It skimmed the outer edge of the Wilds where the trees thinned, and the first hints of Stonewick’s familiar fields should’ve begun. Instead, the ground below was covered in a low-lying blanket of fog, thick and gray, swirling in restless currents.
Shadow fog.
I’d seen Malore summon it, watched it crawl like smoke with teeth. This was worse. Denser. It covered everything, trees, paths, the Wards’ visible markers, with a smothering layer.
“Is that…” I started.
“Not all hers,” Gideon said, voice raw. “Some of it’s the Wards. Pushing back, bleeding sideways. They’re trying to hold and choking at the same time.”
Like the town was suffocating under a wet blanket of its own magic, mixed with hers.
The broom dipped lower, searching.
I didn’t need my eyes to know we were crossing the threshold into Stonewick’s reach. The familiar buzz of the Wards brushed my skin—Maple’s steadiness, Butterfly’s shimmer, Stone’s deep hum, Flame’s stubborn flicker.
None of them felt right.
The tones were off. The harmonies clashed. The echo in my bones was discordant, frayed.
“Come on,” I whispered. “Let me in.”
We skimmed along the edge of the dome. From the outside, it was like flying next to a storm cloud made of tar…thick and dark, with veins of pale light trapped inside. Shapes moved under its surface, flashes of spell-fire, flares of ward-light, shadow spikes.
If the priestess’s magic had a sound, it would be that dome.
The broom made disgruntled little jerks, as if trying to find a way through and not liking its options.
“You’ve done this once,” Gideon muttered. “Getting in where you shouldn’t.”
“Flattering,” I said.
I closed my eyes and reached, not with my hands, but with the lines that connected me to Stonewick.
Carved circles in the Academy’s floors. The Butterfly Ward’s garden under my feet so many times I’d know it blind. The feel of Stella’s front stoop. The way the cottage had woven its threads through the town’s history and tugged me, again and again, to stand at its intersections.
I pictured the square. The fountain. The crooked lamppost. The front of Stella’s tea shop, door crooked, bell chiming.
“All right,” I told the town. “I brought you a piece you need. Let us in.”
For a second, nothing changed.
Then a thin, bright line appeared in the dome below us.
Not a crack. Not a wound.
A seam.
The broom dove.
“Warn me before you do that,” Gideon hissed, clutching the handle, breath catching.
We arrowed toward the seam.
The dome’s surface rushed up, shadows crawling across it. Just before we hit, the line widened, and a slit opened like an eye squinting. Fog roared up around us, cold and damp and threaded with static. For a heartbeat, everything was gray withno sky, no ground, and just thick, choking mist that smelled like wet stone and burnt rosemary.
Then we were through.
Stonewick spread out below us.
