She was here.
Not in a dream. Not behind a mirror. Not through the Luminary’s interference.
Here.
The shadows tightened in the middle of the square.
A figure stepped out of the darkness.
She was… smaller than I’d imagined.
Not tiny, just… compact. She wore black that swallowed light, layered fabrics that shifted between velvet and something thinner, like smoke. Her hair was silver-white, but not in an old, frail way—in the way of steel filaments, catching what little light remained and twisting it cold.
Her face…
It was like looking at a sharper, harder version of a reflection I’d never taken.
High cheekbones. A narrow jaw. Eyes pale as winter sky, blue washed with gray. Lines carved at the corners of her mouth that could be laughter, or cruelty, or both.
She smiled.
It did not reach her eyes.
My mark flared, hard enough that I bit back a sound.
She lifted her hand.
The shadows around her stilled, shivering into obedience.
Then, in a voice that slid straight through glass and stone and skin, she called:
“Maeve Una Bellemore.”
My whole name.
The windows shuddered.
Not from volume…she wasn’t shouting. If anything, her voice was almost conversational. But the sound of it carried a weight that had nothing to do with lungs. It was like the wordsthemselves were hands, rapping on every surface in the village at once.
The tea shop’s glass rattled. A hairline crack etched itself across the corner of one pane with a tiny, protestingtink.
The bell above the door chimed.
“Nope,” Twobble squeaked. “No, thank you. Wrong address. She must mean some other Maeve Una… Uvula… Bell-melon—”
“Twobble,” I said, or tried to. My tongue felt thick.
He clapped his hands over his ears.
“If I can’t hear her, she can’t own my soul,” he muttered.
Skonk, white-faced, reached up and gently pulled one of Twobble’s hands away so he could still hear us. “That’s not how auditory magic works,” he whispered.
“Let me have this,” Twobble hissed back.
My heart was pounding so hard it shook my whole body. The mark over my hip pulsed in time with it, a cold, aching throb.
“Maeve,” Mom said, voice tight.
