Chapter Thirty-Five
Bella stood to my right, quiet for once, her arms folded tight against her chest like she didn’t trust her thoughts to stay put.
I glanced at her, searching for something in her expression…answers, maybe, or at least a sign that I wasn’t the only one reeling. But she didn’t look at me. Her eyes were fixed on the figure in front of us, standing in the soft circle of light filtered down through the Academy’s high windows.
Ardetia.
She didn’t seem real, not exactly. From what I’d read, fae rarely did. She stood with the stillness that made you forget what breathing looked like. Her hair shimmered red, and her robe looked like mist stitched into fabric, and when she spoke, her voice cut through the silence like something meant to be remembered.
“You truly didn’t know,” she said, brows lifted in a way that didn’t feel cruel—just astonished. “No one told you?”
I shook my head. “No one has said anything much about my magic at all. Probably because I don’t have much yet.”
“Of course you do, but you’re definitely a hedge witch. Your magic isn’t confined to one realm. You walk between them. Easily. Too easily for a mortal. It’s common among my kind. Fae learn to drift from one plane to another when they’re young. But humans?” She paused, watching me. “It’s rare. And dangerous. Except for hedge witches.”
I stared at her. “But I’ve never walked through realms. I don’t even know how. ”
Ardetia smiled with just a small quirk of her mouth. “Oh, but you have. You’ve done it without knowing. That’s what makes it more alarming. You think the Wards at the Academy let just anyone through? That you just… wandered into Stonewick and found its magic open and humming like a familiar tune?” She shook her head. “You were born to the edges. That’s what hedge means—between things. You live on the border. That’s what your dreams are.”
My mind started racing. I tried to reach for something solid, something I could hold onto. But all I could think about were the times I had slipped between places.
The night I looked into the pedestal, I ended up in the Academy’s sealed library. Was it more about me and less about the pedestal?
The time I followed my dream and met Gideon in the middle of Shadowick.
The dream that hadn’t been a dream, where I walked through a field that looked nothing like this world, under a sky with stars so bright they nearly burned.
And Gideon.
Always Gideon.
He’d shown up too many times now to be a coincidence. In places no one should’ve found me. Not unless they were following a thread I couldn’t see.
He had known.
He knew what I was before I did.
“That’s why,” I said, more to myself than anyone else. “That’s why he’s been circling.”
“Gideon?” Bella asked sharply.
I didn’t answer her.
My thoughts were spinning too fast. I could feel the pull of all those moments I’d brushed against something not-quite-this-world. I’d chalked it up to accidents. Luck. Odd quirks in the way Stonewick worked. But now, everything was rearranging itself in my head.
He called me his apprentice . Not because of what I could learn, but because of what I already was.
He saw it before I did.
Ardetia’s voice broke through the whirlwind in my mind.
“It’s not a curse, Maeve. Hedge witches are bridges. You bring balance between places that otherwise wouldn’t touch. But it’s not easy. You need training. Understanding. Or it will pull you apart. There are so few of you now.”
I looked at her, trying to steady my breathing. “Why didn’t my grandmother tell me?”
“I suspect,” she said softly, “that she was trying to protect you. And perhaps… she wasn’t entirely sure herself. Grandma Elira was powerful. But even she could only guess at what would wake up in you.” Her head tilted. “And now it has.”
Bella took a step closer. “So what does this mean? For her?”
Ardetia studied me with an unreadable expression. “It means she’ll be hunted by those who understand what she is. And wanted by those who wish to use it. Which is, I suspect, what your Gideon has in mind.”
I clenched my jaw.
All those conversations I’d had with him danced around truth. The ones where he’d smiled like he knew something I didn’t because he most likely did. He’d never tried to win me with flattery or manipulation. He didn’t have to.
He knew I’d come to him, eventually. Once I realized I wasn’t like the others. That my magic didn’t follow the rules. That no one else had the answers I needed.
He’d waited.
And now I saw the shape of his patience for what it was.
A trap.
I turned toward the window. The glass was smudged, and beyond it, the garden shimmered faintly. Everything was layered. Stacked. Magic on magic.
Fae. Witches. Dragons. Wards. And now, this.
Bella moved beside me. She didn’t speak, didn’t reach out. Just stood there, shoulder to shoulder. A small comfort in the middle of something so vast I could barely hold it.
“I’m still me,” I said, mostly to remind myself.
Ardetia nodded once. “Of course. But knowing what you are is only the first step. What you do with it, that’s what matters now.”
I didn’t answer her. Not yet.
I didn’t know the shape of that answer.
But I did know this. I wasn’t walking blind anymore. And I wouldn’t let Gideon lead me anywhere I didn’t choose to go.
He thought he understood me. Thought he’d seen everything he needed to.
Let him think that.
Because hedge witch or not, I wasn’t his apprentice.
I would never be his.
I needed more answers from someone who seemed to keep them close, and glanced at Bella and Ardetia.
“I need to speak with my grandmother,” and a nod from Bella was all I got in return.
As I walked quickly, the sconces flickered, casting uneven light on the stone floors. My shoes made soft echoes, the only sound aside from the wind pressing against the windows like it wanted to come inside.
The snow had started falling again with thick, steady flakes that made the windows blur around the edges like a memory. It was the kind of snow that muffled everything once you stepped outside, made the world feel smaller and quieter. I’d always loved that about it. But now it was pressing in, trying to keep me from thinking too hard.
