“Maeve?” Keegan's voice came from above, blurred at the edges. It wasn’t loud or panicked.
I didn't answer fast enough, so his foot hit the top stair, and my heart jumped.
"Maeve," he said again. “Are you okay? It sounded like you fell.”
My mouth opened, but no sound came out, and my lungs had decided on shallow breaths that didn’t work very well.
Keegan moved down a few steps, and his gaze landed on me. He noticed my posture, my hands, the way I was angled like I'dbeen shoved backward, and his expression changed in a single heartbeat, but it wasn’t with fear.
It was with recognition.
He knew this fall wasn’t out of clumsiness. This wasn’t a bad step. This was something else that made me fall to the ground.
He crouched, keeping his movements slow, as if the wrong speed might shatter me.
“Talk to me,” he said softly.
I tried.
My tongue felt thick. My words got caught somewhere behind my teeth.
“I—” My voice cracked. I cleared my throat, but it didn’t fix the trembling. “I saw—”
His gaze flicked to the mirror, and for the first time since the vision, my panic shifted shape. Sharpened into something like humiliation as if I'd been caught staring into something forbidden and now had to explain why.
I shook my head because I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong…but what worried me was whether or not my future self did.
"No," I said, too fast. "Not now. Not—"
Keegan held still and kept his voice even.
"Do you want me to come down all the way?"
The question landed carefully, as if he were giving me control back in pieces.
Part of me wanted to say yes so that he was close enough that I could feel the steady, real weight of him to remind me that mirrors weren’t the only truth in the world.
But another part worried he might believe what I saw because if the Priestess could reach the cellar and distort things through the pedestal, could she reach him too?
If this pedestal was showing me her hall, her compound, my future…
Then bringing Keegan down here felt like lighting a candle in a cave and calling every creature to come see and predict my fate.
"I'm fine," I fibbed automatically, and I felt guilty immediately.
Keegan's mouth went flat.
"That was a terrible lie," he said.
"Okay. I'm not fine," I admitted. “I’m embarrassed, mortified, scared, and exhausted.”
He nodded once and came down the remaining steps and crouched beside me.
"Are you hurt?"
"No. Just shaken." I shook my head. “And my pride.”
I always pictured making the right choices, but this…scared me.
