Not the woman I remembered chasing after cruise ships and flitting from adventure to adventure, with her oversized sunglasses and a mimosa never far from hand. Not the carefully curated, practical, pressed-linen Mom who had worked double shifts and smiled through gritted teeth, trying to pretend we were normal.
No. This woman was someone else.
I rose slowly, the bench scraping against the stone floor with a screech that echoed through the silent hall. My knees trembled, but I forced them straight. She turned toward me, and when her eyes, still familiar, still part me, met mine, I almost forgot how to breathe.
She looked… at home.
Her hair, once cropped neatly, fell in long, easy waves threaded with silver, the kind that looked earned rather than endured. Her clothes were not the bright vacation colors she used to wear when she would sweep back into my life from a trip, smelling of sunscreen and expensive perfume. No, now she wore soft earth-toned robes that clung as though they belonged in these halls, woven with threads that caught the candlelight.
And her eyes…oh, her eyes. They carried shadows of exhaustion but also a depth I had never noticed when I was younger.
I realized, in a single heavy rush, that she had been carrying something all along. Protecting me from it. Trying, failing, hiding. She hadn’t just been my mother. She had been a witch caught between duty and fear, and she’d chosen to keep that truth from me.
But curses don’t respect secrets. They had gnawed through our family anyway.
“Maeve,” she said softly, her voice neither shy nor commanding. It was simplyhers.
My throat closed. I wanted to fling a hundred questions, a thousand accusations, all the words I had rehearsed over the months of silence. Why did you truly leave Stonewick? Why did you let me think I was ordinary? Why didn’t you tell me what I was, what our family carried? Why did you let me grow up blind?
But none of them came out.
Instead, I whispered, “Mom.”
The word tasted both bitter and sweet on my tongue.
The hall had gone utterly still. The midlife students, who had only moments ago been laughing over their pudding, sat frozen, their spoons hovering, their eyes wide.
Nothing like a midlife soap opera to watch while dining.
Lady Limora, ever regal, had even set down her goblet with a soft thud, lips pressed into a line of surprise. Vivienne’s jaw dropped so far she nearly swallowed a sugared almond whole. Opal elbowed Mara, who looked caught between gasping and giggling.
I took a step closer. My hands were shaking.
“You look… different than earlier,” I managed.
Her lips curved into a small, rueful smile. “So do you.”
Something in my chest cracked. I hadn’t expected her to say that. I hadn’t expected her to sound like she saw me as more than the daughter she left behind…as if she finally saw me as a witch in my own right.
“Why aren’t you at the cottage?” I shrugged. “What are you doing here?”
Her smile faltered, but her gaze stayed steady. “What I should have done a long time ago.”
The words hit me like a stone to the chest. They were too big, too heavy, and too late.
“Besides, Miora was about ready to hang me up at the stake,” my mom whispered, and I chuckled.
Before I could press her for details, the curtain at the far end of the hall rustled, and another figure stepped in.
Grandma Elira.
Her presence always filled a room. She was regal without trying, her silver hair braided like a crown, her eyes carrying decades of calm. She moved with that same quiet grace that had met me the moment I’d come inside the Academy.
The students straightened instinctively as she passed, like flowers reaching for the sun.
But when her gaze landed on my mother, the calm cracked.
She nearly gasped.
