Chapter Twenty-Three
The bronze dragon’s eyes glinted brighter, like embers fanned by wind.
The Priestess.
The name felt different inside the den. It wasn’t just a threat, but something the dragons recognized as old.
The silver dragon’s tail flicked once, slowly.
“My grandmother is planning something that I can’t even wrap my head around.”
She hasn’t been the first to try, and she certainly won’t be the last. But you’re in a unique position, Maeve.
“I’m at a loss.”
A ripple of thought moved through the elder dragons. It felt something like understanding.
I feel anger coming from you, but it’s in the form of devotion, the silver dragon murmured. It means you believed there was another path.
I let out a breath that felt like it came from the bottom of my lungs. “Yes. Absolutely, I believed there was another path. One where my mom didn’t willingly play into the Priestess’s hand.”
What if the Priestess played into your mom’s hand?
The question shocked me and took the wind right out of me.
“I don’t know…” I said, shaking my head. “I never thought of it that way.”
We all have a part to play in the world, Maeve. That doesn’t mean choices are right or wrong. They simply are…
I thought about that for a second and nodded slowly.
“I’m worried that something has started that can’t be undone. The Academy seems awake in different ways, and even those that started this game seem to be…turning.”
Toward you or against you?
“I’m not sure.” I let out a breath. “It’s…Gideon.”
Behind the silver dragon, farther back in the den, a dragon moved forward slowly, eyeing me as if he recognized the name.
It had smoke-gray eyes to match its smoke-gray skin. Its eyes were half-lidded, and mist curled from its nostrils as he studied me. It almost felt as if it could see the shape of my mistakes before I made them. But beyond all that, I felt its gaze study me.
Gideon. The silver dragon repeated, and I nodded.
Gideon’s name felt like it snagged on something unseen
The bronze dragon’s presence pressed closer, not physically, but in attention.
Speak.
I licked my lips and glanced around the den as several sets of dragon eyes stared at me.
“Gideon helped us with the orcs. The priestess is forcing hordes of magical folk from their homes, and the orcs marched toward the Luminary. When we all had arrived, the Priestess had orchestrated the event to pin us against one another. Gideon stood between the orcs and Stonewick, giving his word that the Priestess wanted to see the battle and that she was indeed driving them from their homes.”
The den went very still, and the smoke-gray dragon exhaled. The mist in the air curled like a question.
You closed the circle. The silver dragon watched me. Unexpected things can come from unity.
“He’s come to me through my mind and physically as well. He confirmed my mom is alive, and he also offered something…a stone.”
The shadow stone?
I smiled and nodded, unable to hide my pride that the dragons continued to be one step ahead of us all.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to have it. But Gideon thinks it would be safer for us to keep it. And he feels that’s why the Priestess is hunting him.”
One of the reasons, no doubt. The silver dragon eyed the bronze dragon, and they both turned their eyes toward me.
We don’t want the Priestess to have the stone, but not because it’s all that powerful, but because she thinks it is.
All of Shadowick thinks that stone holds something greater than their parts, and that’s where the power comes from.
Believing in something apart from themselves that enables them to go deeper with the magic.
“So the stone isn’t dangerous by itself?”
Not particularly. Your world is full of objects you believe you can control or that can control you, the bronze dragon murmured. But the oldest magic is not held. It is agreed with.
The silver dragon stepped forward. If you believe in yourself, you can become more powerful than anything a stone can give the priestess.
The young dragon nearest me stirred, stretching one tiny claw in its sleep. Its wings twitched, and a soft pulse of warmth rolled through the alcove like a sigh.
“I don’t want you to tell me what to do,” I said, looking up at the elders. “I know you won’t. You don’t meddle. You’ve told me that before.”
The silver dragon’s eyes glinted. And yet you return.
“Because you comfort me. You remind me that this isn’t just about… me. You’ve been here. You’ve seen cycles. You’ve watched people make choices and live with them. And you’re still here.”
I let my gaze drift over their massive coils, their folded wings, the ageless patience in their eyes.
“Your mere presence gives me hope that we can do better.” I shrugged. “Maybe that’s my problem, though. I hope for things that…”
Hope isn’t foolish, the silver dragon said. It’s disciplined and trained. Hope is the most powerful tool humans have.
“My mother believes she’s saving us. She believes she’s doing what only she can do. And part of me understands it because I keep thinking… if it were that simple, wouldn’t I do it?
The question hung there, and the dragons didn’t answer immediately.
Finally, the silver dragon lowered her head slightly, eyes locking onto mine.
