For a second, I saw everything. Every mirror, every reflection, every possible version of myself smeared across the surfaces as headmistress, Hedge Witch, dragon-keeper, Shadowick priestess, stranger, child. All of them blurring, splitting, merging.
Then it all went white.
Something slammed into my chest with an unknown force or magic or just the world deciding I needed to sit down very fast. The last thing I felt was the sting of a small cut on my cheek as a sliver of glass brushed it, then the cold rush of the floor rising to meet me.
“Maeve. Maeve. Maeve, awake now, please, before Keegan starts howling and we all have to comfort him, and it will be a whole thing—”
The voice filtered in like a radio trying to find the right station. Annoyed, anxious, and very, very goblin.
I groaned. The world was heavy. My eyelids felt glued shut. My butterfly mark throbbed in time with my pulse. The stone under my back was cool and hard.
“Try poking her again,” another voice said, farther down, dry as parchment.
Nova. Of course.
“I have poked her four times,” Twobble said, scandalized. “There is a limit to how much one can poke their headmistress before it becomes an HR issue.”
“Twobble,” Nova said patiently. “She’s awake.”
I cracked one eye open.
Twobble’s face was inches from mine, his ears drooping, his eyes wide with worry and an unflattering amount of relief. He had what looked like a bandage stuck to his own forehead, slightly off-center. Behind him, Nova loomed, staff in hand, expression composed but tight at the edges.
The corridor lights glowed low, each sconce burning steadily. The mirrors…
I flinched, trying to sit up too fast. The world tilted. Twobble yelped and caught my shoulders.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he babbled. “Easy there, Flying Hotdog. You’ve been out long enough, no repeat performances and…”
Keegan’s footsteps thundered down the hall.
He reached us in a rush, breath sharp, eyes wild in that way they got when the curse whispered too loudly, and fearturned him into a storm. He dropped to his knees beside me, hands hovering over my face, my arms, my shoulders, as if afraid touching me would reveal something broken.
“Maeve,” he rasped. “Talk to me.”
“I am…” I swallowed. My throat was dry, and there was a metallic tang in my mouth. “Apparently alive.”
Some of the feral tension left his shoulders. He let out a shaky breath that ghosted across my cheek, then very carefully brushed his thumb over the small cut there. His hand trembled.
“You scared the hell out of me,” he said.
“Join the club,” Twobble muttered. “Membership includes a complementary panic attack.”
“How long was I…?”
“Too long,” Keegan said.
Nova eased down to a crouch, her green eyes assessing.
“We found you on the floor,” she said. “The Ward shrieked loud enough to bring Karvey halfway up the tower from the cottage. Twobble was first to reach you.”
“I was already on my way,” Twobble said stoutly. “I felt a disturbance in the snack force.”
I blinked, trying to piece together the last… however long.
“The mirrors,” I said hoarsely. “Elira was there. And the priestess. They were—” I gestured feebly. “Fighting over the connection. They both tried to talk to me. And then…”
I looked past them.
