Chapter Four
The Academy didn’t recoil.
Honestly, that alone was the first thing that unsettled me.
I felt that realization before I fully understood it: the absence of resistance.
There was no tightening of Wards or sharp intake of magic.
The stone didn’t shiver in indecision. Rather, it swallowed Gideon whole and allowed him another step forward. The vibration beneath my shoes deepened.
Gideon stood just inside the entryway, hands relaxed at his sides, posture open in a way that looked almost polite.
Almost. His mage magic brushed the edges of the foyer, testing nothing, pressing nowhere. He wasn’t challenging the Academy.
He was waiting.
Somehow, that made my nerves worse.
My dad shifted first, placing himself a half-step closer to me without saying a word.
His stance was casual to anyone who didn’t know him, but I caught the subtle readiness in his shoulders, the way his weight settled as if he could move fast if needed.
After all, Gideon’s choices had left my dad stuck in his shifted form for most of my life.
Twobble hovered near the banister, arms crossed, eyes narrowed, chewing something that might have been a scone or might have been stress. Skonk lurked just behind a pillar, lemon filling on his sleeve and gaze flicking between Gideon and the exits like he was mentally mapping escape routes.
Stella stood near the wall, chin lifted, expression composed in that dangerous way she got when she was pretending not to be offended by something she fully intended to remember forever. Her magic didn’t flare, and her fangs didn’t emerge, which was telling. But they would if needed.
The Academy lights adjusted. The walls didn’t whisper. The floor didn’t tremble.
“That’s not right,” Twobble muttered under his breath. “It should be doing something dramatic like flinging him across the foyer.”
“This feels suspiciously like patience,” Stella said coolly.
Maeve, that’s me, still adjusting to the idea that I am the one standing at the center of all this, couldn’t tear my gaze from the space around Gideon.
The Academy wasn’t icing him out or punishing him for his wicked way. It wasn’t bristling or showing displeasure in any of the ways magical institutions were supposed to when faced with someone who’d tried to unravel them from the inside.
It was… watching him. Perhaps, the Academy was analyzing him like a chessboard that had accepted a piece back onto the square it once occupied, not because it trusted the move, but because the game required it.
Or at least that was what I had to tell myself.
The front doors opened again, and a cool draft slipped through, carrying the faint scent of woodsmoke and sweetness.
Ember glided in from the inn. Her presence was soft and luminous, and her expression was relaxed right up until she looked up and saw Gideon standing in the foyer.
She stopped short, and her glow flared instinctively before she reined it in.
“Oh,” she said. “That’s… new.”
Ember’s eyes flicked to me, suspicious and searching. The silent question lingering behind her gaze was clear as anything she might have spoken aloud.
I gave a small nod of acknowledgment because I was as unsure as she was.
She carefully drifted closer, but her gaze never left Gideon.
“He’s standing,” she observed. “Usually when people like him come here, they’re either restrained, expelled, or…worse.”
“Give it time,” Twobble said with a wicked smile.
Before Ember could reply, another presence entered the space, and the temperature shifted just enough that I felt it along my spine.
Keegan stepped into the foyer.
He took everything in at once: the people, the positions, the subtle tension woven through the air.
His gaze locked onto Gideon, and the effect was immediate.
A restless charge snapped between them. It felt like two storms readying to collide for the same airspace.
Keegan’s jaw tightened, and his hands curled briefly before he forced them open again. He didn’t move toward Gideon. He didn’t bare his teeth or growl or do anything overtly wolfish. He simply stood there, radiating a quiet fury that made the air feel smaller.
Keegan’s eyes found me, but the tension didn’t ease. It only shifted.
I knew that look. He hated every second of this. He hated that Gideon stood unchallenged on Academy ground. And he hated that I had walked him here myself. He despised that the land seemed willing to entertain a possibility that Keegan would rather see buried.
But beneath the anger was reluctant trust.
His loyalty to me, the Academy, and the village was unshakeable and the fact that Gideon was still standing in the Academy without sprites tying him up or gargoyles turning him to stone spoke volumes about how we should proceed.
Not to mention we all needed Gideon here for one simple reason.
