The Crowned Shadow

10

Sleep was impossible that night. Miranda's grandmother's journal lay open on my desk, its pages illuminated by moonlight. I'd read the entries about the accident so many times I had memorized them: *"The archives burned for three days. Magic-fueled flames that water couldn't quench. When they finally got inside, they found him—just ashes and that cursed family ring."*

Makalai's brother. How many times had I passed Makalai in the halls, never knowing he carried such a burden? The weight of a family legacy that had already claimed his brother's life.

A soft knock at my window made me jump. Elara hovered outside on her levitation disk, her white hair ghostly in the moonlight. I quickly let her in.

"I saw your light," she whispered, gracefully stepping down from her disk. "And I've been thinking about what Miranda told us." She pulled something from her robe—an old yearbook. "Look what I found in the library's restricted section."

The yearbook was from twenty years ago. She opened it to a marked page, and my breath caught. There, smiling up at me, was a boy who could have been Makalai's twin—except for his eyes. Where Makalai's held careful control, his brother's blazed with barely contained power.

"Marcus Thorne," I read the caption. "Head Boy, Advanced Combat Champion, and—" I stopped, staring at the last line.

"'Recipient of the Founder's Merit Award,'" Elara finished. "Isa, that award hasn't been given out since his death. But look at the photo more carefully."

I peered closer. Around Marcus's neck hung a pendant—a shield crossed with a sword. The same symbol I'd been absently drawing in my notebooks for years.

"That's the Blackwood family crest," Elara said softly. "I did some digging after your display in Combat Theory today. The Blackwoods and the Thornes were always connected. Where one family appeared in history, the other was never far behind."

My hands shook as I traced the symbol in the photograph. "Not just connected," I murmured, remembering the prophecy. "The Blackwoods were guardians, meant to maintain balance. Which means..."

"Which means Makalai wasn't just warning you the other day," Elara said. "He was recognizing you. He must have suspected what you were even before you did."

A sudden gust of wind rattled the windows, making us both start. The candle on my desk flickered, casting dancing shadows on the wall. For a moment, they seemed to form the shape of a shield.

"There's more," Elara continued, pulling out a folded paper. "I found records of your family. Your mother's side goes back generations here at the academy, but there's a gap—a big one—right around the time the founder families supposedly disappeared. And look at this."

She showed me a photograph, worn and faded. A group of students stood on the academy steps, and there in the center was a girl who could have been my twin, wearing the same shield and sword pendant Marcus had worn two decades later.

"That's my grandmother," I whispered, recognizing her from old family photos. "But she never mentioned..."

"Maybe she was trying to protect you," Elara suggested. "After what happened to Marcus... keeping quiet about founder family connections became a matter of survival."

I sank onto my bed, mind reeling. "So what am I supposed to do with all this? If Makalai is planning something—trying to reclaim whatever power his brother died seeking—am I supposed to stop him? Help him? My poem, the prophecy... it all points to something coming, something big."

Elara sat beside me, her expression grave. "I think that's what you need to find out. But Isa?" She gripped my hand. "Be careful how you do it. The last time a Thorne and a Blackwood worked together, it ended in fire."

As if in response, the candle flame suddenly shot up, nearly touching the ceiling before returning to normal. We both stared at it, hearts pounding.

"I need to talk to him," I said finally. "Not just as another student, but as... whatever I am. Whatever we are. He knows more than he's saying, and after what happened to his brother, he owes me the truth."

"And if he won't give it?"

I touched the spot on my neck where my grandmother's pendant should have been—would have been, if our family hadn't buried those secrets so deep. "Then I'll find it myself. The answers are here somewhere. In the archives, in the old records, in the very walls of this place." I picked up Miranda's grandmother's journal. "Blood calls to blood, right? Maybe it's time to stop running from what's in mine."

Elara stood, summoning her levitation disk. "Just promise me something? Don't go into the sealed archives alone. Whatever killed Marcus is still there, waiting. We all feel it sometimes, late at night when the academy grows too quiet. That hungry darkness, watching."

After she left, I stayed up reading more of the journal, piecing together fragments of my family's past. Outside, clouds gathered, obscuring the moon. A storm was coming—both figuratively and literally.

Tomorrow, I would find Makalai. We would either be allies or enemies, but we couldn't remain strangers. Not with the weight of our families' history bearing down on us both. Not with the prophecy hanging over our heads like a sword.

The candle guttered one last time before going out, leaving me alone in the darkness with my inheritance of secrets and the growing certainty that everything was about to change.