Chapter Thirty-Three
I stepped toward a stone wall and noticed a small plaque. Bending slightly, I used my palm to wipe away the soot and grime that had covered the letters, but after several failed attempts, I realized it wasn’t coming off.
“That’s not dirt,” Barlen whispered.
I straightened and turned to him. “What is it?”
“Shadow mud. It covers anything that isn’t meant to be seen and only something as bright as day can remove it.”
I didn’t like that answer and took a step back, staring at the small sign that no longer directed anything.
“You’re quite persistent,” the old man said. “Quite different than your mother.”
I spun around to look him in his eyes. “What do you mean?”
“She never followed the shadows.” He smiled and rocked back on his heels.
I knew in my heart what was bright as day to me, but I didn’t know if that counted in the land of shadows.
Turning back, I stepped forward and kneeled in front of the plaque.
I pressed my hands to the cold stone, closed my eyes, reached out to everything I loved back home, and clung to the hope that a new day, a better day, would rise again.
I felt my fingers warm, and my birthmark nearly fluttered as I blinked open to see the shadow mud turn to ash and fall away. I gasped as the words settled in.
Shadowick Academy.
I nearly stumbled backward and into Barlen, but he caught me instead. The old man’s pale eyes glimmered in the fog, and for once, Barlen had nothing to say, which only made everything more solemn.
Shadowick Academy.
The words sat there in blackened silver as if they’d been waiting for me to learn about them.
I’d heard whispers once or twice, implications that Shadowick had one too.
But why hadn’t Gideon said more, and what exactly did this Academy teach?
The questions rushed through me so quickly, I could hardly grab one before the next came. All I wanted were answers, and that longing was a dangerous thing in Shadowick. I knew it. I could feel it. Curiosity here had the same sharp edges as hunger.
Still, I took another step toward the enormous doors.
Barlen grabbed the edge of my cloak. “No.”
I looked down at him, and his little paw trembled against my cloak.
“You don’t even know what I’m going to do.” I eyed him.
“I do.” His voice dropped into a whisper. “You’re going to go inside.”
The old man shifted behind us, his cane tapping once against the stone. “If it opens.”
Barlen threw him a look of pure betrayal. “You are not helping.”
My butterfly mark pulsed, and I pressed my hand to my hip, sucking in a breath before I could stop myself.
Barlen’s eyes widened. “It’s calling to you.”
“It’s not. This happens from time to time.” I shook my head, trying to take in the grounds.
There were some commonalities with Stonewick, on some level, with its courtyards and grand buildings, but I wanted to know what was inside. Who was taught inside the walls?
Barlen stepped forward and stared at me. “You should walk away.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think I can.”
He swallowed, and I realized he believed me.
The building loomed above us, its double doors as tall as the Academy doors in Stonewick, though these had been barred with black iron wrapped around them in thick loops like roots and a shadow.
I recognized stars, moons, flame, and….my breath caught.
A butterfly.
That symbol was wrong here, or maybe it belonged here, and I was the one who had spent too much time believing Stonewick owned all the gentler magic.
The old man took a step closer, though he did not cross whatever invisible boundary seemed to exist around the front steps.
“Your mother came here willingly once.”
I turned sharply. “Here?”
His gaze moved to the doors. “Not inside the Academy walls, but to this area.”
“Why not step inside?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she was afraid of what the answer would be or what she might lose.”
My chest tightened.
Barlen made a strangled little sound. “You shouldn’t speak of this.”
The man shrugged. “She asked.”
“She is a guest of the Priestess,” Barlen warned.
The old man’s expression hardened. “No one is a guest here. We’re all prisoners.”
The words rang softly between the three of us, and the fog shifted along the steps as if the village itself had listened.
My fingers slipped into my pocket.
I expected to feel Twobble’s rough little pebbles, and for half a second, I wanted that. Something familiar. Instead, something else pulsed against my fingertips…the charm from my mom.
It had recently behaved more like a key or an entryway.
Maybe now would be no different.
I drew in a slow breath and pulled it from my pocket.
I held it up, and Barlen backed away immediately. “Where did you get that?”
“My mother left it for me.”
“She shouldn’t have had it.”
“There are a lot of things that shouldn’t have happened, yet here we are.”
He flinched, and I softened slightly, though only because he looked genuinely terrified. “What is it?”
The old man’s gaze stayed on the charm. “A remnant. A key.”
The charm didn’t look like a key. It had no teeth, no shape meant for a mechanism, no practical reason to fit into anything other than a pocket or the pages of a book where my mother had hidden it.
