The Crown Beneath the Stone

Posted on Mon Jun 29th, 2026 @ 12:55pm by Maeve MacKenna

5,804 words; about a 29 minute read

Mission: Episode 8: Shadows Over Avalon
Location: The Veil Between Achill and Avalon (Inside her head)
Timeline: Just as Maeve Stepped Through the Portal

The portal took her gently.

Maeve had braced for pain. For a tearing feeling, maybe, or that sick lurch in the stomach that came when the ground dropped away beneath you. Something honest. Something that admitted crossing between worlds should not feel natural.

Instead, warmth folded over her skin.

The tent vanished by inches. Floodlights blurred first, then the standing stones, then the rough shapes of the others behind her. Sound thinned until there was only the low hum of the veil and her own breath, caught too high in her chest.

For one strange second, she was still stepping forward.

For one strange second, she had always been stepping forward.

The world stretched around her, soft and gold at the edges, and Maeve felt the earth of Achill beneath her feet pull away like a hand slipping from hers.

Panic rose fast.

Then something answered below that absence.

Not ground. Not exactly. Something older than ground. A pressure under the skin of things, deep and waiting, as if the bones of another world had turned towards her in the dark.

Maeve froze between one breath and the next.

There you are.

The voice was not at the edge anymore.

It was close enough to feel like breath against her ear.

Do you feel it now?

Maeve tried to move, but there was nowhere to move to. The light held her without holding her. No floor. No sky. No tent. No team. Only gold mist, her own heartbeat, and that vast, buried attention underneath everything.

She opened her mouth.

This time, there was no War Room. No Kennedy watching. No one to hear her sound cracked or mad or afraid.

“What is this?” she asked.

The voice smiled. Maeve could feel it.

Good. Then listen.

The gold mist thinned.

Achill came back around her, but not the way it should have.

The road beneath her feet was the narrow one above Keel, wet with rain and sheep muck, stone walls hunched on either side as if they had been listening for years. The sea was there too, too loud and too close, smashing itself white against the rocks below. Wind pulled at her hair. Cold. Salted. Real enough that Maeve looked down, half-expecting mud on her boots.

There was no portal now.

Just home.

Maeve’s chest tightened.

“This isn’t real.”

Isn’t it?

The voice came from the wind, from the stone wall, from the wet earth packed hard beneath the road. Not everywhere. Worse than that. Everywhere that mattered.

Maeve turned slowly.

The cottage stood where it had always stood, small and stubborn against the weather. Smoke curled from the chimney. Light warmed the window glass. For a second, the sight of it nearly broke something in her.

Then two girls ran past the gate.

Amelia first, hair flying loose, boots splashing through a puddle. Saoirse behind her, laughing and shouting something Maeve couldn’t make out. They were little. Too little. As Maeve remembered them, not as they would be now.

“No,” she said, sharper this time.

Her feet moved anyway.

The girls vanished around the side of the cottage before she could reach them. Maeve followed and found only the cliff path, grey sky overhead, grass bent flat under the wind. The ground changed too quickly beneath her, road into path, path into loose rock, loose rock into the place everyone spoke about quietly after.

Her mother’s place.

Maeve stopped dead.

The air tasted of rain.

“My mam died here.”

She refused here.

The words were soft.

They still struck like a hand around her throat.

Maeve went cold.

“What?”

The mist shifted down the path.

A figure stood there, blurred by weather and distance. Dark hair pulled loose by the wind. One hand resting against the stones as if steadying herself. Not clear enough to see her face. Clear enough that Maeve’s heart recognised her before sense could stop it.

“Mam?”

The figure did not turn.

Your mother was better at hiding than you. Softer hands. Quieter lies. She kept old doors shut and called it love.

Maeve shook her head once.

“No.”

She knew the bloodline. Knew what slept beneath it. Knew that some children are born with the world already listening.

The ground beneath Maeve’s boots stirred. Pebbles shifted around her feet. A seam of rock along the cliffside hummed faintly, familiar and strange at once.

