Chapter Thirty-Seven
Gideon stared at me like his brain was still buffering.
I stared back, trying very hard not to show how much it hurt to see him like this.
Up close, the damage was worse.
Bruises bloomed along his jaw in ugly shades of purple and blue. Dried blood crusted on his hairline. The shadows shackling his wrists weren’t passive bindings. They pulsed rhythmically, tightening every few breaths like they were checking his pulse and punishing him for still having one.
“You’re real,” he said again, less like a question, more like an accusation.
“Unfortunately for both of us,” I said, swallowing past the ache in my throat. “Yeah.”
His gaze flicked over me, fast and assessing, lingering a fraction too long at my butterfly mark before he dragged it away.
“What are you doing here?” he rasped. “Lose a bet?”
“Rescuing you, apparently,” I said. “Believe me, this was not on top of my daily planner.”
One corner of his mouth twitched.
The rest of him didn’t move.
“Can you walk?” I asked.
It was a stupid question. My Hedge Witch brain knew that. My eyes knew that. But my mouth asked anyway, because sometimes you just need the person to say it.
He let out a sound halfway between a laugh and a groan.
“That depends,” he said. “On your definition of walk. If it includes falling down immediately and decorating the floor with internal organs, then yes. Absolutely.”
“So that’s a no,” I said softly.
He dropped his gaze, breath rough.
The chains at his wrists pulsed again.
He flinched, barely, his fingers curling.
Anger flared, hot and sharp under my breastbone.
“Okay,” I muttered, stepping closer. “One thing at a time.”
I knelt beside him.
The marble leached warmth out of my knees instantly. Up close, I could see the sigils etched around the shadow bands on his wrists in delicate, cruel lines, designed to channel pain back into whoever tried to break them.
The priestess’s work.
Of course.
“Don’t,” Gideon said hoarsely, as I reached for the nearest band. “They’re keyed to her. You touch them, they bite.”
“So do I,” I said.
I hovered my fingers just above the band, not quite touching, feeling for the texture of the magic. It hummed, low and ugly, twined with the same signature I’d felt in the square…her path, her hunger, her particular brand of ownership.
Mine.
Hers.
Mine.
She’d laid these bindings into her house, on her path, with her power. But the house had helped me find him. The path had cracked under our combined resistance.
It wasn’t all hers anymore.
I called up a thin thread of Hedge Magic, imagining it as a narrow, thorn-tipped root pushing into dry soil. I gave it one job: find the seam where her magic met the world’s and wedge itself in.
I felt around the edges of the band, not with my hands, but with that root.
There.
A hairline gap.
“Who taught you that face,” Gideon muttered. “You look like you’re trying to do long division in your head.”
“Shut up,” I whispered, not unkindly.
I pushed.
The thorn-root slid into the seam.
The band jolted.
Pain pinged up my arm, quick and sharp, like touching an electric fence. I hissed, teeth clamping down on a curse.
The band pulsed harder, trying to push me out.
“Maeve,” Gideon ground out. “Seriously. Stop. If she feels that—”
“She’s busy,” I said through gritted teeth. “You know. Attacking my town. Multitasking has limits.”
I twisted the root, not trying to rip the band open, that would just tighten it, but to unhook it.
“Who even thinks like this?” he muttered.
“People with grandmothers who knit curses,” I said.
The band flickered.
Once.
Twice.
Then, with a soft, ugly pop, it loosened, slipping through Gideon’s wrist like smoke being pulled through a ring. It didn’t vanish entirely. Old magic rarely gave up that easily, but it retreated, curling back into the floor sigils, sulking.
Gideon gasped.
His hand spasmed, then went limp.
“Okay,” I panted. “One.”
I moved to the other wrist.
The process went faster now that I knew where to poke.
Another jolt of pain. Another flicker. Another ugly pop.
Both his wrists were bare.
Shadows still clung to his skin, faint bruises of magic, but the direct connection to the floor, her control, was broken.
He sagged forward, free arm coming up instinctively to brace himself.
“That,” he said hoarsely, “was a very stupid risk.”
“Hi, pot,” I said. “I’m kettle.”
He huffed again, sound catching in his chest.
I slid my arm under his, bracing my shoulder against his side. He was heavier than he looked and all bone and tension.
“On three,” I said. “One. Two—”
He lurched, trying to help.
We got him halfway up before his leg buckled.
White-hot pain flashed across his face.
He bit down on his lip so hard his jaw spasmed.
“Okay,” I said quickly, tightening my grip under his armpits to keep him from slamming back onto the marble. “That’s… some walking. We’re halfway to shambling corpse. Progress.”
