I moved again through the trees, and each step became an argument with myself.
Branches clawed gently at my hair, tangling strands, as though urging me to turn back. A vine coiled around my wrist again, cooler this time, reluctant to let go. I shook free as my breath caught.
The hush deepened until it roared in my ears, and without warning, the trees opened.
I stumbled into a clearing I knew too well.
The cemetery.
My breath stilled as I took it in.
The headstones were pale in the afternoon sunlight, some leaning, some straight, their inscriptions half-swallowed by time. A low wall of moss-covered stone edged the place, crumbling in spots where roots had pried the rocks apart.
Flowers, both wild and planted, crowded between the graves, with roses, lilies, and now, newly risen in clusters, more of those red mushrooms.
I wrapped my arms around myself, shivering despite the warmth of summer. The cemetery sat just behind the Academy’s lands, shielded by the Wilds. The events of the Moonbeam flooded through me, and as I looked at the tombstones, I sawformer teachers, guardians, and students whose lives had twined with the Academy until the end.
Now, standing alone, the place felt different. Less peaceful, more… expectant.
My heart hammered in my chest as I stepped closer to the first row of stones. Sunlight slid across the names carved there, names I didn’t recognize, though I knew they belonged to someone’s story, someone’s magic, someone’s life that had been given to Stonewick.
The tug in my chest drew me deeper still, moving between graves, pulling me toward the far edge of the cemetery where the Wilds pressed close again.
I paused beside a stone marked only with a single rune, its meaning lost to me, and tried to still my racing thoughts.
“Why here?” I whispered. “Why now?”
The silence answered like a held breath, heavy and waiting.
And then…
Maeve.
The voice again.
Closer.
My knees weakened, and I gripped the top of the stone, the cold seeping into my palms. My heart stopped, then thundered so hard it ached.
It was his voice.
But whose?
Gideon’s low murmur?
Keegan’s rough warmth?
Malore’s growl edged with command?
I couldn’t tell. The single word carried pieces of them all, threaded through the syllables like smoke.
Tears stung my eyes. I blinked hard, refusing to let them fall.
“Stop playing with me,” I whispered hoarsely into the hush.
The shadows deepened between the trees at the edge of the cemetery. My skin prickled, and my magic surged again, warning, bristling, begging me to leave.
But my feet rooted to the moss, caught between fear and yearning, between the desperate hope that the voice belonged to the man I loved and the cold terror that it belonged to the ones I feared most.