I have always watched the ones who bend the world without spell or staff. Stone-listeners. Storm-callers. Bloodlines with old doors in them.

Maeve stared at the shape of her mother, rage and grief catching against each other until she could barely breathe.

“She was good.”

Yes.

The answer came too quickly.

Too gently.

That was the trouble.

Maeve took a step forward before she could stop herself.

The figure at the end of the path flickered.

For one broken second, Maeve saw Aoife turn her head, not fully, only enough for the suggestion of her profile. A cheek. A dark eye. A mouth that might have been trying to warn her.

Then the mist swallowed her.

“No!”

Maeve reached out, and the cliff path answered before she asked it to. Stones lifted from the grass, small and sharp and trembling in the air around her hand.

She stared at them, horrified.

The voice laughed softly.

There. Even grief knows what you are.

Maeve’s fingers curled.

The stones dropped hard into the mud.

“Stop showin’ me things you don’t own.”

Little girl, I have owned nothing here that was not first offered by blood, sorrow, or stone.

The cliff path trembled.

Maeve looked down.

The stones at her feet were moving without her asking, turning towards her like faces in a crowd.

The cliff path broke apart.

Not violently. It simply stopped being one thing and became another.

Mud darkened beneath Maeve’s boots. The wind changed. Salt remained, but now it carried diesel, rust, old rope, and the sour stink of fear packed too tightly into too small a space.

New York.

The docks.

Maeve knew before she looked up.

“No.”

This time the word had teeth.

The world showed her anyway.

The vans waited with their doors open. Men shouted through the rain. Somewhere behind her, girls were crying, the sound slipping in and out like a bad signal. Pebbles lifted from the ground around Maeve, shaking in the air. Broken concrete rose beside her hand, turning slowly, eager for direction.

She remembered the blow to her stomach. The taste of blood. The moment something inside her stopped begging and struck back.

This was the first honest thing you ever did.

“I was scared.”

Yes. And fear told the truth quicker than mercy ever did.

The concrete shot forward.

Maeve flinched before impact, but the scene shattered first.

Club Blood rose around her in red light and broken music. Glass everywhere. Blood rain. Xarus pinned beneath her, his heart cold in her hand. Her own reflection stared back from the ruined bar mirror, red-eyed and snarling, a thing wearing her face.

“That wasn’t me.”

It came too quickly.

Too familiar.

How many times will you say that before you bore yourself?

The mirror cracked.

Then every shard lifted from the floor.

They hung around Maeve in a slow, glittering storm. Not attacking yet. Waiting. Each piece caught the red light and changed.

Aoife first.

Her mother’s face appeared in a long, thin sliver, blurred by rain and cliff mist.

Your mother hid the truth and called it protection. You inherited her silence. See how well it saved her.

The shard flew.

It cut across Maeve’s cheek, sharp and bright. She gasped, hand flying to her face, but before her fingers found blood, another shard turned.

Her father.

Liam MacKenna looked older than she remembered, tired in a way that made her stomach twist.

He lost a wife, then a daughter. Now two more. How many absences can one man carry before he curses the first girl who ran?

“No,” Maeve said, but the glass came anyway.

It sliced her shoulder.

Amelia and Saoirse came together, small as memory first, then older, then gone again. Laughing. Sleeping. Reaching. Taken.

You promised yourself you were leaving to keep them safe. A pretty lie. They were safer when they were still only missing you.

The next shard struck her ribs.

Maeve staggered, breath cracking out of her.

Desmond’s face caught in another piece. Amber eyes. The soft, awkward look he got when he was trying too hard not to say something wrong.

Even he went home, little earth-heart. Everyone returns somewhere, except the girl who belongs nowhere unless I name her.

The glass cut her palm as she reached without meaning to.

“Stop.”

The word shook.

