Chapter Thirty-Five
Keegan went still.
It wasn’t the kind of stillness that comes from calm. It was the other kind, the dangerous one, that came from horror. The moment when someone sees something they never expected, and the world stutters for half a breath.
His eyes had landed on Rendel.
That was all the opening the Priestess needed.
Her hand lifted.
It wasn’t quick or dramatic, just a small movement through the fog, as if she were brushing something invisible from the air.
Behind her, the shadows shifted.
They had been drifting back a moment before, loose and scattered, like smoke after a fire. Now they tightened all at once, gathering themselves.
Then they came screaming back across the clearing.
“KEEGAN!” I yelled.
The first shadow hit the ground exactly where he’d been standing a heartbeat earlier. Keegan twisted aside just in time, his wolf body moving with the kind of speed that made your eyes struggle to keep up. Dirt and leaves exploded into the air where the thing struck.
Another shadow caught his shoulder as he turned.
He staggered half a step before snapping around and tearing straight through it with his teeth. The creature burst apart like smoke under pressure.
But it didn’t matter.
There were too many of them.
They came pouring through the trees from every direction at once.
Bella lunged forward with a snarl and slammed into one midair, sending it spinning into the underbrush. An orc barreled straight through another with a roar that shook the branches overhead.
Still, they kept coming.
One slipped past Bella. Another darted low through the grass.
And that’s when the mark on my shoulder flared.
It wasn’t a slow burn, and Luna’s wrap stopped working.
A violent flash of heat shot straight through my chest.
I sucked in a sharp breath as the pain hit as I tried to stand.
My knees wobbled, and the hedge around the clearing reacted instantly. The vines shuddered like something had yanked a wire through them. Thorns rattled against one another as the entire wall of greenery rippled outward.
Twobble made a small noise behind me. “Oh geez.”
The shadows weren’t just going for Keegan anymore.
They were reacting to me.
One slammed straight into the hedge.
The vines recoiled as if they’d been struck with lightning. A ripple of movement ran along the entire wall of thorns, leaves shaking violently.
And then something strange happened.
The shadow didn’t fight the hedge.
It slipped through it.
It didn’t tear through the vines or blast them apart.
Just sliding and threading its way between the branches like smoke slipping through the cracks in a door.
My stomach dropped.
“They’re using your magic!” Skonk shouted behind me.
“I know!”
Another wave of shadows dove toward the clearing.
Keegan leapt to intercept them, knocking one aside with his shoulder. Another twisted past him and brushed against his back leg before dissolving into mist.
He stumbled again.
The sight hit me like a punch to the ribs.
Keegan didn’t stumble.
Not unless things were already very bad.
Fear clawed up the inside of my chest.
If he went down—
No.
I shoved the thought away before it could finish forming.
The mark burned hotter against my shoulder as the shadows had worked their way into the hedge.
They slipped along the vines, winding through the bramble like dark threads stitched into the green. Every time the branches shifted, the shadows shifted with them, moving where the hedge moved.
I’d never seen magic do that before.
They weren’t tearing the spell apart.
They were guiding it.
The thought made my head swim, but it occurred to me that if the shadows could use my Hedge magic, I should be able to use the shadow magic.
“Maeve,” Rendel called from somewhere behind me, his voice suddenly sharp. “You need to stop this.”
A breathless sound escaped me that might have been a laugh.
“Great idea,” I said. “I’m open to suggestions.”
Another shadow streaked low across the clearing.
Keegan snapped at it and tore it apart, but two more came in behind it, twisting through the branches like they knew exactly where the openings were.
The hedge shuddered again, but not in response to the shadows.
In response to me.
The mark pulsed, and suddenly I could feel the vines.
Not just see them.
Feel them.
I could feel the hedge beneath everything.
The roots pushed through the soil. The branches hooked around the edge of the clearing. Every thorn, every stubborn twist of green.
It was still my magic.
The shadows hadn’t taken it from me. They were just moving along it, slipping through the spaces the spell had already opened.
The realization landed hard and clear.
They weren’t controlling the hedge.
They were following the paths I’d made.
Which meant I could shut those paths and drive the shadows where they needed to go,
Another shadow dove for Keegan.
Bella slammed into it before it reached him, sending the thing spinning through a cluster of low branches.
But Keegan had already turned to face another.
And another.
And another.
Too many.
“Maeve!” Skonk yelled.
“I know!”
My hands curled into fists. The mark at my side flared hot enough to make me suck in a breath, and the hedge shuddered with it, branches rattling as the shadows scraped through them.
Everything around me was noise, shouting, the rush of wings, the crack of spells hitting bark, but underneath it, there was something quieter. Something steady.
The hedge.
But the shadows slipped through the vines again, twisting their way along the paths my magic had opened.
This time, I didn’t let it happen.
I dug in, the way the roots did, and shoved back hard.
“I’m trying!”
But the vines weren’t listening.
The hedge surged outward again, thicker now, thorns snapping and curling—but the shadows slipped between them as if they belonged there.
My magic felt wrong.
Unsteady.
