Page 27

Chapter 26

T he first thing I felt was the cold.

Not the sharp bite of winter air but something deeper. Stone-cold. Damp. The kind of chill that had sunk into the ground a long time ago and never left. It pressed up through my spine as I stirred, stiff-limbed and slow, and tried to make sense of where I was.

The second thing I noticed was the silence.

Not the quiet of early morning or deep forest stillness. This was different. Heavier. Like the air was holding its breath.

I opened my eyes.

The light was wrong. Pale and diffused, but not from the sun. It didn’t flicker. Didn’t shift. It just… hung there. Cold and constant, spilling across smooth stone like it had been cast from some distant, buried lantern.

I pushed myself upright. My palm scraped moss—slick and cold and clinging to the curve of carved flagstone. Beneath it, the ground was uneven. Cracked in places. Roots snaked between the seams, thick alder roots, grown through the floor like veins through flesh. The patterns carved into the stone were old. Older than the war. Older than Everwood. I didn’t recognize them.

The trees arched high above us, their branches leaning inward, thick with leaves that didn’t rustle. No wind. No birdsong. Just stillness. I couldn’t see the edge of the clearing—just the faint shimmer of air bending wrong where the light reached too far.

Panic didn’t hit all at once. It came slowly—a crawling thing, like water seeping under a door.

My hands braced against the stone. The ground was cold but not dead. It thrummed beneath me—low and steady, like a heartbeat buried in the earth.

Then I realized what was missing.

“Maeve.” The name broke out of me like a bruise. Raw. Hoarse.

My arms were empty.

I scrambled to my feet too fast. The world tilted sideways. I caught myself on one of the standing stones—rough with age, damp with mist—and turned.

There. Across the circle. Raised above the ground.

She was laid out on a stone slab—no, an altar. Vines wrapped around her wrists and ankles, threaded with faintly glowing sigils. Her copper curls were spread across the surface, and her chest rose and fell, shallow, too shallow.

“No.” The word scraped out of me. I staggered toward her. Five steps. Six.

Then I slammed into something hard.

I reeled back, breath knocked from my chest. I reached forward, fingers meeting nothing—and still couldn’t move past it.

A ward. Invisible but solid. Cold against my skin. My pulse spiked.

“No—no, come on—”

I pressed both palms flat to the barrier and pushed. It didn’t give. It didn’t even ripple.

A soft laugh echoed through the stone circle.

Then Drev stepped into view from behind one of the standing stones, her dark leathers catching the cold light. The glyphs stitched into her coat shimmered faintly, silver threading through the black like veins of frost. She looked like she’d been waiting. Not out of patience. Out of certainty.

She was inside the ward.

Inside—with Maeve.

“Still cleaning up after your sister, Ro?” she asked, voice smooth as ever. Familiar and wrong all at once.

I launched myself at the barrier again, shoulder-first this time. It held. I ricocheted back with a choked breath, stumbled, caught myself on my hands. Drev didn’t flinch. She just watched. Hands in her coat pockets. My heart thundered in my chest.

“Let her go.” My voice was raw, scraped clean. “Whatever this is—whatever you want—just let her go.”

She tilted her head, almost thoughtful. “Now there’s a line I didn’t expect so soon.”

I shoved to my feet, hand pressed against the ward. “Take the shop. The coin. The house. Everything. You can have it all. Please.”

"You still think this was about money?" Drev's voice softened, but not with kindness. With something worse—pity. "It was never about coin. Never about ink or land or ledgers. That's not what your sister owed me."

Her face changed then—went quieter. Colder. The mask of casual cruelty slipping to reveal something harder beneath. She turned toward Maeve, and something in her expression made my blood run cold.

"She owed me this." She gestured to my niece's small form on the altar, like she was indicating a prize. A possession.

"She's just a child!" The words tore from my throat, raw and desperate. My fist slammed against the barrier again, though I knew it wouldn't give.

Drev's eyes never left Maeve. "No," she said, voice distant. Clinical. "She's a vessel."

She stepped closer to the altar, and I pressed myself against the ward until my bones ached, desperate to reach through, to stop her, to do anything but watch.

“Finn knew what the ritual required,” Drev said quietly, her fingers suspended above Maeve’s chest. “She agreed to it. She wanted it. Power like that doesn't come without cost, and she said she was willing to pay.”