Jean appeared next, then Jennifer, Joey, Kennedy, Alaric. Not one accusation, but many. Worry. Trust. Judgement. Fear. All of it sharpened by Morgan’s hand.

They will stand beside you until standing beside you becomes dangerous. Then they will call it care when they decide where you belong.

Maeve shook her head, eyes wet now and furious.

“They’re my friends.”

Friends flinch too.

The shards came at once.

Small cuts opened along her arms, her neck, her jaw. Not deep enough to kill. Just enough to make every name hurt. Maeve backed into the bar, glass crunching beneath her boots, the red rain turning cold as it ran down her face.

Then the storm parted.

One shard remained.

The largest.

It floated in front of her, wide as a window, black around the edges and bright at the centre. Maeve looked into it and saw herself. Not child, not student, not vampire, not victim. Just Maeve, blue-eyed and pale, staring back with all the grief she kept trying to dress up as anger.

For a moment, Morgan said nothing.

That was worse.

Maeve reached towards the glass before she knew she was doing it.

Her reflection reached back.

There she is. The one you failed first.

The shard drove into her chest.

Maeve screamed.

Not because it cut like glass. It didn’t. It went deeper than that, through skin and bone and all the names she had survived wearing. The floor vanished beneath her, then surged back with a force that stole the sound from her throat.

Stone.

Soil.

Clay.

Salt-wet rock.

Glass.

Silica. Sand made sharp. Earth changed by fire.

For one impossible second she felt all of it, not as separate things but as kin. The broken glass around her trembled, answering the same way pebbles did, the same way cliffstone did, the same way old concrete had once answered at the docks.

Maeve stared down at her hands.

The cuts were gone.

The shard was gone.

The power was not.

It moved under her skin, wider than before, frightened and alive.

Morgan’s voice softened again, all velvet over a blade.

Now you begin to understand.

The red light went out.

Club Blood, the docks, the cliff path, all of it fell away beneath Maeve’s feet, and for one horrible moment there was nothing under her at all.

Then the ground rose to meet her.

Not Achill.

Not anywhere she knew.

Maeve landed hard on one knee, breath knocked out of her as her hand struck pale earth. It wasn’t soil exactly. Too fine. Too bright. Chalk and ash and crushed stone, cold against her palm. A white plain stretched ahead, half-hidden beneath low mist, broken by black rocks that jutted from the ground in long, slanted teeth.

She could feel every one of them.

Maeve went still.

The nearest stone answered before she reached for it. A faint tremor ran through it, then through the next, and the next, until the whole field seemed to wake beneath her. Not loudly. Not violently. Just aware. Waiting for instruction.

Her fingers curled against the pale ground.

A ridge of stone lifted beside her hand.

Maeve jerked back.

The ridge rose higher.

“No,” she breathed.

It obeyed.

The stone sank again, smooth and silent, leaving no mark behind.

Maeve stared at the place where it had been, heart hammering.

Here, the earth does not need convincing.

The voice was pleased. Almost tender.

It knows a sovereign hand when it feels one.

“I’m not that.”

Maeve pushed herself upright too quickly and stumbled, but the ground shifted under her boot, catching her balance before she fell. She froze, more frightened by that kindness than she would have been by pain.

The mist moved around her ankles. Beneath it, the world kept speaking.

Stone. Clay. Chalk. Flint.

Farther down, deeper than she had ever reached before, something darker hummed in mineral veins. Iron asleep in the hill. Copper threaded thin as old blood. Silver glinting somewhere out of sight, not answering, not yet, but no longer silent either.

Maeve pressed both hands to her ears, though the sound wasn’t there.

“Stop.”

No.

This time the refusal was softer.

Worse.

You have spent years begging the world to be quiet because others frightened you with the noise. That was never discipline, child. That was grief taught to kneel.

The black stones ahead began to move.

Not because Maeve wanted them to. Not exactly. Her fear touched them, and they answered as if fear was enough. They dragged themselves from the earth, one after another, turning in the mist until they formed a narrow path across the white plain.

