Page 96 of Her Orc Healer

“The binding needed a host. It found the nearest spark. An unformed mind. A body just beginning to hold magic. And it made itself at home.”

My voice cracked. “She was a baby—”

“Exactly.” Drev didn’t even blink. “Before the world could fill her with anything else. Before she could resist it. The magic’s been part of her longer than breath. Her aura grew around it. It’s shaped her.”

“Take me instead,” I begged. “Please. If you need a vessel—take me.”

Drev shook her head slowly, almost pitying.

“You’re too late. You’re too full. Memory, magic, will. Your soul’s already decided what it is.”

She looked back to Maeve, reverent now.

“But this child? The magic didn’t destroy her. It lives in her. She holds it without breaking. That’s what Finn wanted to be.”

She reached down, gently touching Maeve’s temple with two fingers.

“And Maeve is what she left behind. The only one who’s ever survived it from the start.”

She spoke like Maeve wasn’t even there. Like she was some kind of artifact pulled from wreckage, some rare mineral polished enough to study. I wanted to scream. Wanted to rip through the ward with my bare hands. But all I could do was watch as that pale, precise hand brushed my niece’s skin like it belonged there.

No. No, no, no.

Maeve wasn’t a theory. She wasn’t a solution. She was mine.

The child who painted on the shop walls with my best pigment. Who glowed, quite literally, when she laughed. Who loved without caution. Who trusted me to keep her safe.

“What happens to her?” I rasped, my voice raw, barely above a whisper.

“The magic settles completely,” Drev answered. “There’s no more flicker. No more instability. No more unraveling.”

I stared at her. “And what’s left of Maeve?”

That was when Drev hesitated.

Just for a breath.

And that was the real answer.

“She’s five,” I choked.

“The power inside her doesn’t care how old she is,” Drev said, without heat. “It’s going to tear through her either way. I’m giving it structure. Purpose.”

“No,” I said. “You’re hollowing her out.”

“She’ll survive,” Drev said. “More than most of us ever did.”

I pressed my hand to the ward, trembling. “But she won’t be Maeve.”

Drev’s mouth twisted. “She was never going to stay Maeve.”

The words hit harder than any blow. I felt them land in my chest, sharp and dull all at once—like a truth I’d been trying not to look at finally forced into the light.

Behind her, movement stirred at the edge of the circle. I blinked—once—and they were there.

Five figures, cloaked in shadow-colored robes, stepped into the clearing without sound. They didn’t speak. Didn’t gesture. Just moved to stand in a half-circle beyond the ward, their faces hidden beneath deep hoods. One held a long staff etched with faint silver sigils that pulsed like veins under skin. Another cradled a thick book bound in something too pale to be leather.

And at their center—her.