Chapter 43
Theo
The vision still burns behind my eyes as I burst through the sanctuary doors, breathless and wild-eyed, scanning the darkness until my gaze locks onto them. Something passes across my face—relief, then recognition, then pure alarm.
Seth. From the morning walks. The one Jace mentioned—said he'd been around Bree. Too much.
I'm running before anyone can call out to me, feet pounding across the gravel path.
"Get away from her!" I shout, voice cracking with urgency.
Bree stumbles backward, startled by the raw panic in my voice. Seth raises his hands, stepping back with calm surprise, but I don't slow down.
I reach them in seconds, shoving myself between Bree and Seth, muscles tight with fury I don't remember choosing.
"Theo, what—"
"Don't," I say, not taking my eyes off Seth. "Something's wrong. I saw—" I swallow hard, chest heaving. "I had a vision. You're in danger."
But Seth looks... completely normal. Just confused. Just Seth.
"Were you about to—" My voice cracks again as I try to make sense of what I'm seeing versus what I saw. "What were you talking about?"
Seth steps back further, hands still visible, expression genuinely puzzled. "We were just talking about the garden. She was showing me around."
For a second, the vision overlaps what I'm seeing—Seth's face flickering between solid and broken, real and reflected. I blink hard, and he's just Seth again.
"In my vision, you were standing over her," I say, words tumbling out. "The Ether was wrong—black, like oil on water. Everything was ruined."
"Theo." Bree's voice cuts through my spiral, alarmed now. "You're scaring me. What's going on?"
I stare at Seth, trying to find any trace of the otherness I witnessed. Same face, same voice, but there's no threat here. He looks human in every way that matters.
But what if the vision was wrong? What if I'm losing control of my gift?
"I don't know," I admit, feeling completely unmoored. "I don't know what I saw."
Bree's expression shifts from alarm to concern—for me, not about some imaginary threat. She steps closer, her hand finding my arm, not pulling me closer—just anchoring me.
"Theo..." she says, and I can hear the conflict in her voice. "I want to talk about this," she says, softer now. "Just... let me clear my head first. Please?"
She's not stepping away from me. She's just... standing still. Choosing calm. I want to follow—but I know I'd just drag the panic with me.
I nod slowly, backing toward the sanctuary. As I reach the doors, I catch her turning back to Seth.
"Sorry," she says quietly. "I don't know what that was."
I know she'll come find me. She always does. It's the waiting that's hard.
The main hall feels too bright after the garden's shadows. The others are already there, drawn by whatever energy I put off when the vision hit, or maybe just by the sound of me crashing through the sanctuary like something was chasing me.
Rhett moves toward me immediately. "What happened? You look—"
"Where's Bree?" Gray interrupts, scanning the space behind me.
"Still outside," I say, the words tasting bitter.
"With who?" Jace's voice carries an edge I rarely hear.
"Seth."
Thane's gaze flicks between me and the direction I came from, but there's something off about him—an edge to his usual control, like he's holding himself together with sheer will. Something unreadable crosses his face. Without a word, he turns and slips back toward the garden entrance.
"Theo," Rhett says carefully. "Talk to us. What happened?"
I make it to the stone circle in the center of the hall, pressing my palms against the cool stone. The contact usually grounds me, helps me sort through whatever I've seen. Tonight the Ether here feels charged wrong—static electricity crackling through my bones, setting my teeth on edge.
"A vision," I say, dropping into the center. "But different. It felt real in a way that defies everything I understand about my gift."
Which admittedly isn't much.
The sanctuary's warm silver hum surrounds me. Familiar. Comforting. But then something like mirror-glass slices through my thoughts—too sharp to belong here.
Bree's shadow splits—one half reaching toward me, the other toward something hidden.
A door opening into a sanctuary that looks like ours—but hollow. Like the shape of the sanctuary had been remembered rather than lived in.
Whispers echoing in my own voice: "She doesn't belong here—yet. It's not time. You saw it already."
I surface gasping, the fragments scattering like startled birds.
But the certainty remains—something is bleeding through from a place it has no business being.
What I saw had the same layout—familiar, but wrong—like the vision didn't know how to interpret the place and stitched something together from pieces it thought I could understand.
"The vision was of our garden," I say finally. "But not our garden. Everything was in the right place, but... off. Changed. And Seth was there, but fractured. Like someone had tried to glue broken pieces into the shape of him."
Wes lowers himself beside me without a word, grounding me with the steadiness I couldn't find on my own. "And Bree?"
"Hurt. Dying, maybe. The Ether around her was black as night, rippling in patterns that felt wrong."
"But outside just now," Gray says, "everything looked normal."
"That's what I don't understand." I run my hands through my hair, frustration bleeding through. "This vision felt more alive than anything I've felt before. But Seth looked... he looked exactly like himself. Human. Confused."
Silence settles over the group like a weight. I can see the calculation in their faces—whether to go after her, whether to trust my vision, whether to trust me.
"Visions can be warnings," Stellan murmurs. "Or fragments. Not certainties."
"Can the visions lie to him?" Jace asks, but there's no edge to it. Just consideration.
Stellan's expression shifts slightly. "It's rare, but it's not impossible."
I sit in the circle's quiet after they drift away to give me space, replaying every detail. The changed garden. The fractured figure. Whispers in my own voice. The way Bree's shadow fell in two directions, like she was being pulled between worlds that shouldn't touch.
I open my palm—and stop breathing.
A thread of reflective mist rests on my skin. Not silver like Bree's Ether—dark as polished obsidian, gleaming with inner light.
I blink. It's gone.
The cold spot it leaves behind doesn't fade. Like it touched me back.
What if the vision was a warning? What if a door's been opened and something's already walked through?