My butterfly mark pulsed, and I pressed my hand to my hip, sucking in a breath before I could stop myself.
Barlen’s eyes widened. “It’s calling to you.”
“It’s not. This happens from time to time.” I shook my head, trying to take in the grounds.
There were some commonalities with Stonewick, on some level, with its courtyards and grand buildings, but I wanted to know what was inside. Who was taught inside the walls?
Barlen stepped forward and stared at me. “You should walk away.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think I can.”
He swallowed, and I realized he believed me.
The building loomed above us, its double doors as tall as the Academy doors in Stonewick, though these had been barred with black iron wrapped around them in thick loops like roots and a shadow.
I recognized stars, moons, flame, and….my breath caught.
A butterfly.
That symbol was wrong here, or maybe it belonged here, and I was the one who had spent too much time believing Stonewick owned all the gentler magic.
The old man took a step closer, though he did not cross whatever invisible boundary seemed to exist around the front steps.
“Your mother came here willingly once.”
I turned sharply. “Here?”
His gaze moved to the doors. “Not inside the Academy walls, but to this area.”
“Why not step inside?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she was afraid of what the answer would be or what she might lose.”
My chest tightened.
Barlen made a strangled little sound. “You shouldn’t speak of this.”
The man shrugged. “She asked.”
“She is a guest of the Priestess,” Barlen warned.
The old man’s expression hardened. “No one is a guest here. We’re all prisoners.”
The words rang softly between the three of us, and the fog shifted along the steps as if the village itself had listened.
My fingers slipped into my pocket.
I expected to feel Twobble’s rough little pebbles, and for half a second, I wanted that. Something familiar. Instead, something else pulsed against my fingertips…the charm from my mom.
It had recently behaved more like a key or an entryway.
Maybe now would be no different.
I drew in a slow breath and pulled it from my pocket.
I held it up, and Barlen backed away immediately. “Where did you get that?”
“My mother left it for me.”