“Don’t,” he rasped, fingers digging into my forearm. “Don’t do this. You shouldn’t be here. She’ll feel—”
“She already did,” I said. “If she knew exactly where we were, we’d be dead. So either she’s too busy, or the house is playing favorites.”
His head tipped toward mine, eyes narrowing.
“You talked the house into helping you,” he said slowly. “Of course you did.”
“I am very persuasive,” I said. “Especially with real estate.”
He made a noise that might’ve been a laugh if it hadn’t sounded so wrecked.
We stood there for a second in a weird little stalemate with me trying not to collapse under his weight, and him trying not to collapse under his own. And both of us painfully aware that if the priestess decided to focus on this room, we were done.
“Is there any universe,” I said, “in which you can walk even a little?”
He closed his eyes briefly.
“Not one you’d want to live in,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what I thought.”
I looked around the room, wildly, as if a wheelchair or a magical gurney might spontaneously appear. Stone. Torches. Sigils. No convenient escape portals.
The secret passage upstairs felt very far away.
“Okay,” I said, shifting my grip. “New plan. I fireman-carry you.”
His eyes flew open, alarmed.
“No,” he said. “You’ll—”
“Die, yes, I know,” I said. “But hear me out, we—”
A familiar scraping sound interrupted me.
From behind.
I twisted as much as I could with Gideon half hanging off me.
There, nosing its way through the narrow doorway like a guilty dog, was the broom.
It had somehow squeezed itself down the cramped passage, bristles first, handle coming along behind. Dust clung to its straw. It hovered uncertainly just inside the threshold, as if aware it was intruding.
“You,” I said.
The broom bobbed.
“I thought you weren’t going back,” I said. “We had a whole boundary-setting argument about this.”
It edged closer.
Gideon squinted at it.
“Is that—” he started.
“My deeply unhelpful transportation,” I said. “Yes.”
“How did you get here?” I demanded of the broom. “You wouldn’t even take me back to Stonewick, and now you just—what—decided to pop into the dungeon for a social call?”
It zipped forward, stopping right in front of us, handle tilted as if it were evaluating angles.
Oh no, I thought.
“Oh no,” I said aloud. “Absolutely not. No. I am not—this is not a two-seater. You do not have the weight distribution for this kind of nonsense.”
The broom ignored me.
With startling speed for a glorified stick, it darted down, swept between Gideon’s legs, and wedged itself under him.
His knees, uncooperative traitors, gave in to gravity.
He dropped onto the broom in a graceless, painful slump, ending up straddling it sideways, half sprawled, half hanging.
He let out a raw sound, knuckles white on the handle.
“Okay,” he ground out. “Ow.”
“See?” I told the broom, outraged. “Ow. This is not ergonomically appropriate.”
It shivered once, as if shrugging.
Gideon turned his head enough to squint back at me. “Are you… shouting at a broom?”
“Frequently,” I said. “It deserves it.”
The broom shifted its balance, straightening underneath Gideon until he was more or less seated properly. It hovered a few inches off the floor now, taking most of his weight. His toes dragged against the marble, but he no longer had to hold himself up.
“Fine,” I muttered. “Fine. Whatever. We’ll discuss your boundaries later.”
I swung a leg over and climbed on behind him.
There was no dignified way to do it.
I ended up pressed close, my knees bracketing his, my chest against his back. I could feel every line of tension in him, every flinch when the broom jostled.
Up close, he smelled like smoke, sweat, and the faint, sharp tang of Shadowick’s magic. Underneath that, something familiar like wolf and wind and the cheap soap from the Academy’s bathrooms, caught in the fabric from our last misadventure.
But he was no shifter…
“Hold on to something,” I said.
“The broom?” he said dryly. “Or your terrible life choices?”
“Whichever you think will keep us from dying,” I said.
He managed to hook his fingers around the handle.
I wrapped one arm around his waist on pure instinct, afraid he’d slide off, and used my free hand to slap the broom’s neck.
“Up,” I commanded. “And out. Back the way we came. No detours, no scenic routes, and if you bang his head on a wall, I swear I will snap you in half for kindling.”
The broom, apparently properly chastised or simply eager to leave, shot forward.
We rocketed toward the narrow doorway.
I ducked my head at the last second.
The bristles scratched against stone, showering us with dust, but somehow we squeezed through. The broom careened up the tight passage like it had been born in it, scraping once, twice, then bursting out the bookshelf gap into the hallway in a shower of dislodged books.
We hurtled into the corridor.
Candles blurred past on either side. Portrait eyes flashed. A gust of cold air slammed into us as the house reacted with shadows stirring and magic tightening.