I had to hold firm and search for answers.
“What turned you into this, Gideon? Who made you so evil that you’d enthrall innocents, toy with darkness, and tear families apart?”
He stared at me for a beat too long, silver eyes half-lidded, flickering back to their original blue.
Something flashed through his gaze for a second—a memory, maybe.
Gideon’s hold slackened on my hands.
“Evil. You use that word as though everything in Stonewick is black and white. You have no idea what lines people cross in the name of protection or survival. Good and evil are a matter of perspective, I assure you.”
I sensed an opening as my thoughts shifted subtly and wove a tiny magic thread into his world.
I felt myself pulled toward a break in his mind.
Maybe I could break his hold on our village if I could slip in and seewhyhe believed what he did.
“Tell me,” I coaxed. “Help me understand.”
He studied me warily. “You’d open your mind to me, just to glean a story?”
I swallowed. “If that’s what it takes. I need to know the reason behind this cruelty. Don’t you owe me that much if I’m to be your apprentice?”
His lips twitched into a humorless smile. “Owe you? I owe no one anything.”
I let my thoughts shift from defensive to curious, drifting like an invisible tendril toward Gideon’s consciousness.
He didn’t block me.
My heart hammered.
This was dangerous.
I saw movement from the balcony and realized Keegan figured out what I was doing, but it was too late.
In a heartbeat, Gideon and my connection intensified.
Images crashed into me.
A younger Gideon stood at the outskirts of Stonewick. There was something behind him, but I couldn’t see it. He bent down to tend whatever was with him.He turned back to look at the main street of Stonewick but was shunned by harsh, suspicious stares.
Packs of shifters closed in toward him.
My heart raced as I watched the Academy’s Wards glowing at full strength.
The swirl of heartbreak flickered in his eyes, and bitterness followed.
Betrayal.
The sense of being an outcast in a world that revered magic more than the person behind it.
A wave of sadness burned through me, so profound it almost made me stagger.
Is that how Gideon felt? Shunned?
But why?
I kept my thoughts trained on him as sadness twisted into something darker.