But it had opened doors and led me places I never thought about. Some good, others I needed to ignore.
And what if that was here? A place I needed to ignore.
“Telling me it’s a remnant tells me nothing.” I held it tighter and glanced at the doors.
“It tells you everything and opens doors you never imagined.” The old man’s eyes stayed on mine. “If you listen. If you’re the correct holder. It didn’t work for your mother.”
His revelation shook me to my core. It had already worked for me more times than I wanted to admit.
“Don’t do it, Maeve,” Barlen said softly.
“I have to.” I walked toward the Academy and up the steps, staring at the lock on the massive door.
I held it up, and Barlen whimpered just as the lock clicked open.
“You should not do this,” Barlen said. “Do not open the door.”
“I hear you,” I said, glancing over my shoulder.
“But apparently that is not the same as listening,” Barlen grumbled.
“People keep telling me that.”
The old man stepped back from the stairs. “If it opens for you, remember that it has been starving for a long time. It might not want to let you go.”
That nearly stopped me.
Nearly.
But just like Stonewick, somewhere under the soot, iron, boards, and shadow mud, this place had been filled with students. Teachers. Lessons. Laughter maybe. Fear, too, probably, because magic had a talent for including both, but still. There had been a purpose here once beyond silence and shadows.
The double doors groaned inward as a cold breath spilled out from the dark beyond, carrying dust, old smoke, dried ink, and a faint sweetness that made my chest ache for reasons I didn’t understand.
I took in a deep breath as the fog curled toward the opening. It stopped at the threshold as if it even knew better than to enter without permission.
I stood there staring into the darkness, wondering if I’d made the wrong choice.
Barlen whispered, “You opened Shadowick Academy.”
“I noticed.”
“You should close it.”
“I don’t think it works like that.”
The old man gave a low, humorless chuckle. “It never did.”
Inside, a single light flickered to life, and farther down a corridor, pale and unsteady, another light lit.
And another.
The lights did not brighten the space so much as reveal how much darkness there was.
The entry hall stretched wide beyond the doors, larger than the building's exterior should have allowed. Stone floors disappeared beneath layers of dust, and tall pillars rose on either side, carved with the same root-and-star symbol I’d seen throughout the village.
A grand staircase climbed at the far end of the hall, though half its railing had collapsed. Portraits lined the walls, their canvases turned inward to face the stone.
That bothered me.
A lot.
But I stepped to the threshold and stopped.
The shadow mark pulsed again, but this time, I felt something beneath the pulse, a question.
It felt like it came from inside the Academy, just the shape of inquiry brushing against my bones. Maybe not words like we were accustomed to.
Who?
I swallowed.
“Maeve Una Bellemore,” I whispered back to emptiness.
The entry hall answered with dust lifting from the floor in a slow ripple, sweeping backward from the threshold and clearing a narrow path through the center of the hall. The lights along the walls flickered brighter, and somewhere deep inside the building, a bell chimed once.
Barlen made a miserable noise behind me.
“I’d say it is expecting her,” the old man muttered behind us.
I glanced over my shoulder at Barlen. “You coming?”
Barlen looked appalled. “Inside there?”
“You brought me out for a day on the town.”
“You escaped my supervision. This was not in the plans.” Barlen glanced around the room in front of me. “But I suppose I shouldn’t stay out here, while you’re in there.”
I smiled. “Exactly my thought.”
His whiskers trembled as he looked from me to the Academy. “The Priestess will know.”
I glanced toward the silent street behind us, the curtains trembling in the nearby buildings, the old man watching with pale eyes that looked far less sleepy now.
I nodded in agreement. “She probably already does.”
Barlen frowned at me. “Not helpful for the nerves, Maeve.”
The old man stepped forward, though still not onto the stairs. “Take nothing it offers unless you understand the cost.”
“Why does everything magical have a cost?” I muttered just as the shadow I’d followed earlier appeared inside the hall. It stretched itself along the cleared path as if welcoming me. It pulsed once, then slipped deeper into the Academy.
My mark pulled toward it right when I thought about turning back.
I really did.
But my mother’s charm had opened the door.
The plaque had revealed itself to me.
The shadow had led me here.
And Gideon had kept this secret for too long.
I wanted answers.
No.
I needed them.
I stepped across the threshold into Shadowick Academy, and the moment my boot touched the dusty floor… every person in the portraits turned around to look at me.
And then I heard it speak.