The circle.
Keegan came to my side without a word.
Gideon inclined his head slightly in Keegan’s direction. He wasn’t mocking or deferential. Instead, he acknowledged a rival who could not be ignored.
“Wolf,” he said.
“Shadow,” Keegan replied.
If they were going to lunge at each other, it would have already happened, but that knowledge didn’t make anyone relax.
Nova stepped forward, tapping her staff once against the stone floor. The sound carried just enough authority to pull attention away from the standoff.
“This is the moment where speculation becomes unnecessary,” she said calmly. “What happens next will not take place here.”
Everyone turned toward her.
“The Wilds are open,” she continued. “They are prepared to receive what must be done.”
My dad frowned slightly. “Theoretically.”
Nova nodded. “Theoretically.”
Twobble scowled. “I don’t like that word.”
“No one does,” Stella agreed. “It’s the word people use right before things get messy.”
Nova ignored them both with practiced ease.
“The Wilds don’t judge intent. They respond to agreement. Gideon has consented to the closing of the circle. The Hollows are holding that vow. What unfolds beyond the threshold will be shaped by what each of us brings with us.”
“And if someone brings bad intentions?” Skonk asked from behind the pillar.
“Then the Wilds will reflect them wholly for all to see,” Nova said.
A hush settled over the foyer, and a prickle of unease zipped through me.
I looked at Gideon and wondered what truth he carried that he hadn’t yet spoken, or were his intentions as he spoke them to me?
The stone vibrated again, low and steady, not approving, not condemning.
Waiting.
Whatever happened next, the Academy had chosen not to interfere.
And more than anything else, that told me this was no longer about keeping Gideon out.
It was about what would happen when he stepped fully in, and the circle was closed since it never should have been opened.
“I’ll get Gideon a refreshment,” Stella said, eying our visitor coolly.
Gideon’s brows lifted. “Should I be worried?”
“I don’t know, Gideon. Have you ever given us a reason that would make you worry?” Stella asked, wryly.
“Fair point,” Gideon said, clearing his throat.
I turned my attention to the hallway leading to my room.
I needed a moment to gather my thoughts and reflect on what was ahead.
Sure, Keegan had felt like a new man since Malore had been taken down, but there was still a chance that Keegan could get sick again, and the only thing stopping that was completely ending the Hunger Path by closing the circle.
Keegan walked with me to my room without speaking, his presence a steady counterpoint to the restless hum threading through the Academy. The halls felt narrower tonight. They weren’t threatening, just attentive, as if the stone itself were leaning closer to hear what might go on.
Light brightened as we passed the sconces with a soft ripple of recognition rather than alarm, and I wondered, not for the first time, how much the Academy understood before any of us finally caught up.
Inside my room, the air smelled faintly of old dried herbs, familiar enough to steady my breathing. The windows were open, curtains stirring as though they were undecided about whether to billow dramatically from the fall breeze or behave themselves.
Outside, the sky churned. Clouds rolled and folded into one another, shadows threading through them like ink dropped into water, restless and displeased. Whatever news was traveling through the unseen channels of magic tonight, it wasn’t being well received.
Keegan closed the door behind us and leaned against it, arms folded, eyes on me. He didn’t try to fill the silence. He never did. That, more than anything, was why I needed him here with me. Whenever my thoughts felt too loud and too fragile all at once, Keegan centered me.
I crossed to the desk and laid out the books I’d gathered earlier, their covers worn smooth by hands far older than mine.
The Hunger Path lay open at the center, its pages dense with script that seemed to shift subtly when I wasn’t staring directly at it.
Margins were crowded with notes in different hands, some sharp and precise, others looping and uncertain.
It often felt like the writers themselves had wrestled with what they were trying to contain.
“This is the part that matters,” I said quietly, more to myself than to Keegan, tracing a finger along a passage I’d read so many times it felt etched behind my eyes. “The Path feeds on choice. On hunger born of wanting something that was never meant to be taken.”
Keegan pushed off the door and came to stand beside me, close enough that I felt the warmth of him at my shoulder.
“Malore chose it,” he said. “Manipulated it and created a new wickedness.”
