Vivienne stood slowly. “I’ve only ever read about one. Once. A theory. That if a witch of certain blood walked through a path while being pulled by multiple futures with equal power, the path wouldn’t close.”
“It wouldcollapse,” Opal finished quietly.
“Not collapse,” Limora corrected. “Transform.”
They all looked at me.
Keegan still held me, but I could feel the tension in his frame. He didn’t interrupt.
“What did youdo?” Vivienne asked, not accusing, not fearful—just stunned.
I tried to sit up straighter, and Keegan braced me. The morning sun stretched long across the grass, but it felt like no time had passed at all.
“I wanted them all,” I said finally. “My daughter. Keegan. The answers I didn’t want to want from Gideon. The Academy’s future. I refused to choose just one. And something listened.”
Lady Limora’s lips tightened. “That shouldn’t be possible.”
“More like it’s impossible,” Opal argued.
“But it was,” Keegan said quietly. “I saw it. The path lit up like a storm. It shook the whole ward.”
“It reached through the veil,” Vivienne murmured.
“It wasn’t a spell. It was something older,” Opal said.
They all fell quiet.
Keegan glanced down at me, his thumb brushing over the back of my hand. “You’ve changed.”
I blinked up at him. “Youcantell?”
He gave a humorless laugh. “You’re humming. Your body.”
He wasn’t wrong.
I could feel it, even now.
A soft thrum beneath my skin. Not magic in the way I’d known it. Not the prickling warmth of a cast spell or the tightness of a shield raised too quickly. No, this was different. It was as if ley lines had crawled into my bones and refused to leave.
Limora rose and stepped back, brushing grass from her dark cloak. “You shouldn’t be standing. You need to rest.”
But Iwasstanding.
I realized it as I placed one hand against the stone wall and pushed to my feet. Keegan moved to help, but I steadied myself.
“I need to be in the Academy,” I said, my voice stronger now. “I need to know it’s still there.”
Opal nodded. “It is. But something’s changed.”
“Because I didn’t come back as who I was,” I said softly.
I looked around the garden, at the paths still dew-drenched and sunlit, at the shimmer still faint in the air like residue.
The calling path had closed, but I hadn’t.
And that was the difference. I felt open to possibilities.
The moment we rounded the corner past the Butterfly Ward, the energy of the Academy wrapped around me like a shawl I hadn’t realized I’d missed until it slid across my shoulders.
