Chapter Twenty-One
She led us down a narrow stairwell that curved into a lower hall. The turn of it made me think of the hidden room where I’d first uncovered the history about the dragons and the Hunger Path, though this part of the Academy was different.
The air cooled as we descended.
It carried that faint metallic scent I’d come to associate with old magic.
I rubbed my palms against my pants before I even realized I was doing it, until Ardetia shifted closer to me for comfort.
Nova stopped in front of a door that most would walk right on by. A faint line through the stone appeared more vivid as Nova pressed her palm in the middle.
“Well, I’m impressed,” I said, smiling. “I never would have thought to do that.”
“This is one of the Archive Halls,” Nova said quietly. “It’s obviously different than the library. This isn’t a place a student would visit unless there were a serious need. But this room is where the Academy keeps its impressions.”
My heart picked up speed. “We’re being judged?”
Nova ticked her head slightly. “I thought you knew that. Wouldn’t you say the moment you set foot inside the Academy that it's been reading you, testing you?”
I nodded, smiling. “I suppose it has. I just didn’t think it kept a running log.”
“Magic has a way of settling into stone, and this place has been listening for a very long time.”
“That sounds a little ominous,” I said.
“It’s honest,” Nova replied, shrugging.
Stone ground together as the door pushed open.
Inside, the hall was dim. Small floating lights drifted through the air, steady and soft. Along the walls, shallow niches had been carved into the stone. Each one held something small—a shard of glass, a ribbon, a feather, a smooth stone that glowed faintly.
Nova stepped inside first, alert without looking tense. Ardetia followed, light on her feet, her eyes already scanning the room. I lingered on the threshold for a moment before making myself step through.
The air felt different in here. Old magic lingered in the stone, and it felt quiet and layered, as if the room had been holding on to things for a very long time.
Nova stopped at one of the niches and lifted a small flat stone from it. The rock looked ordinary enough. It was smooth and gray, but the light above us flickered the moment it left its resting place as if it was connected to the building.
“This one records movement,” she said. “Paths taken near Ward boundaries. Crossings. Thresholds.” She looked back at me. “If you want to reenact what happened, we start here and let the Academy show us what it remembers.”
Ardetia glanced at me. “Are you ready to see?”
Was I?
My mother’s note flashed through my mind.
Don’t mistake this for loyalty to her. It is loyalty to you.
And beneath that memory, another one surfaced where the Priestess stood in the mirror’s reflection, claiming the library as if it belonged to her.
“I’m ready.” But would I ever truly be ready for this?
“Stand here.” Nova guided me to the center of the hall, where the stone floor was etched with faint circular patterns. I hadn’t seen them at first, but now they seemed to brighten as my feet crossed into them.
The Academy responded the moment I stopped moving.
Nova held the movement-stone in front of her and closed her eyes. Her lips moved in a quiet spell. I couldn’t hear the words, but something in the air shifted, tightening slightly, like the room was listening.
Ardetia raised her hand near the stone, adding her magic to Nova’s.
The lights in the hall softened, and without thinking about it, I moved my fingers above the stone, letting them hover. My fingertips heated with recognition as I let my mind drift to my mother and everyone’s separate accounts.
I looked around the room and noticed it had dimmed. It didn’t turn into darkness, but it started to feel like the walls and floors were a little out of focus, and the air seemed to ripple.
Nova’s voice cut through my thoughts, steady and clear.
“Show us the last crossing,” she said. “Show us the path tied to Headmistress Maeve Bellemore’s blood.”
The Academy didn’t resist, and the air in front of us shifted as the walls widened until the hall fell away.
A moment later, I was looking at something else entirely. I saw a path in the early evening, with barely any moonlight sprinkling across the grass.
An uneven line of stones led through the gardens as trees stood in near darkness.
Someone moved along the path, and my breath caught.
It was my mother.
She looked just as she had that day. Her steps were deliberate and steady. Her back was straight, and her chin was up as if any decision she’d made was set in stone. She wasn’t rushed or hurried. She seemed…calm.