“Yes,” I replied. “And every choice after that fed it. That’s the thing no one ever says outright.
The Hunger Path isn’t just a spell or a curse.
It’s a habit. A way of moving through the world that keeps taking and taking until nothing is left but the taking.
I just hope closing the circle is enough to break the habits. ”
“We have to believe it will.” Keegan’s eyes met mine, and I felt the familiar charge run through me.
“I hope so.” I turned a page, careful not to crease it. The illustration there was deceptively simple, a circle marked with sigils that looked almost gentle at first glance.
“The Ancient Rites were never meant to destroy or manipulate,” I said. “They were meant to remind and return everyone involved to the moment of decision.”
Keegan’s brow furrowed. “Including Malore.”
“Especially Malore,” I said, though the words weighed heavily on my tongue. “Stopping the Path means confronting the choice that started it. And everyone bound to it has a role. Even the ones who don’t want one.”
I closed my eyes briefly, letting the lines of the ritual settle into me again.
I’d memorized the order, the cadence, the way the words were meant to be spoken aloud, and the way others were meant to be held in silence.
There was no room for improvisation here.
No clever shortcuts. The Rite demanded presence, honesty, and a willingness to stand still when every instinct screamed to move.
Outside, the wind picked up, rattling the windowpanes. Shadows stretched and recoiled in the sky, clouds knotting and unknotting as if they were arguing with themselves.
“They don’t like this,” Keegan murmured.
“No,” I agreed. “The Hunger never does. It senses when it’s being named.”
I turned back to the desk and picked up the smaller book tucked beneath the others, its spine cracked, its pages soft with age.
This one was older than the Academy itself, older even than Stonewick, if the notes were to be believed.
It spoke of balance not as a static thing, but as a living agreement that had to be renewed, again and again, by those willing to remember why it mattered.
“We’re going to do this,” I said, meeting Keegan’s eyes. “Even if it means standing hand in hand with Gideon.”
Keegan’s expression didn’t change, but something in his gaze intensified. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I know,” I said, and meant it in every sense.
I flipped another page, committing the sequence to memory.
My dad’s role came first, anchoring the Rite in the physical world, his presence a reminder of what had been protected and what still could be.
My father would stand opposite Gideon, not as a victim of Gideon’s curse, but as proof that the Hunger Path could be interrupted, its grip loosened, its story rewritten.
That thought mattered more than any incantation.
Malore didn’t have control over my father’s will.
Gideon’s place was harder to look at, harder to accept. The book didn’t soften it, didn’t dress it up as redemption or punishment. He would stand as choice embodied, as someone who’d walked close to the Path without stepping fully onto it. His agreement mattered. His honesty would matter more.
And me.
Always me.
I was the one who would speak the Rite aloud, who would open the space and hold it steady while the others faced what they had fed and what they had feared. The words settled into me with quiet certainty and a heavy responsibility.
I moved to the window and pushed it open wider, letting the cool night air spill into the room. The sky above the Academy roiled. The clouds thickened and bruised, as shadows curled through them in patterns that made my birthmark ache faintly.
“They’re listening,” Keegan said softly.
“Yes,” I replied. “And they’re unhappy.”
“Good,” he said. “That means we’re doing something right.”
I smiled despite myself and leaned against the sill, watching the clouds shift.
For a moment, the shadows thinned, revealing a sliver of moonlight that cut cleanly through the chaos, pale and steady.
It didn’t banish the darkness. It didn’t need to.
It simply reminded everything else that it was there.
I turned back to the desk, to the books, to the careful order I had etched into my memory. I whispered the opening line under my breath, testing its weight, its truth. The words didn’t resist. They settled, warm and sure, like something I had always known how to say.
Keegan reached for my hand and grounded me. “You’re ready.”
I looked at him and felt the strange, steady calm that had been building all evening finally take root.
“I am,” I said. “And so is the Academy. Whether the sky likes it or not.”
Outside, the clouds continued to argue with themselves, shadows churning, restless and displeased.
Inside, the ancient words waited, patient and unyielding, ready to be spoken at last.
And the Wilds, they welcomed the show.