“What kind of library?” Miora asked gently.
"Too close for comfort," I said. "Shelves like the Academy. Book sprites. Dust and ink and old charms in the air. It was the Academy's, almost — but darker. Like shadows had settled into it."
Elira's expression shifted.
"And she was touching everything," I added. "Running her fingers along the spines, snapping at the sprites like they were inattentive servants."
Miora muttered something under her breath — it sounded like a kitchen curse dressed up as a recipe.
"And then I saw myself."
"And?" Elira prompted.
"There were magical folk with me. All kinds. But none that I knew and none from here. It felt like a lot of time had passed."
Elira nodded once. “The priestess favors reflection as a means of influence.”
“Elira,” Miora said, voice low. “You’re saying she planted that?”
“I’m saying,” Elira replied calmly, “that Mariselle has used reflective magic for longer than most of us have been alive. I wouldn’t be surprised if she found a way into the pedestal.”
The name sat in the room differently than Priestess did. Mariselle. Elegant. Almost benign.
“Yes,” Elira said. “She can observe through reflection. Sometimes she can nudge.”
A cold line slid down my spine.
“I can do the same, I think,” I confessed, thinking back to the mirrors at the Academy.
“Well, you all are related,” Miora pointed out.
I playfully scowled at her.
“She’s mastered nudging, it seems,” Grandma Elira said, sighing.
“Nudge how?” I asked.
“By presenting possibility as inevitability,” Elira said simply.
My breath caught with recognition.
“That’s exactly what this felt like,” I whispered. “It didn’t feel like the Academy’s mirrors. Those felt like questions. This felt like… a suggestion. And things were…off. Probably because she hasn’t been inside the actual Academy library to know the details.”
Keegan’s fingers shifted slightly against mine, as relief slid through me.
“I saw into her world,” I said. “I wasn’t drawn into it. I wasn’t part of it. I was looking through.”
“That matters,” Elira said.
“Does it?” I demanded. “Because I also saw myself walk in like I belonged there.”
Silence stretched as Elira moved at last, taking the chair opposite me. She folded her hands in her lap and studied me the way she used to study Ward fractures—patiently, looking for the true break, not the surface crack.
“Magic doesn’t deal in guarantees,” she said. “It deals in threads.”
“I don’t want that thread.”
“You don’t have to take it,” she replied calmly.
