Chapter Eleven
The cellar air was cooler than the cottage should’ve allowed.
The wooden hatch groaned softly as it settled closed behind me, the sound swallowed almost immediately by the thick, waiting quiet below.
My boots found the first step by memory more than by sight.
The stairs dipped down at a gentle angle, worn at the center from years of careful feet, and the walls on either side, and the mirror’s pull was there again.
At the bottom of the stairs, the cellar opened into that strange, cold space. The cottage above was cozy and lived-in and stubbornly domestic, with thick rugs, worn armchairs, and a chipped vase that had survived at least three of my emotional spirals. The cellar was something else entirely.
The air carried a faint scent of minerals and wax.
At first glance, the pedestal looked the same as the first time I’d ever stepped down here.
The mirror sat at the center of it all, planted into the pedestal like an eye that never closed.
The pedestal was carved from dark stone veined with silver that caught the lantern-light and held it.
The mirror’s surface looked like glass until you got too close. Then it felt like looking into water, and if you narrowed your eyes and kept looking, it changed into a door.
I stepped toward it anyway and lifted my hands, my fingers hovering just over the surface.
The mirror brightened, and my pulse quickened.
“Just a quick look. In and out. No… dramatics. No massive revelations, please.”
The mirror didn’t respond in words. Instead, the surface shimmered beneath the air, and I felt the tiniest ripple of pressure against my fingertips.
I pressed my palms flat to the glass, and warmth spread through my hands, slow and deliberate, like a heartbeat syncing itself to mine.
The cellar dissolved, and the library sharpened into reality.
It was as if I were in a real library.
There were higher ceilings and darker wood than in the Academy…
or was it the same? The shelves were carved with ornate edges and inlaid with symbols that made my birthmark throb in recognition.
The lanterns were different, too. Cold-blue flames were trapped in glass globes, lighting the aisles with a clinical calm that made my stomach drop before I even understood why.
But yet, I couldn’t shake knowing this space.
Book sprites flitted between shelves, but these weren’t the polite little caretakers I’d grown accustomed to.
They moved like startled birds. They were quick and wary, carrying stacks that looked too heavy for their small bodies as if they couldn’t stop for any breaks without consequences.
One of them bumped a spine on the edge of a shelf and stilled, frozen. I could taste their fear.
Because someone was behind it.
A woman’s voice cut through the room like a blade drawn slowly, and my blood turned to ice.
“Careful.”
I didn’t need to see her face to know the sound of that tone. It was the kind of voice that didn’t rise to shout because it didn’t have to. It was the tone that assumed obedience, the way a queen assumed her crown would remain on her head.
The Priestess stepped into view.
Mariselle, my grandmother, was inside the mirror.
She moved down the aisle with elegant ease, as if every stone beneath her feet belonged to her personally.
Her gown was made out of dark, heavy red fabric with a faint sheen.
The hem brushed the floor in a whisper. Her hair was pinned up in a careful twist, silver threaded through black like frost in the night.
It occurred to me that I’d seen her with both dark hair in visions and silver in person…
yet I still couldn’t decipher timelines.
She didn’t look rushed. She didn’t look harried.
In fact, she looked… pleased with herself.
It worried me because it was almost like she’d finally been allowed into a place she’d always considered hers and was savoring the moment before anyone dared to suggest otherwise.
The book sprite that had bumped the shelf dipped into a frantic bow, wings quivering.
Mariselle extended one slender finger and traced the spine of a book as she passed, not reverent. No, she was possessive. Her nail made a soft, audible tick against the leather, and the sound made bile rise in my throat.
I could almost feel the library recoiling, but it didn’t eject her.
It tolerated her.
Which was somehow worse.
Because I knew why. The library didn’t have a choice.
She paused, flicking her gaze up and down the shelves like she was inventorying treasure. Her expression didn’t change much from book to book. She didn’t need dramatic eyebrows or villainous smirks. The menace lived in how calm she was and in the certainty of the choices that got her there.