Maeve backed away.

The path followed.

Do you feel how easy it could be?

She did.

That was the thing she hated most.

No strain in her skull. No trembling hands. No desperate pull through stubborn ground. Here, stone rose before the thought finished forming. The earth listened so closely it was almost eager, and some part of Maeve, some tired, furious part, wanted to lean into it until everything that had ever made her feel small broke apart beneath her feet.

She thought of the War Room floor cracking.

Kennedy’s voice.

Jean’s hand.

Her sisters’ names under black and white photographs.

Maeve swallowed hard.

“This isn’t mine.”

The mist stirred.

Not yet.

The path of stones stopped moving.

Ahead, the fog thinned enough to show a hill rising from the pale earth. At its crown stood something dark and immense, its towers half-lost in cloud. A castle, or the memory of one. Walls of black-green stone. Narrow windows lit from within. Banners moving in a wind Maeve could not feel.

The ground beneath her feet tilted gently towards it.

An invitation.

Maeve clenched her hands into fists and felt the stones along the path tense with her.

Come. There are deeper lessons than silence.

Maeve did not move.

Not at first.

Then somewhere beyond the castle walls, faint as a breath through stone, a child laughed.

Maeve’s head snapped up.

“Amelia?”

The castle waited.

So did the earth.

And against every scrap of sense she had left, Maeve stepped onto the first black stone.

The first stone held beneath her boot.

So did the second.

Then the path carried her without moving at all.

The white plain fell away and the mist peeled back in great, sweeping curtains until the castle rose around her, vast and black against a sky that seemed too old to belong to any living world. One breath later she was no longer approaching it. She was inside.

The hall before her was enormous, built on the kind of scale that made people feel small on purpose. Pillars of dark stone climbed into shadow so high they vanished. Banners hung between them, heavy and slow-moving, their symbols shifting as if no single kingdom had ever been enough to name the place. A raven. A crescent. A crown. A sword snapped at the hilt. An old knot that seemed to turn when she wasn’t looking at it directly.

At the far end of the hall stood a throne carved from black stone streaked through with silver and iron, less like something made than something unearthed. It did not look ceremonial. It looked claimed.

Maeve felt the floor before she looked at it properly. Marble underfoot, yes, but alive with veins of mineral and metal. Silver threaded through stone. Iron buried deep in the bones of the place. Copper, gold, darker things she did not have names for. The whole hall hummed against her senses. Not just stone. Not just earth. More. As if the world had cracked open its ribs and shown her what sat beneath.

All of it heard her.

All of it would answer.

Now you begin to feel it.

The voice did not drift this time.

It rang.

It filled the hall like a great struck bell, like a queen’s decree hurled from the top of a tower to the world below. It came from the pillars, the throne, the iron in the walls, the very mortar between the stones. Not whispering now. Claiming.

Maeve turned, and the hall changed around her.

She saw herself standing before the throne.

Not as she was, mud-souled and frightened and holding herself together by stubborn habit, but remade into something terrible and magnificent. Her hair moved like fire caught in storm wind. Her spine was straight as a spear. Light pulsed beneath her skin, green-gold and molten, as though the deep veins of the earth had risen into her body and taken root there. It travelled the fine branching lines of her throat, her arms, her hands, bright as ore under a miner’s lamp, bright as buried treasure dragged up from the dark and taught to burn.

Her eyes were blue.

That was the part that made Maeve’s breath catch.

No vampire red. No possession. No obvious corruption she could reject on sight.

Just power.

Just herself, sharpened into myth.

The other Maeve lifted one hand.

The hall obeyed.

Stone rose in sweeping arcs behind her like the curve of mountains answering a queen’s call. The marble floor folded upward into broad, elegant steps. Iron ran liquid from the hinges of the great doors and braided itself through the air into a crown, dark and beautiful and edged like a weapon. Beyond the towering windows, the world opened. Not one world. Many. Cities of gold and glass. Burning plains beneath red skies. Forests older than nations. Seas black as obsidian. Realms beyond anything Maeve had language for, all laid out like a promise.

