Chapter Twelve
The cellar steps creaked the moment I shifted my weight, and I hated that it felt like a confession.
I sat there anyway, trying to remember how breathing worked. My palms were damp, my throat was too tight, and my stomach was rolling with something that wasn't really nausea. It was my body deciding it didn't want to be in the same world as what I'd just seen.
Above me, the cottage settled. The fire gave a soft crackle somewhere in the living room. The wind tapped the windows like it hadn’t heard the news.
“Maeve?” Keegan's voice came from above, blurred at the edges. It wasn’t loud or panicked.
I didn't answer fast enough, so his foot hit the top stair, and my heart jumped.
"Maeve," he said again. “Are you okay? It sounded like you fell.”
My mouth opened, but no sound came out, and my lungs had decided on shallow breaths that didn’t work very well.
Keegan moved down a few steps, and his gaze landed on me. He noticed my posture, my hands, the way I was angled like I'd been shoved backward, and his expression changed in a single heartbeat, but it wasn’t with fear.
It was with recognition.
He knew this fall wasn’t out of clumsiness. This wasn’t a bad step. This was something else that made me fall to the ground.
He crouched, keeping his movements slow, as if the wrong speed might shatter me.
“Talk to me,” he said softly.
I tried.
My tongue felt thick. My words got caught somewhere behind my teeth.
“I—” My voice cracked. I cleared my throat, but it didn’t fix the trembling. “I saw—”
His gaze flicked to the mirror, and for the first time since the vision, my panic shifted shape. Sharpened into something like humiliation as if I'd been caught staring into something forbidden and now had to explain why.
I shook my head because I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong…but what worried me was whether or not my future self did.
"No," I said, too fast. "Not now. Not—"
Keegan held still and kept his voice even.
"Do you want me to come down all the way?"
The question landed carefully, as if he were giving me control back in pieces.
Part of me wanted to say yes so that he was close enough that I could feel the steady, real weight of him to remind me that mirrors weren’t the only truth in the world.
But another part worried he might believe what I saw because if the Priestess could reach the cellar and distort things through the pedestal, could she reach him too?
If this pedestal was showing me her hall, her compound, my future…
Then bringing Keegan down here felt like lighting a candle in a cave and calling every creature to come see and predict my fate.
"I'm fine," I fibbed automatically, and I felt guilty immediately.
Keegan's mouth went flat.
"That was a terrible lie," he said.
"Okay. I'm not fine," I admitted. “I’m embarrassed, mortified, scared, and exhausted.”
He nodded once and came down the remaining steps and crouched beside me.
"Are you hurt?"
"No. Just shaken." I shook my head. “And my pride.”
I always pictured making the right choices, but this…scared me.
His gaze moved over me, checking for blood, bruising, the signs of pain. When he didn't find anything, his eyes came back to mine.
"What did it show you?" he asked.
I looked at Keegan, and the decision I’d been avoiding pressed in on my ribs.
Once I spoke the truth, that made it feel more real.
But if I didn’t tell him, I wasn’t sure I could carry it alone.
My chest tightened.
“I don’t know if I should—”
Keegan's expression didn't shift into impatience. It softened into something that made my throat close.
"Maeve," he said quietly, "whatever it is …you don't have to hold it by yourself."
I stared at him for a beat too long and finally exhaled.
"It showed the library," I said, voice low.
"The way it did when I first came down here.
Only this time, it felt different. The hope and curiosity had been replaced with…
dread and fear. It was the same, yet so different…
so very strange and dark. The poor book sprites, they—" I stopped myself. “They were frightened.”
Keegan's eyes narrowed as he focused on what I was trying to say.
"And then," I continued, "she was there."
His posture went very still.
"The Priestess," I whispered.
“In the library?” he asked, and the way he said it made it clear he understood the implication: she shouldn’t be able to access that place. Not without the Academy allowing it, or something in the magical world drastically changing.
“Yes. She was walking the aisles as if she belonged and had done it many times before. She touched the spines. She snapped at the book sprites. It was horrible.”
My stomach knotted again just remembering her, that elegant disdain, and the casual possession she embodied.
"I feel sick.”
Keegan's gaze flicked to the mirror. He didn't step toward it, but something in him went rigid.
"And then?" he asked.
"And then I saw myself." My voice trailed off as a shiver ran through me.
Keegan blinked. "You.”
I nodded. “I was older, not ancient, but older than I am now. I was somewhere I didn’t recognize. There were people, magical folk, but none of them were anyone I knew. Not Bella, not Nova, not Ardetia, not… anyone. It felt cold…dark. I know where it showed me.”
He didn’t say anything. He knew too.
“The worst part was that it felt like I belonged.”
My lungs tightened again, and I fought for the next breath.
Keegan’s eyes darkened, but his gaze held mine, and then he held me.