Not just about the hedge witch business. Sure, that was still spinning in my head, but it wasn’t just that. It was the books. The Shadowick dragon records in the basement. References to Gideon. The hidden pages, the pressed flowers, the scribbled diagrams that looked more like summoning circles than anything I’d ever seen her use.
She had to know I’d found them by now. The Academy didn’t exactly operate on secrets, not when it wanted you to believe something was meant to be discovered.
My grandma’s chambers were in the north wing, tucked near the library’s spine where the walls thickened and the ceilings bowed slightly from age. I knocked once, out of habit, and then let myself in.
She was reading in the chair by the fire, glasses perched low on her nose, a blanket over her knees. Her silver hair was braided back, same as always, and her slippered feet rested on the small blue velvet stool she always used but never admitted she needed.
“You look like someone who’s just learned too much,” she said without looking up.
“I probably have.”
She closed the book gently and set it on the side table. “Come sit.”
I took a seat in the chair across from her. The fire crackled between us, and the snow danced hard against the windowpanes.
“You knew, didn’t you?” I asked. “About the hedge witch thing.”
My grandma sighed and tilted her head just slightly. “I suspected . That’s different.”
“But not so different that you didn’t wonder.”
“I’ve wondered a great many things about you, Maeve. From the moment you spoke to Gideon from the safety of your bedroom.” Her eyes crinkled. “But wondering isn’t knowing. And I had no proof.”
“Ardetia seems pretty certain. She’s a fae.”
Elira raised a brow. “Fae usually are. Is she our new visitor?”
I nodded, looked at the fire, and let it warm my hands before speaking again.
“Why didn’t you tell me that it was a possibility? That hedge witches even existed in our family line?”
She was quiet for a moment. Not defensive. Just… careful.
“Your great-grandmother was one,” she said finally. “Though we didn’t call it that back then. Just said she had a knack for crossing thresholds. She didn’t stay in one place for long—not mentally, not magically. She was strange in all the ways people find inconvenient. She left before I was old enough to remember her properly.”
Did this mean Celeste would eventually wind up here? Wondering? Believing?
“I saw hints,” she admitted. “The way the Wards behaved around you. How some of the binding spells just… frayed in your presence. But you never seemed pulled between worlds. Not until recently.”
“I didn’t even know I was .”
Elira nodded. “Which was the only reason I didn’t push. I would've told you if you’d shown signs of slipping through places you didn’t belong. But you stayed grounded. You grew up mostly outside of magic, where that kind of crossing wasn’t likely. Until you came back here.”
I swallowed. “So it’s not just a magical quirk.”
“No.” Her voice softened. “It’s an identity. A weight and a gift, both.”
I nodded slowly, chewing on the inside of my cheek. Then, before I could lose my nerve, I shifted forward in the chair. “There’s something else.”
My grandma raised her brows again, though her expression didn’t change.
“I found the books,” I said. “In the basement room. The ones behind the stone. The journals.”
Her lips pressed together. She didn’t speak.
“And I saw the spells. The diagrams. Some of it looked… not like the magic we use.”
Still, she didn’t speak.
“Some of it looked close to shadow work,” I said. “Not quite dark magic. But not light either.”
Finally, Grandma Elira inhaled, slow and deep.
“I was scared,” she said. “Curious. And reckless in a way I wouldn’t wish on anyone. I wanted to know what the Academy couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell me. I never crossed into true shadow magic. But I walked the border.”
I looked at her, trying to gauge the distance between who she’d been and now. “You didn’t tell me.”
“Because it was mine to carry,” she said simply. “And I didn’t want you tracing my path. I wanted you to make your own.”
I leaned back, hands folded in my lap. The fire popped sharply. I stared at it for a long moment.
“There’s one more thing.”
Grandma Elira’s voice was quiet. “Go on.”
I turned to her, my expression probably sharper than I meant.
“Why did you lie? When I asked you if other dragons existed, besides the ones here, you said you didn’t know.”
“I didn’t lie,” she said evenly.
“You knew Shadowick had some.”
She tilted her head. “I knew Shadowick had dragons. Past tense. I don’t know that they still do.”
I blinked.
“You asked me if others exist ,” she continued. “In the present. And I answered honestly. I don’t know. I haven’t been beyond these walls in decades, Maeve. I don’t pretend to know what the world looks like now.”
I let out a long breath.
“I never wanted you chasing ghosts,” she said, softer this time. “The dragons chose to sleep, but they’re waking now. It’s for a reason. And maybe it’s time someone started asking why. But I wouldn’t drag you into that before you were ready.”
“And now?”
She looked at me, steady and kind. “Now I think the dragons are choosing you. ”
I didn’t answer right away. I didn’t know how.
Outside, the snow kept falling, burying the old paths. Covering everything. Making it new.
“You wrote that you knew what Gideon was after.”
She laughed and shook her head. “If I did, none of this would have ever happened. It was an obnoxious witch walking lines I shouldn’t have been.”
“So, you’re not keeping that from me?” I pressed.
My grandma’s gaze stayed on mine, and she shook her head. “I would tell you if I knew what Gideon wanted, but I don’t. Those journals were coming from a desperate place where confidence overshadowed factualness. It’s why I hid them in the basement.”
I nodded slowly. “Thank you for telling me now.”
“Absolutely, darling. Absolutely.” She smiled. “Now, I think it’s time to meet our new teacher.”
But the one thing I kept close was that the Academy only showed me what it wanted me to know.