The name cracked out of me.
My reflection shimmered, wavered, and then the mirror swallowed it.
Grandma Elira’s image stepped forward into clarity, as if she’d only been standing one room back and had finally decided to get closer.
“Maeve,” she said, voice muffled, as if it had to travel through a very long pipe. “Oh, Maeve, there you are.”
My knees nearly gave out. I grabbed the frame, wood biting into my palms. “You— You— I thought—”
She smiled, and it was the same smile she’d given me in the Academy when I’d first found her—proud, exasperated, unspeakably tender.
“I know what you thought,” she said. “And you’re not entirely wrong. But I told you, didn’t I? The Academy keeps what it has claimed.”
My heart pounded. “Are you—? Where are you? Are you—?”
“Complicated,” she said gently. “Half-woven. Do not worry about it yet. There are more pressing—”
Her image jerked like a puppet with its strings yanked. A ripple ran across the glass, warping her features for an instant. Behind her, darkness flickered. Frost bled in from the edges of the frame, etching along the silver like fingers.
My grandma’s eyes went sharp.
“We don’t have much time,” she snapped. “Listen to me. The circle—”
Static hit. It shouldn’t have been possible in a mirror, but that’s what it felt like: a shudder, a crackle, a violent interference. Her mouth kept moving, but the sound went thin, then vanished entirely.
“Elira?” My voice went high. “Grandma?”
Her hand lifted, palm pressed on her side of the glass. I mirrored it without thinking, my fingertips tingling where they met the cold barrier.
Her lips shaped words I couldn’t hear. One, two, three. I thought I caughtdon’tandtrustand something that might have been a name, but the frost thickened.
For a heartbeat, I thought it was just the ambient magic. Then another image surged up behind hers, as if ink dropped in water.
A figure taller than Elira, wrapped in heavy, dark robes, appeared. Hair black as wet stone, braided and coiled into a crown with pale skin as moonlit snow. Her eyes reflected chipped onyx. Her presence pressed against the inside of the mirror with a weight that made my shoulders ache.
The head priestess of Shadowick.
My other grandmother.
The frost wasn’t just frost. It was her.
Elira’s image flickered, fought, like two slides being forced into the same projector. One second, I saw my grandmother’s familiar, beloved face; the next, the priestess’s cold, severe features overlapping hers, eyes cutting through.
“Maeve,” Elira mouthed, urgent. “Maeve, listen—”
The priestess’s voice cut in, ice slicing through the muffled warmth of Elira’s like a knife. “Enough.”
It wasn’t loud, but it rang in my bones.
Every mirror in the corridor shuddered in sympathy. Some flashed bright white, others went black as ink. My butterfly mark flared, a sting so sharp I gasped.
“Elira,” I said, or tried to. The word snagged in my throat.
Elira’s image jerked sideways, like she was being dragged away from the glass. Her hand left a smear of light on the surface that the priestess’s frost chewed through an instant later.
For the first time, I saw my mother’s bone structure in the priestess’s face. The same line of jaw. The same shape of lips, though my mother smiled with hers and this woman turned hers into a weapon.
“Maeve Una Bellemore,” she said, and hearing my full name in that voice made my stomach drop. “You are making a mess.”
