There was definitely some kind of magic in the cabin itself. Not as drastic as whatever caused the spaces inside the Towers, but there was so much more to inside here than the simplistic outside had ever shown.

Mom was beaming. Excitedly pulling on Dad's arm as she led him through the space.

I lingered back to take it all in.

The living room was bigger than ours. With a grand fireplace that reminded me of the one back at Dragon Tower. A similar brick color but this one was twice the size.

There wasn't a fire lit in it, but the chill of outside was kept out regardless. It wasn't fully another world, nothing in here was beyond the scope of imagination. If anything it looked simple. The fireplace was the only outlandish thing in the room.

The room had two blue couches, a loveseat, and a large armchair. All of them were different shades of light blue. Like someone was trying to find a particular one and kept getting close but not quite finding it.

"Great-Great-Grandmother Serafina Hearth built this place. She picked every piece of furniture and every plank of wood herself, according to what I was told," Jarec commented.

Serafina Hearth. The previous owner of my record player. One of the last Dragons before us. I could only imagine her as the teenage girl I'd gotten glimpses of. Not the older woman she must have become to spawn the Hearth Coven I knew in the present.

I remembered the image of the Hearth sigil Mom had shown me. Were these things supposed to be Hearth blue or Echo Blue? Was there even a difference?

The layout did feel familiar to me.

I looked away from the room to a false window. It had to be false, even with all the light it was letting inside. The image didn't match the outside of the cabin once I looked closer.

Holly trees. Identical to the species around the school.

She must have missed it. I didn't know if she was one of the ones left behind when Dragon Tower closed the doors early, but it was certainly something to think about. How old was she? What would she have thought of me? Of this generation of Dragons?

But we would never really know, so the only thing we could do was the best for us. The past didn't have any power. But we did. I did.

It was on our shoulders now. Mine and my friends. Time didn't flow backwards, only forwards.

I shook my head of the thoughts, "How's your break been? Anything interesting happen with you?"

"Grandmother keeps getting requests to marry me off to other covens. Her and Mom have been politely refusing them all."

"And here I thought it was Hearth tradition to burn those."

"The polite part is not sending the ashes back to the senders."

"The more I learn about this coven, the more I realize Mom isn't an outlier."

"Well guess that makes you one of us."

"Even after meeting Dad?"

"He seems…very calm about all of this."

"He knowingly married Mom. I think he's made peace with magic."

There was an odd look on Jarec's face as he paused for a moment. "So…I know what you've said before but, in theory if Grandmother made you the heir of the Coven, what would you do with it?"

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"Seriously?"

"Yes."

I took a deep breath, "I'd make changes. Ones that would let Dad in. It's not fair that he can't do things and go places with me and Mom."

"That's thousands of years of tradition."

"Too bad. He's my father and if it's up to me he'll be treated like it."

Jarec started to laugh. "You heard her Grandmother," he turned to looked behind him.

What.

Wait. Jarec was more than capable of using telepathy. That last part was just so that I heard it. I didn't know if that was worse than him gossiping about me in the first place.

I should probably be horrified or something. But it was probably no worse than whatever they say about me in the group chat since they will never be caught there.

"Hello Professor Hearth," I greeted as Vivian emerged from a door towards the back. The same door Mom had pulled Dad through earlier.

"We're not at the school. You don't have to call me professor," she told me. Not acknowledging what just happened.

"Habit. What would you prefer I call you?"

Jarec rolled his eyes. "She wants you to call her Grandmother but doesn't want to force it."

Vivian gave him a stern look in response, must have been the truth for her to get this annoyed at him for it. I also wasn't sure if I was fully there yet.

"Vivian is fine, if you're more comfortable with it." She said that, but I couldn't help but hear a 'for now' after that sentence. But if she wasn't going to address it, I would be happy to leave it be.

Mom was still hanging off Dad but she wasn't pulling on him anymore. "Serafina, why don't you and Jarec go play outside for a bit? We'll call you when lunch is done."

That was the most suspicious thing she could have said. But it would give me and Jarec a chance to talk while all the adults were busy.

Jarec seemed just as unconvinced by this behavior.

"Sure. Fine," I responded and left out the front door, Jarec trailing behind me slowly.

The moment he closed the front door behind us he turned to me and said, "They're up to something."

"Mom's keeping secrets, big shock," I commented sarcastically as I stepped into the snow. "Want to build a snowman?"

"Right now?"

"I don't think either of us is sneaky enough to snoop in on them without getting caught. If they think we're listening they won't talk about whatever it is."

"Do you think they know?" He asked as I started gathering up snow.

"Know about what?" I looked up from the snow in my hands to see him glance anxiously as the cabin.

Instead of just answering me he knelt down and traced the crude image of a knife into the snow.

Oh. Death's Echo. I blinked as he erased the drawing by gathering up snow.

"Maybe. They don't know that I know though. And I feel like Vivian almost definitely knows."

"Would they tell you, if they knew about it?"

"If Mom knows, she'd tell Dad. If Dad knows, then I'd be able to tell he was keeping secrets. I haven't gotten that impression from him though."

"You're not going to tell them though?"

"If Mom thinks there's someone at school plotting something horrific, she'd pull me out."

"You're not worried?"

"If Mom pulls me out of the school, you all would probably never see me again," I stated as plainly as I could. "That's the last thing I want."

"Even if it's your life on the line?"

"Jarec. If I was happy with my life as it was, would I have gone to a school three thousand miles from home? And we have no evidence that Death's Echo going missing is about any of us."

"I think you're in denial."

"Maybe," I admitted. "But…I'm not…someone worth going to all that trouble over."

"You're joking, right?"

"Look, I know I'm different. But I don't think I'm…special. Like I'm just me."

Jarec's face did something complicated. More complicated than I was used to deciphering with him. "You opened Dragon Tower."

"Yeah and it could have just as easily been any of you."

"But it wasn't. It was you. And you're descended from the Hearth Coven. Plenty of reasons for someone to want to try something."

"Do people come after you? For being the heir?"

"There's been a couple of incidents. And probably more I don't know about."

"That's horrifying."

"Probably why Aunt Lucinda left."

There were a lot of reasons Mom left it seemed. "Look, I just…I'm not the center of the world. And I don't want to be. We don't know nearly enough about any of this to make assumptions about whoever has that knife."

"Except that they're at the school."

"We can't prove that it's still there."

"If the knife is still at the school that means whatever the plan is, it's at the school."

"Maybe a professor is the target, not a student. Cause this seems like an elaborate plan to kill a teenager."

"Not if that student is hard to find outside school walls."

"You seriously think it's me?"

"It's not your Pixie friend for sure."

That was something he was probably right about. I didn't want him to be right about the rest of it though. I was just some nobody from Massachusetts. "We can't know anything for sure," I simply said instead.

He paused for a time before responding, "I just wish they'd tell us."

"If Vivian didn't tell you, how did you find out?"

"A guy in Pegasus I know has an uncle who works at the museum, we talk sometimes."

Was he like a spymaster or something? Seriously? "Sneaky."

Then some of the snow around us started to float upwards. Like someone turned the gravity off. Faintly I could see small amounts of sky blue on the clumps.

They came together to form a snowman that looked almost annoyingly perfect. Mine was still incomplete and a little lumpy in a couple of areas. Whatever. It was fine.

The itch in my wrist said otherwise.

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