Then my legs remembered what walking was, and I staggered backward onto the path, heart hammering against my ribs. But I wasn’t fooled.
Nothing about this was normal.
I knew what I’d just seen.
What I’d justfelt.
Even if I didn’t want to name it.
Even if saying it out loud felt like opening a locked door and begging whatever was on the other side to come through.
Gideon.
The name curled in my gut like fog…familiar, acrid, wrong in a way that didn’t make sound but shape.
He hadn’t appeared. Not fully.
But I’d felt him.
And worse, I’d recognized thatabsence of fear. That creeping calm he always wore like a badge. He’d been playing with the hedge.
This sensation wasn’t the kind of fear that made your heart pound or your breath catch.
The feeling was subtler.
That was always Gideon’s gift, though, wasn’t it?
He’d manage to make himself feel like the reprieve before revealing he’d been the cage all along, ready to trap you.
And here I was.
Tired.
Unnerved.
Barely holding onto the fraying edges of what I’d just seen and what I still didn’t understand.
HadIinvited him in?
Or had he simply walked in on his own?
Slipped through the bend.
Because if that vision, if thatfuture, was more than just a warning, then the boundary had already bent.
Not shattered. Not breached.
Warped enough to let him pass.
But maybe that meant it could be bent both ways.
And the moment I stepped into the Hedge, the moment I listened, opened myself up, and followed that pull, I might have cracked the door just wide enough.
My stomach rolled as I walked into the Academy.
I slid down the wall slowly, sitting on the cold floor, hugging my knees to my chest like I hadn’t done since the first night after my divorce, when the house felt empty in a way no spell could soften.
The hallway was empty now and blessedly quiet. The students were tucked away in classrooms or the library, chasing charms, enchanting teacups, or writing love letters with invisible ink.
