CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Things Shadows Remember

By the following morning, the Academy of Veils had decided that Eveline was either a miracle, a threat, or an exceptionally inconvenient administrative problem, and judging by the number of professors who had been waiting outside her classroom when she arrived, the third possibility appeared to be winning. The shattered windows from yesterday had been restored, the ancient runes had disappeared beneath the stone, and Professor Bell had assured the faculty that the incident was being investigated, but none of those explanations accounted for the way the other students watched Eveline whenever they thought she wasn't looking. Rumours had already spread through the seven towers, growing more elaborate with every retelling, until the silver light had supposedly summoned a dead king, destroyed an entire classroom, and chosen Eveline as the vessel of some ancient, forbidden power. Eveline had learned two things about magical society in less than a week: magic could accomplish almost anything, and people could still be spectacularly stupid.

She sat through the remainder of Foundations of Magic with her hand tucked beneath the desk, studying the faint silver mark that had appeared beneath her skin. It had faded overnight, leaving only a delicate pattern near her wrist, but whenever she concentrated on it, she felt a strange pressure behind her ribs, as though something inside her recognised the mark and was waiting for her to notice it. Professor Bell had instructed her not to experiment with it alone, a warning Eveline had every intention of following until she could find someone willing to explain what had actually happened. Unfortunately, the professors seemed to have reached a collective agreement that answering questions was less important than preventing her from asking dangerous ones, which meant that by lunchtime she had learned the correct method for creating a protective barrier, memorised three principles of elemental control, and discovered absolutely nothing about why her dead mother had appeared inside a sealed memory.

Her next class was Magical Creatures, held in the western gardens beyond the Academy's seventh tower. The grounds were considerably larger than they appeared from the upper windows, stretching across terraces of silver grass, moonlit ponds and ancient trees whose branches carried clusters of glowing fruit. Creatures moved freely through the gardens, some familiar enough to resemble animals from the human world, others so strange that Eveline couldn't decide whether to admire them or maintain a respectable distance. A pair of Moon Stags grazed beneath a tree with translucent leaves, their crystal antlers scattering pale reflections across the grass, while a small dragon perched on a stone railing and sneezed a shower of silver sparks onto the unfortunate student standing beneath it. At the centre of the gardens, Professor Rowan Hart was attempting to persuade a Silver-Winged Lion to leave a basket of freshly baked rolls alone, with the confidence of a man who had clearly lost this particular argument many times before.

Professor Hart's lesson proved to be far more interesting than Eveline had expected. He explained the old bonds between magical creatures and the Great Houses, the difference between a creature that tolerated human company and one that had chosen a lifelong companion, and the dangerous arrogance of assuming that something powerful could therefore be controlled. When he spoke about dragons, his usual cheerful manner softened into something almost reverent, describing the bond between a dragon and its rider as a mutual promise rather than an act of ownership. Eveline listened closely, especially when he explained that some creatures could sense magical disturbances long before trained mages detected them, because she had begun to suspect that the world around her knew things she had not yet been told. As the class moved toward the Moon Stags, one of the creatures lifted its head and stared directly at her, its crystal antlers catching a silver light that had no visible source. It approached slowly, lowering its muzzle toward her hand, and for one strange moment Eveline felt the same sensation she had experienced in Professor Bell's classroom, a quiet recognition passing between her and something ancient.

Then the stag turned toward the northern mountains.

Its ears flattened.

The other creatures followed its gaze, and the little dragon on the railing abruptly spread its wings before darting into the sky. Professor Hart stopped speaking. Across the garden, every enchanted lantern flickered at once, and a ripple passed through the silver grass as though an invisible wind had travelled beneath the earth. Eveline felt the mark at her wrist grow warm, and before she could pull her sleeve back, the Moon Stag retreated several steps, watching her with an expression that looked almost like sorrow. Professor Hart dismissed the class early, offering no explanation beyond a request that everyone return to the Academy, but Eveline noticed that he remained in the garden long after the students had left, his attention fixed on the mountains.

By the time she reached the main corridor, the disturbance had become impossible to ignore. The Academy's enchanted maps were displaying routes that no longer existed, several doors had sealed themselves without instruction, and a group of senior mages hurried past her carrying instruments that glowed with unstable light. Near the central staircase, Eveline found Kaelen Vaelor standing beside a tall window, dressed in black with the silver embroidery on his coat catching the afternoon light. He looked as though he had been there for some time, watching the courtyard below, but his attention shifted toward her the moment she approached. His expression gave away very little, although his eyes briefly dropped to the sleeve covering her wrist before returning to her face, and Eveline immediately disliked the possibility that he knew something she didn't.

