Chapter Thirty
Celeste was working with Bella, Ardetia, and Nova for tonight’s spellwork, and I could tell she wanted a little space.
I was halfway down the corridor to my bedroom when the whispers began. At first, they caressed me as if asking me to follow the soft voice, and I swiftly remembered I’d had a long day, and I wasn’t hearing anything other than the Academy settling into itself after a long day.
That lasted all of three heartbeats.
The whispers weren’t far-off words that were abstract and obtuse. They weren’t layered, distant, or woven into the hum of the building the way I’d gotten used to the Academy behaving.
No, these sounds were closer and more deliberate. The words brushed against my thoughts like fingertips testing the surface of water.
Maeve.
I stopped walking at that point. It was one thing to hear words that didn’t pointedly ask me for something, but this…
This was far too personal.
The sound of my name wasn’t spoken aloud, but it landed fully formed in my head in a precise way that made my scalp prickle.
“Okay. That’s new.”
The sconces along the wall flickered, and I took another step, followed by a few more, but the whispers followed.
They turned from my name to impressions and warnings disguised as questions.
You stand at a hinge.
I swallowed back my worry.
This wasn’t the Academy’s style.
The Academy nudged and guided. Occasionally, it would shove us where we needed to go or slam walls in front of us, but it didn’t speak in riddles meant to unsettle. It didn’t loom like this and linger in the dark spaces between thoughts.
Something else was here.
Or someone.
As I walked, the corridor stretched longer than it should have, the familiar turn toward my room drifting just out of reach time and again. A sigil along the floor charged as if redirecting me.
“No,” I said softly. “I’m exhausted. This, whatever it is, can wait.”
But in front of me, the hallway curved gently, just enough so that my room was no longer in view.
And my blood went cold.
I stopped again, heart hammering, as my magic stirred in response to this invitation, but the whispers grew clearer.
Blood remembers.
Legacy answers.
Choice echoes.
It wasn’t the Academy speaking to me.
It was my grandmother.
The Priestess.
My pulse roared in my ears as I turned slowly in place, searching the shadows for a presence I prayed I wouldn’t find. I wanted to believe that after Gideon, the Academy didn’t make a sudden habit of inviting guests from Shadowick into its fray.
“You don’t get to just… drop in, especially here.”
A low, knowing warmth slid through my veins, followed immediately by ice.
Do I not?
The question didn’t sound offended. It sounded amused.
And that worried me most.
The light dimmed as the corridor ahead narrowed, the stone pressing in with quiet inevitability. Doors that should have offered escape slid seamlessly into the walls, their seams vanishing as if they’d never existed.
The Academy wasn’t fighting this.
“Why are you letting this happen?” I demanded, pressing my palm to the wall. The stone thrummed beneath my hand, familiar and steadfast, but distant now.
Remember who’s in charge.
My stomach dropped, and the corridor opened abruptly, the ceiling lifting, the air changing, heavy with something old and reverent and sharp as oathbound steel.
The Oath Room. The Academy placed me here without the staircase to get here, without the trek down quiet halls.
It wasn’t my grandmother. It was the Academy calling me to the mirrors.
I hadn’t been here since the night everything changed. It felt like just yesterday that I chose to join the Academy as it saw fit.
I stepped forward despite myself, my feet moving as if drawn by gravity rather than will. The doors swung closed behind me with a soft, final sound.
The mirrors gleamed.
They lined the walls as they always had, tall and curved and impossibly deep, their surfaces silvered not to reflect but to reveal. Candlelight bloomed unbidden, illuminating the room in a glow that felt less like warmth and more like witness.
My reflection stared back at me from a dozen angles—older than I felt, younger than I felt, steadier than I feared, carrying more than I ever intended.
But the reflections shifted.
The first mirror showed me as I remembered myself at twenty, standing on the edge of my life, wondering about Alex. Another showed my mother, younger still, her face knotted with fear and resolve as she turned away from magic she loved too much to risk.
