Chapter 6
Theo
Two days of questions that no one will answer.
Two days of watching Bree avoid eye contact whenever I’m in the room, like she’s afraid I’ll see too much again. Like what happened in that mirror realm scared her enough that keeping distance feels safer than letting me close.
I tried to apologize yesterday. Cornered her in the hallway outside her room, words tumbling out about how sorry I was for what happened at the end—for pushing when she needed space, for letting my vision overwhelm the moment when she was already drowning.
She just looked at me with those green eyes gone carefully blank and said, “It’s fine, Theo. Really.”
But it’s not fine. The way she barely lets our eyes meet now, the careful distance she maintains even when we’re in the same room—none of it is fine. And I can’t shake the feeling that I broke something fragile between us when I let my Seer instincts override my common sense.
Two days of Stellan’s elegant dismissals and Thane’s cold refusals every time I try to understand what the Ashen Oath actually means.
And two days of visions that make no sense.
Not about Bree this time. About Seth.
I see him standing beside two figures—Phil, and with him, a man whose face shifts every time I try to focus on it, something infinitely more predatory lurking beneath the surface.
They’re talking in low voices, planning something.
But then the vision fractures, and I see Seth again—standing between Bree and danger, protective, chosen, belonging.
Two futures flickering like competing flames.
The contradiction gnaws at me. Seth working with someone who wants to hurt her, but also Seth saving her. Seth betraying everything we’ve built, but also Seth earning his place among us.
Both futures feel equally real. Equally possible.
It makes me want to scream.
“Not everything is for you to know, Seer,” Stellan said yesterday, voice smooth as silk and twice as cutting. When I pressed, his smile went sharp. “Some knowledge is earned, not given.”
Thane was more direct. “Ask again, and you’ll regret it.”
So I stopped asking them.
Instead, I turned to what I do best: quiet obsession.
The sanctuary has a small library tucked into one of the restored wings—shelves of books that appeared the same way everything else here does, in response to need and intention.
Most are general magical theory, histories of the various factions, treatises on Ether manipulation that make my head spin.
But scattered through them are fragments. Mentions of mirror rites and oaths sworn between selves. References to chambers where choice became destiny. Never enough to understand, always enough to frustrate.
The name Riley appears nowhere. Not once.
But Ashen does. Oath does. Always fractured, always incomplete, like someone tried to erase the knowledge but couldn’t quite manage it.
After sixteen hours of reading, my eyes burn and my hands shake with the effort of not throwing the books across the room. I need air. I need space. I need to move before I shatter something.
The sanctuary grounds stretch beyond the main building in ways that seem to shift depending on who’s exploring them.
When Bree walks the paths, flowers bloom and trees bend toward her like she’s the sun.
When Rhett trains outside, the fire-resistant stones arrange themselves into perfect practice rings.
When I walk them now, frustrated and hungry for answers, they lead me deeper than I’ve ever gone.
Past the garden, training areas and the meditation circles. Into sections where the paths become older, more overgrown, like they haven’t been walked in decades.
Something hums faintly under my skin—not a vision, but something close. A whisper of recognition, of rightness, pulling me forward even though I don’t understand why.
That’s when I hear footsteps behind me.
I turn, expecting Rhett or maybe Gray checking on me, but it’s Seth who emerges from the tree line. His sandy hair is disheveled, shirt sleeves pushed up like he’s been working, and there’s something careful in his expression. Cautious.
“Hey,” he says, stopping a few feet away. Like he’s not sure he’s welcome.
“Seth.” I nod, not moving closer or farther. “You’re pretty far from the main buildings.”
“So are you.” He shoves his hands into his pockets, shoulders hunching slightly.
“Look, I… I wanted to apologize. For the other night. When you had that vision and came running out—” He stops, jaw working.
“I know how it must have looked. Me being alone with her in the garden. I wasn’t trying to…
I mean, I wouldn’t—” He trails off, looking uncomfortable.
I study his face, looking for any trace of the threat I saw in my vision. But all I see is genuine regret and something that looks like confusion.
“I was protecting her,” I say simply. “Or trying to. The vision felt so real.”
“I know. And I get it. But…” Seth runs a hand through his hair. “She looked at me like she didn’t know if she could trust me after that. Like maybe your vision was right and there really is something wrong with me.”
