Circe stood in front of the broken mirror that had been split into three pieces in the Chamber of Mirrors and demanded her mother appear to her. She was filled with so much rage it frightened her.

“I am here, daughter. I take it you’ve learned you and Hook were unable to rewrite his story.” Lucinda’s face appeared in each broken shard of the mirror, reminding Circe of when she had three mothers and not just one. She missed Ruby and Martha, and longed for the time they had been all together in the Place Between.

“I thought making you whole again, repairing the damage your own mother did to you by splitting you into three, would restore you, Mother, but I see you are still as misguided and cruel as ever. We were given a choice; why did you throw it away?” said Circe, wondering why her mother had cast her out of the Place Between.

“And what choice was that, daughter? Stay in the Place Between forever, move beyond the veil and spend our afterlife with our ancestors who betrayed us, or become this? And you made the choice for me, didn’t you? Fusing Martha, Ruby, and me together again. It wasn’t your choice to make. And that is why we cast you out! All this for some childish notion that I would be whole again, and we would be a happy family of witches together. I will never be whole; my soul has been split so many times I am beyond being simply Lucinda again. Ruby and Martha live within me—they are inside me, as we are inside you,” said Lucinda, her head twitching as if she was trying to shake off an intrusive thought, and Circe was sure it was Ruby and Martha wishing for their voices to be heard as well.

“We are so curious, our daughter, did you curse James’s boot buckles?” The voice was Ruby’s, and it made Circe frightened and sad to hear her voice but not be able to see her. She saw only the face of Lucinda looking back at her. Her mothers would never know how guilty she felt for having joined them together again. She knew when she did it that it meant she would never see Ruby and Martha again, but at the time she felt it was the only way to save her mothers and preserve their sanity. The only way to bring them back to the world of the living.

“I wouldn’t say curse. I just imbued them with a healthy dose of fear,” said Circe, not being able to meet the look of satisfaction on her mother’s face.

“Look at the great and kind Circe, casting fear curses, hoping to strike fear into poor James’s heart.”

“I hoped it would keep him from going to Never Land. I hoped it would save him from you,” said Circe.