Her stomach dropped.

Look at you.

Morgan’s voice cracked through the hall with contemptuous wonder.

Not some skulking child muttering apologies for the space she takes up. Not a frightened student waiting to be told she is still good. Not a girl trembling at her own hands.

The crowned Maeve turned, and shadows knelt before her.

Some wore faces she knew. Some didn’t. Those who had feared her. Those who had used her. Those who had looked at her power and seen a problem to contain instead of a force to honour. They bowed because the earth itself bent them down.

Maeve recoiled from that.

But not fast enough.

Because some ugly, starving part of her understood the relief in it. No pleading. No begging to be believed. No being sent away or talked around or watched for signs of fracture. No one daring to take her sisters because no one would mistake her for prey.

Arthur built a court of bright little lies and called it civilisation. Merlin wrapped fear in prophecy and called it wisdom. Guinevere wept, Lancelot postured, Gawain preened, and all of Camelot rotted exactly as mortal kingdoms always do.

The banners above her snapped once, hard, as if in laughter.

I endured them. I endured priests, kings, sorcerers, heroes, would-be gods. I have watched empires name themselves eternal and fall screaming into dust. I have seen fools like Belasco strut in stolen hells, mystics like Strange play at guardianship, and older things than either of them whisper from books and graves. They all wanted power. None of them deserved it.

The air tightened around Maeve.

Morgan was closer now, though still unseen. Not hidden exactly — withheld.

You do.

The words hit like a blow.

Do you think I crossed centuries for weakness? Do you think I waited in your bloodline, watched your mother turn her face away, watched grief split you open, only to settle for a sobbing orphan with cracked hands and a martyr’s heart?

Maeve flinched.

Her jaw hardened almost instantly after, but the wound landed.

The crowned version of her stood unmoved, green-gold light burning brighter through her veins now, the throne at her back, the worlds beyond the windows open to her will. She did not look lonely. She did not look ashamed. She looked like fear had never touched her.

This is what you are when no one is left to diminish you. This is what you are when the earth is not merely beneath your feet but in your blood, your bones, your breath. Beside me, there would be no door you could not break. No kingdom you could not humble. No child stolen from you. No man leaving. No voice above yours.

That last one struck deeper than Maeve wanted it to.

The hall answered Morgan’s rising force. Stone cracked and reformed. The mineral veins underfoot blazed brighter. The crown hovered between throne and girl, waiting.

I would not make you a servant, little earth-heart.

Now the voice softened, and somehow that was more dangerous than the thunder.

I would make you a sovereign.

A sound rose somewhere beyond the throne.

A child crying.

Maeve’s head snapped toward it.

The crowned version of herself extended a hand.

Not gentle. Not pleading.

Certain.

Take what is yours.

Maeve stared at that hand.

At the crown.

At the worlds beyond the windows.

At the version of herself who looked as though she had never once had to ask permission to exist.

Her own hand lifted.

Only a little.

Only enough.

Her hand hovered between herself and the crowned girl.

Only inches.

The other Maeve did not plead. That was part of the temptation. She stood in green-gold light with the crown waiting above her palm, all the fear burned out of her, all the hurt made useful. No apologies. No shaking hands. No cracking floors because grief had nowhere else to go.

Just power.

Maeve stared at her and wanted, so badly, that it made her feel sick.

The child cried again beyond the throne.

Amelia.

Or Saoirse.

Or something wearing their fear because it knew she would turn towards it.

Maeve’s hand stopped.

The crowned Maeve smiled.

Not cruelly. Worse. Kindly. Like she understood.

There is no shame in taking what you need.

The hall bent closer around them. The floor brightened until the mineral veins under the marble glowed like fire trapped under ice. Stone shifted behind the throne, forming wide steps, high walls, a thousand doors opening onto a thousand worlds. So much waiting. So much possible.

