Page 51 of Magical Moonbeam
“She’s not wrong,” Stella said, eyes on me.
Keegan looked surprised.
“Before you start quoting historical curses at me,” she added dryly, “Idoagree with Keegan. Gideon doesn’t think like us anymore. But that doesn’t mean Maeve is wrong to want to understand him.”
“I didn’t say she was wrong towantto,” Keegan muttered. “I’m saying it’s dangerous.”
“Well, darling,” Stella said, lifting her cup, “so is breathing because a moment will come when you just…don’t.”
I almost smiled. Almost.
Stella stepped closer, her eyes flicking toward the mist-shrouded rooftops.
“If Gideon still has a soul, and I meanif, then it’s tangled in everything he’s done. Which means pulling it loose might unravel more than you expect.”
“I’ll be careful,” I said.
“You’d better be,” she replied. “Because I rather like you alive.”
Another soft swish of air behind us, and then Bella appeared, walking out of the fog in her human form, copper and amber hair wild around her shoulders. Her coat was unbuttoned, and her eyes still held the gleam of her fox form—sharp, curious, alert.
“I heard some of that,” she said, stepping into the loose circle we’d formed. “And I think I might have something.”
Keegan looked skeptical. Stella looked intrigued. I turned toward her, eyebrows raised.
“In fox tradition,” Bella began, brushing her fingers through her hair as if sorting thoughts, “there’s a ritual on Moonbeam’s Eve. We don’t talk about it much, mostly because humans think it’s just a story, but it’s older than that. It’s called the Turning.”
“The Turning?” I repeated.
She nodded. “It’s meant for curses. Entanglements. Shadow-bound fates. It doesn’tbreakthe curse, but it reverses the weight of it, and helps shift it toward healing.”
Stella tilted her head. “Why haven’t you mentioned this before?”
Bella shrugged. “Because I didn’t realize what you were trying to do until I saw Maeve walking through this place like she’d known it all her life.”
The scary part was that, with all the times I’d visited in my dreams, it felt like I had.
Keegan turned to her. “What does it involve?”
“Light,” Bella said. “And shadow. And choosing which one to walk through.”
I swallowed. “That sounds a bit... abstract.”
“It is,” she said. “But it’s worked before in small ways. A fox shifter once used it to undo a family blood feud that had lasted for six generations. We don’t know how it will work in a place like Shadowick, but it’s abridge.Somethingancient.And it responds to intention.”
Nova stepped out of the mist just then, as if summoned by the very word.
“Intention,” she echoed. “That’s what the Moonbeam responds to most.”
Bella’s eyes met mine. “You’re the tether, Maeve. If we do this, if we turn the curse back toward light, you have to be the one walking through it.”
“I was planning to,” I whispered.
Keegan exhaled sharply beside me.
And I didn’t blame him.
Because this just got very real and very close.
