I straightened, smoothing my skirt with shaking fingers. The movement is automatic. Proper. What's expected of me. "I dropped something. I'm sorry about the mess."
She moved into the room, her gaze sharp as it swept over the scattered herbs, the broken mortar, my too-pale face."That's not what I asked."
"I'm fine," I said, but my hands shook as I bent down to start picking up the pieces. "I'm just tired."
Judy studied me for a long moment, and I kept my face smooth. Calm. The perfect niece who followed rules and respected hierarchy and never, ever defied the High Priestess.
But she didn't believe me. I could see it in her eyes. However, she didn't push, and I was grateful for that. Because how did I explain to someone who had no idea what it was like to have a twin that I could feel my brother's terror like it was my own? That every time I closed my eyes, I saw fragments of his prison? That something inside me was changing, awakening, responding to his captivity with a power I didn't understand and that, quite frankly, terrified the hell out of me?
I couldn't.
So I didn't.
"Why don't you take a break?" she suggested gently. "You've been working yourself to exhaustion."
"I need to stay busy."
What I didn't say was that if I stopped moving, I'd fall apart. If I let myself feel the full weight of Alex's absence, I wouldn't be able to function.
She sighed but didn't argue. Instead, she pulled me into a hug that smelled like rosemary and… home.
I held her tight and tried to believe it. But the vision lingered at the edges of my consciousness, and I knew—with a certainty that chilled me to my core—that finding Alex wouldn't be as simple as tracking him to a location. We'd need magic that went far beyond what our coven knew. Magic I was only beginning to comprehend.
That night, I dreamed of dimensions folding in on themselves like origami.
The world tilted sideways, and suddenly I was seeing things I shouldn't have been able to see. Layers of reality stacked on top of each other like sheets of glass. The physical world where my body lay. The spirit realm where ghosts and old Druidism lingered. And between them was something else. Pockets that folded into themselves, spaces that existed in the cracks between worlds.
Then I was standing in a space that existed between those spaces. I couldn't have explained it if I tried. The air here tasted ancient, threaded with power so old it made my teeth ache. I saw layers of reality stacked on top of each other, translucent and shimmering. And there—in one of those impossible pockets—was my brother.
Except he wasn't. Not in any physical sense.
He was pacing a cell that shouldn't have existed, running his hands along walls that phased between solid and ethereal. His magic sparked against the barriers, but it slid off uselessly.
Because witch magic couldn't touch djinn constructs.
The realization crystallized in my mind with perfect, horrible clarity.
I reached for him, and something inside me reached back. Not my magic, or even Alex's. This was older. Deeper. It pulsed from a place in my chest I didn't know existed, unfurling like wings I'd never used. The power tasted like storm winds and star fire, and it responded to my desperation with terrifying eagerness.
The dimensional barrier noticed me.
I felt like it wasn't sentient, not exactly. But it recognized what I was…who I was.
"Alice." Alex's voice was loud in the dream, sharp with warning. "Don't. It's a trap. He's?—"
The vision had shattered.
I jerked awake gasping, sheets twisted around my legs, my heart hammering against my ribs. But the power that had woken in the dream hadn't faded. It had hummed beneath my skin, waiting.
Hungry.
I pressed my hands to my chest and tried to steady my breathing. This hadn't been witch magic. Witch magic felt like the natural world responding to will and intention. I worked with herbs and moonlight, with the slow patient growth of living things. My spells were soft and sure, woven into the fabric of nature rather than forced against it. This had felt like I could tear a hole in reality if I tried hard enough. Like I could step between worlds and drag my brother home.
The air in my bedroom had suddenly grown thick, almost syrupy. The hum beneath my skin had intensified, and I felt something shift in the fabric of reality itself.
When you need it most, it will find you.
The voice wasn't mine, but it was familiar to me. My grandmother's voice…
