Page 176 of Magical Moonbeam
“We go deeper.”
“You sure?” Keegan asked, already stepping beside me. “If we’re wrong—”
“I’m not wrong,” I said, sharper than I meant to. “If we don’t find where he’s anchoring this, where the curse isrooted, then when the Moonbeam dies completely, we lose our last chance to weaken him. My dad stays a bulldog, and you might not survive your next uncontrolled shift in a decade.”
Keegan met my eyes, nodded once, then moved to reinforce the charmed vines around the trapped shadow.
I could feel it writhing below us, but even now, it didn’t scare me.
What scared me was howfamiliarits thoughts had felt when it tried to push into mine. Like it had worn my voice to try on a secret I wasn’t ready to admit.
But that was a problem for later.
Because we had to actnow.
Keegan turned to me, jaw set.
We’d all given everything tonight.
And it still hadn’t been enough.
But the worst kind of curse wasn’t just one that choked a place.
It was the kind thatwaited.
That tricked you into thinking time was on your side.
Now the Moonbeam was almost gone.
And the shadows?
They weren’t waiting anymore.
Chapter Forty-Two
I gritted my teeth as the pulse beneath the Academy trembled again. It wasn’t just magic anymore. It was pressure.
Tension rising, coiling through the walls like breath being sucked in before a scream.
He thought he had us.
That the Moonbeam would vanish without purpose, its light spent and useless, that we would scatter in the aftermath, tired and fractured. That the curse would outlast our hope.
But I wasn’t done.
And I wasn’t letting Gideon win.
Not while I still had a single spell left in my bones. The others had followed us here, but stayed back.
Keegan moved beside me, his steps sure, but his eyes still scanning the dark like Gideon might slip through the cracks again. “You’ve got that look,” he said quietly.
“What look?”
“The one right before you do something that terrifies the rest of us.”
I gave him a tired smile. “Then I’m right on time.”
The floor beneath us thrummed again. The light I’d commanded earlier twitched in the shadows, overtaxed but holding. The echo of Gideon’s shadow was still bound beneath the layers of green magic, but I could feel it struggling. Pushing. Waiting for the Moonbeam to slip entirely below the horizon.