The third mirror darkened, and there she was.
The Priestess stood tall and radiant, with her presence filling the glass as if it were a doorway rather than a surface.
Her eyes, my eyes, I realized with a sick twist, burned with conviction and something colder.
I had to remind myself this wasn’t the Priestess.
This was what the Academy wanted me to see, wanted me to feel.
You wear the burden poorly, child.
My breath caught. “You don’t get to judge me.”
She smiled, slow and patient. You misunderstand. Judgment requires distance. This is inheritance.
The mirrors shifted again, images cascading now of Stonewick fractured by broken Wards, Shadowick bleeding into the edges of the world, and the Hollows flaring bright against the dark like a beacon that shouldn’t exist.
Orcs stomped across the horizon.
Celeste stood at the center of it all, her magic bright and unshaped, her expression fierce and frightened and so achingly familiar it made my chest ache.
My knees went weak even though I knew it wasn’t her.
“No,” I whispered. “You don’t get to show me her.”
The Priestess’s voice softened, just slightly. I show you what you refuse to see.
The mirrors flared, and suddenly I understood in a terrible rush of clarity.
This wasn’t about conquest.
It wasn’t about Stonewick alone.
It was about succession and bloodlines, awakening whether they were wanted or not. And the power that refused to skip generations and a legacy that didn’t end simply because someone chose to walk away.
You think you can shield her, the Priestess murmured. You think love will blunt the blade.
My hands curled into fists. “I will protect her.”
Of course you will, she replied.
The mirrors dimmed, the images dissolved back into silver calm, leaving me shaking in the center of the room, my heart pounding, my magic humming painfully beneath my skin.
The doors creaked open behind me, and the Academy exhaled.
The whispers were gone, but the truth they’d left behind weighed heavier than any sound. Even though I knew it wasn’t my grandmother speaking to me, it felt more real than I could imagine.
I stood there for a long moment, gathering myself, knowing with bone-deep certainty that nothing had changed, yet everything had because now I understood.
This wasn’t about finding the right book in the library or reading the correct historical volume or hearing a legend that might never come to be.
The Priestess wasn’t trying to reach me.
She was reminding me of where I came from, where my mom came from, and she wanted me to remember the cost of forgetting.
And it all felt so…real.
I stood there long after the doors to the Oath Room opened, my pulse still racing, my thoughts tumbling over one another in a knot I couldn’t untangle.
Had that been the Academy?
Or her?
The question chased itself in circles through my mind, refusing to settle. The Academy had always guided me, sometimes firmly, sometimes with unnerving creativity, but never like that. Never with insinuation or with that intimate, blood-deep familiarity that knew exactly where to press.
And yet… the Academy had led me here.
I dragged a hand down my face and let out a shaky breath. My reflection stared back at me from every angle, fractured and multiplied, a woman caught between past and future, between inheritance and refusal.
“What are you doing?” I whispered to myself.
That was when the frustration finally won.
I was so tired of messages. Of riddles. Of warnings wrapped in half-truths and delivered on someone else’s terms. I was tired of being nudged, herded, and frightened into understanding, rather than being trusted with it outright.
If this were a chessboard, I would be done waiting for my opponent to make the next move.
And maybe that alone was why the Academy led me here.
“All right,” I said aloud, my voice echoing softly through the Oath Room. “Enough.”
The mirrors shimmered faintly, their surfaces rippling like disturbed water, as if surprised by my tone.
I stepped forward.
I stepped deliberately and wasn’t asking for permission. I stopped before the central mirror, the one that had shown me the hardest truths a year before, and straightened my spine. I lifted my chin, feeling my magic rise to meet my intent, not wild or reactive this time, but focused. Purposeful.
“You want to show me things?” I murmured. “Fine. But this time, we do it my way.”
The warmth at my hip flared, and I placed my palm against the glass.
It was cool beneath my skin, resistant in that way ancient magic often was when it was deciding whether to cooperate.