A sprite zipped by carrying a stack of thin volumes, and the Priestess snapped her fingers once, sharp.
The sprite nearly dropped everything.
“Not those,” she said, voice mild and deadly. “Those are not for your little hands.”
The sprite froze in midair, trembling. Another sprite rushed in, as if to help, and Mariselle’s eyes slid toward it.
“Ah-ah.” She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t have to. “One at a time.”
The second sprite halted so abruptly that its wings fluttered helplessly, then drifted backward as if shoved by an invisible force.
My stomach churned. I’d never seen sprites with this much fear running through them. This wasn’t what their world should ever look like.
Even though my hands were still on the mirror, I felt my body react. My skin prickled, and I felt sweat break along my spine as if my body couldn’t decide whether to fight or run.
I tried to pull away, but I couldn’t.
The mirror held me, not physically, but with the weight of what I was seeing. It was as if I looked away, then I’d miss the moment that mattered most.
Mariselle glided to the end of the aisle and turned slowly, surveying the room again.
But then she looked directly toward me.
Not at the mirror or my fingers pressing the glass, but at me.
My breath stopped long enough that my chest ached.
For one terrible second, I was certain she could see through the pedestal.
But as quickly as it happened, her gaze slid past, as if she were looking at something behind the mirror now, something deeper inside the compound.
She lifted her hand and gestured lazily.
“Bring me the index,” she told the sprites. “All of it. I want every catalog entry.”
A few sprites scrambled, panicked, and obeyed.
Mariselle’s mouth curved, but it wasn’t into a smile. There was no warmth there, only a satisfied shift, like someone tightening a grip, and I felt physically ill.
There was nothing metaphorical about the nausea running through me.
My throat tightened. My stomach rolled. A wave of nausea hit so suddenly that I swallowed hard and tasted acid.
And I knew that I was watching my grandmother walk the aisles of Stonewick Academy’s library.
“No…” I whispered.
And then the scene changed, like a page had been flipped.
I was still in a library, but it wasn’t the one I’d just viewed. I saw aisles, shelves, and sprites, but now the focus wasn’t Mariselle. It was someone else walking between the stacks.
Someone with my gait.
My posture.
My hands.
It took my brain a full heartbeat to accept what my eyes were seeing.
Me.
Older.
Not ancient—just… older than I was now. There were faint lines at the edges of my eyes, more confidence in the way I held my shoulders, and my hair was pulled back with a practicality that suggested I didn’t have time for loose curls and wishful thinking.
I wore clothing I didn’t recognize. Darker fabric, fitted at the waist, layered like someone who expected movement and danger at any moment.
I spotted a pendant at my throat that pulsed faintly with light, and when I turned, the glow reflected off the spines of the books like moonlight.
My birthmark burned as I watched myself, magical folk moved through the library in a tense, purposeful stream.
A vampire woman with a braid down her back and a satchel slung over one shoulder stared at a chart. A goblin man with ink-stained fingers clutched a rolled map. A young shifter with a child on their hip, the child’s wide eyes glowing faint gold, looked through books.
But none of them were familiar, and yet they moved like a unit.
It felt like I was watching a group that had been through something together, and I was there, but I didn’t recognize them, and I didn’t see anyone I knew now.
I was their leader.
The thought hit me so hard my stomach lurched again because this wasn’t the Academy’s library and nothing was familiar.
I watched myself head toward a doorway at the far end of the library, where an arch carved in black stone, threaded with silver veins, pulsed faintly.
I watched myself approach it with calm determination and step through it.
The world beyond the arch wasn’t the Academy.
It wasn’t Stonewick.
The air changed immediately into drier, colder, and scented with incense and old blood and something acidic beneath it that made my skin crawl.
The walls were dark stone, polished to a gleam, etched with symbols that looked like charms. Torches burned in sconces, but the flames were pale, almost colorless, as if starved of warmth.
Older Me walked down the corridor with the group close behind her.
And then she turned the corner.
My blood froze.
