“She may think she’s protecting you,” he said carefully.
The words hurt more than anything else.
“That’s worse.”
Because if it was a choice, if she believed she was saving me from something, then she had walked straight into that woman’s reach on purpose.
“She asked me something earlier tonight,” my father said after a moment.
I looked up at him.
“She asked if blood can be corrected.”
Ice slid through my chest.
Blood remembers.The Priestess’s words echoed in my head.
“She left an empty teacup on the table in her room,” he added softly. “The porcelain still warm.”
That small detail undid me more than the rest.
She hadn’t stormed out.
She hadn’t fled.
She had finished her tea… and walked away.
“She thinks she understands the Priestess,” my father said.
The distinction sat heavily between us, but then a quiet voice drifted from the porch.
“Maeve?” Twobble stood at the bottom step, clutching something carefully in both hands. Cindy was sitting securely on his tiny shoulder.
There was no dramatic sigh, punchline, or speech about goblin authority. He looked pale and uncertain. His ears drooped in a way I had never seen before.
“I tried to stop her,” he said softly.
My chest tightened.
“I know,” I said, moving toward him.
“She told me it wasn’t my burden,” he continued, shuffling forward,
He held out a folded piece of parchment.
“I found this on your desk in the office.”
My name was written across the front in my mother’s familiar, slightly slanted handwriting.
Everything around me went quiet.
The wolves.
The trees.
Even the wind.
Keegan’s hand stayed steady against my back while my father moved closer without saying a word.
