Page 5

The others had scattered back to their classrooms. Their laughter and murmured worries faded with them, and only Keegan remained.

We stood beneath the canopy of the Maple Ward, its leaves rustling like a lullaby overhead. The sun dappled through the glass in shifting waves.

For a moment, it felt like the Academy had exhaled. Like the land itself was holding its breath for what we might do next.

“Do you think I’m bonkers?” I asked him.

Keegan crossed his arms and stared at the tree’s thick trunk. He hadn’t said much since the others left.

That alone told me everything.

“You’re brooding,” I said gently, brushing my hand along the soft edge of a nearby maple leaf.

He glanced at me, mouth twitching slightly, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m not brooding. I’m thinking.”

“Right. You just think with your jaw clenched and your shoulders tense.”

He didn’t deny it. Instead, he looked back toward the shimmering edge of the Ward, where the light bent slightly around the barrier. His voice, when it came, was low.

“This plan… It sounds noble. It is noble. But noble things don’t always end well.”

I stepped closer and folded my hands in front of me. “You think we’re rushing into it.”

“I think you’re trying not to be afraid.” His gaze met mine. “And I think that’s more dangerous than fear.”

The words hit harder than I expected. I didn’t answer right away, because he wasn’t wrong.

I was afraid. But if I let that show, if I let it in too far, I might never act.

That was what had happened in my doomed marriage.

All the red flags waved and flickered in front of me for years, but I chose to ignore them because I was afraid.

I let the fear paralyze me until the truth was so brutally honest that it became more crippling than the initial fear.

Instead, I tilted my head and asked, “What would happen if someone just walked into Shadowick? No magical transport, no tether spell, no gateway. Someone just put one foot in front of the other and walked across the line?”

Keegan frowned and hesitated before answering.

“Why?”

“Because I keep thinking about how we keep dancing around Shadowick as if it were another realm, but it’s not. It’s right there. A few hours, give or take, from Stonewick. If someone left Stonewick with a knapsack and enough trail mix, they could be in Shadowick on foot by evening.”

“No one does that. Not anymore.” He sighed, running a hand through his hair.

“The borders aren’t just physical. Not anymore.

You might get close, sure. But something happens when you try to cross.

People lose track of time. Lose direction.

Some walk for hours in circles. Some get in and don’t come back.

You know how when the Academy was closed, you would lose track of time or worse, weeks would go by on the outside and you thought it had been merely hours? ”

“I’m grateful the Academy meshes with real time now.” I shivered despite the sunlight.

“Everything about Shadowick is off.” His voice lowered. “Everyone who goes there, if they even return, is forever changed.”

The leaves above us whispered like they agreed.

I hugged my arms. “I was hoping the Moonbeam crossing might make things simpler.”

“It won’t,” he said. “It might make it possible, but not simple.”

The Ward pulsed gently around us as we stood in silence.

“I need to believe it’s worth the risk,” I said finally. “If we don’t try, then what are we doing here? We break our curse, and then Shadowick just comes on stronger and curses us again?”

“You’re not wrong,” Keegan said, his tone softer now. “But Maeve, I’ve seen what that place can do. You step into Shadowick, and it doesn’t just look at you. It recognizes you. It finds the cracks.”

I turned to face him fully. “And I’ve spent my life pretending I didn’t have cracks. Maybe they won’t find them.”

His jaw clenched again, but not in anger. Worry etched his features, and I could not only see how much he cared, but I could feel it.

“You’ve changed since you came here,” he said. “You’ve grown stronger and sharper. But that’s also what makes this dangerous. Shadowick won’t just try to break you. It’ll try to use you.”

“And I’ll have you,” I said softly. “I won’t be alone.”

That made him pause.

Light caught his eyes, turning the amber flecks into something almost golden.

Keegan looked at me not the way someone looks at a problem or a challenge, but in the way someone looks at the one thing they don’t want to lose.

My heart clenched, and I cleared my throat, glancing at the towering maple.

“I don’t want to be the reason you hesitate,” he said. “But I also don’t want to watch you walk into something we can’t pull you out of.”

I took his hand without thinking, and his grasp was steady.

“You’re not the reason I hesitate,” I whispered. “You’re the reason I’ll come back.”

For a moment, the Maple Ward held us in silence, as the world narrowed down to something as simple as breath and light.

Keegan didn’t let go, while his thumb brushed lightly against mine.

“You’d better,” he said.

I smiled. “I’d like to see Gideon or Shadowick try to stop you.”

His brow lifted. “Are you challenging a cursed realm to a fistfight on my behalf?”

“I mean, if it comes to that,” I teased. “But I know you’d win.”

He let out a quiet laugh, the tension in his shoulders easing at last.

“Don’t make me the romantic one,” he muttered.

“Too late,” I said.

We stood there a while longer, not talking.

But when we finally stepped away from the Maple Ward, I felt stronger, and certainly not because the path was clear, but because I wouldn’t walk it alone. We walked along the hallway and out the doors. I glanced at him before turning my gaze to the shadows stretching toward the hedges.