Because the hall opened into a wide space that looked like a cathedral made by someone who’d never believed in mercy, pillars rose like ribs, and a dais sat at the far end, carved from the same black stone as the walls.
Curtains hung in heavy folds, swallowing sound.
And the air hummed. It wasn’t cozy Academy magic buzzing through the breezes. It was tight and controlled.
And then it hit me.
I knew that architecture.
Not by memory.
By instinct.
By the way, my body tried to recoil even as the mirror held me.
Mariselle’s compound.
I watched Older Me step farther inside, and I saw her pause, just for a heartbeat, like she was bracing herself before walking into the mouth of something that wanted to swallow her whole.
Then she lifted her chin and kept going.
My lungs stopped working.
“No,” I gasped, loud enough that in the cellar my voice echoed off the stone.
The mirror released me so suddenly that my hands slid off the glass like it had turned slick.
I stumbled backward, heels catching on uneven stone, and the world spun.
For a brief, humiliating moment, I windmilled my arms like a woman who had once possessed dignity. Then my foot found nothing but air, and I fell.
Hard.
My shoulder slammed into the stone floor. My hip hit next, pain flaring bright enough to blur my vision. My head thudded against something, maybe the edge of the pedestal base, maybe the floor itself, and stars burst behind my eyes.
I lay there, gasping for breath as the sconce flickered, and I swallowed against nausea, pushing myself upright with trembling hands. My shoulder screamed. My hip throbbed. My palms were damp with sweat.
But pain wasn’t what held my attention.
The thing that held my attention was the mirror.
It looked normal now, just a faint shimmer in the surface as if nothing had happened.
It pretended it hadn’t just shown me my worst nightmare of being connected with Shadowick or walking into the Priestess’ compound.
My stomach rolled again, and I pressed one hand to my mouth, breathing through my nose until the urge to be sick eased enough for me to think.
“No,” I said again, but this time it was steadier. Angrier. “No. I don’t accept that.”
I got to my feet, wincing, and stepped back to the pedestal.
The stone was smooth, cool beneath my fingertips.
It had always been reactive. Responsive. Moody.
If it wanted me to see something, it invited me to see it.
If it wanted to withhold, it resisted.
Fine.
I planted my feet.
I put both hands on the edge of the pedestal and shoved.
Nothing.
Not a scrape. Not a shift. Not even the faint vibration of stone protesting.
The pedestal didn’t budge.
I tried again, jaw clenched, shoulder protesting with every movement.
Still nothing.
The mirror stayed perfectly still, perfectly calm, perfectly unhelpful.
My breath came faster from panic, trying to grab me by the throat.
“Show me again,” I whispered, voice shaking despite my best effort. “Show me what that was. Was that real? Was that a warning? A possibility? A—”
The pedestal didn’t budge.
It sat there in silent refusal, as if it had given me exactly what it meant to give me, and now it was finished.
I stared at my own reflection, and the pale, wide-eyed expression I couldn’t wipe off my face.
And somewhere upstairs, the cottage creaked softly, the way an old home did when it settled.
I could almost hear Keegan’s voice in my mind—Maeve? You sure you’re okay down there?
I swallowed hard, forcing my breath to slow, forcing my hands to unclench.
Whether I wanted to believe it or not, I had seen it.
Mariselle was inside a library that felt too close to the Academy’s bones.
And me, older and steadier, walking into her compound like I was choosing it.
My stomach twisted again, and I reached out one more time and pressed my palm to the pedestal, gentler now, like negotiation instead of force.
The pedestal stayed inert.
And up in the quiet above, I could feel time continuing forward—tea cooling in cups, wood settling into place, the world shifting outside the cottage walls.
I squeezed my eyes shut, swallowed down the sick rise of fear, and opened them again to face the mirror’s blank surface.
Whatever that vision meant, it wasn’t nothing.
But if the pedestal wouldn’t budge, then I’d have to.
And I’d have to do it smart.
And cautious.
Because the last thing I was going to do was walk into my grandmother’s compound just because a mirror decided to frighten me into it.