Not from the path.
From somewhereelse.
Their eyes locked with mine.
And they smiled.
Not kindly.
Like they had been waiting.
And now something had begun.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The weight of it hit me all at once.
I staggered forward.
The ground beneath me was solid, but my legs betrayed me. My knees buckled, and the sky spun in a slow, dazzling arc above, and before I could cry out, a pair of strong arms caught me, sure, steady, and warm.
Keegan.
He knelt with me, arms bracing my shoulders, one hand cradling the back of my head like I might disappear if he let go.
“Maeve.” His voice wasn’t loud, but it vibrated in my chest. “You’re here. You’re okay.”
I wanted to answer him, but the words tangled in my throat. My vision swam, all shimmer and sunlight and memory, and all I could do was lean into him and breathe.
Then came the others.
Their footsteps were swift, purposeful, and nearly soundless.
“Move—move, let me see her!” Mara’s voice, quick and sharp with concern, sliced through the rising buzz of the garden.
“She’s conscious,” Lady Limora said behind her, but even she sounded breathless. I had never heard her voice tremble before.
“Keegan,” Vivienne’s cool, elegant tone layered over theirs, “lay her back gently. If she’s bleeding internally—”
“She’s not,” Keegan said. “I’ve got her. She just… she fell through something.”
I blinked again, forcing my eyes to focus. The vampires stood in a half-circle around us, pale and radiant in the new sunlight, their expressions a mixture of astonishment, worry, and something very close to fear.
“Maeve,” Lady Limora said, kneeling beside me now, her violet eyes wide. “Can you hear me?”
I nodded slowly.
Vivienne leaned in. “What happened inside that path?”
The words still wouldn’t come. I looked up at Keegan, who was watching me with that quiet intensity he always wore when he was afraid to speak first. Like I was a dream that might vanish if disturbed.
“I didn’t choose,” I rasped, my voice low, raw. “I couldn’t. So I didn’t.”
Opal’s brows pulled together. “You didn’t choosewhat?”
I took a shaky breath. “The path…it gave me options. Fractured versions of myself. People I love. Futures I could follow.”
Limora’s lips parted. “That’s… normal, to a degree. But not like what we saw. Not what wefelt.Maeve, that wasn’t a path. That was—” she stopped herself, looking at Vivienne and Opal as if silently asking for consensus. “—it was a convergence.”
