“Another prison?”
“A school for the children,” she said coolly.
“A magic school?” I asked.
Her gaze flashed to mine. “We don’t teach magic to children. There are no magic schools in Shadowick.”
The Priestess watched me rather than the children.
That was the lesson.
Not for them.
For me.
I finally understood why Shadowick felt locked up. It wasn’t only fear of the Priestess. It was fear that had been taught early, polished and repeated, until even children knew the safest way to survive was to make themselves small.
I thought of the midlife witches standing by my side, choosing to help me because they had learned their voices mattered.
The difference nearly split me open.
The Priestess leaned closer. “You see cruelty. I can see it in your eyes.”
I didn’t answer.
“All I see is protection,” she continued. “I’m protecting these poor souls.”
“From you?” I asked, and Barlen shuddered as he moved behind the Priestess.
But she stepped beside me. “You disapprove.”
“You already knew I would.” I folded my arms over my chest as if that would shield me from what I saw.
“I hoped you might surprise me.”
“I am full of surprises, aren’t I? Today, they’re just not in your favor.”
She studied me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. “The Academy would have taught them differently.”
My heart stopped for one terrible beat.
I didn’t turn my head.
“What Academy?”
Barlen made the smallest sound beside me, and I looked at him from the corner of my eye.
He stared straight ahead.
The Priestess didn’t know, but she felt the shape of something missing from the town’s silence.
She began walking again, and I followed because stopping would have said too much.
The streets seemed narrower now, the windows darker. Every person who watched us from behind the curtains felt like another weight pressing against my chest. Shadowick wasn’t empty. It was crowded with people who had learned to hide while standing in plain sight.
And with every step, I felt farther from Stonewick, and the version of myself who had stood in the Butterfly Ward and believed the world could be mended with enough courage, enough tea, and enough stubborn love.
The Priestess glanced back at me.
