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.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I knew where I needed to go. The dragons.
When we returned to the Academy, I told them I needed to lie down.
That much was true, but I just didn’t tell them where I was going first.
The corridor beyond the entrance had quieted, but it was never empty once school started. The Academy didn’t sleep so much as settle into a softer kind of motion. I spotted a student crossing the far end of the hall carrying a stack of books. Somewhere deeper in the building, I heard a kettle whistle.
But I kept my pace steady because if I hurried, someone would notice.
The stone beneath my feet held that low hum of magic moving through the bones of the place. It traveled up through the soles of my boots with every step, giving me the extra oomph I needed after everything that had happened.
Of course, the images of my mother walking into the Wilds wouldn’t leave my mind.
Seeing that quiet determination firsthand once her decision had been made left very little to argue with. Nova had been right. Seeing it through the Academy’s eyes was the only way.
And Gideon. Seeing him there and feeling that the stories he gave me matched up added another layer of uncertainty. It wasn’t whether I could or couldn’t trust him. More so, it was why his heart was changing so much toward us.
In the memory, he had been there, half hidden beyond the clearing. Watching. That act alone was far more dangerous than anything I could imagine.
He could have stayed there, could have disappeared into the trees, and let whatever happened next unfold without him, but he remained watchful. And something told me that he would have stepped in if needed.