She continued past him without slowing, determined not to encourage another conversation in which he would say very little and somehow leave her feeling as though she had lost an argument. Kaelen fell into step beside her anyway, maintaining a measured silence that became increasingly irritating the farther they walked. When she finally glanced at him, she discovered that he was no longer looking at her but at the corridor behind them, where the shadows had gathered in a corner despite the bright afternoon light. They were thin and almost transparent, barely distinguishable from the darkness beneath the wall, yet they moved against the direction of the sunlight, stretching slowly toward the place where Eveline stood. Kaelen's hand shifted toward the narrow blade at his waist, and for the first time since she had met him, the cold composure of his face gave way to unmistakable concern.

The shadows withdrew before either of them could act, slipping through a crack between the stones and disappearing into the foundations of the Academy. Eveline crouched beside the wall, searching for a trace of whatever had been there, but found only a faint silver symbol etched into the floor. It resembled a crown surrounded by seven stars, identical to the mark that had appeared above her during the incident in Professor Bell's classroom. When she touched it, the symbol vanished beneath her fingers, leaving behind a brief sensation of cold that travelled up her arm. Kaelen caught her wrist before she could touch the stone again, his grip firm but careful, and the silver mark beneath her skin flashed in response.

For one suspended moment, the corridor seemed to disappear around them.

Eveline saw a dark room, a broken doorway and a woman standing with a child in her arms. She could not make out the woman's face, but she recognised the silver light surrounding her, the same light that had filled the sealed memory of her mother. Then the vision collapsed, leaving Eveline staring at Kaelen, who had gone very still. Whatever he had witnessed, he was clearly not prepared to discuss it, and when he released her wrist, he did so with the careful restraint of someone who understood that the smallest wrong movement could make the situation worse.

"Stay away from the lower foundations," he said.

Eveline looked at the fading symbol.

"Perhaps someone should explain why."

Kaelen's expression hardened, but before he could answer, a bell sounded from the highest tower, followed by a second, deeper note that rolled through the Academy and out across the city. The students in the corridors stopped moving. Far beyond the windows, the silver banners of Aurelis began to stir despite the still air, and Eveline felt the mark beneath her skin answer the sound with a pulse of its own. Kaelen looked toward the tower, and whatever he had intended to say disappeared behind the guarded expression she was beginning to recognise.

Far beneath the Academy, where sunlight had not touched the stones for centuries, Morwen Nythara opened her eyes.

She had been standing inside her private chamber when the first disturbance reached her, a faint tremor passing through the shadows that served as her eyes and ears throughout Vaeloria. At first she had mistaken it for the lingering effects of the previous day's magical event, but the darkness had continued to behave strangely, gathering in corners and refusing commands that should have been effortless to enforce. Morwen had spent most of her life learning the language of shadows, understanding the difference between ordinary darkness and the kind that remembered what it had seen, and she knew immediately that something beneath the Academy had stirred. Her creatures were not frightened easily, and yet one of her oldest Shadowborn had returned from the northern passages without its usual form, appearing only as a trembling stain across the floor.

Morwen knelt beside it and placed two fingers against the darkness, allowing its impressions to pass into her mind. She saw fragments rather than a complete memory: a room covered in protective runes, a woman holding an infant, silver magic breaking apart beneath an assault of living shadows, and a portal opening just as the doors gave way. The memory was old, eighteen years old, but the fear within it had not faded. Beneath the images lay something far more troubling, a second presence concealed behind the attack, something that had not belonged to the attackers or the people they had pursued. It had watched the entire event from beyond the reach of the wards, remaining hidden even from the magic that had sealed the memory afterward.

Morwen withdrew her hand.

For eighteen years, she had believed that the mystery surrounding the royal family's final night had been buried with the dead, leaving only rumours, political suspicion and a throne that no one could legitimately claim. Now the Academy had opened a memory that someone had gone to considerable lengths to hide, and the shadows were bringing her evidence that the attack on Lunara had not unfolded as the surviving accounts described. The figures who entered the room had been real, the danger to the infant had been real, but something else had been present that night, something capable of concealing itself from the most powerful wards in the kingdom. Morwen could not yet determine whether it had orchestrated the attack or merely waited for its outcome, but either possibility threatened to overturn everything the Five Houses believed they understood.

She rose and crossed to the tall window overlooking the city, where Aurelis shimmered beneath its three moons even in the lingering daylight. Somewhere inside the Academy, Eveline was beginning to discover the shape of a history that had been deliberately denied to her, and Morwen knew that the girl would not be satisfied with partial answers for long. That made her dangerous in a way the Crown alone could never make her, because inherited power could be managed through laws, alliances and carefully chosen advisers, while a determined girl who wanted the truth could undo eighteen years of carefully maintained silence without even understanding what she was destroying.

Morwen extended her hand, and the shadows gathered around her fingers, forming the outline of a raven with silver light burning in place of its eyes. She sent it toward the Academy with a single instruction, not to approach Eveline or reveal itself, but to watch the lower foundations and return if anything emerged from the sealed passages. The raven dissolved into darkness before it reached the window, leaving Morwen alone with the uncomfortable certainty that the old threat had never truly disappeared. It had simply been waiting for the royal heir to return.

And now that Eveline had retur

ned, something beneath Vaeloria had begun to wake.