Sacrifice isn’t always about a body falling, Hedge Witch. Sometimes it is the surrender of anger when it is easiest to hate. Sometimes it is choosing patience when fear would run faster. Sometimes it is letting others carry what you have always carried alone.
“I’m not good at that,” I admitted.
You are becoming, she murmured.
I stared at the sleeping young dragons again.
“How do I protect them?” I whispered. “How do I protect the Academy when the Priestess has her hands in everything? When Gideon, Gideon of all people, might be trying to do something right, but his right has sharp edges and history and blood on it?”
The bronze dragon’s thoughts rolled through the air like distant thunder.
What is anchored by truth will hold. What is rooted in fear will crack. But hope must remain triumphant.
I thought back to the fear that rolled through me when I looked into the pedestal, and that’s when I realized I couldn’t let someone else’s plans define me. And I couldn’t live in fear that someone else’s actions could dictate my own.
“I keep thinking about the meaning of magic,” I confessed.
“I never used to think about it on its own. I thought about spells, Wards, and survival, and… not dying. I never stopped to ask what magic meant to me. Sure, I might not be the best at kitchen spells, and sometimes my wand work is a bit sketchy, but I still feel like magic is surrounding me.”
The silver dragon’s gaze softened, if a dragon’s gaze could soften.
Once you master what it means to you, all spells will fall in place, Hedge Witch.
I nodded, feeling hope fill my veins.
“To the Priestess, it means control, and to my mother, it means saving her family.”
And what about you, Headmistress? the bronze dragon asked.
The answer came like warmth spreading slowly through cold hands.
“To me, it means choosing hope. Magic gives me hope.”
Yes, my dear child, the silver dragon’s elegant head nodded.
“Magic gives me hope that we can unite and come together. Hope that we can end this and make the magical world safe again. Hope that Gideon will remain an ally.”
I took a deep breath and scanned the dragons, young and old. “Magic means hope to me.”
The den hummed around me, the Academy’s heartbeat threaded through stone, but then something shifted at the far edge of the cavern.
I watched a dragon I had never seen before step forward from deep in the shadows. It was so silent I might have missed it if the air hadn’t changed around him.
It was elegant, yet familiar. Its black scales weren’t just dark; it was as if midnight had been laid on his shoulders. Along the edges of his wings, along the ridges of his spine, silver tipped each scale as if someone had brushed him with starlight. His eyes were deep and unreadable.
He didn’t speak to me. He didn’t need to. He walked with deliberate strength and grace until he stood behind the other elders. His presence made the den feel larger.
And it suddenly felt like a page had been turned that I didn’t expect. That a new story was being written. I noticed the silver dragon glanced toward him for the briefest beat before turning her gaze back to me.
There are those who listen, she murmured. And those who watch. Both matter.
My pulse quickened as I felt the black dragon watching me.
“Who is he?” I asked quietly.
The black dragon met my gaze.
He didn’t answer.
The silence stretched for a moment, heavy but not uncomfortable. It felt less like refusal and more like patience, as though the dragon had stepped forward for a reason that didn’t require words.
Slowly, it dawned on me that he hadn’t come to explain anything.
He had come to watch me.
The bronze dragon’s voice moved through the den again, steady and deep.
You cannot control Shadowick. You can’t control the Priestess. You can’t control Gideon’s redemption, if that is what this is.
I let out a slow breath.
“But I can control myself,” I said. “What I do. What I choose to do with my magic.”
The silver dragon answered with a low rumble that warmed the chamber.
Yes.
“I will do my best to protect everyone,” I said.
The words came easier once I started.
“Stonewick. The Wards. The people who showed up at my cottage and stood there like it was their own home.”
Karvey’s heavy landing on the roof flashed through my mind. Twobble’s worried expression. My father helped when my legs had nearly given out.
“And I’m bringing my mother home,” I added.
The words came out quieter that time.
Not because I doubted them.
Because saying them out loud made the promise real.
The black dragon’s silver-tipped scales caught the light as he shifted, almost imperceptibly. It felt like a nod in slow motion.
The silver dragon’s voice brushed my mind like moonlight through mist.
Go, Hedge Witch, with open hands and not clenched fists. Let your magical meaning guide you.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
The dragons didn’t respond with words this time, just presence…and warmth.
As I stepped away and started toward the exit, I felt it. There was a subtle shift in the den, in the Academy, in something that lived beneath the stone.
It wasn’t a prophecy or a warning.
It was a promise held together by hope.
The magic I had created, and somewhere behind me in the den’s deep hush, the black dragon with silver-tipped scales remained silent, watching me, like the Academy itself had just placed a new guardian in my path.