Ardetia.
She didn’t seem real, not exactly. From what I’d read, fae rarely did. She stood with the stillness that made you forget what breathing looked like. Her hair shimmered red, and her robe looked like mist stitched into fabric, and when she spoke, her voice cut through the silence like something meant to be remembered.
“You truly didn’t know,” she said, brows lifted in a way that didn’t feel cruel—just astonished. “No one told you?”
I shook my head. “No one has said anything much about my magic at all. Probably because I don’t have much yet.”
“Of course you do, but you’re definitely a hedge witch. Your magic isn’t confined to one realm. You walk between them. Easily. Too easily for a mortal. It’s common among my kind. Fae learn to drift from one plane to another when they’re young. But humans?” She paused, watching me. “It’s rare. And dangerous. Except for hedge witches.”
I stared at her. “But I’ve never walked through realms. I don’t even knowhow.”
Ardetia smiled with just a small quirk of her mouth. “Oh, but you have. You’ve done it without knowing. That’s what makes it more alarming. You think the Wards at the Academy let justanyonethrough? That you just… wandered into Stonewick and found its magic open and humming like a familiar tune?” She shook her head. “You were born to the edges. That’s what hedge means—between things. You live on the border. That’s what your dreams are.”
My mind started racing. I tried to reach for something solid, something I could hold onto. But all I could think about were the times Ihadslipped between places.
The night I looked into the pedestal, I ended up in the Academy’s sealed library. Was it more about me and less about the pedestal?
The time I followed my dream and met Gideon in the middle of Shadowick.
The dream that hadn’t been a dream, where I walked through a field that looked nothing like this world, under a sky with stars so bright they nearly burned.
And Gideon.
Always Gideon.
He’d shown up too many times now to be a coincidence. In places no one should’ve found me. Not unless they were following a thread I couldn’t see.
Hehadknown.
He knew what I was before I did.
“That’s why,” I said, more to myself than anyone else. “That’s why he’s been circling.”
“Gideon?” Bella asked sharply.
I didn’t answer her.
My thoughts were spinning too fast. I could feel the pull of all those moments I’d brushed against something not-quite-this-world. I’d chalked it up to accidents. Luck. Odd quirks in the way Stonewick worked. But now, everything was rearranging itself in my head.
He called me hisapprentice. Not because of what I could learn, but because of what Ialreadywas.
He saw it before I did.
Ardetia’s voice broke through the whirlwind in my mind.
“It’s not a curse, Maeve. Hedge witches are bridges. You bring balance between places that otherwise wouldn’t touch. But it’s not easy. You need training. Understanding. Or it will pull you apart. There are so few of you now.”
I looked at her, trying to steady my breathing. “Why didn’t my grandmother tell me?”
“I suspect,” she said softly, “that she was trying to protect you. And perhaps… she wasn’t entirely sure herself. Grandma Elira was powerful. But even she could only guess at what would wake up in you.” Her head tilted. “And now it has.”
Bella took a step closer. “So what does this mean? For her?”
Ardetia studied me with an unreadable expression. “It means she’ll be hunted by those who understand what she is. And wanted by those who wish to use it. Which is, I suspect, what your Gideon has in mind.”
I clenched my jaw.
All those conversations I’d had with him danced around truth. The ones where he’d smiled like he knew something I didn’t because he most likely did. He’d never tried to win me with flattery or manipulation. He didn’t have to.
