Chapter Forty #2
“Thank you for confirming.” I peeked around the pillar as the Priestess lifted her hands, and the storm of darkness above her condensed into a spinning mass that made my shadow mark burn cold and hot all at once. My butterfly birthmark answered, pulsing so hard that tears blurred my eyes.
The Academy shuddered, and the shadows hesitated.
The Priestess smiled through the fury. “You see? You still remember who gave you shape and a voice.”
The storm above her lowered, and the shadows trembled.
I felt it then. The shadows were fighting back and feeding off her darkness. Every twisted spell she had poured into them. Every command. Every cruel little hook she’d buried inside their magic to make it obey.
They were pulling it out and using it up, burning through it so she couldn’t reach it.
The silver light inside them spread faster, racing through the black like roots through soil. The shadows began to tear themselves apart and knit back together in the same breath, shedding pieces of her influence like old skin.
And that was when I realized what was breaking her.
The Priestess’ power was breaking because it was never her power to begin with.
She’d manipulated the shadows, Malore, Rendel, Gideon, and more.
She guided their power, but it wasn’t her own.
And they were all slipping away. It wasn’t about me stepping in and fighting her.
She was fighting herself, destroying herself.
The Priestess’ smile faded.
“No,” she whispered as the shadows surged.
The storm she’d built collapsed inward, but instead of striking the Academy, it poured into them. They drank it down in one enormous, impossible wave. The entire room filled with light as the shadows rose to the ceiling and swept back down around the Priestess.
She fought instantly.
Dark sparks flew from her hands, slicing through the air. The shadows broke apart and reformed. She shouted words I didn’t understand, and the Academy answered by slamming several doors shut at once.
The sound boomed through the halls as the Priestess tried again. The shadows wrapped around the doorway, the pillars, the floor, every path her power tried to take.
And then they began to taunt her, not with words, but with memories.
The younger Priestess smiling as a frightened student collapsed from a spell gone wrong…
The Priestess turning away from Barlen as he begged for mercy…
The Priestess reaching toward my mother through iron bars, taunting her daughter…
Each image flickered through the air, one after another, and with every vision, the shadows tightened closer.
The Priestess staggered. “I made you powerful.”
The shadows hissed.
You made us prisoners.
Her face contorted, and she thrust one hand toward me. “Maeve, command them to stop.”
I stared at her. “They’re not mine to control.”
After everything, she still believed I’d want to command them.
That was the difference.
The whole difference.
“Show me mercy,” she whimpered as the shadows swirled above her.
“I won’t command them,” I said softly.
“Save me.”
The shadows stilled near her, and even the Academy seemed to listen.
The Priestess’ eyes narrowed on me as if she’d gotten her point across to me.
“I told you, they’re not mine,” I continued, feeling the words settle deeper as I said them. “And more importantly, they were never yours.”
A sound moved through the Academy that was beautiful and aching. It started beneath the floors and drifted upward through the walls until every lantern shimmered and every shadow answered as the energy poured out of the Academy and into the sky.
And I realized that all of the shadows my grandmother had collected over the centuries weren’t shadows at all. They were stolen memories.
Barlen turned toward me, awe washing over his face as the Priestess shrieked and lunged.
The shadows caught her before she stepped again.
They wrapped around her wrists first, then her arms, then her waist. She twisted violently, sending bursts of darkness through the hall, but every bit of magic she released only fed them more.
The shadows brightened each time they absorbed it, using her own power to strengthen the prison closing around her.
She fought harder, and the Academy pushed back. The shadows clung to her and pulled her into the center of the emblem.
The lines of the star and root flared brighter as her boots struck the rune below her feet.
“No,” she gasped. There was no pride hiding beneath the word, only terror.
The shadows climbed higher, winding around her throat but not choking.
Holding. Capturing. Binding. The silver inside them shone like moonlit thread, and for one breathtaking moment, the Priestess looked less like a ruler and more like a woman trapped inside the consequences she’d spent lifetimes building.
Barlen stood beside me in stunned silence, but I couldn’t look away.
The shadows finally pulled her arms tight to her sides, and the Academy floor lit beneath her with a deep, resonant thrum that vibrated up through my bones.
The Priestess’ eyes locked onto mine.
“This is not over,” she whispered.
Before I could answer, Keegan came through the door, broad shoulders tense, eyes blazing wolf-bright as his gaze swept the hall and landed on me. Gideon followed at his side, but his expression was unreadable for half a second before shock cut through the darkness in his gaze.
Bella slipped in behind them, half crouched as if ready to shift, while Nova moved with that terrible calm that always meant she’d known just enough to worry.
Ardetia came next, pale and silent, and Twobble and Skonk tumbled in after her with the frantic energy of goblins who’d run the whole way and regretted every step.
Twobble skidded to a halt and clutched his chest. “We made it. I saw the signal and…”
“Signal?” I shook my head. “What signal?”
Barlen whistled and rolled his eyes. “I might have borrowed one of the pebbles in your pocket.”
“And?”
“I tossed it with a wish for backup.”
I bit back a smile. “So that’s what they were for.”
Twobble nodded. “Good man. Little did I know, I needed to provide a set of instructions for every magical instrument I hand over to our headmistress.”
Skonk stared at the bound Priestess as Keegan’s eyes moved from me to the Priestess and then to the shadows holding her in place.
“What happened?” he asked, voice rough with horror and awe.
I looked at the shadows that were no longer cloaked in darkness wrapped around my grandmother and over at Barlen, who still looked like he couldn’t decide whether to cry or kneel, and I let out a shaky breath.
“Shadowick found its voice.”