Chapter Thirty-Six
We were sitting in her study, the one I’d had my vision of so long ago, when she was hurriedly stuffing something into the drawer.
The same thing Gideon managed to steal and was now protected within the walls of Stonewick Academy.
I thought back to the stone that the Priestess so desperately needed to continue her unnatural reign and longevity, and how there were two now sitting behind the protection of Stonewick.
She sat behind the desk, but something struck me.
My grandmother, the Priestess, looked tired. That was unusual, and it made me wonder whether the effects of not having the stone in her possession were already allowing her to age naturally.
“It was nice to visit Shadowick with my granddaughter,” she said, opening a drawer, almost on instinct, and shutting it again.
I scanned the shelves of books at the far end of the room and rose without answering.
“Enjoy, Maeve. It’s about time you understood the place that has always been your home.”
Her words felt like a slice to my heart as I drew a breath and continued forward.
“I don’t belong here,” I whispered. “I never have.”
She laughed. “Gideon told me that was a sore subject.”
Barlen came into the room with a tray of tea and set it down. He brought a cup to me as I lifted my hand toward a book that caught my eye.
“Interesting that that’s the one you chose,” she said, flashing a sinister expression.
I didn’t even bother to look at the title after that comment. Instead, I kept it in my left hand while I held the tea in my right, and Barlen quietly left the study.
“What did you make of the Academy?” she asked.
My heart stopped as I let out a slow breath.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t be silly.” She laughed. “I know you saw it.”
Ah, yes. I saw it…But she didn’t know I went in it.
I turned around slowly. “Did you ever attend the Academy?”
“Indeed, I did,” she said with a quick flick of her wrist toward the window. “I’d been abandoned by my husband and left to raise a family without any means to do so, and in those days, it was a grueling sentence. This century can be a bit kinder to single moms, but not by much.”
I took a sip of tea and saw something on the saucer. Not wanting to bring attention, I set my cup down.
“I felt a calling and wound up in Shadowick. Immediately, I sensed something was different here. People came to my aid, fed my child, and found me housing. It was a new start. But when I walked into the Academy at forty, I knew my life would never be the same.”
Her eyes met mine, and she smiled. It was the only genuine one I’d seen on her.
“What was the Academy like?”
The Priestess went quiet after that. It wasn’t the cold kind of silence she usually carried, either. This silence felt older somehow, reflective, as if she’d wandered into her own memories and forgotten I was sitting across from her.
The fire crackled softly beside us, throwing gold across the dark wood shelves lining the study, and for the first time since entering Shadowick, I caught something unexpected in her expression.
It wasn’t cruelty or power, but a sense of…grief.
“It was beautiful,” she said finally, her voice softer than I’d heard before. “Truly beautiful.”
The answer settled strangely inside me. I guess I had expected bitterness, resentment, or anger.
Barlen appeared beside the table without a sound and traded the teapot. The shadows near the ceiling stirred faintly around him before settling again, almost like they recognized him. He kept his gaze lowered the entire time.
The Priestess wrapped both hands around her teacup, staring into the steam curling upward.
“When I arrived there, I had nothing.” A faint smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes.
“My child was hungry. I was exhausted all the time. There’s a particular kind of fear that settles into your bones when you spend years wondering whether you’ll survive another winter. ”
Something tightened painfully in my chest because, despite everything she’d become, she suddenly felt real, not just a caricature of a wicked woman.
“I remember seeing the gates for the first time.” Her gaze drifted toward the windows. “The fog was so thick that night I could barely see the towers. But the Academy…” She shook her head slowly. “You could feel it before you ever stepped inside.”
The room dimmed around me, and suddenly I could see it too.
Massive black gates wrapped in silver vines with towering spires disappearing into moonlit clouds.
Lanterns floated through the mist like drifting stars, and a younger version of the Priestess stood there with a small child clutching her skirts.
For a second, she looked nothing like the woman sitting across from me now.
“They fed my child and me before they even asked my name,” she whispered as the memory shifted again.
Midlife students crossed an enormous courtyard lined with glowing ivy.
Shadows moved gently beneath archways and staircases, almost alive but not threatening.