She wasn’t fleeing. On the contrary, it felt like she knew exactly where she was going.
The sight of her there hit me so hard my knees almost gave out, and Ardetia’s hand closed gently around my elbow before I could sway.
I took a deep breath, centering myself as the decisions my mom made became more apparent with every step she took. Her eyes were clear, and she wore a thoughtful expression.
I glanced at Nova, who didn’t move. But I could see a focus in her gaze that I recognized.
The scene shifted slightly, drawing us closer as the Wilds came into better view.
My mother walked straight toward it.
For a moment, I thought I was only watching.
But then the feeling hit.
It slipped through me so suddenly that I drew in a sharp breath.
It was the moment she’d made the decision. The sensation wasn’t in words, exactly. It felt more like the shape of it was developing. A quiet certainty pressed against my chest as if I’d been standing beside her when she made the choice.
She had known what she was doing.
The realization settled heavily because there was no spell cast or dramatic lure from the Priestess.
I sensed fear building in my mom, but it wasn’t the kind that made her falter. This fear carried her; her choice had already been made.
And the longer I watched her move toward the Wilds, the more I felt the weight she had carried with her.
Stonewick was behind her, the Academy loomed in the background, and my dad and I were all there unknowingly pushing her into a decision she felt she had to make. I spotted Twobble waving frantically in panic as she dismissed his concerns.
Regret was the next emotion that swelled over me from her. I watched my mom slow a little and turn around, glancing back toward the Academy.
She wasn’t doubting the choice she made, but she was regretting the choices she’d made prior.
The cottage wasn’t visible from here, but I could feel the pull of it all the same. The warmth of the fire in the hearth. The quiet comfort of the life she had tried to build there.
“She chose this,” I heard myself say.
Nova stood beside me, her expression unreadable in the dim light of the Archive Hall.
“Yes,” she said quietly.
In the vision, my mother faced forward again, and the edge of the Wilds waited only a few steps away now. The lanky pines crowded together and stretched for the clouds while the maples acted like an umbrella, shading the underbrush and tangling with one another.
The moonlight could barely sprinkle through, and I felt the air shift the way it always did once you set foot into the Wilds.
And that’s when I felt it. Old magic. The magic that watched carefully, lurked, and waited patiently.
My mother felt it, and I sensed the recognition linger in her mind as she moved through the Wilds.
I watched her shoulders lift and lower with each quiet breath as she made her way through the woods.
She walked carefully, avoiding any trace of the mushrooms that hadn’t receded for fall, and with every step forward, something grew inside of her.
It wasn’t fear, though. It was acceptance.
It was as if she knew someone was waiting deeper in the Wilds, and she knew exactly where the path ahead led.
She was headed straight toward her mother, and yet, the knowledge didn’t slow her.
If anything, it steadied her, and that worried me.
I watched shifters come up to her as she dismissed their concerns, and she kept walking.
My vision blurred for a second, and I glanced toward Nova and Ardetia, who kept their gazes forward.
But then I felt something else build in my mother.
Pure exhaustion.
This wasn’t the kind of sleepiness that came knocking after a long day, but the type of fatigue that grew slowly, year after year, watching danger circle closer and closer to the people she loved.
And I recognized that tiredness immediately.
Her thoughts brushed through me again, faint but unmistakable.
Better me than her.
She was thinking of me, trying to circumvent a choice she didn’t want me to have to make. It felt like a punch to the stomach.
“You should have told me,” I whispered to the fading image, but the memory continued forward.
“She wasn’t taken,” I said softly.
Nova’s gaze shifted toward me.
“No,” she agreed.
I looked toward the place where the trees had been in the vision.
“She walked into the Wilds and out of it,” I whispered as the light faded under the branches, and the path narrowed.
And then I felt her.
The Priestess.
I narrowed my eyes and saw someone standing near the edge of the clearing, just past the orc encampments…barely a shadow in the background, but I knew it was her.
The shape wasn’t completely clear, more suggestion than detail, but there was no mistaking the Priestess.
A figure in a cloak stood and waited.
Waiting for my mom because she knew that my mom would make this choice.
