Chapter Thirty-Two
The path up to the Academy felt longer than it looked. Maybe it was the way the trees leaned in at odd angles, or how the ground sloped in that slow, creeping way that made you think you were almost there… and then you weren’t.
But I finally saw the stone arch come into view through the trees, just past a low curtain of ivy that hadn’t been there the last time I visited.
The Academy rose ahead of me as the front steps stretched wide and empty, morning light catching on the cracks in the old stone. The wooden doors stood open, just a sliver, and I could already smell the familiar scents.
I stepped inside, and Bella was pacing in the grand entry hall when I walked in, arms crossed, hair falling out of its braid. She looked up, and the tension in her face broke into something like relief.
“Took you long enough,” she teased.
“My mom made a surprise visit. She’s leaving Stonewick.”
“Really? That didn’t take long.” She smiled, brief but real, then gestured for me to follow. “Come on. I need to show you something.”
I laughed nervously. “I figured that was why I came, and I have some news for you, too.”
“Oh, yeah?”
I nodded. “I think our visitor in the Butterfly Ward might be fae.”
She stopped in her tracks and turned to look at me carefully.
“Are you serious?”
I nodded. “I went to see Nova about it, and with everything she did…well, let’s just say all roads led to fae.”
“I can’t even fathom what that means.”
“It’s pretty exciting if it comes true.”
She furrowed her brows. “You mean if the fae shows itself?”
I nodded. “One step at a time.”
“That could be huge, but I don’t want to get my hopes up.” She turned on her heel and led me through the main corridor.
The Academy had always felt like it held its breath while you walked through it as though the halls listened. Today was no different. The sconces flickered to life as we passed, one by one.
We didn’t go toward the reading room or the south wing where the newer texts lived. She took me deeper into the Academy, where staircases roamed and hallways flipped.
Past a map room, past the stairwell I used to avoid because it narrowed as you looked at it, through a door that had always looked like a supply closet.
It wasn’t.
A staircase behind it was curved and lined in smooth, dark stone. The walls were damp and cool. I followed Bella down without asking questions, but I could feel the shift in pressure, the tug of something old.
I hadn’t explored this portion of the Academy before.
“This part of the library wasn’t sealed exactly,” she said over her shoulder. “Just… left alone. I’m unsure if we’re supposed to know about it. It’s like the basement.”
“I don’t think the Academy lets us go anywhere it doesn’t want us.”
“Hope so.”
At the bottom, she led me into a long, windowless room. The walls were lined with books, but not the standard-issue kind. These weren’t catalogued or labeled. Some didn’t even have proper covers.
And a stack of journals was in the middle of the room on a wide oak table. Handwritten names. Frayed at the edges. Bound in twine or ribbon or nothing at all.
“This is what I wanted to show you,” she said, stepping aside.
I looked down at them. There must’ve been thirty, maybe more. None of them had proper titles. I reached out and ran my hand along the top journal’s spine. The leather was soft and worn, the kind that had been handled often.
“Where did you find these?” I asked.
“They were buried under some old disciplinary records,” she said. “Stuff no one wanted to deal with. But this… these aren’t school logs. They’re personal. Diaries. Notes. And some of them match your grandmother’s handwriting.”
I didn’t move.
“Not all of them are hers,” Bella added. “But enough are.”
The air felt heavier suddenly. I took the top journal and opened it carefully.
The handwriting was slanted and neat, looping across the page in a confident hand. No dates. It reminded me of the journal she kept in the main library that described when my dad went missing.
I scanned the page. It was full of speculation. Thoughts about a disruption in the Academy’s heartbeat. Notes about checking with the fae in the northern wood, so this must have been before the curse. A half-scribbled name that had been crossed out hard enough to tear the paper.
“It’s like she was tracking something,” I murmured.
Bella nodded. “That’s what I thought too.”
I flipped to the next page, and my blood chilled.
Gideon is getting close. We told him he can’t have what he’s searching for because it does not exist. It only made him angrier.
So she knows what he’s searching for?
More notes. Diagrams. A sketch of the Academy’s central ward system that was more detailed than anything I’d seen in the official records.
And then another chilling note.
Gideon won’t stop until he gets what he wants. The question is whether we will give it to him.
My heart hammered in my chest.
“You said not all of these are hers?”
She nodded. “Same period, give or take a year. I think they knew each other. Maybe worked together, but this person didn’t appear to be at the Academy. The other one’s handwriting is messier. Angrier. You’ll know which ones I mean when you get to them.”
I glanced at the stack again, heart ticking faster now. “Then why would my grandma have someone else’s journals?”
“I don’t know.”
“She never told me any of this,” I said.
“I don’t think she told anyone,” Bella replied. “And whatever they were working on, it wasn’t sanctioned. Many of these entries reference places and practices that are no longer allowed. They haven’t been allowed for at least fifty years. And something else. I think they were trying to find the source of the Academy’s instability. Or maybe it's origin. It’s hard to tell.”
“Only to strengthen it, I hope.”
