Page 150 of Magical Moonbeam
Dragons.
Earlier, he’d said the word like it meant nothing.
Like it was casual. Tossed in like a garnish atop a poisoned truth. But it wasn’t meaningless. Not to me. Not to the Academy.
What if he knew?
The realization landed like a blow to the sternum. I stumbled back a step, one hand pressed to my stomach, trying to steady the swirling mess of thoughts in my head.
I looked up at the darkened spire of the mansion, the sky above now heavy with swirling fog and the faint glimmer of the retreating moonbeam. It hadn’t followed me in here. No, it had abandoned me. Or maybe it had done its job. Revealed what needed to be seen.
And now the truth had to be reckoned with.
This entire thing, bringing Celeste here, playing his twisted game of reunion and choice, luring me through the illusion of Gideon, what if it was all misdirection?
A sleight of hand?
HeknewI’d come here.
Hewantedme to.
Because he needed me gone.
Or maybe…
Maybe it was more insidious than that.
Get everyone with power and purposehere… and leave the real prize vulnerable.
My stomach twisted into a sick knot of regret and horror.
When the moon bends low and the Veil thins, what is anchored in truth will hold. What is rooted in fear will crack.
And I was cracking.
Because now I saw the possibilities blooming with horrible clarity.
Terror clawed up my throat, raw and feral.
Was this what he wanted all along? To draw my attention to the past, to Celeste, to this ghost town built on grief, while the true battleground waited back where it all began?
Or maybe that was the point.
Not to win.
Not to destroy.
But to corrupt.
My hands trembled. I clenched them into fists to stop the shaking. I had to get back. I had to get backnow.
But the path was unclear. The moonbeam had faded. The Hedge shimmered somewhere behind the curtain of illusion and power that separated Shadowick from the real world, but it wouldn’t open just because I demanded it.
The Veil didn’t care about urgency.
It only answered truth.
And my truth?