I thought of the times Grandma Elira stayed within these walls, but knew everything that was happening outside of them.
“Show me,” I said clearly. “I don’t want to see memory or possibility. Show me what the Priestess is doing at this very second.”
For a heartbeat, nothing happened, but then the mirror’s color deepened.
The silver surface darkened, stretching inward until it no longer reflected me at all. Instead, it opened like a window, and my breath caught as the image sharpened into something hauntingly familiar.
Her castle.
The Priestess’s stronghold rose from the mirror’s depths, just as it had the night I’d gone there on a broom.
I still couldn’t quite believe I’d trusted a stick with bristles with my life. Stone walls bathed in twilight were in front of me, with towers that cut into a sky bruised with storm clouds. Finally, I could see inside the walls as I drifted as quietly as Ember could when sneaking up on someone.
The Priestess moved through the halls.
Alone.
That surprised me more than it should have.
There weren’t any attendants or guards, and no circle of disciples whispering at her heels.
She walked with unhurried confidence, her dark robes trailing softly behind her, one hand resting lightly against the stone as if the castle itself were an extension of her body.
I leaned closer, heart pounding.
She passed rooms I recognized, but I knew there were so many more I hadn’t seen.
I spotted the entrance to the antechamber where Gideon had been held, and a shiver ran through me. I kept with her in my mirrored state as she stepped into a study.
It was quieter than I thought it would be, lit by tall windows that overlooked rolling hills fading into dusk.
Shadowick lay beyond them, its edges blurred by distance and magic, the land itself seeming to breathe as if aware it was being watched.
The Priestess crossed the room and sat at a heavy desk.
Her movements were precise and strategic, even in her own personal space. She rested her elbows lightly on the polished surface and stared out the window for a long moment, her expression unreadable.
She didn’t appear angry, nor triumphant, just contemplative.
“That’s not fair,” I whispered, unsettled by the lack of obvious villainy.
She reached forward and opened a drawer.
The moment the contents were revealed, I gasped.
The object nestled inside was small, but it glowed with a power that made my teeth ache and my magic recoil instinctively. Whatever it was wasn’t just magical. It was foundational. Old in a way that predated schools and covens and neatly named spells.
A relic.
No, not a relic.
A key?
I didn’t know how I knew that. I just did. It was the kind of knowing that settled into a person’s bones and refused to leave. I steadied my breath as the object pulsed softly, light threading through it like a heartbeat, and I felt the echo of it flare painfully at my hip.
“Oh no,” I breathed.
The Priestess’s head snapped up.
She turned sharply, scanning the room, her gaze cutting through the shadows with frightening precision. Her eyes narrowed, not in fear, but in alert recognition.
For one horrifying moment, I was certain she was looking directly at me.
The air in the Oath Room thickened. The mirror trembled beneath my hand, the image wavering as if resisting being seen.
The Priestess stood, her movements swift now, and strode toward the door. She closed it firmly, her hand lingering on the latch as she murmured something I couldn’t hear.
But I felt a ripple through the glass like a warning, and the image shattered.
The mirror snapped back to silver, reflecting my pale face and wide eyes, my hand still pressed flat against the glass.
I staggered back, my heart hammering so hard it hurt.
She’d felt it.
Not seen me, not fully, but sensed the disturbance.
The connection.
The intrusion.
And that was when the final, chilling realization settled over me.
This wasn’t a one-way path.
The mirrors weren’t just windows.
They were bridges.
Whatever line existed between the Priestess and me, between Stonewick and Shadowick, between the Academy and her castle, it was thinner than I’d ever imagined. It was thin enough for magic to cross and fragile enough for awareness to bleed through.
If all it took was me watching her to alert her to my presence, I couldn’t guess how much it could go the other way.
I pressed my hands together and grounded myself. Our worlds weren’t merely adjacent. They were entangled. And if I could see her…Then someday, if not already, she might see me too.
And that told me everything I needed to know about Celeste.
She had to go home.