The truth hit like a physical blow, driving the air from my lungs. "No," I whispered. “She wouldn’t—”

“She did.” Drev didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t need to. “We’d been studying the fragments left after the war. Trying to understand how the corrupted Alder magic worked—why it unraveled some people and not others. They burned most of the records, but we found the old bindings, the failed sigils, the survivor scars. We thought we could make it stable. Safely contained.”

She circled the altar slowly, eyes flicking to the vines, the runes. “The theory was simple. A willing vessel. Anchored. Alive. But when it came time to open herself to it, Finn panicked. She ran.”

Her lip curled—not in anger. In disdain.

“She thought stopping the ritual meant stopping the magic.” Drev turned her head slightly, just enough to meet my eyes. “But you don’t stop a current. You just change the path it takes.”

She looked back to Maeve, her expression unreadable.

“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.

The Woman in Blue.

My mouth went dry.

“You,” I breathed.

The woman turned her head, just slightly, as if regarding an insect too small to swat.

“You said she’d be safe,” I said, louder now, fury cracking through the grief. “You said you could protect her—”

“I am,” the woman said, her tone unbothered. “She is safer now than she has ever been. She’s coming home.”

The words landed wrong. Too soft. Too final.

Drev stepped back, giving space, as the Lady approached the altar.

“She is the hinge,” the Lady murmured. “The turning point. A vessel born of unfinished magic and restless blood. She completes what was broken. She closes what was left ajar.”

I could barely breathe. “You’re using her.”

The woman looked at me, and—for a heartbeat—something flickered in her eyes. Not cruelty. Not kindness.

Reverence.

“She was made for this.”

Then she raised her hands.

The circle responded.

The runes along the altar flared to life, white and silver and tinged in faint, curling red. The vines binding Maeve shimmered with sigils that pulsed like a second heartbeat. Around the clearing, the other robed figures lifted their hands, movements slow, synchronized, ritualistic. The ward between us began to thrum.

“Stop—” I surged forward again, slamming both palms against the barrier. “Stop! You don’t get to decide who she is—!”

“She already is,” the woman said. “We are only shaping what the blood remembers.”

The wind stirred at last. But it didn’t come from the trees. It came from below.

A low, rising hum began to build in the stone beneath my feet. The carvings lit in sequence, one after another, spiraling toward the altar like the spokes of a wheel. Maeve stirred—barely—a flicker of movement across her brow, her chest rising too fast now, then too slow.

The air thinned.

Every breath felt too small. Like the trees had pressed inward, sealing the circle off from the rest of the world.

Her chest rose once, shallow. Again, slower. A small, broken sound escaped her throat—like a sob cut short, or a hiccup swallowed before it could become a cry. Her fingers twitched. Her lips moved around a word I couldn’t hear.

And then she stilled.

I pressed both hands to the ward. Then my forehead. The stone was cold beneath my knees. The world narrowed to the pulse of magic winding tighter, the shimmer of runes glowing bone-white along her arms, her ribs, her throat.

Drev stood beside her now. Silent. Watching.

I couldn’t scream.

Couldn’t breathe.

This is what the end feels like , I thought. Cold stone. Empty arms. And knowing I failed her anyway.

I pressed harder against the ward, the edge biting into my palms. My voice wouldn’t come. Only the thought: This is my fault.

I should have asked more questions. I should have pushed harder. I should’ve seen the signs sooner. Should’ve trusted less. Trusted more. I should’ve kept her safe.

That was the one promise I made.

And I had failed.

Because that’s what I did, wasn’t it?

Held the pieces too tight. Refused to let anyone help. Convinced myself I could carry it all. And now Maeve was on that altar, and I was kneeling in the dirt, and—

This was it.

Cold stone. Empty arms. The echo of her name in a place that didn’t care.

Maeve .

Then—

Just as the light reached its brightest point—

A flicker.

Subtle. Barely there. A soft thrum beneath the noise of the ritual. A pulse. Small. Steady.

Not part of the binding. Not born of the spell.

From her.

A beat that didn’t match the others. A tether thin as thread, pulsing once, then again, just beneath her ribs—warm and wrong and resistant.

Something felt it.

Far beneath the stones. Deep in the roots. The earth heard it.

And held its breath.