Chapter 13 – — Unsigned Entry, Ashwell Archives #2
It doesn’t come from anywhere. It comes from everywhere. Inside my head. Inside my chest. Echoing in the darkness all around me.
“Maelissss Rosssse.”
Not a question. It already knows.
“Yes.”
“You have come to receive your eidolon, to be judged worthy of the bond.”
“Yes.”
“Then we will see what you are made of.”
The darkness presses closer, and a coldness spreads across my skin as a tingle creeps up my spine.
“What do you fear mossst?”
“Death.”
“No.” The voice wraps around me. “You do not fear death. You fear what comesss after. Or rather what doesn’t.”
I’m speechless.
“You fear the void, the end, the eternal nothing. It keepsss you awake at night. It sssitsss on your chest and stealsss your breath. You cannot prove there is something more. And that uncertainty is the thing that truly hauntsss you.”
I can’t breathe. I can’t move. I can’t find my voice.
“You became a healer to fight thisss and have control over the one thing no one can control.”
My chest starts to heave, but I fight it, burying it where I bury everything else.
“You fear the end so profoundly. You want to become an elite healer. A Veilguard who savesss livesss. Sssomeone who stands between the living and the dying.”
The darkness shifts, and an icy chill settles over me as the temperature plummets.
“And yet you have taken a life.”
The tears come before I can stop them. Hot and sharp, spilling down my cheeks. I want to scream no, but it would be a lie.
“Yes.” My voice cracks. I wipe my eyes and look down to see my hands covered in blood. Panic spikes inside me like a jolt to my heart.
“I know this blood.”
I blink. “What?”
“Your father’s blood. It has walked these hallsss.”
My father…was here? He went to Ashwell?
It explains so much. The journals and the acceptance letter. The way he knew things he shouldn’t have known.
“He never told me,” I whisper.
“There is much you have not been told. In time, you will learn.”
Before I can ask what that means, the darkness begins to recede. Light bleeds in at the edges. I feel the ground solidify beneath my feet.
“You have been judged, Maelissss Rosssse. You have been found worthy.” The voice fades. The light grows brighter. “Your eidolon awaits.”
And then I’m through. Standing on the other side of the mirror, gasping for air, shaking from head to toe and flooded with the warmth from the cavern. The chamber is silent. Two hundred students watching. Faculty along the walls like statues.
I look down.
A small shape appears at my feet. Gray fur. Round black eyes. A ringed tail curled around tiny paws.
A raccoon.
Someone in the crowd laughs. Whispers spread like fire catching dry leaves.
“Even the mirror knows she’ll be picking through scraps to survive here,” someone says loudly enough for everyone to hear, and my cheeks burn.
“A bottom feeder for a bottom feeder,” someone else adds. More laughter follows.
I stare at the creature. She stares back.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
The raccoon tilts her head like she’s asking me the same question.
I crouch down slowly and hold out my hand. She sniffs it once then presses her small head against my palm.
Something clicks into place, a warmth I didn’t expect. A connection I can’t explain. Like a thread pulled taut between us, invisible but unbreakable. Suddenly I don’t care about the laughter or the whispers. I don’t care what anyone else thinks.
She’s mine, and I’m hers.
I scoop her up and hold her against my chest, wrapping my cloak around us both. Her tiny hands grip my sweater. Her heartbeat thrums against me, finding the rhythm of mine. I run my fingers along her soft fur, and she leans into the touch.
Her eyes meet mine again. Dark and knowing and full of something that feels like trust.
“Poppy.” The name comes to me instantly. “You will be my Poppy.”
I feel her pleasure at the name. A flutter of warmth in my chest that isn’t mine. This must be what the others feel when they talk about current. I can feel her emotions and thoughts, like an extension of myself I never knew was missing.
I don’t know how to describe it because I never knew such a thing was possible.
“Okay,” I murmur.
I turn and walk back through the crowd. A sudden urgency to protect her rises in my chest. The feeling spreads through me, and she vanishes, only she’s not gone.
She’s a part of me now, like Lux tried to explain before.
I couldn’t comprehend it then. Now I understand how she can appear and disappear at will but always be here.
I don’t look at the students snickering, Draven or Malric or anyone.
But I feel Headmaster Ashmoor’s eyes on me as I pass him. Heavy and watchful as I take my place on the other side of the room.
Lux and Jace are there in an instant. Jace wraps his arm around me, and I sink into his warmth without thinking. He looks down at me, and I can see it in his face. All the questions he wants to ask. All the things he wants to say.
But we have to wait. There’s still a handful of students left to finish the ceremony, and we’re supposed to remain silent.
I survived the mirror. I got my eidolon.
I have Poppy.
I never imagined wanting something like this, never knew there was a hole in me until she filled it.
But she’s mine now, woven into every part of me, and I love her in a way I don’t have words for yet.
I would destroy anything that tried to hurt her.
And I know deep in my bones she would do the same for me.
The headmaster waits until the final student takes their place. Then he steps forward, hands clasped behind his back.
“Tonight you have all faced the mirror. Some of you found it easier than expected. Some of you did not.”
His eyes flick toward the door where they carried Nyra’s body.
“Not everyone survives the judgment. This is not cruelty. It is truth. Ashwell does not coddle. It reveals. Those of you standing here have been deemed worthy of continuing. Do not waste that. Return to your rooms. Tomorrow we begin again.”
He exchanges a few hushed words with Professor Nestor as they cover the mirror with a drape and then departs.
A hand clasps my shoulder.
“Maelis, I was having a panic attack when you were in the mirror for so long. What happened?” Lux exclaims, moving to my free side.