“That’s—” I started, then stopped, because saying it felt like making it real.
I watched several orcs approach my mom, and she barely stopped, ignoring their pleas because they could sense the shadowed woman ahead.
Nova’s eyes narrowed. “That’s what the orcs described.”
My mother continued toward her mother; her steps were steady and without hesitation.
She didn’t even pause.
She walked straight toward the figure and never once looked back.
The memory pulled closer until the clearing filled my vision.
Then something moved in the shrubs beyond the cloaked figure.
At first, I couldn’t place it. It wasn’t someone stepping forward or an animal shifting in the brush.
There was simply a presence there.
Something about it felt wrong, though. It wasn’t necessarily dangerous in an obvious way, but there was something out of place.
Ardetia went still beside me, and Nova’s grip tightened on the movement-stone. We all felt it.
Without warning, the edges of the vision began to blur. Ripples disturbed the images, and for a brief second, it looked like it might collapse entirely.
“Hold it,” Nova murmured. “Keep the impression steady.”
The air around us trembled as my gaze stayed steady and focused on my mom.
In the clearing, the cloaked figure shifted and slowly turned its head, as though it had felt our attention on it.
I couldn’t see the face beneath the hood, but the sense of it reached me all the same.
There was nothing frantic in the movement. No wildness.
Whoever stood there moved with complete control, the quiet confidence of someone who believed they had every right to occupy that space.
A chill ran up my arms, and the memory broke apart so suddenly I stumbled forward, gasping.
I lifted my hands instinctively to grab at the images, reaching for something I couldn’t control.
Nova lowered the stone in her hand, and her expression looked strained. It was unusual for much to ever bother Nova, but this did.
Ardetia still had a hand on my elbow, steadying me.
I stood there for a moment, trying to slow my breathing. My hands hadn’t stopped shaking yet. Seeing my mom so willingly go toward the Priestess wasn’t something I was ready to see. I thought I could handle it, but it wrecked me.
And what worried me was that my mom never noticed what was in the shadows, so what else would she miss once she got to her mother’s compound?
“What was that?” I asked.
Nova looked from me to Ardetia before answering.
“There was definitely something else there,” Nova said, nodding.
“Maybe shadows to help if your mom decided not to go willingly?” Ardetia offered.
“Or a trap,” I said.
Neither of them argued with me.
The Archive Hall had gone still again, the floating lights barely moving. One of them flickered, just for a moment, and the brief dimming made the room feel deeper than it had a second before.
I waited for the dread to come back.
But something else rose instead.
Relief.
It surprised me enough that I had to close my eyes for a second and steady my breathing.
My mother hadn’t been dragged into the Wilds. She hadn’t stumbled into something she didn’t understand. The memory had been clear about that much. Every step she took had been deliberate.
She had chosen that path.
And if she had chosen it, then she had gone in with her eyes open.
That didn’t make the danger smaller, but it shifted something inside me. If she had walked toward the Priestess by choice, then maybe she hadn’t walked straight into a cage.
Maybe getting her back out wasn’t impossible.
I opened my eyes again and looked at the place where the vision had been.
The clearing still hung in my mind—the cloaked figure waiting near the edge of the trees, my mother walking toward it without slowing.
And that other shape.
The one that had been half-hidden in the brush.
For a moment, I tried to picture it the way the memory had shown it: something vague, something wrong in the shadows.
But the more I thought about it, the less it felt like a thing.
It had moved too deliberately for that.
A cold realization slid quietly into place.
“That wasn’t some creature in the bushes,” I said slowly.
Nova looked over at me.
Ardetia’s hand tightened slightly where it still rested on my arm.
I stared at the empty air in front of us, the shape of the memory settling more clearly in my mind now that the fear had shifted enough to let me see it.
“It was someone,” I said.
The name came to me with an uncomfortable sort of certainty.
“Gideon.”
He’d said he was there…that he’d followed them to the compound, and he hadn’t been lying. The realization brought with it an odd comfort, and the hall stayed silent after that, as if even the Academy had paused to listen.