Chapter Thirty-Five
If Shadowick had a heart, I’d just flown straight into it.
From the air, the place had looked like a mean little stone house sunk into a hill—ugly, hard-edged, forgettable by design. The kind of building you don’t look at twice, because your instincts tell you it’s better not to remember it at all.
The moment my boots hit the ground, reality… shifted.
The modest, squat shape in front of me inhaled.
Not literally. There was no roof rising and no walls expanding, but the sense of it, the magical overlay, drew in a long, quiet breath and exhaled its glamour.
The little house melted away.
In its place, something bigger unfolded.
The hill itself seemed to unroll, like a cloak being thrown back.
Stone columns rose where bare rock had been, their surfaces carved with old sigils and scars.
The roofline stretched, jagged points emerging like broken teeth against the dim sky.
A tower I was absolutely certain hadn’t been there a second ago pushed upward, stopping short of any sensible height just so it could loom.
A mansion, or a castle, depending on how charitable you wanted to be, resolved in front of me.
It wasn’t grand in the shiny, palace sense. It wasn’t beautiful, exactly. But it was… darkly romantic in that “I eat hope for breakfast” way.
Gothic bones. Shadowick style.
The stone was a deep, near-black gray, the kind that drank light instead of reflecting it.
Ivy crawled up the walls in thick, ropey swathes, its leaves not green but a muted wine color, like blood gone old. High, narrow windows punctured the facade at irregular intervals, their glass almost opaque from this angle, some lit with the faintest glow from within—dull amber, sickly purple.
Balconies jutted out in odd places and were too narrow to be practical and too exposed to be safe. Some had wrought-iron railings that twisted into thorn-like curls; others were simply open platforms that seemed made for dramatic entrances, exits, or falls.
It looked like the kind of place where tragic love stories came to die.
The air around it was thick with old magic. It clung to my skin, slid into my lungs. It smelled faintly of damp stone, old iron, and something sweet underneath—dried roses left too long in a book.
“Of course,” I muttered. “Of course, she lives in the villainous romance novel house.”
A path wound up from where I stood to the front entrance. Once, it had probably been brick. Now it was a long, uneven spine of dark red rectangles, cracked and buckled in places, moss growing in the gaps like stubborn old grudges.
Ancient shadows blew across it in thin, tattered sheets.
Not a breeze.
Shadows themselves, streaming low like ground-hugging fog.
As they passed, dirt and leaves skittered aside, clearing the way as thoroughly as any broom.
They left the path bare and bone-colored, lined by low, creeping plants with thorny stems and tiny, almost-black flowers that seemed to track my movement.
“Well,” I said to nobody, forcing my boots to move. “Nothing says ‘welcome’ like the house doing its own sweeping.”
As I stepped onto the brick, the shadows parted in front of me, then closed behind, like I’d walked into the throat of something that didn’t intend to let me back out easily.
Gargoyles circled overhead.
They weren’t like Karvey and the others. These were leaner, meaner, and carved in sharper lines. With wings folded, they prowled the roofline in stiff, suspicious patrols. A few crouched on the corners of balconies; others clung to the tower like gargantuan stone bats.
As I walked, their heads tracked me, but they didn’t attack.
Eyes, glowing faintly with dull silver light, followed my every step. Clawed stone paws gripped the ledges as they shifted, repositioning themselves so they always had the best view. One lifted its head and scented the air, lip curling back from stone fangs.
The message was clear. Prey in the yard.
“Hi,” I said awkwardly, trying not to wince as my voice carried oddly in the dense air. “You know Karvey? He says hi.”
Silence.
Then a low grinding rumble escaped the nearest one, its stone chest expanding slightly.
I had no idea if that was a warning, a laugh, or a burp. Shadowick gargoyles were not on my list of electives.
“Noted,” I said. “Sticking to the path.”
The mansion loomed larger with every step.
Details emerged.
The massive front door was made of some dense, dark wood, slashed with bands of black iron.
The iron wasn’t smooth; it was etched with more sigils, little hooks and lines that scratched against my senses.
A heavy knocker in the shape of a wolf’s head hung in the center, its eyes set with pieces of dull purple stone.
The windows nearest the entrance were taller, their glass warped here and there so the reflections they threw back were slightly… wrong. Distorted. My own faint shape in one pane looked like someone had stretched it on the wrong axis, limbs too long and a blur where my face should be.
“You really are committed to the aesthetic, aren’t you?” I whispered, more to keep my courage from leaking out of my shoes than in hopes the house would answer.
Something… answered anyway.
The closer I got, the more the magic around the place pressed inward, curious and invasive. It brushed against my butterfly mark, pushing, prodding, trying to measure.
I layered my Hedge magic over myself like a shawl, thorns pricking outward.
My grandmother’s magic would feel the edge of the Hedge and either respect it or use it to find my soft spots. There wasn’t much I could do about that except exist and refuse to make it easy.
Halfway up the path, it hit.
A stabbing pain, sharp and sudden, knifed right through my chest.
Not in my mark.
Not in my magic.
In the place that knew one particular wolf too well.
Keegan.
My knees buckled.
For a second, I couldn’t breathe. The world blurred, mansion and path and gargoyles smearing together like a wet painting. The pain wasn’t physical, no hot blood, no snapped bone, but it was real.
A tearing sensation along the thread between us, raw and frantic.
I dropped to my knees on the brick, palms slapping down hard enough to sting. The shadows that had been twining along the edges of the path recoiled, hissing, as if offended by my sudden, graceless collapse.
“Keegan,” I gasped.
Images slammed into me, jagged and fragmentary.
