imagine a life in a place as quiet and remote as this. Without the bustle of busy streets, diverting conversation, the food, and the markets. This wasn’t a life for them
I sighed. “But I just realized that it was stupid to even ask,” I said, ending in a little laugh.
“No, hon—” Leo started.
“No, it’s okay.” I cut him off with a sad smile. The mirror had begun to waver and greedily, I fed more magic into it, forcing it to remain open just a bit longer. “Really, it’s more than okay. But,” I started, thinking there was one thing I could offer. “I hope you’ll come and see me here, and I hope that any time you’re in Ireland you’ll visit.” I rushed the offer, some of the excitement coming back into my voice. “I’ll make you your own room, and you can keep some things here and you can stay as long as you want.”
Tears sprang to Lara’s eyes. “We’d love that.”
Leo pulled Lara into his arm, squeezing her gently. “When can we come?”
I filled them in on the less dreary details of how things were going at the academy, careful to glaze over certain details, like Elias, and how I’d attended a severing ceremony in a forest full of shifters just last week. I stuck to the things they would want to hear, and they seemed happy to hear it. Mostly, they were dying to meet my familiars, both of them resplendent with pride as I told them all about my Cal and Adrian.
And then they were gone again, too soon, but this time with the promise of a visit on the near horizon. They would have to store the caravan someplace safe, and then they’d only ever been to Galway and I honestly didn’t even know where in Ireland I was exactly. I’d have to get Martin to show me on a map so I could tell them how to get here.
Once they’d been here just one time, they would be able to come back via portal whenever they liked.
I lifted myself up off the ground after taking a few minutes to collect my thoughts and return to the manor. The earth beneath my bare foot groaned when I stepped on it. Strange.
I lifted my foot up and pressed it back down, harder this time, in the same spot I’d stepped a second before. It groaned again and I jumped back, looking at the patch of earth covered in spotty grass. It’d sounded like the creaking of the old floorboards in the Abbey, but I was outside.
I knelt back down, ignoring the fact that my knees were sinking into the wet dirt beneath the grass. I felt around on the ground, shocked when I noticed how the earth was slightly depressed in a perfect square in front of me.
“The hell is this?” I said aloud, peeking through the reed-like branches to make sure no one had come out to find me yet. The yard of the Abbey was still and quiet.
I clucked my tongue, wondering how long whatever was below had remained hidden. If there was no break in the earth, and there was grass growing over it, I had to guess it’d been there for a long time—maybe since before my father died and the Abbey was left uninhabited save for Martin.
The curiosity was too much to ignore.
Only one way to find out.
Pursing my lips, I dug my fingers into the earth at the edge of the square depression and lifted up a chunk of dirt and grass roughly the size of a bowling ball. And then another. Three more and I’d hit wood. Old, worn, gray wood. Hard, like it was petrified.
“Harper!” Cal’s voice reached me on the light, briny breeze.
Through the reeds, I saw him coming down from the steps, and even though I was being quiet as a church mouse, he must’ve heard me because his head turned in my direction. In the slit between the reeds, our eyes met.
Adrian came out behind him, and the two raced over to where I was knelt, covered in a thick layer of grass and muck, my nails caked with the clay-like dirt.
My hands stopped their digging, and heat rose up the back of my neck. Crap.
Should’ve just gone inside, Harper.
Cal was the first one through the leafy curtain, closely followed by Adrian, who barreled into his brother’s back, knocking him a step forward.
“Uh… hi?” I started to raise my hand to brush the hair from