Chapter Thirty-Two
Nobody moved for a few seconds after Rendel’s last words. Even the leaves overhead seemed to settle, the wind slipping through the branches softer now, like the forest itself was waiting to see what I’d say next.
I found my voice before the rest of my thoughts caught up.
“How do you know about my mother?” I asked.
The words came out sharper than I intended. My hands had curled into fists without me noticing.
“You know about the Priestess holding her?”
Rendel nodded slowly.
“I make Shadowick my business,” he said, “as well as Stonewick.”
The way he said it made it sound less like a job and more like a long habit.
“And for the record,” he continued, “she’s not exactly holding her.”
Something about the calm in his voice made the air feel colder.
“She can be retrieved.”
A chill skittered across my skin, and I hadn’t realized how tight my chest had been until that moment, until the idea slipped into the room between us like a door cracking open.
If he was to be believed, my mom wasn’t permanently trapped or held in chains.
She could be gotten.
I didn’t know if that made things better or infinitely worse.
My eyes stayed on Rendel.
“So,” I said slowly, “what do you think I have that you want?”
For the first time since we’d stepped into the clearing, something shifted in his expression.
It was small, but I saw it.
His eyes darkened briefly, and his attention flicked over my shoulder toward the deeper woods before returning to me. There was something so familiar about his expression, but it had nothing to do with Keegan, and that bit of information worried me.
“The shadow stone.”
The words landed like a dropped plate, and for a second, I forgot how to think.
Out of everything he could have said…
That hadn’t even crossed my mind.
And because I wasn’t ready for the answer, the truth slipped out before my brain could stop it.
“I don’t have it.” The moment the words left my mouth, I wished I could grab them out of the air.
Rendel’s eyes narrowed slightly, but he wasn’t angry. Perhaps just disappointed.
“That’s a shame.” He pressed his lips into a thin line and let out his breath. “This could have gone a lot quicker.”
Rendel watched me carefully.
“You’re sure?” he asked again.
“Yes.” The answer came out quicker than I meant it to, but it didn’t change the facts.
Keegan’s father kept looking at me for another second, like he was checking whether I’d take my words back.
He gave me a small nod and stepped forward.
“That’s unfortunate.”
Twobble threw his hands up. “I’m sorry—are we just skipping over the part where things get explained?”
Skonk pointed straight at Rendel. “Yes. Like, why do you want the shadow stone?”
Rendel glanced at both of the goblins before his eyes came back to me.
“You really don’t know where it is.” It wasn’t a question. It was an observation.
“I just said I don’t have it,” I replied.
“But you know of it.” He tried a different angle.
I hesitated while something thoughtful crossed his face.
“You know where it is, don’t you?” A wicked smile spread across his lips that was nothing like Keegan’s. “That’s as good as having it. Just might complicate it.”
“Things are already complicated,” I said.
He gave a small nod, conceding the point, as the forest creaked softly behind him.
A branch shifted somewhere in the trees, and it was the quiet sort of sound that made the hairs on the back of my neck lift.
Rendel’s gaze flicked toward the noise and back to me.
My mind raced through everything I knew.
The Priestess.
Shadowick.
The strange pull the stone had carried when it surfaced before.
Now Keegan’s father, very much alive, is standing in front of me, asking for it like it was the most natural thing in the world.
And Gideon is the one who has it.
“You still haven’t explained something,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Why do you think I’d give it to you even if I had it?”
A faint smile touched the corner of his mouth.
“Because you want your mother back.”
The words landed quietly, but they hit harder than anything else he’d said.
Twobble sucked in a breath, and Skonk went completely still.
I felt a tidal motion again in my stomach, like something heavy had been dropped into deep water.
“You think I’d trade it,” I said slowly.
“I think you’d consider it.” His voice wasn’t mocking, but it was certain.
I crossed my arms tighter.
“You’re making a lot of assumptions.”
“I’ve had time to.” He nodded, exhaling and scanning the woods as if he were being watched.
The wind stirred the leaves again, and I studied him.
Really studied him.
The lines around his eyes.
The quiet way he held himself.
The strange familiarity that had tugged at me the moment I saw him.
Keegan’s father.
But there was something more about him. It wasn’t just Keegan’s familiarity that haunted me.
“What do you plan to do with it?” I asked.
“The stone?”
“Yes.”
He didn’t hesitate.
“Keep it out of the Priestess’s hands.”
