I couldn’t stay and watch them any longer. It hurt too much to smile. I walked down the hallway, each step becoming heavier and heavier as my legs filled with lead.
I wasn’t sure if it was having Milo home and safe for the last few days, if it was the lingering sadness of the funerals, or if I finally had enough time to sit with my sorrow. But it hit me like a fucking avalanche, crushing me beneath the weight of guilt I carried. Guilt for failing Tara and Caleb.
Every happy moment I shared… It haunted me. They were out there, petrified, trapped. And I had the audacity to enjoy small family moments.
Milo met me at the end of the hallway, kindness in his thoughts, and a calm sincerity in his expression. “Are you okay?”
My lip trembled, making it impossible to speak without breaking, so I nodded. Hopefully that’d suffice.
“It’s okay not to be okay.” Milo placed his hands on my shoulders, a gentle embrace coupled with a soft touch as he ran his hands along my neck and cradled my head. “Don’t push me away.”
“I’m not…” My voice cracked. “I just feel so responsible for everything.”
“You feel responsible? You put in more work than anyone at the Global Guild. We were the ones who were supposed to—”
“I don’t even care that the Celestial Coven got away,” I said, knowing where this conversation led. “I care that they took Tara. They took Caleb. They hijacked Katherine’s mind. They nearly killed several of my students. They did kill…”
Tears spilled down my cheeks, and my face burned. Each breath I took carried a thick phlegm in my throat, making it difficult to speak.
“We’ll get them back, I promise.”
“How?”
“I don’t know…yet, but I can see pathways leading to possibilities. They’re faint.”
“They’re always faint, always changing,” I said, pulling away from him. “Those possibilities could be gone in a week, in a day, in minutes. Admit it.”
“True, under normal circumstances, but these possibilities are cemented by bonds of fate.”
“What?”
“Your connection to your homeroom coven, their connection to each other, it has created this continuous spark,” Milo said. “Sometimes, when lives interact with each other, they’re bonded. Sometimes, when a clairvoyant interferes with the future, it can create some semblance of those bonds.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning they were always going to be connected in one form or another, as classmates, as peers, perhaps as survivors to a terrible event,” Milo explained. “But then that horrible event, that awful fate, was averted, and all their futures were set on a different path.”
“The day I saved Caleb from the void vision.” I didn’t even need to read Milo’s thoughts to know that. “Well, the day they saved themselves, really.”
Looking back on that assault, each of my students carried themselves with grace.
“Your interference saved Caleb’s life. It painted a new future, and little by little, I began to realize your students’ lives, possibilities, and potentials were all syncing up together.”
“What does that mean exactly?”
“As a psychic, as a clairvoyant, I don’t put much stock in Fate or Destiny,” Milo said with a coy smile. “They’re both rather fickle.”
“And yet, here you are speaking of fate.”
“I’ve seen her work.” Milo’s mind flitted with flashes of him, Finn, and me all together; memories of Milo and I finding our way back to each other; images of Ben entering our lives after I liberated him from an impossible magical trap. “Fate might be fickle, but she has rules. I just haven’t learned them all yet.”
Milo spoke of this Fate as an actual being, something he’d never really expressed with me, but there was a reverence he held for her in his mind. Like some kind of psychic deity floating in the abyss of possible futures. Perhaps a side effect of his branch magic, some mythical oddity.
Hell, maybe Fate was merely a projection of Milo’s inner thoughts, perceiving his magic with consciousness to some degree.
I didn’t need him to elaborate on this being of Fate so much as what he meant by my students’ role in this.
“Your students’ futures are tangled together, walking down the same roads,” Milo continued. “Twelve bound by fate, so to speak.”
