Page 113 of Magical Moonbeam
The garden was too still.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t blink, and couldn’t breathe around the swell of dread rising in my throat.
Because the truth settled over me fast and hard.
Moonbeam’s Eve wasn’t arriving.
It was already here.
I glanced around at the faces circling me. Nova’s eyes held apology. Lady Limora looked stricken but focused. Bella’s mouth was a thin line, and Ardetia’s gaze had shifted from the moon to me.
“You have to go,” Ardetia said, and there was no ceremony in it. There was no softness to the words, just the hard edge of certainty.
“But I’m not ready.” The words slipped out before I could stop them.
I hadn’t meant to say them aloud.
Nova stepped closer. “You’ll never feel ready, Maeve. No one ever does. That’s the point of Moonbeam.”
Twobble wrung his hands. “But there were still things to go over. You haven’t even eaten your snack.”
Keegan’s jaw was tight. He didn’t say anything, but his eyes never left me.
I was trying to remember how to breathe. How to think. My heart felt like it was going to beat straight out of my chest.
I had hours. Less than. No, it wasnow.
My voice trembled, but I steadied it. “We don’t even know how to break the curse yet.”
Nova’s expression flickered. “We know enough.”
“That’s not the same.”
Lady Limora stepped forward, laying a gloved hand gently on my shoulder. “Maeve. The moon doesn’t open the Veil to your convenience. It opens to what it senses. To intention. And whatever you’ve stirred in this town… It’s time.”
Her words didn’t comfort me.
But they rang true.
I looked up again, eyes locked on the pale silver globe that now glowed faintly, not with sun or star but with promise.
This was it.
No more practice.
No more illusion.
The real Shadowick waited, and the Veil was already thinning.
I felt the world shift beneath my feet again, the quiet hum of the Butterfly Ward trembling just slightly, like it too understood what was coming.
I thought of my father, still trapped in a cursed form.
I thought of my daughter, happy and far away and utterly unaware that her mother was about to step into the most dangerous place she’d ever seen.
I thought of the dragons beneath the Academy.
Of the spell that waited somewhat formed in the depths of my magic.