“That’s convenient.”
“It’s also true.”
I folded my arms over my chest. “And what makes you think that we couldn’t do the same?”
A small breeze slipped through the clearing, and somewhere far behind us, a crow called once from the trees.
Rendel looked back toward the deeper woods again, but this time, he frowned slightly.
When his eyes returned to mine, something in them had shifted.
It wasn’t fear but urgency.
“Don’t let the Priestess find it.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“You’re already in deeper than you realize,” he said.
Twobble leaned forward. “I think that’s become crystal clear.”
Rendel didn’t answer him.
Instead, he just kept looking at me, and for the first time since this strange meeting began, the calm certainty in his expression faltered.
Just slightly.
The forest rustled again, but things felt closer this time.
Rendel noticed it too.
His head turned toward the trees behind him and back at me.
And when he spoke again, his voice dropped lower.
“Whatever you decide,” he said quietly, “decide it quickly.”
Twobble whispered, “I don’t like the sound of that.”
“I won’t tell you where it is.”
Rendel glanced into the woods, making it very clear we weren’t alone anymore, but it wasn’t his visitors. I could see it in his eyes.
The noise wasn’t loud at first. There was no thunder cracking through the sky or monstrous roar echoing between the trees. It was a hush that slipped over everything at once.
Even the breeze seemed to reconsider moving.
My skin prickled, and Twobble turned in a tight circle, his ears twitching like tiny radar dishes.
“I don’t like this,” he announced. “I especially don’t like it because I don’t know what I’m not liking, which somehow makes it worse.”
Skonk gripped the broom with both hands like it was a club. “Did the forest stop breathing?”
Rendel’s face had gone still in a way I didn’t trust.
“What did you do?” I asked.
His attention snapped to the trees beyond me. “I came alone.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
A streak of cold slid down the back of my neck.
Then the shadows moved.
Not the ordinary kind cast by branches and light, but something deeper. Wrong. The darkness peeled away from the bases of the trees in long ribbons, lifting from the ground as if the earth itself had decided to breathe out darkness.
One slid up a trunk and stretched into the air as another twisted around a patch of ferns and shot toward us, fast as a thrown knife.
I ducked, and the thing skimmed over my head with a hiss that raised every hair on my body.
Twobble shrieked. “NOPE.”
He threw both hands up, and a spray of bright gold sparks burst from his fingers in a way I’d never seen before.
They struck the shadow square in the middle.
For half a heartbeat, it held its shape, and I saw claws and smoke and hungry edges, but then it burst apart into a thousand black flecks that scattered through the trees.
“That worked!” Skonk yelped.
“Of course it worked,” Twobble snapped, already edging closer to me. “I’m brilliant under pressure and charming during disasters.”
Another shadow dropped from above.
This one struck the forest floor in front of Rendel and lunged at him low and fast. He moved quicker than I expected for someone who spent most of his time standing around being mysterious. His arm sliced through the air, and a blade of pale silver light flashed across the clearing.
The shadow split cleanly in half, and both pieces writhed.
But in the blink of an eye, they pulled themselves back together and spun toward us again.
“Oh, absolutely not,” I muttered.
My hand dropped to my waistband without thinking. The wand slid into my palm like it had been waiting there the whole time, warm and steady against my skin.
The chaos around us sharpened. Shadows wheeled overhead. Twobble was shouting something unhelpful. Skonk swung the broom like he was fighting off angry bats.
I didn’t think.
I just pointed.
A bright crack of magic shot from the wand and tore through one of the diving shadows like lightning ripping through fog. The thing burst apart in a spray of black fragments that scattered into the branches.
“Ha!” Skonk shouted. “Wand wins!”
“Don’t celebrate yet,” I said, tightening my grip as more shadows peeled off the trees and rushed us. I zapped the wand toward the creatures, and the power merely bounced off their edges, barely fraying the darkness.
And I knew I’d better reach for the magic inside me because my Hedge magic came easiest, especially when things started spilling out of their proper places, and right now the entire forest felt like it was tipping sideways.
I thrust my hand toward the nearest shadow and pictured a thorn hedge surging up where there should have been nothing but air.
The magic answered immediately, and a wall of bramble burst into existence between us and the diving shape. The shadow slammed into it and shrieked, smoke curling from the places where the thorns pierced it.
The smell made my stomach turn—wet ash, spoiled herbs, and something metallic underneath.