Chapter Twenty-Nine
The priestess’s voice slid through the glass again, softer this time, and somehow that made it worse.
“Maeve Una Bellemore.”
The windowpane shivered. The little crack in the corner spidered another millimeter.
Behind me, half the room spoke at once.
“Don’t move,” Keegan said.
“Absolutely not,” Stella snapped.
“You’re not going out there,” my mom hissed.
The Silver Wolf growled, low and continuous, like distant thunder.
Nova lifted her staff a fraction.
“We stall,” she said. “We regroup. We do not answer on her terms.”
I heard them all and agreed with… nearly all of them.
But every instinct in me that wasn’t currently screaming was whispering a different truth.
I couldn’t hide from the priestess of Shadowick forever.
If I didn’t step out on my own feet now, she would find another way to drag me where she wanted me. Through mirrors. Through Wards. Through my daughter.
At least this way, I chose the angle.
I stepped closer to the window.
Up close, the frost on the glass was beautiful in a horrifying way—delicate, knife-edged ferns curling outward from invisible points of impact. Beyond it, in the square, the high priestess stood at the center of her gathered shadows like a queen on a very unfortunate chessboard.
She’d folded her hands now, patient, as if she were waiting for a late guest at a dinner party.
My butterfly mark throbbed, sick and cold.
“Maeve,” Keegan said again, lower now, right at my shoulder. “Look at me.”
I tore my gaze from the square.
His face was pale, the curse-blue shadows under his eyes darker than ever. But his expression was steady, jaw clenched, eyes clear and full of something I could stand on.
“You don’t have to go,” he said. “She’s trying to pull you into her rhythm. Make you dance to it. We don’t play her game.”
“I know,” I said. “I know.”
“Then don’t,” he said.
The problem was, I also knew what kind of magic she wielded. I’d seen its fingerprints. In Malore. In the Hunger Path. In the way the mirrors had cracked when she’d tried to shove herself through them.
She didn’t stop just because you ignored her.
“She’s already in our rhythm,” I said quietly. “The Wilds shook. The Wards shook. This town shook. We just pretended it was a tremor instead of someone knocking.”
“Maeve,” my mom said sharply. “Don’t you dare—”
I turned to her.
Her face was white, anger and fear doing an ugly, familiar waltz there.
“You saw what she did to Elira,” she said.
“You saw what she did to Frank. To all of us. She doesn’t play fair.
You go out there, and she’ll crawl into your head, and it will be over before you even know she’s decided how to use you. ”
“I’m not Elira,” I said.
“That’s what she’s counting on,” my mom shot back.
The shop felt cramped, suddenly, air heavy with too many people’s breathing and too much fear. The walls, shelves, teapots, and even the old kettle seemed to lean in.
My brain tried to go in ten directions at once.
Dragons. Hollows. Elira anchored in the cottage. Celeste packing a bag somewhere, blissfully unaware. Gideon’s empty place in the circle. The priestess’s voice still humming under my skin like a bad note.
Twobble had pressed himself against the side of a display case, eyes huge, ears flat. Skonk hovered beside him, notebook clutched to his chest like a shield.
I made a decision.
“Twobble,” I said.
His head snapped up. “If this is about me going out there instead, I have to respectfully decline,” he said in a rush. “I’m very small and extremely fireable.”
“Not that,” I said. I gestured him closer.
He edged over warily, casting suspicious glances at the window like he expected a shadow tentacle to slither in at any second.
“What?” he whispered. “If this is about snacks, I swear I’ll ration the cake.”
I leaned down until we were almost nose to nose. His breath smelled like tea and sugar and a little like panic.
“I need you to do something for me,” I murmured, keeping my voice low enough that only he and maybe Keegan could hear. “Something seriously annoying and very important.”
His expression sobered instantly. Goblin humor and goblin gravity lived right next to each other.
“Name it,” he said.
“Keep Keegan safe,” I said. “If he tries to follow me out there, trip him. Bite him. Set his pants on fire. I don’t care. Just don’t let him walk into her reach if you can help it.”
Keegan made an offended sound behind me. “Maeve.”
“Do you know you?” I said without looking at him. “You’re going to try to hero out the door the second I open it.”
“Accurate,” Twobble said solemnly.
I squeezed his shoulder. “You’re the only one who can distract him enough that he doesn’t bulldoze over everyone. You and Stella, maybe. Tag-team it. Goblin tricks, vampire guilt. Whatever it takes.”
Twobble looked past me at Keegan, then at the window, then back at me.
For once, he didn’t crack a joke.
He nodded. A short, sharp, stoic little dip of his chin that did not match his sticky fingers and crumb-covered shirt at all.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. I’ll glue him to the floor if I have to.”
“Preferably not literally in my shop,” Stella said. “But I co-sign the sentiment.”
Keegan’s hand closed around my elbow. “Maeve. Don’t do this.”
I straightened slowly, forcing myself to meet his gaze.
“I have to talk to her,” I said. “I can’t keep doing everything through intermediaries and guesswork. She came here, Keegan. To Stonewick. To my doorstep. If I don’t face her now, she’ll just find another way in that we don’t control.”
He held my eyes a long beat.
“Control is not what she’s offering,” he said.
“I know,” I said. “I’m not going out there to accept any offers.”
The Silver Wolf padded closer, massive head lowering until her golden eyes were level with mine.
“If she tries to take you,” she said. “She will meet my teeth before she reaches the trees.”
I swallowed. “Good to know.”
Nova stepped in, staff in hand.
“You step outside,” she said, “you stay inside the line of sight. No moving out of windows’ view. No stepping into any shadows that aren’t yours.”