I turned another page. There were pressed flowers between two sheets—wilted, darkened with age. Next to them, my grandmother had written:
Only bloom when the leyline is disturbed.
“I thought I knew her,” I said.
“You knew the parts she shared,” Bella said quietly. “That doesn’t mean the rest wasn’t real.”
I closed the journal gently and set it back on the stack.
“I’m going to read all of them,” I said.
“I figured you would.”
I looked around the room. No chairs, candles, or lingering scent of warm tea or fire. Just old paper and secrets.
But I’d come this far.
“I’m headed to my room. Come there if you need anything.”
I nodded and pulled the stool from under the table, sat, and untied the next journal.
Outside, the world kept spinning. But down here, in the belly of the Academy, it was just me, my grandmother’s words, and a past that wasn’t finished with me yet.
I read through half of the first journal before the words started to blur. It wasn’t just fatigue or the poor lighting. It was the sheer weight of it all. Each line of my grandmother’s looping script felt like a stone added to my ribs. She hadn’t been scribbling down idle thoughts or student gossip. These were careful notes, observations, and theories. The kind of writing that came from someone chasing something they weren’t supposed to chase.
I closed the book slowly, pressing my hand against the cover as if it might pulse with heat or echo some long-forgotten spell. The leather was warm from my touch. The room had grown quiet, more so than before. As if even the air knew better than to interrupt.
I stood, the stool scraping softly against the stone floor, and stretched my back. The journals were still in their fragile towers on the table. But the shelves lining the walls… hadn’t called to me until now.
There were no labels. No tidy sections. Just an uneven sprawl of old bindings, frayed scrolls, loose pages stacked inside cracked folders. The kind of mess that only exists when no one’s touched something for decades.
I ran my fingers along the nearest shelf. Dust clung to my fingertips like memory. Some books had been chewed at the corners by time, or something less poetic. Others had broken spines, their pages fanned out. Most were handwritten. Not meant for public consumption. Notes. Drafts. A few were wrapped in cloth and sealed with wax that had long since crumbled.
One book in particular caught my eye. It wasn’t the cover, which was plain and water-stained, but how it was wedged in tighter than the others, almost like it didn’t belong. I tried pulling it out, but it didn’t budge. I tugged harder, shifting the books around it, and heard a soft click.
A sound behind the shelf.
I froze.
Carefully, I stepped back and pressed my hand against the stone wall behind the bookcase. The click hadn’t been imagined. There was a small seam there, subtle but unmistakable. The wall wasn’t solid.
A loose stone.
My heart picked up its pace, not with fear, but with the sharp, breathless curiosity that always got me into trouble.
I pressed again. The stone gave slightly. I leaned into it and twisted. With a low groan, it shifted inward, revealing a hidden cavity no larger than a breadbox. Tucked inside were three slim books, bound in deep red leather so dark it looked black in the low light.
I glanced back at the door out of habit.
Still closed. Still locked.
I pulled the books out, one by one. They were cold in my hands. The spines bore no title, no author. Just smooth, dark covers with worn corners. I brought them back to the table and sat down, suddenly aware of how fast I was breathing.
The first book cracked open easily.
Handwritten. Of course. But the ink was different, shimmering slightly, like a beetle’s shell. The script was elegant and sharp, like it had been written by someone very precise, powerful, or both.
Study of the Internal Colonies: An Account of the Bonded Dragolies
Not just legends or whispered rumors passed down in the common rooms. This was a proper record. And not of far-off mountain flights or broken eggshells in caves. These were here at the Academy.
I turned the page.
The opening line stopped me cold.
Only three remain.
My fingers hovered over the words, careful not to smudge them.
But we had more than three. I’d seen more than I could count.
I read on. The writing was dense, but not dry. Whoever had written this hadn’t just catalogued the dragons like specimens. They’d lived among them.
The descriptions weren’t just anatomical or magical. They were personal. Each dragon had a name, a temperament, and a role.
One of them, Noralis , was listed as the oldest and most intelligent. He’d communicated with certain scholars through dreams.
I stopped again, trying to swallow the lump in my throat.
Dreams.
I turned another page.
There was a map, hand-drawn, faded but detailed. A rough layout of a town… and beneath it, another level. A forgotten level.
Marked only as Shadowick.
I closed the book and sat very still.
I had asked my grandmother about other dragons in other factions, and she said she didn’t know.
But it says that there were dragons in Shadowick.
Page after page of half-finished thoughts, theories, warnings.
And on the last page:
The Wards are failing. If they break completely, I don’t know what will happen to the Academy.
The final sentence was a name. Half-crossed out.
Elira.
My breath caught.
Elira. My grandmother.
I touched the name like it might vanish.
She knew. She’d hidden this, and for good reason, probably. But why? Why tuck these away, forgotten, behind stone?
I looked at the third book but didn’t open it yet. My hands were shaking. My mind wouldn’t settle.
And something told me that I hadn’t just stumbled on Shadowick’s records.
I’d been meant to find them.