The Academy itself pulsed with magic so old and deep that even watching it made my ribs ache.
I recognized the kindred spirit between both Academies, and I couldn’t help but wonder what went wrong.
As I watched the young Priestess move deeper into the grounds with her child, it wasn’t dark in the way I expected.
The grounds were breathtaking.
“They gave us rooms overlooking the lower gardens.” Her smile deepened slightly now. “Moonflowers were climbing the stone walls outside our windows. I used to leave the curtains open at night just to smell them.”
I swallowed my surprise as a realization settled over me. This wasn’t the story of a woman corrupted overnight.
This was someone who had once loved a place deeply.
“They taught things there nobody else understood.” She leaned back slightly. “Magic wasn’t separated into neat little categories inside Shadowick. Light, dark, healing. Destruction, all flowed together.” A low laugh escaped her. “Sometimes it took one to get the other.
The visions sharpened around me again.
“Outside those walls, people wanted magic simple enough to control in a way they understood.” She sighed and shook her head. “And that was the beginning of the end.”
I didn’t say a word.
“They respected shadow magic there,” the Priestess said quietly. “Or at least they claimed they did.”
And there it was.
The shift.
It was subtle but enough to make my stomach tighten.
I watched professors sealing doors with enormous iron keys, restricting hallways, and removing ancient books from shelves while students whispered in corners.
“At first, I believed the Academy was limitless.” Her fingers traced the edge of her cup absentmindedly. “But eventually I realized they only taught enough to keep students obedient.”
I frowned, wondering if she saw the parallel.
“No,” I said before I could stop myself. “Maybe they understood it better than you think. Perhaps, they wanted to protect the students.”
Her eyes lifted slowly to mine, and she smiled.
“They feared what shadow magic could become. They wanted to use it to pull the darkness and shadows out of the world, but I realized how powerful it could be if you put them back in.”
I sat shocked. My grandmother handed me the answers to my questions on a platter.
“That’s wicked.”
“Oh, Maeve.” Her voice dropped almost affectionately. “That’s exactly what they wanted us to believe.”
The shadows near the walls stretched slightly.
“They taught restraint constantly,” she continued. “Control. Balance. Limitation.” Her mouth curved faintly. “Every lesson came wrapped in warnings. It was ridiculous. And to think I was the one teaching fear? Don’t do this, or you’ll be ignited in flames. Don’t do that or…”
The vision shifted again, and I saw a younger version of her standing inside a massive circular chamber lined with silver runes. Shadows curled around her wrists like smoke while professors watched from above. They seemed nervous, and even then… uneasy.
“I excelled quickly,” she admitted as I brought my gaze back to hers and drew a breath.
“It’s classic. They praised talent right up until the moment talent stopped being manageable.
” Her gaze drifted again as if she reveled in the memory.
“There were lower chambers beneath the Academy that most students never even knew existed. Ancient places with even more ancient…” She stopped herself as a chill crept slowly up my spine.
The shadows around us deepened.
I caught flashes of hidden corridors beneath Shadowick with black stone walls and mirrors that seemed to move when no one touched them and shadows that hovered just out of reach.
“I learned they carried emotion. Memory. Fear. Rage.” Her voice lowered further. “Love. Grief. Every terrible thing people bury inside themselves leaves an imprint.”
“The shadows?” I asked softly as the room fell colder, or maybe it was just me.
She nodded. “And if you listen closely enough…” Her eyes glittered strangely in the firelight. “…the shadows answer back.”
A knot formed hard in my stomach, but it wasn’t for the most obvious reason. It was in some odd way that she sounded somewhat reasonable.
“I started teaching the students this…At least the ones who’d listen.” Her eyes met mine, and she tilted her head. “The Academy started panicking once some of us began discovering deeper forms of magic.” She gave a humorless laugh.
The visions turned foggier now, but I could sense arguments behind closed doors and fear spreading.
“Entire wings were sealed. Books disappeared overnight. Professors suddenly became very concerned with safety.” She tapped her finger on the desk and stared into the distance.
“Was anyone hurt? Was that why?” I asked, but she continued on her own.
“They called it corruption,” she murmured.
“The shadows?” I asked.
