Edges of Reality
I stood frozen in the doorway of Emry’s house, bag strap still clutched in my fist like a lifeline. The dissonance hit me like vertigo on concrete—dizzying, nauseating, inescapable. This wasn’t déjà vu. This was a life I’d never lived trying to pretend it belonged to me.
It was beautiful, airy, full of warm light and green plants cascading from macramé hangers. Lace sheers or beaded curtains across doorways. Wind chimes and crystal mobiles. Dried herbs hanging from hooks over windows. Bookcases filled with public domain hardcovers with gold foil lettering. The exact kind of bohemian-meets-academic space Emry had always talked about wanting. But it wasn’t a house I or Raven had ever seen. Not even in photos. Still, our presence was everywhere.
I moved through the entryway as if wading through water up to my chin, each step feeling slightly wrong—too heavy, too light. The floorboards creaked beneath my feet with a familiarity, but it was the energy that surprised me most. I could feel my own energy here, and Raven’s. My throat constricted as I fought the sensation of being both stranger and resident simultaneously.
There were framed pictures of the three of us—Raven, me, and Emry—laughing together on the beach, dressed up at some kind of formal event, sitting next to a clear stream where manatees swam. The easy affection captured in those snapshots made my chest ache with longing. I didn’t remember any of them. None of those moments had ever existed for me.
One photo, in black and white, featured Raven in the middle, smiling broadly, hair curling over his shoulders. Emry and I were on either side, on our tiptoes, each of us planting a kiss on his cheek and eyeing the camera at the same time.
My fingers trembled slightly as I reached for a frame. My reflection in the glass showed a woman I recognized but couldn’t quite claim as myself—someone happier, more carefree. A version of Lilah Burns who hadn’t spent seven months grieving her best friend.
There was also a photo album on the coffee table, leather-bound and well-worn. I flipped it open and found pages full of more pictures I didn’t remember—trips we didn’t take, birthdays we never celebrated. In one, we were toasting marshmallows around a fire pit on the Island of Glaucanita, my face illuminated with firelight and laughter. I’d been there, yes, with Raven, less than a month ago, but no fire pit and no Emry. In another, we were all dressed for a Renaissance faire, Raven in period-accurate clothing that highlighted the priest tattoo on his wrist, Emry and I in flowing dresses with flower crowns, and handfasting ribbons weaving through our wrists and Raven’s in a marriage of three. My handwriting was in the captions, looping and familiar, but I had no memory of writing any of it. Not even from my wildest dreams.
“This isn’t possible,” I whispered, more to myself than anyone else. A chill spread across my skin. I touched the edge of one photo—a camping trip in the mountains—and pulled back as if burned. It felt real. The paper, the ink, even the slight water damage in one corner. Evidence of a life I’d never lived.
A happy life with two people I had loved.
Still do.
Raven noticed, too. His hand lingered over a photo on the entryway table where Emry was leaning her head on his shoulder and I had my feet kicked up across both their laps while he rubbed my bare feet.
Standing close enough that I could have reached out and clasped his hand, he wore his ever-popular poker face, yet I saw his knuckles whiten as he gripped the frame.
It was clear Raven lived here. The denim jacket he’d snubbed hung by the door. His favorite books lined a shelf near the window. His ceremonial daggers rested on small easels on a side table, next to an altar full of statues of Emry’s Dark Goddess. His energy was everywhere, and as happy as mine. Raven wasn’t anyone I’d ever describe as effervescent, yet here, the energy was joyous.
As if something he’d been denied by the life he’d chosen was freely available here in this reality.
Some of my things were scattered about, too—an old hoodie slung over the arm of the sofa, a water bottle Emry had gifted me a year ago that said Quiet, I’m Scrying, a charm bracelet in a dish by the sink—but it was also clear I didn’t live here full-time.
I just spent a lot of time here. Like I hadn’t quite surrendered to what could be mine. At least that part of me was the same.
Closing my eyes, I breathed in the scent of our home together. The buzzy energy filled with love. This was what I wanted. This reality. I could stay here in this timeline and never complain!
Nosy, I tiptoed around the kitchen. My fingers drifted to the charm bracelet. I owned one exactly like it—a Solstice gift from Emry that still lived in my jewelry box back in the version of reality where she’d died. But here it was again, in a dish by the sink, catching the same light. Two identical objects existing in two separate truths. One mine. One… almost mine.
This was a different timeline—many things better, none worse that I could tell, but threaded through with impossible possibilities.
Emry didn’t comment on our unease, though I could feel her wariness. She moved through the house with the habit of comfort, closing drapes and blinds one by one. She switched on a small white noise machine in the corner of the living room, and its soft static hum filled the silence.
