Elira didn’t flinch.
“Anything is possible,” she said. “Some have speculated that’s how she keeps her years, but no one knows for sure.”
“Using the youth of her family?”
“Possibly.”
“I refuse,” I said, the word low and fierce.
Elira’s eyes softened slightly. “Refusal is a choice.”
“But if magic is threads,” I whispered, “how many threads came before me?”
Silence settled again.
I thought of my mother. Of her leaving. Of her choosing distance over legacy.
How many of them had looked into reflective surfaces and seen something similar and told themselves they were different?
Keegan’s thumb traced a small, absent circle against my hand.
“You are not her,” he said quietly.
“I know,” I answered automatically.
I leaned back slowly, staring at the ceiling beams.
“Could it be myth?” I asked again, softer now. “Could the stories about disappearing kin just be stories?”
Elira’s expression didn’t darken, but it deepened.
“Perhaps,” she said. “But if you were facing someone like Mariselle… would you gamble on that?”
The answer came too quickly.
“No.”
The cottage hummed around us. The warmth. The safety. The illusion of simplicity.
And yet beneath it all, the question remained.
How many came before me?
How many daughters and granddaughters had stood at this crossroads?
How many women had thought they were the first to resist?
And how many of them had believed, as I did now, that love and stubbornness and good intentions were enough to keepthem from walking willingly into a hall they once swore they would never enter?
Chapter Fourteen
Keegan’s breathing was the first thing I noticed when the lights were out, slow and steady.
The trees pressed close to the cottage, and the moon turned silver, but the quiet that came with night helped me to stop moving for a few hours.
I lay on my side and stared at the faint outline of the window. The cottage smelled like dried herbs and woodsmoke, and whatever Miora had been simmering earlier, something sweet that had left me feeling almost back to normal.
I told myself I could sleep and that I didn't have to replay the episode with the mirror, but I wasn’t good at lying to myself.