“Got it,” I said.
“And you keep your mind thorned,” Ardetia added, voice cool. “She will not just speak. She will reach. Hedge magic was born to resist that. Use it.”
Thorns. Roots. Stone under my feet.
I could do that.
“Right,” I said. “Thorns, roots, no field trips into shadow. Don’t accept any candy.”
“That last part is not a joke,” Stella said.
I took a breath that didn’t feel big enough and walked toward the door.
The room seemed to hold its own breath.
The brass handle was cold under my fingers. The bell above the frame quivered like it knew what was coming and objected on principle.
I felt Keegan move behind me, but Twobble was faster.
He launched himself at Keegan’s waist and latched on like a particularly determined burr.
“Goblin ballast!” he yelled. “You have to stay for structural integrity!”
Keegan swore, half-staggering, grabbing for a chair to steady them both.
It gave me the second I needed.
I opened the door.
The bell chimed, far too cheerful for the occasion.
Cold hit me like a wall. Not the crisp chill of winter, or the damp cool of Stonewick mornings.
This was… absence.
Heat, sound, color—all blunted.
The square lay spread out before me, familiar and wrong. Shadows pooled at the edges of buildings, too thick, too dark. The fountain in the center had frozen mid-splash, water arched in impossible, perfect curves of ice.
And in the middle of it all, the high priestess stood, her shadows trailing behind her like an overexcited cloak.
Stepping out onto the cobbles felt like walking into a story I hadn’t agreed to be in.
I let the door fall shut behind me.
Immediately, I sank my awareness downward.
Hedge magic was about edges. Boundaries. The spaces between.
I imagined roots dropping from the soles of my feet, digging into the stone, seeking the stubborn little weeds that always grew between the cracks.
I let my senses touch the cool, rough texture of the cobbles, the faint thrum of the land’s own magic under the priestess’s overlay.
I let my mind drum an energy that only I felt, imagining realms only for me.
Thorns, I reminded myself.
In my mind’s eye, I pictured a hedge around my thoughts—dense, spiky, woven from blackberry vines and rose canes and the prickly branches growing along the Butterfly Ward.
Every time my anxiety tried to rush out toward her, I nudged it back inside, letting the thorns snag and slow it.
The priestess watched me approach like I was a mildly interesting animal.
Up close, she did not look as old as I’d expected.
Her hair was braided back from her face, threaded with pale, glinting charms. Her skin was pale, but not fragile, more like porcelain that had never once been allowed to crack. Only the fine lines around her eyes and mouth gave her away, and even those looked… curated.
Her eyes, though.
Those were ancient.
“A good girl,” she said, when I stopped a sensible distance away. Her voice was clear, carrying, the accent of Shadowick threading it with colder vowels. “You have sense. I was afraid Elira’s… whims might have made you stubborn to the point of stupidity.”
My jaw tightened. “I’ve been known to have my moments.”
The corner of her mouth ticked up. “That, I do not doubt.”
She tilted her head slightly, studying me. I felt the brush of something, not physical, not quite magical, testing the air around me, looking for a way in.
Thorns, I thought fiercely.
I pictured them biting down on any tendril that reached for me, sap and bramble and all the tiny, ruthless plants that refused to be uprooted.
The pressure slid off.
Her eyes narrowed just a fraction.
“Interesting,” she murmured. “Hedge magic. Not as primitive as I thought.”
“We’re very versatile,” I said.
“Mm.” Her gaze flicked past me, to the shop, where shadows pressed against the fogged glass. “You keep impressive company,” she observed. “Wolf. Fae. Vampire. Goblins. Witches.” Her lip twitched. “And yet, for all your allies, you came alone when I called.”
“Let’s not pretend I had many options,” I said. “You shook the Wards. You froze the town. You shouted my entire name at a tea shop. Subtlety is not in your top five traits.”
She laughed.
It was a pretty sound, light and musical.
It did not make me feel any better.
“Come now,” she said. “If I wished to drag you elsewhere, I would not do it in front of an audience.” She spread her hands slightly, and the shadows at her feet quivered like obedient dogs. “We both know I have something you want. And you”—her eyes sharpened—“have something I want.”
My stomach rolled.
“Let’s start with what I want,” I said, because hedge magic also meant picking your ground. “Gideon.”
Her expression didn’t change much, but something in her eyes cooled.
“Ah,” she said. “My little knife.”
I bristled. “He’s not—”
“He is exactly what I made him,” she said, voice cutting. “A blade. Sharp enough to wound, not sharp enough to kill me. He owes every scrap of his power to the path I opened for him. The Hunger, the shadows, the whispering edge that made him so useful to Malore and so irritating to you.”
“He’s a person,” I said. “Not a pet. Not a toy.”
She smiled, slow and terrible. “Everything is a toy, if you are old enough and patient enough.”
I felt bile rise in my throat.
“You used him,” I said.
“Of course I used him,” she said, as if I’d commented on the weather. “That is what one does with tools. I sharpened him. Pointed him at the right targets. Let him believe his rebellion meant something. It kept him obedient far longer than chains would have.”
“He helped you build the Hunger Path,” I said. “He kidnapped my father. He hurt people I love. And you expect me to believe he did all that because you… nudged him?”
“Do not be naive,” she said. “He enjoyed it. Power is… intoxicating, for those who have never had it.”
I thought of Gideon’s face in the neutral ground, drawn and tired, the glitter of something hollow in his eyes.
I thought of the way he said yes to the circle.
And didn’t come.
My chest clenched.
“Where is he?” I demanded. “If you claim to have something I want, start there.”
She laughed again, delighted this time, as if I’d told a clever joke.