Chapter Forty
I kept my balance as a beam of light shot from below me through the ceiling, and the Priestess cackled, but the shadows weren’t to be controlled.
Not this time.
She moved her hands toward the floor and then up to the sky to whisk the power she’d been accustomed to using, but the shadows remained where they’d been. Her eyes blazed with anger as she looked across the room at me with Barlen at my hip, staring up at me.
If I didn’t know better, I thought it might be his teeth chattering that I heard.
“Enough,” the Priestess called into the air, expecting the shadows to respond.
But they didn’t.
The word floated above us and disappeared into the rafters as if the Academy had simply swallowed it.
A strange sound whispered through the entrance hall. It moved along the pillars and across the ceiling beams before drifting down the staircases in long, velvet streaks. It wasn’t laughter exactly, but it was close enough to make every hair along my arms stand up.
The Priestess heard it too.
Her shoulders stiffened as she slowly lowered her hands.
The shadows gathered around her feet, curling over the cracked stone, and through the open doorway, but this time they didn’t rise for her command.
They circled, slowly and patiently, almost curious.
Barlen’s hand clutched the sleeve of my cloak. “Maeve…”
“I know,” I whispered, even though I didn’t.
The shadows nearest the Priestess stretched upward like smoke pulled by invisible strings. They brushed against the hem of her dress, and she immediately stepped back, her eyes flashing with outrage.
“You forget yourselves,” she hissed at them.
The sound came again, an eerie, almost-laugh.
The Academy answered as the rooms brightened, and the entire entrance hall shimmered with light and darkness woven together. The shadows didn’t shrink from the glow. They moved through it, drinking it in like they’d been starved for years and had only just remembered what nourishment felt like.
The Priestess lifted her hands again.
Black magic sparked between her fingers, piercing and jagged, the kind that made my shadow mark pulse in warning. She twisted her wrists, and the darkness that had always obeyed her should have snapped into place.
Instead, the shadows leaned closer, but not to serve…to feed.
A gasp fell from Barlen as the darkness around her hands thinned and poured away from her fingers in silky strands. The shadows on the floor absorbed the threads, and for one impossible second, the blackness rippled with silver.
The Priestess froze, and I couldn’t breathe as I watched them.
The shadows weren’t becoming more wicked from her power, but something was happening as we watched her magic slide into them.
The shadows curled and twisted, devouring the darkness she offered and reshaping it into something almost beautiful as flecks of light bounced between the Priestess and the shadows.
“No,” she whispered.
Her voice was different that time…smaller.
The shadows rose higher, circling around her waist now, and whispers filled the Academy. They didn’t come in one voice, but many. Some sounded old and brittle. Some young. Some angry. Some heartbroken. The shadows had voices.
The Priestess’ face twisted with fury. “I gave you purpose.”
The shadows tightened around her as a tremor ran through the walls.
Barlen stepped closer to me, and I felt him shaking. “They’re speaking.”
“We’re going to be okay,” I whispered, hoping that was true.
The Priestess slashed her hand through the air, sending a blade of dark magic toward the shadows. They split apart before it touched them, opening like a curtain.
The magic struck the stone behind them instead. The impact cracked the archway above the entrance, sending dust and pebbles skittering across the floor.
The Academy groaned, but it didn’t seem to be from pain…Perhaps irritation?
I was surprised I could feel it.
“Enough,” my grandmother hollered.
The shadows recoiled for only a breath before surging toward her again.
This time, they wrapped around the dark magic still clinging to her arms and pulled, sucking every bit of darkness they could.
“Whoa,” Barlen whispered as the Priestess staggered.
Her eyes widened as sheets of black energy peeled away from her skin and slid into the shadows gathering around her. The more they fed, the more they glimmered. Silver threads appeared inside them, faint at first, then brighter, like moonlight caught inside ink.
“You cannot take what is mine,” she snarled.
Mine.
The word rolled through the hall and hit the walls with such force that several lanterns flickered.
The shadows answered at once.
Never yours.
The Priestess’ expression shifted again, and this time I saw it clearly.
Fear.
It was there and gone quickly, buried beneath fury and pride, but I’d seen it. So had Barlen, judging by the way his hand slipped from my sleeve.
He stared at the woman who had ruled over Shadowick as if he were seeing her for the first time.
