Page 80 of Magical Moonbeam
If I couldn’t hold the truth of myself here… I’d lose more than a fight.
I’d loseeverything.
A cold gust swept through the open archway, and I startled, just a little, but no one was there. Of course not. Not yet.
Two days.
Two days and I’d walk into the real Shadowick with only what I carried in my chest and what I’d forged in these quiet, terrible moments.
Chapter Twenty
I stood at the edge of the square, the church behind me, the mansion still looming from the hill like a secret that refused to stay buried. My hands were trembling.
Not from fear, exactly. Not even from cold.
But from that pressure again. It was the kind I’d started recognizing more and more. It was the weight of knowing something before I understood it.
I turned in a slow circle. The fog shifted as I moved, parting reluctantly, revealing more of Shadowick’s broken bones.
And then it hit me.
The silence.
There wasalwayssilence in my dreams. In the visions. In the Hedge.
But here, tonight, something was missing.
A sound.
A breath.
A presence.
Every time I’d been pulled into the edges of Shadowick, whether in the Hedge or the forge, or the dreams left behind by Gideon, there had always beenhim.
A shadow in the periphery.
A whisper against my name.
A ripple of cold brushing too close.
But tonight… there was nothing.
My breath caught in my throat.
No Gideon.
No pull.
No tether humming under my skin.
I waited, just to be sure. I closed my eyes, tried to feel for that awful thread that sometimes tugged at my ribs like a fishhook. That subtle knowing that someone was watching.
But there was nothing.
The illusion held steady, fog curling, lights flickering, the mansion still threatening to breathe, but nohim.
And the realization slammed into me like a tide.
