And there she was.
Lady Limora.
She stood at the very edge of the hedge maze, a dark silhouette against the glimmer of silver grass. Her cloak fluttered slightly in the breeze; her posture was regal and unmoving. She didn’t shift, didn’t pace. She simply watched.
The path pulsed faintly behind her, still golden and glowing, and still waiting for me.
I pressed my hand to the cold glass.
What did it want?
What would it show me?
What if it wasn’t even meant for me?
That thought lodged somewhere deeper than it should have. It hadn’t occurred to me before that the magic could be wrong. That it could be whispering to the wrong person, or that I was simply standing in the way of someone else’s revelation.
What if I stepped into it and it showed me nothing?
What if it expected more than I had to give?
I let the curtain fall back into place and leaned my forehead against the window frame.
It wasn’t doubt, exactly.
It wasfear.
Of being unworthy.
Of finding out that all the steps I’d taken toward the Academy, toward Stonewick, toward the woman I was still learning how to be, had been building to a moment I wasn’t meant for.
My dad snorted in his sleep, kicking once at the air like he was chasing something through dreams.
I smiled faintly and turned away from the window.
I lit a single lavender candle near the bed and tugged back the quilt. My body ached, not just from the day, but from theholding on. The way I’d braced myself for every conversation, every spell, every step forward had finally taken a toll.
I slipped beneath the covers, the familiar softness wrapping around me like a memory. The air smelled faintly soothing and familiar with each flicker of the candle, promising nothing terrible could reach me here.
My eyes drifted to the fire, where my dad had tucked his snout beneath one paw and let out a soft snore. His fur rose and fell in a steady rhythm, his tail twitching every now and then like he was dreaming of long walks and forbidden snacks.
My dad.
In this odd, magical form.
It still caught me off guard sometimes how fiercely he stayed close, how he watched me without judgment. I hadn’t asked him to. He simply…had.
And somehow that grounded me more than any spell.
I stared at the ceiling, watching the faint shimmer of the ward light shift with the wind outside the window.
Tomorrow, I would step into something older than my knowing. Something that had waited silently until I was ready to see it.
But tonight?
Tonight, I was just Maeve.
A woman in a warm bed, under a blanket she loved, in a room where the walls knew her name.