“The shadow magic,” she corrected. “But it wasn’t corruption.” Her gaze locked onto mine fully now. “It was evolution.”
Every instinct inside me screamed not to look away.
“Over the years, I came to realize that they feared shadow magic because they realized it wasn’t passive.” Her voice had gone almost reverent now. “The darkness grows. Learns. Adapts.” She tilted her head slightly. “And once it recognizes someone willing to truly listen…”
My breath caught.
Oh no.
Nope.
Absolutely not.
I did not like where this conversation was heading.
“The Academy tried stopping me eventually.” She smiled faintly, though there wasn’t an ounce of warmth in it now. “By then it was already too late.”
The room darkened another shade as I saw professors confronting her and students gathered secretly in underground chambers.
Ancient symbols carved into stone floors pulsing with black light.
And the younger version of the Priestess standing at the center of it all, with absolute certainty burning in her eyes.
I shivered at the images and brought my gaze to hers.
“They thought they could contain what was happening beneath Shadowick Academy.” She smiled and took a sip of tea before setting the cup down. “But the shadows had chosen.”
Ice slid through my veins as I realized that the Academy hadn’t feared ordinary ambition. It had feared her.
And judging by the way the darkness moved around her even now…
Maybe it still did.
Silence settled between us while the fire crackled softly beside the shelves, and I became painfully aware of every tiny sound in the study. Branches scraped against the windows in uneven patterns while Barlen quietly gathered her abandoned teacup.
I swallowed slowly and tried to ignore the pressure building behind my ribs.
The unsettling part was that I understood fragments of what she was saying.
And I didn’t mean the terrifying shadow ritual portion of it because absolutely not. I preferred my magic to be significantly less horrifying and involve fewer underground chambers.
But then I thought back to the dragons.
Okay, maybe not significantly fewer underground chambers since they often proved useful for hiding things like dragons and ancient documents.
But I understood the feeling beneath her words. The frustration of being told to stay smaller. Safer. Easier for other people to manage. I’d spent a lifetime doing that.
The Priestess watched me carefully over the rim of her teacup that Barlen had already replaced, and the look in her eyes made me wonder if she could somehow see every thought trying to tumble through my head.
“You feel it too,” she said quietly.
“No,” I answered a little too fast.
A faint smile tugged at her mouth like she didn’t believe me for even a second.
I shifted farther back into the chair and folded my arms. “There’s a pretty massive difference between power and whatever creepy shadow basement situation you got yourself involved in.”
One of Barlen’s shoulders jerked beside the shelves, and I realized with complete horror that the furry goblin was trying not to laugh.
The Priestess let out a long sigh that carried the exhausted energy of someone dealing with a particularly stubborn child.
“You reduce things into mockery when they frighten you,” she said.
“Well, humor is cheaper than therapy.”
That earned me another suspicious choking sound from Barlen before he quickly busied himself stacking books that absolutely did not need stacking.
The Priestess carefully set her teacup onto the saucer. “Stonewick filled your mind with fear long before you understood what shadow magic truly is.” Her gaze held mine steadily. “Tell me honestly, Maeve. Since stepping inside Shadowick, has the magic itself harmed you?”
I opened my mouth to answer and then stopped.
The horrible truth was that the shadows themselves hadn’t been what hurt me.
Unease curled slowly through my stomach as I realized my hesitation had lasted far too long.
“I see that look,” the Priestess murmured.
“That’s not a look,” I argued quickly. “That’s me realizing you ask questions exactly like the villain in every story.”
“I’m not the villain.” The Priestess closed her eyes briefly as though summoning patience from another realm entirely. “You make everything difficult.”
“I’ve been told it’s one of my defining qualities.”
The faintest hint of amusement touched her face before vanishing again so quickly I almost thought I imagined it, but something shifted.
The warmth disappeared from the room so gradually that it took me a second to realize the fire had dimmed lower beside us. Shadows stretched farther along the stone floor, while the corners of the study darkened beneath a strange heaviness that pressed against the air.
“You should be careful mocking things you don’t understand,” she said quietly.
Every instinct inside me hit at once.
Because the shadows weren’t moving toward her anymore.
They were inching slowly across the floor toward me.