“I haven’t felt Gideon’s pull in days,” I said, voice low but sure.

Keegan stopped walking. “What?”

I turned toward him. “Not a flicker. Not a whisper of shadow magic. Nothing. And it’s been… days. At least three. I haven’t seen an illusion on the grounds like before.”

His eyes narrowed. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” I said. “I would know. Ever since I stepped foot into the Academy, maybe even before, I could always feel him, like a breath at the back of my neck. A warning. A reminder. But now? It’s just… gone.”

Keegan’s brows furrowed. “That hasn’t happened since…”

“Since he sent those decoys through here.”

Keegan blew out a slow breath. “So either he’s retreating, regrouping, or he’s watching from farther away.”

I nodded. “And that’s what’s worrying me. He doesn’t retreat.”

“No,” Keegan agreed. “But maybe even he’s worried. Maybe the Wards are stronger than he expected. Maybe his decoys failed harder than he wants to admit.”

I looked back toward the Academy, rising like a carved stone sentinel behind the flowering trees.

“We’ve been focusing so much on the curse, the Wards, the Moonbeam, but maybe we’re missing something even bigger,” I murmured.

Keegan gave me a sidelong glance. “Like what?”

“His why. ” I chewed my bottom lip. “Why does Gideon want Stonewick so badly? Why go to all this trouble?”

Keegan was quiet for a beat. “Power. Always the first answer.”

“Sure,” I said. “But power isn’t the kind of thing you keep attacking year after year if you know it’s sealed. He’s fixated on this place.”

Keegan crossed his arms, frowning thoughtfully. “Because it’s the one place that won’t bow to him.”

“But he’s not just sending curses or illusions. He’s infiltrating, stealing, and studying. Sending people in.” I hesitated. “Like he’s not trying to destroy Stonewick… but to change it. From the inside out.”

Keegan looked at me. “Or take it away.”

The words hung between us.

“Maybe he thinks it belongs to him,” I said slowly.

“Maybe it once did,” Keegan replied. “Or maybe to someone in his line. Magic like this, land like this, it’s old. And old things don’t forget being taken from.”

I looked at him then. “Do you think that’s all he wants? Land?”

Keegan’s gaze didn’t waver. “I think land is just the start.”

He turned and kept walking, and I followed, letting his words swirl and settle. My boots crunched against loose stones on the path as the air grew thicker with unspoken thoughts.

Then, after several long steps, Keegan said, “What if it’s not just Stonewick?”

I blinked. “What do you mean?”

He stopped again and turned to face me. “What if it’s you ?”

The question hit like a rush of cold water.

I stared at him. “Me?”

“He’s targeted you more than once,” Keegan said, his voice calm but edged. “Found you in dreams. Sent magic that seeks you. Even those decoys weren’t meant for just anyone. They were designed to fool you. ”

I swallowed. “I’ve thought about it. But I don’t know why. I’m not that important.”

“You’re the one who woke the Academy,” Keegan said. “The one who bonded with the cottage. The Wards respond to you. You’re the one who’s unraveling the history, who’s changing the magic just by existing here.”

I felt a strange pull inside my chest at his words. It wasn’t fear exactly.

“You think he sees me as a threat,” I said.

“Or an opportunity,” Keegan said, softer now. “Maybe both.”

A breeze stirred the leaves above us, sending a whispering hush through the trees.

“What could he want from me?” I asked, half to him, half to myself.

“Maybe he thinks you can open something he can’t,” Keegan said. “Or maybe… maybe it’s deeper than that. Old magic doesn’t always follow logic. You said it yourself. The Veils are thinning. Maybe the Moonbeam isn’t just a bridge. Maybe it’s a mirror.”

“A mirror?”

Keegan nodded. “What if he sees something in you he lost or never had? A connection to Stonewick that he can’t recreate.”

The idea sank into my bones like an ember finding dry wood. Seeing the images of him as a young boy standing on the outskirts of Stonewick had haunted me from the moment I saw them in Gideon’s thoughts.

If I were the key, if I was the connection between the Academy, the Wards, and the future of both towns, what did that make me?

A symbol?

A target?

Or a door?

“I don’t want to be a pawn in someone else’s plan,” I said softly.

“You’re not,” Keegan replied. “You’re the one making plans now. But that’s why we need to understand him. You’ve always been right about that, as much as I hate to agree, because if he’s not pulling at your magic right now, that means he’s waiting. And I don’t like what that might mean.”

I nodded slowly, staring out over the rise of the garden path, where the trees opened up just enough to reveal the far edge of the Academy grounds. Beyond that lay the wild fields.

And beyond those, Shadowick lurked.

“You’re not alone in this,” Keegan said.

I turned to him, his eyes steady on mine.

“I know,” I said. “That’s the only reason I’m not entirely scared out of my mind.”

He didn’t smile, not exactly. But something softened in his expression.

“We’ll be ready,” he said. “No matter what his reason is.”

And somehow, standing there under the rustling trees, I let myself believe that.

At least for now.