The room went quiet for exactly half a second, and then everyone laughed.
Stella chuckled, shaking her head. “Eventually,” she said. “I imagine.”
My mother gave Alex one final, considering look. “There’s no rush.”
I wrapped an arm around Celeste, heart full, exhaustion finally settling into something warm instead of heavy. The Academy buzzed around us, content and indulgent, as if it too understood that sometimes magic wasn’t about fixing things right away.
Sometimes it was about letting the universe have a joke.
And for once, the joke wasn’t on us.
Chapter Thirteen
I’d been thrashing before I knew I’d crossed the threshold, sheets tangled around my legs, breath ragged and uneven as the dream crashed down around me.
Stonewick stretched out before me, but it was familiar and wrong all at once. The lamplight flickered too brightly. The cobblestones breathed beneath my feet. Every shadow was too long and stretched to places unseen.
And the Priestess stood at the center of the square.
She hadn’t changed. Her robes fell in perfect lines, her face serene in that way that suggested certainty without mercy. Her eyes found mine immediately, as if she’d been waiting for me to notice her.
“You broke what was holding you,” she said, voice echoing oddly, as if the words were being spoken in several places at once. “You don’t yet understand what you’ve invited in.”
I tried to move, but the square locked around me. The buildings leaned closer as the Academy loomed at the edge of my vision, its windows dark.
Gideon appeared, but not beside her. It was as if he was caught in the air between us, suspended by threads of shadow that wrapped around his wrists and throat, pulling him taut.
His eyes met mine, and I felt the familiar twist in my chest as anger, regret, and recognition all tangled together.
“This is your fault,” the Priestess said pleasantly. “You always needed him closer than you should have.”
“No,” I said, but my voice didn’t sound right. It echoed, broke, reformed. “I don’t need Gideon. I don’t need anyone.”
The scene fractured as Stonewick bled into Shadowick without warning. The sky deepened into that impossible indigo where stars pulsed like living things. The ground turned to ash beneath my feet, and the Glacial Hollows rose around us, vast and cold.
Its presence pressed in from all sides. It didn’t speak. It never did. But the weight of its attention was suffocating.
I watched the Priestess fade, the shadows loosen, and Gideon drop in front of me as we were completely transported into the Hollows. The ice acted like a buffer, and my skin chilled at the invasion of my mind.
“Maeve.” Gideon’s voice yanked me to reality.
“This isn’t—” I stopped, swallowing hard. “This is a dream.”
“Yes,” he said. “And no.”
I let out a shaky breath. “You’re doing this...”
“I didn’t know how else to speak to you,” he said quietly. “Not without eyes on us. Not without risk.”
The world shifted as he spoke. The Hollows dissolved into the edge of the Wilds, mushrooms glowing softly at our feet.
“This is real,” I said slowly. “We’re in the Hedge.”
He nodded. “You always knew how to find it. Even before you knew what it was, remember?”
I crossed my arms, grounding myself. “You shouldn’t be doing this.”
“I know,” he said. “But it’s the only place I felt… unobserved.”
