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Arielle, the path forward for you is treacherous but not impossible. Lean on your Triad to guide you but know that your magic will be the key. However, you must heed my words and not tap into your full magic until your coming of age. All magic comes at a cost. The universe has ordained it so as there must be balance. With great power comes great sacrifice. To utilize that much power before you are ready will kill you, of that my visions are certain.
Claire was really wishing she had started with a different category. Yet some part of her felt validated that her intuition about her magic was right. She knew it had been a bad idea yesterday to let her magic out. She should have listened to her instincts as she was lucky she didn’t hurt anyone yesterday while trying to ‘save’ them.
She peeked up at the Triad, all engrossed in their own readings. Should she tell them about her mother’s warning? If she told them, they might try to prevent her from using her magic at all. She knew without question that any of the men sitting in this room would jump in front of any threat to her without hesitation. And she would do the same. But they were heading into the unknown with this ‘ultimate weapon’. If they knew the risks of using her magic too early, they would try to stop her from using her magic completely. While she was scared of losing control and hurting them, she was scared of losing them more.
So she bit her lip and ducked her head back to the notebook. She scratched out her mother’s warning to her, erasing the words from the page but not from her mind. No, each word of warning was seared into her brain forever. All magic comes at a cost. Claire was determined not to let the cost be her Triad.
Shaking off those doomsday thoughts, she focused on the next category which seemed to be focused around the Academy. Hopefully this one had better news for her than the first category did. There were a few phrases that contained information that Claire already knew. That the Academy was sentient and would respond to Claire’s magic like it did to the Fae and Elves that built it. But there were also a few phrases that talked about how the Academy provided in times of great need. There was one phrase that read much more like a riddle than the others.
The answers you seek lie in the room that cannot be found except by those who seek it.
The line directly underneath of the riddle read:
I’ve left something there for you. It’s imperative you retrieve it as soon as you read this.
Her mother left her something at the Academy? How? What? What could be so important she needed to retrieve it immediately after reading this? Did Winona see what would happen if Claire didn’t? Nothing in the rest of the column even hinted what the item would be, just that Claire needed to retrieve it quickly. That for all of the Academy’s neutrality, the mysterious room could be used by other people.
Claire went back and reread that line.It’s imperative you retrieve it as soon as you read this.The handwriting was shaking as if Winona had scribbled it in a rush. Whatever it was, her mother thought they needed it desperately. And what was this room that could not be found? How could someone leave something there and how would Claire find it? Winona had to be pretty sure that Claire was going to be able to find it if she left the item there. Regardless, her mother’s message was clear. And urgent.
“We need to go to the Academy,” she said out loud, looking up from the notebook.
“Now?” Desmond arched an eyebrow.
“Yes, now,” Claire said absentmindedly as she scanned the rest of the book for more clues.
“What did you find?” Everett got up and crouched down next to her.
“Winona wrote the journals in code. This one column is about the Academy,” she indicated with the pen the column.
“What was this one?” Everett asked, pointing to the column that had contained Winona’s warning about Claire’s magic.
Claire hesitated. She shouldn’t keep secrets from her Triad. It felt wrong to do so but she held fast to her earlier reasoning.
“I thought it was something but it didn’t turn out to be. But Winona says here she left some item at the Academy and that it’s ‘imperative’ that I retrieve it as soon as I cracked the code and read this.”
“What’s the item?” Desmond asked.
Claire shook her head. “She doesn’t say.”
“Okay,” Malcolm said. “Where did she leave it?”
“She doesn’t say that either,” Claire replied. “Just a riddle about a room that cannot be found except by those who seek it.” If her mother could have been less helpful, she might have been.
Desmond frowned, brow furrowing as he thought. “I can’t recall anything at the Academy like that. The Headmaster might have some ideas though.”
“And we have to go now?” Malcolm checked.
Claire nodded. “She doesn’t say why but you can tell she wrote it with urgency. And…” She paused and rubbed her chest where the familiar feeling of urgency lingered under her skin. “I’ve been feeling this pull the last few days. I just thought it was nerves but it’s similar to the pull I felt at the Elven Forest. What if that was my mother guiding me then and now?”
Malcolm and Desmond exchanged a look. “It’s not outside the realm of possibility,” Desmond admitted. “There could be some unconscious triggers Winona placed on your magic.”
“How do we get there without the Council knowing though?” Everett asked, his green eyes worried. “Roderick just said that they were talking about monitoring portal activity. If they are already talking about it, there’s a good chance they are already doing it.”
“He’s right,” Desmond said. “We have to find another way.”
“It’s too risky to fly,” Malcolm said. “We’ll have to chance the portals.”
“We should ask Roderick,” Desmond said. “I know my father as Coven Leader has some security measures he places around portals to make them more defensible. Maybe Roderick does too.”