"You're sure of what you saw?" he asked.
I let out a short, humorless laugh.
"I wish I wasn't," I said. "I wish I'd seen myself tripping over a basket of laundry in a harmless future where the biggest threat was ironing linen."
Keegan's mouth twitched, but it didn't become a smile.
He studied me.
“And you think the mirror is showing a future,” he said carefully.
“I don’t know what it’s showing,” I confessed. “Maybe just options or choices if I’m not careful.”
Keegan didn’t flinch.
“Okay,” he said, softening his voice. “Okay. It might not be a fixed future.”
I stared at him, wishing this wasn’t the conversation. I don’t know what I’d hoped the pedestal would show me, but this certainly wasn’t it.
“I walked as if I chose it, and that’s the most terrifying thing about it.”
“I don’t know what to say,” he admitted, and the honesty of it almost undid me more than comfort would have. “I don’t want to dismiss it. And I don’t want to feed it.”
“I hate it,” I whispered. “I hate that it’s in my head now, like a planted seed.”
Keegan squeezed me tighter.
“You’re not her,” he said, the words rougher now. “And you’re not… someone who can be shaped that easily.”
“But what if I am?” I blurted.
Keegan’s eyes stayed on mine. “Maeve,” he said, low and firm, “listen to me.”
I tried. I did. But my mind was already spiraling—already rearranging every moment, every choice, every impulse. Was the pedestal warning me? Was it bait? Was it a test? Was it showing what she wanted me to believe?
Keegan shifted, sliding his arm around my back, helping me rise. My legs felt untrustworthy, but he was steady. He guided me up the stairs slowly, step by step, as if we had all the time in the world and none of it was going to collapse under us.
When we reached the living room, the firelight hit my face, and I realized my cheeks were wet.
I didn’t remember crying.
Keegan led me to the couch and sat beside me, close but not crowding. He reached for a throw blanket, thick and soft, and draped it over my legs.
The cottage smelled like tea leaves and woodsmoke, and the faint lavender Miora liked to tuck into corners of the cottage, which I had mocked relentlessly until I started needing it.
I pressed my palm to my forehead.
“There’s no way,” I whispered. “There is no way I would—”
“I know,” Keegan said quietly. “I can’t pretend I understand what the pedestal shows, but I know this: visions can lie. Or they can show possibilities. Or they can show what someone wants you to fear.”
My stomach twisted.
“You think she can influence it?” I asked.
“The very first time you used the pedestal, you saw the beauty of the Academy’s library because Elira wanted you to see the possibilities.”
His words made me feel better.
“It didn’t mean you would necessarily see them, but she managed to call to you from it.”
I nodded and let out a deep breath.
“So, maybe it’s just the same type of thing…only, from the Priestess’s perspective. I know she would love nothing more than to put doubt inside you.”
Doubt could be more insidious than terror, and it lasted longer.
I stared at the fire until it blurred.
“I don’t know what to do with it,” I admitted. “I don’t know how to… unsee it.”
Keegan’s hand found mine, fingers threading through like he was lacing me back into my own body.
“Maybe you’re not meant to unsee it. Now, we’re aware of possibilities, and all of our choices will be made accordingly. Just don’t let secrets eat you alive. You can always talk to me.”
“Thank you,” I whispered as a soft clatter sounded beyond the doorway.
Footsteps in a familiar, brisk rhythm came quickly.
I barely had time to lift my head before Miora appeared in the kitchen archway, hair pinned up messily, sleeves rolled, holding a wooden spoon like a weapon out of habit.
Behind her, Grandma Elira stepped into view like she’d been there the whole time and simply decided to be seen now. Her eyes flicked from my face to Keegan’s hand in mine to the blanket over my legs with the same quiet assessment she’d once used in the Academy.
Miora’s gaze sharpened.
“I heard a thump,” Miora said, voice light but eyes not light at all. “And then I heard the phrase Priestess’s compound floating through the air, which is not what I like to hear during my evening simmer.”
Elira’s attention landed on me fully.
“Maeve,” she said softly.
And the softness of it made my stomach drop again, because Elira didn’t soften unless something mattered.
Keegan’s thumb brushed over my knuckles once, anchoring me.
It was crazy to me, with everything I’d seen and been through since entering Stonewick, it was the pedestal that stole my breath away. The thought of standing in the shadows petrified me.
Miora took one step into the room, spoon still in hand, and sniffed the air like she could smell panic.
“You looked into the mirror,” she said, not a question.
I swallowed, and Elira’s gaze didn’t waver.
I nodded once, and the cottage seemed to hold its breath with us, the fire crackling like it was trying to pretend it hadn’t heard anything, and inside my chest my panic rose again—because now it wasn’t just mine.
Now it was shared.
Now it was real.
And I didn’t know which was worse.