Maeve heard Jean’s voice, not clearly, not as words. Just the feeling of a hand around hers. Warm. Human. Letting go when it had to.

She thought of Desmond’s eyes too, quick and painful. Amber, not the brown the image inducer had given him. Real. Awkward. Gone home, but not gone from her.

Then the others came with it.

Jennifer looking at her across blood and smoke, afraid and still standing. Joey making a joke because terror sat easier when someone put teeth in it first. Hayden’s voice saying they were a team. Alaric giving her point because he trusted her to take it. Even Kennedy’s sharpness, cruel as it had felt, had carried a truth Maeve couldn’t pretend away.

Fear mattered.

Fear kept you from walking blind off cliff edges.

But fear was not meant to be a throne.

And love was not a leash.

Maeve looked at her sisters again, not as names on a file, not as bait in a castle, not as proof of what she had failed to protect.

Girls.

Messy hair. Loud laughs. Dirty boots. Real enough that no crown in any world had the right to turn them into a lesson.

She lowered her hand.

The crowned version of her did not move.

Morgan did.

The mist beside the throne tightened into something almost shaped. A woman’s outline. Dark hair. Pale hands. A crown that might have been shadow, or antler, or metal remembered badly by the dark.

No.

The word shook the hall.

Maeve flinched, but she did not lift her hand again.

“I don’t want that.”

You do.

The certainty in it struck harder than anger.

You want to stop hurting. You want them safe. You want the world to look at you and know better than to take another thing. Do not insult me with this little martyr’s lie.

Maeve’s mouth went dry.

“I want my sisters back.”

And I am offering you the power to take them.

“No.” Maeve’s voice shook. She hated that, but kept going. “You’re offerin’ me a crown and callin’ it rescue.”

The hall went quiet.

Too quiet.

Maeve looked at the throne, at the other version of herself, at the green-gold light beneath that perfect skin. It was beautiful. She would not pretend it wasn’t. Beautiful and lonely as a cliff edge in winter.

“You keep talkin’ like you’re givin’ me something,” Maeve said. “Like you’re generous. Like you’re the only one who sees me proper.”

The mist beside the throne darkened.

Maeve felt it, but did not stop.

“But you’re not givin’. You’re takin’.”

The crowned Maeve’s smile faded.

Maeve drew in a breath that hurt all the way down.

“You want the scared parts. The angry parts. The bits that are tired enough to say yes because it would be easier than keepin’ on.” Her eyes burned, but she kept them on the shape near the throne. “You don’t want me strong. You want me lonely. Because lonely people are easier to make into weapons.”

The hall shuddered.

Careful.

The word was soft.

Too soft.

Maeve laughed once, small and cracked and not at all amused.

“There you are.”

The mist snapped inward.

For half a heartbeat, the woman beside the throne was almost clear. Beautiful and terrible, eyes bright with something older than rage. Her mouth twisted before the smile could catch it.

You know nothing of what I want.

“I know you don’t like bein’ told no.”

The air tightened hard enough to hurt.

Maeve took one step forward instead of back.

“You talk about fear like it’s weakness because you’re full of it.” Her voice was shaking now, but it was hers. “That’s what this is. All of it. Thrones and crowns and people kneelin’. You’re scared if no one’s beneath you, there’ll be no one there at all.”

Morgan’s mask cracked.

Not fully.

Just enough.

The light in the hall turned sharp and green. The banners tore sideways in a wind that had no source. The throne groaned, black stone splitting down one arm.

Ungrateful child.

Maeve’s heart kicked against her ribs.

I waited through blood and grief. I watched your mother squander what she was given. I watched you crawl from ruin to ruin, bruised and weeping, and still you clutch at scraps as if they ever saved anyone.

“There it is,” Maeve whispered.

The fury in the hall faltered.

Only for a second.

Enough.

