He met my eyes, his hazel steady, his jaw set.
“No,” he said. “But it might give us time to figure out what, exactly, they just started.”
The cracked mirrors watched us leave, every fractured surface holding some version of our reflections.
Somewhere in the broken glass, for just a heartbeat, I thought I saw my own face looking back—
not as I was,
but as someone I hadn’t decided yet to be.
Chapter Eighteen
My legs felt like overcooked noodles. The kind Twobble insisted were perfectly al dente while they slid off the spoon like exhausted worms. Every breath scraped my ribs, every blink brought a little flash of fractured mirror light. Whatever the priestess had done…the push, the pull, the ripping magic, it clung to me like cold fingers in my lungs.
“Easy,” Keegan murmured, keeping a steadying arm around my waist as we crossed the Academy’s threshold. “One step at a time.”
“I am taking one step at a time,” I said weakly. “They’re just not… cooperating with each other.”
We made it across the courtyard with only one near-collapse and two moments where Keegan simply lifted me over uneven cobblestones like I weighed nothing but an opinion. The Butterfly Ward shimmered above us, the butterflies hugging the path with a strange, worried hush I’d never felt from them before.
Something about that quiet made my skin crawl.
I squeezed my eyes shut. The mirror corridor kept replaying, shards of memory in shards of glass: Elira’s hand pressing against the other side of the mirror. The priestess’s facefracturing into a hundred watching eyes. The sigil that didn’t belong to either of them pulsing like a heartbeat.
“You’re shaking,” Keegan said.
I hadn’t noticed, but I was. My teeth clicked gently.
“Just cold,” I lied.
He didn’t call me on it. He tightened his hold and walked faster.
By the time we reached the cottage path, the late afternoon sun had already dipped behind the ridge, painting the stones in long shadows. The cottage roofline peeked between the birches like it always did, comforting, familiar, home.
Home.
I needed home.
I needed blankets and garlic-scented air and the creak of the old rafters and Miora’s disapproving fussing and Twobble stealing snacks from the bread bin.
Mostly, I needed the quiet.
“Almost there,” Keegan murmured, his warmth at my side grounding me as we approached the porch. “You’re doing fine.”
“I don’t feel fine.”
“I know.”
The porch steps creaked under our combined weight. The cottage door had already unlatched itself, sensing our arrival with an anxious flutter of magic from Miora’s watchful eyes.
Keegan pushed it open with his free hand, guiding me through as if I were made of fragile glass.
And then—
I froze.
Keegan stopped beside me.
