Page 127 of Magical Moonbeam
The alley ended in a long corridor of broken lampposts and arched ironwork. Somewhere behind one of the buildings, a clock struck. But the hour it tolled didn’t match any I recognized. Time was bending again. Just like it had when I’d first stepped into the Academy before it righted itself with the moon…and like in the Hedge, and the in-between.
We stopped in front of a building I didn’t recognize. The bricks were blackened, scorched by something old and angry. The front door was warped, cracked through the center, and the windows above it were nothing but jagged mouths of shattered glass.
Gideon placed his palm on the door.
It didn’t creak or groan open.
It simplyfell awayas if the air had swallowed it.
“After you,” he said, stepping aside.
I stared into the yawning darkness, felt the pull of it like a tide. And even though every nerve in me screamedno, I stepped inside.
It was colder here.
Colder than fog or wind or winter.
This was the cold of things forgotten.
The inside was hollow, not empty, just… unfinished. The walls were marked with long, vertical gouges, as if something had tried to crawl its way out. The ceiling shifted as I looked at it, the beams bending as if they were breathing.
“I was born here,” Gideon said behind me.
I turned sharply.
“This is where the decision was made. Where I learned what I’d never be allowed to become.”
“Who decided?” My voice was sharper than I meant.
He walked past me, fingers brushing the wall. “The Elders. The Guardians. The people who decided what was pure and what was fractured. You’ve met one of them, but they hide behind lovely names now. Teachers. Guardians. Seers.”
My mind shifted to those I knew.
I frowned. “You think they made the curse necessary?”
“I think they made it inevitable.”
I shook my head.
“There is no spell to end it,” he said quietly, almost gently.
I stilled. “What?”
“No incantation. No charm. No ritual soaked in moonlight.” He turned toward me, his silver-blue eyes catching the low light like glass held to flame. “There’s no breaking this curse the way you were taught.”
A thick silence settled between us, the kind that made the floor feel farther away than it should be.
“I don’t believe you,” I said, even though something inside me already knew he wasn’t lying.
“You don’t have to.” His lips twitched, not quite a smile. “But you should know that this curse wasn’t woven with rhyme and candle wax. It was forged.”
I stepped closer. “Forged with what?”
“Blood,” he said. “Memory. Vow.”
My throat tightened. “Then how does it break?”
He exhaled like he was disappointed in the question. “It doesn’t. Not with magic. It has learned to bend but not break.”