Probably good to help fall asleep, I told myself.
“Standard precaution,” she said, noticing my curious look. “Makes it harder for them to listen in.”
“Them?” I asked.
She just shook her head, her expression grim. Thanks to my empathic talents, I was sure she knew something was different about us, even if she didn’t let it show. Emry wasn’t an empath, but she was a witch of The Morrigan, just as Samantha longed to be. Emry was certain that Raven and I were not quite who we were supposed to be, just as I was certain that Emry wasn’t quite as I had known her. It was like noticing your significant other just came home smelling of soap from a shower you don’t recognize but doesn’t smell like another woman.
Yeah, been there, done that.
As Emry vanished down the hallway, Raven wandered to the kitchen to glance through some books left on the counter. I turned to speak to him—and paused.
In the hallway mirror, his reflection caught my eye.
Raven’s long hair was down, but braided at the sides, drawn back behind his head in a blue ribbon. Not the Raven in front of me, but the Raven in the mirror.
Blinking rapidly, I stared at his reflection. The mirror showed an intricate hairstyle I’d never seen him wear—a style that Daeganean High Priests occasionally wore during ceremonial gatherings, according to some of the Gate 5 books I’d read about the Order of Daegan. Yet in front of me, his hair was bound in a top knot as usual, held in place by slender dagger hairpins. But in the mirror? It was falling past his shoulders in that way that made my fingers itch to push it back from his face.
Was this how Emry, outside of our spell, saw us in this reality?
The ripple of unreality was small but distinct.
I didn’t say anything—yet. Instead, I excused myself to the bathroom. My legs felt rubbery beneath me as I navigated the hallway, noting how I instinctively knew which door to choose. It wasn’t from memory or from muscle memory: I followed the energy patterns of some other me.
As I passed another mirror, I flinched. My own hair, currently loose over my shoulders, was styled similar to Raven’s, with long thin braids loose at my shoulders and some kind of metal beaded headband tied back in happy colors.
My pulse raced. I bent closer. The reflection moved as I did, breathing when I breathed, blinking when I blinked. But the differences were stark and impossible. Beyond the braids, I noticed a small scar near my temple that didn’t exist on my actual skin. A necklace I’d never owned glinted at my throat in the reflection. The pendant at the end of the chain was simple: three small gold rings, entwined. I knew instinctively that each ring represented one of us, and that if I looked closely enough, I’d find duplicates on both Raven’s reflection and on Emry.
I touched my scalp, fingers searching for the phantom braids and headband. Sliding through unbound hair, my fingers met only loose strands. I lifted my hand to touch the nonexistent scar. Nothing. My skin was smooth, unmarked.
I reached toward the glass, half-expecting my fingers to sink through into another world. Instead, they met cold resistance. The reflection did the same, our fingertips meeting at the barrier. Real and unreal, simultaneously.
When I returned to the living room, I leaned close to Raven and whispered, “Check the mirrors.”
Before he could respond, Emry reappeared. Studying us, she waited at the edge of the room. “You two are acting really suspicious.”
“We are?”
I thought we’d been careful—but when you don’t know all the rhythms of a life, it’s hard to fake the dance. Emry noticed, of course. She always had. I’d once caught Charlie the same way, in the tiny betrayals of his mannerisms before he even knew what he was hiding.
Emry crossed her arms. “Life is all about patterns,” she said, reading me like a headline. “Now talk. What’s going on?”
I knew better than to do what Charlie and others had done to me and swear I was imagining a disruption, even a tiny one, in the patterns of everyday life. Nothing had infuriated me more than someone trying to convince me I was losing my mind rather than be truthful.
I half-expected Raven to jump in with an explanation, but he was distracted, fumbling with something in his pocket as he turned his back to us.
“I’m not sure where to start.” I shifted from my right foot to left and back again.
“At the beginning would be nice.”
“At the beginning? Well, okay, Raven and I were in Gate 4 to authenticate a book for Dru, and we did this three-day protection spell on page thirteen—”
“Emry, why don’t I just show you?” Raven turned around, phone in his hand, and zoomed in on an image of The Wards of Braided Light. He held it up for both of us to see. Emry’s entire demeanor changed in an instant from curious to furious.
“Are you serious right now?” she hissed. “You brought your phones into our house? You know better. They’re listening. Tracking.”
I pulled out my phone to protest, but she was too fast. Her hands shook as she grabbed both our phones and smartwatches and placed them in a small Faraday bag near the front door and shoved them into a box safe the size of a small TV. The lock clicked into place with an ominous finality.