“You’re not hurt because I won’t take your gift.” Maeve swallowed, staring at the almost-woman through the mist. “You’re angry because I won’t be yours.”

The crowned Maeve cracked from cheek to throat.

Green-gold light spilled through the fracture.

You are already nearer to me than you dare admit.

The voice smoothed itself by force. The rage did not vanish; it dressed itself again, silk dragged over a blade.

You think this defiance makes you different. Sweet, stubborn girl. I was gentle once. I loved. I warned. I pleaded. I was betrayed by kings, priests, brothers, lovers, bright fools with clean banners and bloody hands. They called me wicked because I survived with teeth.

Maeve stood very still.

You will learn. You will lose enough. Be feared enough. Be used enough. And one day you will look at mercy and see the pretty little trap it always was.

“No.”

Yes.

Morgan’s voice filled the hall again, huge and certain.

I will make you see it. Not today, perhaps. Not with this trembling little refusal. But you will see. You will look into a world that takes and takes, and you will understand why I stopped asking it to be kind.

Maeve lifted her chin.

“My friends came through that thing with me. They were scared and they came anyway. That’s not weakness. Jean carries fire that wants to end the world and she still chooses people. That’s not weakness. Desmond went home because he needed to, and it hurt, but loving him wasn’t weakness. My sisters are in here somewhere, and I’m terrified, and that doesn’t make me less.”

The mineral veins under the floor flared.

This time Maeve did not step back from them.

“Tyranny isn’t strength,” she said. “Making people kneel isn’t strength. Hurtin’ everything before it can hurt you isn’t strength.”

The crowned Maeve shattered down the middle.

“That’s just fear with better clothes.”

Morgan’s silence was worse than shouting.

Then the throne split with a sound like a mountain breaking its own teeth.

Then keep your little loves.

The hall buckled.

Keep your fear. Your friends. Your soft, breakable heart. I will enjoy watching you discover how easily such things are taken.

Maeve’s back hit a pillar. Pain sparked across her shoulder, sharp enough to make her gasp. The crowned version of herself came apart fully then, pieces of glowing glass and stone flying outward, each one reflecting Maeve’s own face back at her.

Afraid.

Tired.

Still herself.

“You don’t get to decide what saved me.”

For a heartbeat, Morgan was almost visible.

Not shadow now. Not merely mist. A woman stood before the broken throne, tall and terrible, green-black light folding around her like royal cloth. Her face refused to settle, beautiful one instant, ancient the next, every version crowned by fury.

I will decide what you become.

The castle lunged.

Or Morgan did.

Or the whole world did.

Maeve threw up both hands, and the floor answered before she could think. Stone rose around her in a rough half-circle, not elegant, not queenly, just desperate. The impact hit it like thunder. Cracks burst through the shield. Dust filled her mouth. She felt the iron, the silver, the old dark minerals inside the stone all flare at once, wild and close and almost hers.

Almost.

Maeve screamed through her teeth and pushed back.

Not at Morgan.

At the throne.

At the crown.

At the beautiful, lonely thing she had almost wanted.

The stone shield shattered.

The hall fell away.

For a second there was only Morgan’s rage, vast and green and cold, rushing after her through the dark.

Run, then. You always do.

Maeve snapped her eyes open.

“I’m not runnin’.”

The veil split.

Real air struck her lungs.

Maeve came out of the portal hard, stumbling from gold light into Avalon. To anyone watching, it would have looked like no time had passed at all. One step in, one step out.

But her knees hit the ground as if she had fallen a long way.

Stone cracked under her palms.

Not much. Just enough to send thin green-gold light flickering through the seams before it vanished again, leaving only earth, breath, and the shock of being alive.

Maeve stayed there for one second too long, head bowed, fingers pressed hard into the ground.

Then she looked up.

Her eyes were blue.

Terrified.

Furious.

Hers.

“I’m here,” she whispered.

Whether she meant Avalon, her sisters, her friends, or the woman in the dark, even Maeve didn’t know.

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