Chapter Forty-One
It started with a twinge.
Not pain, exactly. Just a pulling sensation low on my side, right along the curve of my hip, where the birthmark had always lived—soft-edged, the shape of a leaf if you squinted. I'd had it since birth, barely noticed it most days. But it flared as I stepped out of the hotel’s main lobby. It wasn’t sharp, but insistent. Like a string being tugged from the other end.
I stopped walking.
The air smelled like frost and wood smoke. A few villagers milled about the green, bundled in scarves, buying bread and tea. Normal. Peaceful. But my skin was tight with warning. Something was wrong.
“Maeve?”
Keegan’s voice came from behind me, and I turned just as he came down the steps, pulling on his gloves.
“You okay?” he asked, eyeing me.
“My birthmark’s aching,” I said before I could talk myself out of it. “It’s never done that before. Not like this.”
He frowned, stepping closer. “Do you think—?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But it’s pulling. Like it wants me to follow.”
He didn’t hesitate. “Then we follow.”
We silently crossed the village street, and I felt the tug in my hip with every step, and it grew stronger as we passed the bakery and looked at the narrow alley that had just parted for us. We walked along the cobblestones to the Butterfly Ward’s entrance, but my steps slowed.
Keegan fell in beside me, his expression darkening as the shimmer before us faded.
“I don’t see it,” he said quietly.
I didn’t either.
The glow—always faint but steady—was gone. The air felt heavier here. Not cold, not exactly, but weighted.
The stone of the arch had paled.
“Look at the carvings,” I said, voice low.
Butterflies, once bright with hints of color etched deep in the runes, were dull. Some were barely visible, like they’d been rubbed away by time, weather, or something more deliberate.
I stepped closer and pressed my hand against the arch. My birthmark burned under my shirt.
“What does it mean?” I asked.
Keegan moved beside me, brushing his hand just above mine. He did not touch the stone, but it was close enough that I felt the electricity between us.
“I’ve never seen it like this,” he said. “The Wards can change… sure. Shift with the balance of magic. But this?” His voice dipped. “It looks like it’s unraveling.”
“But this was the strongest one,” I said, confused. “Even when the others faltered, the Butterfly Ward held. It was always steady. Always there. ”
He nodded. “It was rooted. Deep. Connected to the land, to the village, to—” He broke off. “To you. ”
I met his eyes. “So why is it breaking now?”
He didn’t have an answer. Neither did I.
We stepped through the arch together. The air inside was still, quiet in a way that felt unnatural. It didn’t resist us—if anything, it felt too easy to cross. Like the Ward didn’t care anymore who came or went.
Inside the circle, the butterflies were gone.
Not real ones—those only came in spring—but the magical ones. The little pulses of light that used to drift around the Ward boundary like sleepy fireflies. I didn’t realize how much I’d come to expect them until they weren’t there.
“This place always felt alive,” I whispered.
Keegan nodded. “Now it feels… emptied.”
We stood in silence, the snow muffled around us. Even the wind seemed to avoid the ward today.
“Is it the Academy?” I asked. “Is opening it weakening the Wards somehow?”
“No,” Keegan said immediately. Then he paused. “At least, not the way we think of it. Yes, the Wards and the Academy are woven together. But if anything, the return of the Academy should be strengthening them.”
“Then what is this?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he crouched near the stone at the center of the Ward, where the old runes spiraled out like a galaxy. They were faint now, and some had cracked through the middle.
“I think this is the curse,” he said finally.
I knelt beside him, my gloved fingers brushing the stone. The air here felt thinner, like breath didn’t fill your lungs the way it should.
“But it’s not supposed to touch the Wards,” I said.
He looked at me. “Maybe it’s not. Not directly. But if the Wards were feeding off the Academy’s magic, and the Academy has been fractured for years…”
“Then when it starts waking again, the magic shifts,” I said, finishing the thought. “And the curse finds new places to push.”
He stood. “We need to tell Elira. And Nova. Maybe even Ardetia.”
I rose with him, glancing back toward the arch.
“Do you think it can be repaired?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But if it can’t, and the curse keeps spreading…”
He didn’t finish that sentence either.
We walked back in silence, though my thoughts were anything but quiet. My birthmark still ached, like the magic inside me was warning me that the balance had tipped and we hadn’t even seen the worst of it yet.
