer .

I belong here, Gideon.” I slammed both palms to the stone wall nearest him and pulled from deep —from memory, from loss, from love. The Hedge answered in full.

Beams of light tore through the floorboards, cracking stone and forming a barrier of jagged, living wood. Flowers burst open in blinding flashes of silver and green. A Hedge wall erupted between us, pushing Gideon back with a screech.

He writhed, fought it, but for a moment, it held.

And in that moment, I stepped through the moonlight, still clinging to the space between us.

I met him head-on.

He struck with shadow, but I countered with light, using shards of the Moonbeam like knives. I spun the Hedge magic into ropes of gleaming vine and caught his wrist, then his ankle, yanking him down as the floor groaned.

He screamed, a sound that wasn’t quite human, and sent a shockwave of dark magic outward.

The blast knocked me off my feet and into a stone pillar. Stars burst in my vision.

I heard Skonk yelling, someone else chanting a spell.

Why was he here?

Gideon rose again, panting. His form was now more solid, but fractured like glass, struggling to hold water. Every time he drew power, he flickered.

“You’ll lose everything,” he rasped. “Stonewick. The Academy. Your daughter.”

I stood again.

Bruised. Bloodied.

But burning with the oldest, fiercest thing I had.

“No,” I said. “You will.”

I reached out, not with force, but with truth .

And the Hedge responded, along with the last of the Moonbeam.

From beneath, from above, from the very walls. Vines, ropes, blossoms of moon-fed light. It claimed the space around me.

I opened my arms and let it in.

The Moonbeam’s last light laced my fingers like silk.

And I flung it forward.

Straight into Gideon’s chest.

He howled as it struck, light and truth and belonging searing through his smoke-bound form. He tried to scatter, but this time, the Academy didn’t let him .

The walls shimmered with sigils. The stone pulsed with ancient intention.

And his shadows recoiled .

He collapsed inward, his form unraveling, breaking apart not from death…

But from being seen .

Seen for what he really was: nothing but a ghost of hunger and harm.

With one last crack of air, the corridor cleared.

The silence that followed wasn’t peace.

It was relief .

Keegan appeared then, breathless, his hands already reaching for me.

“You okay?” he asked.

I swayed slightly. “Define okay.”

He caught me before I could fall, his arms warm and solid around me. I leaned into him, barely able to lift my arms.

But I didn’t need to.

The Hedge quieted around me, content.

And the light held.

For now.