The shadows brushed against her cheek, and she jerked back as though they’d burned her.
“These shadows don’t belong to you,” I told her. “And neither does this Academy or village. You can’t own magic.”
“But I can control it,” she barked back.
A low whisper curled through the air.
Remember.
The word changed everything.
The shadows around us deepened, and suddenly the room filled with images that weren’t solid enough to touch but clear enough to steal the breath from my lungs.
Students standing in underground chambers, frightened and eager…
Professors arguing in candlelit rooms…
A younger Priestess with ambition blazing in her eyes as shadows curled around her hands…
Then Barlen, younger by years, kneeling before her while a black mark burned into his wrist…
His ears went flat.
“Maeve,” he breathed.
I glanced at him, and my heart squeezed. “I see it. It’s okay. You’re safe.”
The vision shifted to my mother, trapped behind iron bars, her hands wrapped around the cold metal as she looked toward a door that never opened.
Rage struck me so hard I nearly moved forward, but the Academy pulsed beneath my feet, steadying me.
The shadows weren’t only showing me.
They were showing her.
The darkness that had become her had never been forgotten by the shadows she thought she controlled.
The Priestess shook her head, hair whipping around her face as the wind inside the hall grew stronger. “Stop this.”
Remember.
The whispers multiplied until they filled every corner of the room.
Remember.
Remember.
Remember.
The Priestess clapped her hands together, and a violent crack split the air. The shadows scattered across the floor, but not for long. They gathered again almost instantly, sweeping up the fragments of her power.
The Priestess’ gaze snapped to mine.
“You,” she hissed. “You did this.”
“I really didn’t.” I glanced around the hall, watching the shadows ripple with silver and black light. “I’ve never claimed to control the shadows.”
“You opened my Academy.” She pointed her finger at me.
“I used a charm.” I held up my hand slightly. “And the lock responded.”
“But I wouldn’t call it your Academy,” Barlen added.
Her lips peeled back from her teeth, and she thrust both palms toward us. She might not have the shadows behind her, but she still had magic running through her veins.
Her fingertips glowed as Barlen shouted and yanked me sideways.
A stream of dark magic shot across the hall. It struck the floor inches from my boots, blasting stone into the air. Pain sliced across my cheek as a shard grazed me, and warmth trickled down my skin.
The shadows reacted.
Every single one turned toward the Priestess.
The air changed so sharply I felt it in my teeth.
The Academy lights dimmed to a soft glow, and the shadows stretched taller and wider, slipping across the floor like fog. They took shapes now. Not bodies exactly, but suggestions of them.
A hand.
A face.
A mouth smiling where no mouth should be.
The Priestess took a step back as the shadows moved with eerie grace, surrounding her in a wide circle. Their whispers became sharper, clearer, threaded with years of anger that had apparently been waiting for the right moment to spill free.
“You are nothing without me,” she snapped.
The shadows stilled, and for a second, nothing moved.
I glanced at Barlen as the entire room erupted in a sound that was absolutely laughter…deep, terrible, ancient laughter.
It rolled through the Academy and up the staircases, rattling the windows and sending dust drifting from the ceiling.
Barlen’s mouth fell open, and I clutched the wall beside me and tried very hard to remember how breathing worked.
The shadows laughed at her.
At the Priestess.
The woman who had bent them, commanded them, fed on them, and shaped an entire realm around her will.
They were laughing, and a smile started before I could stop it.
The Priestess saw, and her fury snapped back into place. “You think this is amusing?”
“No,” I said quickly. I was smart enough to recognize that the shadows could turn on me, too.
Barlen let out a strangled sound that might have been a laugh if he hadn’t looked like he was about to collapse.
The shadows nearest me curled lightly around the cracked stone floor, and the silver inside them brightened.
A word drifted through the air, softer this time.
Hope.
The Priestess screamed, and the sound tore through the hall, and every lantern burst brighter. She pulled from the ground, the walls, the courtyard, and the dark sky beyond the open doors. Black power stormed toward her in violent streaks, feeding into her hands until the air around her warped.
Barlen shoved me behind a pillar. “She’s drawing everything she can.”
“That sounds bad.”
“It’s very bad.” His eyes stayed on mine as fear filled them. “She might not have the shadows, but she’s still powerful.”