“What was the Academy like?”
The Priestess went quiet after that. It wasn’t the cold kind of silence she usually carried, either. This silence felt older somehow, reflective, as if she’d wandered into her own memories and forgotten I was sitting across from her.
The fire crackled softly beside us, throwing gold across the dark wood shelves lining the study, and for the first time since entering Shadowick, I caught something unexpected in her expression.
It wasn’t cruelty or power, but a sense of…grief.
“It was beautiful,” she said finally, her voice softer than I’d heard before. “Truly beautiful.”
The answer settled strangely inside me. I guess I had expected bitterness, resentment, or anger.
Barlen appeared beside the table without a sound and traded the teapot. The shadows near the ceiling stirred faintly around him before settling again, almost like they recognized him. He kept his gaze lowered the entire time.
The Priestess wrapped both hands around her teacup, staring into the steam curling upward.
“When I arrived there, I had nothing.” A faint smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “My child was hungry. I was exhausted all the time. There’s a particular kind of fear that settles into your bones when you spend years wondering whether you’ll survive another winter.”
Something tightened painfully in my chest because, despite everything she’d become, she suddenly felt real, not just a caricature of a wicked woman.
“I remember seeing the gates for the first time.” Her gaze drifted toward the windows. “The fog was so thick that night I could barely see the towers. But the Academy…” She shook her head slowly. “You could feel it before you ever stepped inside.”
The room dimmed around me, and suddenly I could see it too.
Massive black gates wrapped in silver vines with towering spires disappearing into moonlit clouds.
Lanterns floated through the mist like drifting stars, and a younger version of the Priestess stood there with a small child clutching her skirts.
For a second, she looked nothing like the woman sitting across from me now.
“They fed my child and me before they even asked my name,” she whispered as the memory shifted again.
Midlife students crossed an enormous courtyard lined with glowing ivy. Shadows moved gently beneath archways and staircases, almost alive but not threatening. The Academy itself pulsed with magic so old and deep that even watching it made my ribs ache. I recognized the kindred spirit between both Academies, and I couldn’t help but wonder what went wrong.
As I watched the young Priestess move deeper into the grounds with her child, it wasn’t dark in the way I expected.
The grounds were breathtaking.
“They gave us rooms overlooking the lower gardens.” Her smile deepened slightly now. “Moonflowers were climbing thestone walls outside our windows. I used to leave the curtains open at night just to smell them.”
I swallowed my surprise as a realization settled over me. This wasn’t the story of a woman corrupted overnight.
This was someone who had once loved a place deeply.
“They taught things there nobody else understood.” She leaned back slightly. “Magic wasn’t separated into neat little categories inside Shadowick. Light, dark, healing. Destruction, all flowed together.” A low laugh escaped her. “Sometimes it took one to get the other.
The visions sharpened around me again.
“Outside those walls, people wanted magic simple enough to control in a way they understood.” She sighed and shook her head. “And that was the beginning of the end.”
I didn’t say a word.
“They respected shadow magic there,” the Priestess said quietly. “Or at least they claimed they did.”
And there it was.
The shift.
It was subtle but enough to make my stomach tighten.