Like someone else had their hands on the wheel.
Keegan hit the next shadow head-on, his jaws snapping shut with a sound that carried across the clearing.
The thing tore apart under the force of it, scattering into ragged pieces of dark that vanished before they hit the ground.
His fur was streaked with mud now, sides heaving as he pulled in breath after breath.
Another shadow dropped from the trees.
It came fast.
Too fast.
Keegan never saw it.
“Look out!” Bella shouted.
The shadow slammed into his side and knocked him off his feet. He hit the ground hard, the impact sending leaves and dirt flying.
The whole clearing erupted at once—voices shouting, spells cracking through the air, someone swearing loudly enough that it echoed off the trees.
Something inside me gave way.
Not a quiet crack. Something sharper.
The fear. The frustration. The horrible sense that my own magic had turned into a weapon someone else was holding.
I squeezed my eyes shut, but not to hide from it.
I forced myself to stop looking at the chaos around me and turned my attention inward.
The mark on my shoulder burned, hot and angry, like it had its own pulse. For a second, it almost drowned everything else out.
But beneath it, under the pain and the noise and the shadows tearing through the clearing, I could still feel the magic that belonged to me.
Hedge Magic
Not just the branches I’d thrown into the fight, but the deeper part of it. The roots pushing through dark soil, the slow, steady life of it spreading outward and holding its ground.
It had always been there.
Quiet. Steady. Waiting for me to stop fighting it and remember how to listen.
The shadows were tangled in those roots now.
Sliding through them.
Steering them.
But they weren’t the roots.
They were just… riding them.
“Alright,” I muttered.
The mark flared again.
But I didn’t fight it.
I grabbed it.
The sensation nearly knocked me sideways.
Cold power surged through my chest like river water breaking through a dam. My fingers clenched automatically as the Hedge magic roared awake inside me.
The vines around the clearing exploded outward.
Not lashing.
Growing.
Branches thickened, twisting together as thorned walls surged upward. The shadows tangled in them shrieked as the brambles tightened around their shapes.
They fought back briefly.
Then the vines dragged them down and became what I imagined of them.
Twobble stared.
“Oh,” he whispered. “That seems… new.”
Skonk blinked rapidly.
“Did she just… grow the forest?”
“I heard that,” I snapped.
I kept my attention on the hedge.
The shadows were still moving through it, slipping along the vines and tugging at the edges of the spell as they had before. But now I could feel where they were—every place they brushed the magic, every gap they tried to slide through, and I turned them around.
Another wave dropped out of the trees, but the hedge answered before I even thought about it. Vines shot upward, thick and fast. Three of the shadows hit the thorns and burst apart in ragged streaks of dark.
Three tried to twist past the branches, and I turned two of the shadows against the others.
The hedge closed around it, tight and sudden, and crushed it into nothing.
For a split second, the clearing went quiet.
But the shadows reacted with a rush of something cold and furious that rolled through the trees and rattled every leaf around us.
The fog at the far end of the clearing stirred.
The Priestess stepped out of it like she’d been there all along.
Her gaze landed on me.
“Interesting,” she said softly.
The mark on my shoulder pulsed again, harder this time.
The hedge responded instantly, branches tightening as the remaining shadows thrashed against them. Two shadows slipped above, and I felt the Hedge twist them into my control, diving after the shadows taunting Keegan.
Another slid by and shot toward Luna, and a vine from the ground twisted around the shadow, creating a torpedo, which darted toward another batch of shadows.
But the Priestess wasn’t watching the vines.
She was watching me.
And she was smiling.
I hated that smile.
Keegan pushed himself up from the ground with a low growl.
His wolf eyes flicked toward me briefly, something like surprise flashing through them as the hedge surged around us.
Then he lunged back into the fight, driving two shadows away from the witches near the treeline.
The town didn’t break.
If anything, it pushed harder.
The orcs fought harder as they forced their way toward the center of the clearing. Magic flared around them as the witches joined in—quick flashes of light, bursts of color that cracked through the gloom like fireworks in the wrong season.
Bella streaked past me in a blur of copper and red, too fast for the shadows to catch, her movements sharp and precise as she cut through the fight.
Across the clearing, the Priestess lifted one hand.
She didn’t rush.
She didn’t need to.
The shadows that still lingered pulled back from the others and drifted toward me again, circling in slow, patient loops.
They weren’t striking this time.
They were waiting.
The mark on my shoulder throbbed.
Once.
Hard enough that it stole my breath.
My grip on the hedge slipped for just a heartbeat.
The vines shuddered. Branches rattled together like something had shaken them from the inside.
And that was all the shadows needed.
They slid through the gap.
I tried to pull the spell tight again, but the moment had already passed.
That’s when I noticed movement beyond the mist.
At first, I thought it was just another shadow shifting between the trees.
But this one didn’t move.
It stood there.
Tall. Still.
Watching.
I couldn’t make out a face. The branches and drifting smoke kept breaking up the shape, hiding whatever features might have been there.
But I knew it was a person.
And whoever they were, they weren’t watching the fight.
They were watching me.