As we passed under the bare branches lining the path, I looked back once more.
The arch stood quiet and gray in the distance.
The butterflies were still gone.
And I knew—deep down in the marrow of my bones—that this was only the beginning.
The Academy had awakened.
But so had something else.
The ache in my side hadn’t eased by the time we reached the top of the path. If anything, it had settled into something deeper—less a stab and more a pull, like a memory trying to tug me backward.
I pressed a hand against my hip through my coat, fingers resting over the mark. It throbbed softly. Not painful, exactly. Just… present. Persistent.
Keegan glanced at me but didn’t say anything right away. He knew better than to ask if I was alright. We both knew I wasn’t.
We stopped at the top of the ridge, where the Butterfly Ward’s garden had once bloomed wild and brilliant. Even in the off-season, it usually carried a shimmer—petals curled in frost, the promise of green sleeping beneath the surface. But now? It looked pale. Faded. Like the life had been drained from the soil.
I let out a slow breath and stepped further in, my boots crunching on what little snow had settled on the gravel. There was a bench near the old statue of the seated woman holding an open book in her lap. I always liked that statue. It wasn’t grand or overly magical—just calm. Patient. As though it had all the time in the world.
I sat beside it, the cold from the stone biting through the layers of my clothes.
Keegan stood nearby, hands in his coat pockets, his gaze scanning the ward like he expected it to shift again, to crack further or speak in some hidden voice only he could hear.
“Twobble’s still watching the cottage,” he said after a moment, gently, like he could hear the direction of my thoughts without me speaking them aloud. “Your dad’s alright. Nothing’s stirred near the perimeter, and Twobble would throw a fit before letting anything slip past him unnoticed.”
I nodded, grateful for the update, though it didn’t ease the knot in my chest. If anything, it only made it worse.
And Gideon.
That name landed in my mind like a dropped stone.
I looked up at Keegan, the cold biting at my cheeks, my breath fogging between us.
“What if he’s doing this?” I asked, voice barely above a whisper.
Keegan’s brows drew together. “Gideon?”
“What if… there’s some kind of tie? A bond. Something I didn’t mean to make, but…” I swallowed hard. “What if he can feel everything I’m doing? What if he leeches it the moment I step closer to opening the Academy? Sucks the magic dry from wherever he is?”
Keegan didn’t answer immediately. He looked down at the garden, at the stone beneath our feet, then slowly crossed to sit beside me. The statue watched us in her quiet, carved wisdom.
“You think he left something in you,” he said, not as a question. Just a truth he’d seen written across my face.
“I don’t know, ” I admitted. “But it keeps coming back. I remember all the times I ran into him, how easily he found me, and how he always seemed close enough. And now, with the Ward fading and my birthmark burning, I—” I stopped myself, swallowing the rest.
Keegan didn’t move. He watched the ground for a long moment, then said, “Magical ties are real. You know that.”
I nodded.
“But they’re rarely one-sided. If there’s a tether, Maeve, you can feel him too. You’d know, somewhere deep down, if he were actively feeding off this place. If he was draining it.”
I looked away. “Unless he’s hiding it. Unless I don’t know.”
“You’re not powerless,” he said, firm but kind. “If there’s a bond, we’ll find it. Break it. You’re not his to track. Not his to claim.”
The wind picked up slightly, whistling through the bare branches overhead. I pulled my coat tighter, staring out over the dulled garden.
“I thought the Academy would fix everything,” I said quietly. “Or not fix—just... bring light back. It was supposed to get better, not worse.”
“It is getting better,” he said. “Just not cleanly. Not all at once.”
I looked over at him. “I hate that.”
His mouth lifted in a half-smile. “I know.”
We sat there in silence. The statue held her book. The wind carried frost and old leaves through the broken garden paths. Somewhere below, life moved on—bakers kneaded dough, children chased one another across the green, lanterns flickered in windows.
But up here, the magic was thinning.
And I couldn’t shake the sense that something was watching. Waiting.
The ache in my side pulsed again, and I closed my eyes.
“Even if he’s not draining it,” I whispered, “he’s still out there. And he knows. ”
Keegan reached over and took my hand, not to fix anything or explain it away—but just to hold.
“I know,” he said. “But so do we.”