There’s something vulnerable in his voice that catches me off guard.
Seth falls into step beside me as I start walking again, and for a while we don’t talk. Just move through dappled sunlight and the whisper of leaves overhead. It’s easier than I expected—his presence somehow familiar despite how recently he joined us.
“She’s avoiding me now,” he says eventually. “Bree. I don’t blame her, but…” He trails off, shaking his head. “I don’t want her to hate me. And I don’t know how not to screw this up. Not when she has all of you.”
He kicks at a loose stone on the path. “I heard someone in town call you guys the Ether Entourage—like you’re this…
unit. And I’m just some random guy who showed up and complicated everything.
” His voice drops lower, more bitter. “But I can’t help it.
There’s something about her that… I feel drawn to her.
Like I’m supposed to be here. And I know that probably sounds crazy, but—”
The words hit something raw in my chest. Because I’ve seen it—the screwing up, the betrayal, the way his choices could tear everything apart. But I’ve also seen the other path, the one where he stands with us instead of against us.
“You know,” I say quietly, not looking at him, “you don’t have to be whole to be worthy of being seen. Not by her. Not by anyone.”
Seth goes completely still beside me. When I glance over, there’s something vulnerable and stunned in his expression, like I’ve just said something he’s never let himself believe. The same words I uttered to Bree all those years ago the first time, are just as true for him.
For a long moment, he doesn’t speak. Just stares at the path ahead, jaw working like he’s trying to find words that won’t crack his voice.
“I…” he starts, then stops. Clears his throat. “That’s not—I mean, how do you know that?” The question comes out rougher than he probably intended. “About being broken. About her not… not caring about that.”
There’s something desperate in his voice, like he’s asking for permission to hope.
“Because I’ve seen the way she looks at all of us,” I say softly. “The way she chose to let us stay, even when she was terrified. She doesn’t need us to be perfect, Seth. She just needs us to be real.”
He nods slowly, but I can see him struggling with it. Wanting to believe but not quite daring to.
“You’re not the only one who feels that way,” I add, even softer.
We walk in comfortable silence after that, the path winding deeper into sections of the sanctuary I’ve never explored. Ancient oak trees with trunks wide enough to hide behind. Stone markers half-buried in ivy. The sense of old magic sleeping in the very soil.
“You’re looking for something,” Seth observes after we’ve been walking for ten minutes. “Not just walking off frustration.”
I glance at him, surprised by his perceptiveness. “What makes you say that?”
“The way you keep scanning. Like you’re following a trail only you can see.” He pauses, considering. “If I were hiding something, I’d probably leave a marker where no one would notice.”
“And where would that be?”
Seth stops walking, head tilted like he’s listening to something. When he looks at me, there’s an odd intensity in his eyes. “Somewhere that looks forgotten but isn’t. Somewhere that feels empty but holds memory.”
The words hit something in my chest. Recognition. Like he’s just voiced what my visions have been trying to tell me.
I close my eyes, letting the whisper-pull strengthen. When I open them, Seth is watching me with curious attention but no judgment.
“This way,” I say, turning left toward what looks like a dead end in the trees.
But as we push through the undergrowth, it opens into a clearing I know wasn’t here yesterday. Or maybe it was, and we just weren’t ready to find it.
In the center stands the ruins of what might have been a small temple.
Crumbling stone walls barely waist-high, covered in moss and threading vines.
But carved into every visible surface are symbols—spirals and curves that hurt to look at directly, like they’re moving just outside the edge of vision.
And scattered among the ruins, catching light that shouldn’t exist in the shadow of the trees, are pieces of broken mirror.
“Well,” Seth says quietly. “That’s not ominous at all.”
I step closer, drawn by the same instinct that led us here. When I kneel beside one of the larger mirror shards, I can see why.
The reflection it shows isn’t quite right. Not distorted, but… layered. Like there’s something else behind the surface, watching.
“Theo.” Seth’s voice carries a warning. “Maybe don’t—”
But I’m already reaching out, fingertips brushing the edge of the mirror shard.
It ripples.
Not violently like when Bree’s power surges, but gently. Like recognition. Like greeting an old friend.