Emry recoiled, her expression twisting. “Why would you show me that book?” she snapped. “The Key of Hell and Death? You know better—we don’t talk about that one.”
My blood ran cold.
I turned slowly to Raven. “She’s not seeing The Wards of Braided Light,” I murmured.
His eyes narrowed. He looked back at Emry, then at the phone.
“We’re seeing different books,” he said quietly. “In this timeline… our tech is out of sync.”
I exhaled through clenched teeth. “So it’s not just reality that’s shifting. It’s what our devices are showing us.”
“Which makes them worse than useless,” he said. “They’re misleading.”
Shoulders rigid, Emry rejoined us in the living room. “What the hell is wrong with you two? Have you both forgotten how this works? Those phones are way too easy to trace!”
Raven’s expression darkened. “Forgotten what, exactly?”
“The protocols.” Emry dropped her voice. “You established them yourself, Raven. No tech in safe houses. No electronics that can be traced. You insisted on it after what happened to Terrence Vanderholt.”
Raven’s face went ashen. “After what happened to Terrence…?” he echoed. Terre had been his mentor since Aoife forced Raven to join the priesthood and like a second father to him. One of the most powerful High Priests in the Order of Daegan. And Aoife’s biological father.
Emry looked at Raven strangely, almost like she was seeing a ghost. “You don’t even remember that? I can tell you don’t, but why don’t you?” She lifted her palms like a shield to face us, splaying her fingers as she aimed one hand at Raven and the other at me. Her brown eyes widened. “Your energy is different. Like you’re older or younger than you should be. Some difference in time. Not by much, but different enough. You said you did a spell? It’s like a bubble around you. Or not… you.”
“Yeah, it was a really cool protection spell that—”
“What happened to Terre?” I’d rarely heard Raven raise his voice, but just as we’d gotten Emry back into our lives, we knew now that Terre and others might be back in our lives as well. I could feel the pain behind his voice. Hope, too. Terre would be a powerful ally for us right now, and he might have answers to this reality shift.
“Wow, this is a really powerful spell.” Emry kept one hand aimed at me and let the other wander after some kind of energy wave around Raven. “I can feel the force field around you.”
“Emry! Please. What happened to Terre? Where can I find him?”
She stopped. Her hands hung in the air between us before she let them drop to her sides.
“You really don’t remember! I can tell you don’t, but… but I just don’t understand how can you not remember? Raven, he was murdered two months ago. Right after Aoife found out he was raising a magical army against her to install Veronica as the new leader. He called it the Second Coming of Queen Jaryx.”
I didn’t say anything, just watched Raven and the multitude of expressions crossing his face. Terre had been murdered in our timeline, too, right after I’d come to the Special Collections Library. Not by Aoife, though. Not by anyone in the priesthood. Which in itself was strange because even though murder was the number one cause of death among Daeganeans, Terre’s murder had been the result of a stranger’s greed.
Raven, shaken, asked, “Em, can I use your laptop?”
“What for?”
“I need to run a couple of searches.”
“Okay, but most search engines are worthless as of about two weeks ago. The only results you get are the ones they want you to get. If the answer you’re seeking isn’t on a sanctioned page, you’ll never see it.”
Raven’s breath caught, but he nodded. “Can I at least try?”
Emry hesitated, her fingers drumming against her thigh. I recognized the gesture—she did it when calculating risks. “You never call me Em.”
She studied both of us, and I knew exactly what she was doing. She was reading our energies. Same as I’d read her energy to make sure she was really Emry, even if she was one percent different. Or like she hadn’t seen us in seven months, and our energies were off by that much. Whatever she read in us, she was satisfied enough.
“Are you sure about using my laptop?” she asked. “If you’re compromised…” She let the sentence hang.
“We need answers,” I said softly.
Emry looked between us. “Do you? Are you absolutely certain you want to know? My spirit guides are saying… they’re saying, ‘Because once you know, you can’t un-know it.’”
I could read in her aura what she didn’t say aloud: “I’m not sure I want to know, and in another minute, there’ll be no turning back.”
Raven and I exchanged glances, communicating silently, and for a moment, we forgot that Emry was part of our threesome and understood those unspoken messages. The risks were clear, but so was our need for truth.
“Yes,” he said finally. “I have to know what we’re up against.”
You’re reading The Book of Heroes free, right here in the Library. Want a copy to keep on your Kindle or e-reader? Buy the e-book direct from me →
© 2025 Lorna Tedder. All rights reserved. Free to read here — please don’t repost elsewhere.