There weren’t clear visions, just impressions through the bond. The flash of claws. The crack of impact. The taste of shadow in lungs that weren’t mine. A snarl cut off too quickly. His heart hammering, then stuttering, then forcing itself steady again through sheer, bull-headed refusal to stop.
“Get up,” I whispered, lips numb. “Get up, please get up—”
Fear ripped through me so cleanly it left my hands shaking.
I should be there.
I should be in Stonewick, in the square, at his side. With my dad. With my mom. With everyone.
Instead, I was kneeling on the fancy murder driveway of my terrible grandmother’s goth castle while my broomstick sulked behind me.
I twisted around, scrambling to my feet, nearly slipping on the uneven brick.
The broom was still where I’d left it, hovering a few inches above the ground like a lazy dragonfly. Its bristles were ruffled from the ride; the handle had one new scuff.
“Take me back,” I snapped, stumbling toward it. “Right now.”
It bobbed in place. Slightly.
“No,” I said. “Not we’ll see. Not later. Now. Stonewick, square, wolf, circle, remember? The people I love are down there fighting her while you kidnapped me, and we are not leaving them—”
I grabbed the handle with both hands and swung one leg over, heart pounding.
“Up,” I commanded. “Turn around. Take me back.”
Nothing happened.
The broom sagged under my weight.
It didn’t even twitch.
I clenched my jaw, closed my eyes, and tried to find that slippery internal place I’d hit when the broom had first taken off, whatever strange alignment of panic and intention had made it obey.
I pictured the square. Keegan’s wolf form. Stella’s tea shop. My dad’s face. Shadow and light colliding. I poured every ounce of desperate wanting into the broom.
“Please,” I whispered. “They need me. I need them. I can’t just leave them. I won’t.”
The broom shivered once, like an apology.
Then it drifted backward out from under me.
I stumbled, nearly landing on my tailbone.
“Excuse me?” I snapped at it, as if it had a choice. “What kind of magical midlife crisis vehicle are you? You can fly me into danger but not out of it?”
It bobbed again, a slow little dip, and then floated away another foot, as if to say: this is as far as I go.
The wind shifted, bringing with it a whisper of something distant like magic crackling against magic, a faint echo of my grandmother’s laughter, the Hollows humming an octave too high.
Stonewick’s Wards were vibrating.
Elira’s anchor at the cottage pulsed against my awareness, frantic and bright.
Staying here arguing with a broom wasn’t going to change anything.
“Fine,” I said, breathing hard. “Stay. Mope. Grow mushrooms on your bristles for all I care.”
Keegan’s pain still thrummed along our bond, but it had steadied slightly—more a ragged, oh-ow-oh-ow than a single stabbing note. He was still in the fight. Stubborn, bloody-minded, exhausting man.
“I am coming back,” I whispered, more to myself than the broom. “I am. But I can’t do it empty-handed.”
I turned back toward the mansion.
It appeared even larger now, as if my moment of vulnerability had given it permission to creep closer. The tower seemed taller. The windows felt more watchful.
I took a breath.
Then another.
I thought of the dragons in their hidden wing, the way they’d watched me with ageless, implacable eyes and refused to tell me what they already knew.
Of Elira’s choice to anchor herself to the cottage instead of passing on, just to keep Stonewick’s heart safe a little longer.
Of my mother’s hands shaking as she cast wind at the priestess’s shadows.
Of my father’s joy at seeing his mother again, tangled with grief.
Of Gideon’s voice, hoarse and furious, shouting that he wasn’t hers.
If I could get him free, if we could pull his piece out of her path, we might still close the circle. Might still cut the hunger off before it dug its teeth into Stonewick’s roots and refused to let go.
One thing at a time, Maeve, I told myself.
Step one: survive walking into your grandmother’s house.
Step two: find the very complicated man who helped try to destroy your world and convince him to help save it instead.
Step three: survive long enough to tell Keegan he was not, in fact, allowed to die on me.
Easy.
I squared my shoulders and started up the path again.
The pain in my chest didn’t vanish, but it receded to a savage ache, like a bruise pressed too hard. The gargoyles above hunched closer to the edge, wings twitching. One let out a low, grinding screech that scraped along my bones.
“Noted,” I muttered. “No snacks on the premises. I’ll be sure to leave a review.”
The shadows along the path behaved themselves this time, streaming ahead instead of trying to trip me. They seemed… amused, in a cold, rustling way. Like they’d seen this scene before.
Probably because they had.
How many people had walked this path toward my grandmother’s front door? How many had done it willingly, eyes bright with ambition? How many had staggered, dragged, or been carried?
I thought of Gideon, younger, desperate, and furious. What version of him had crossed this threshold the first time?
The door waited.
Up close, it was bigger than it had looked from the bottom of the path. Maybe it had grown a little, too, because of course it had. The wolf-head knocker’s purple eyes seemed to glow faintly, tracking me as I approached.
I stopped just short of the stone step.
The air here was thick enough to chew. Magic pressed from all sides, layer after layer of spellwork laid down over years, maybe decades.
I could feel where different eras overlapped: younger, sharper sigils under older, heavier ones; remnants of Ward patterns, brittle and cracked, beneath my grandmother’s tangled web.
I placed a hand over my butterfly mark.
“I’m not yours,” I whispered—to the house, to the magic, to the woman who’d built everything on owning people. “I’m never yours.”
Then I lifted my chin, stepped onto the final stone, and reached for the iron ring on the wolf’s jaw.
The metal was cold.
It bit into my palm.
I drew breath to knock and let the search for Gideon begin.