Page 118 of Academy of the Wicked: Year Three

"Control is just delayed violence," the reflections respond. "We're going to hurt you eventually. It's what shadows do—consume light until nothing remains."

"Then why haven't you?"

The question makes the reflections pause, their synchronized movement breaking into individual confusion.

"We've had countless opportunities," I continue, moving deeper into the mirror maze. "You could have let me die in thetrials. Could have used our bond to control rather than protect. Could have taken instead of given."

"We wanted to," some reflections admit.

"We still want to," others add.

"But we won't," I say with certainty that makes the shadows pause. "Because that's what control actually means. Not the absence of dangerous impulses but the choice not to act on them."

The real Cassius—I can identify him now by the way his shadows move with purpose rather than pattern—finally opens his eyes.

"You don't understand what I really am," he says, and his voice carries exhaustion of someone who's been fighting himself for hours, days, centuries. "What I could become if I stop holding back."

"Then show me," I challenge, moving closer to him through the maze of mirrors. "Show me the worst version of yourself. Let me see what you're so afraid of."

The shadows explode outward.

Not attacking—revealing.

Every mirror shatters simultaneously, but instead of falling, the fragments hang in air, each one showing different memory, different moment where Cassius chose control over violence.

I see him as a child, shadows responding to rage by destroying everything around him. I see him learning control through pain, binding his own shadows until they cut into his soul. I see him alone in the shadow realm, refusing connections because closeness means vulnerability.

I see him watching others with hunger he won't acknowledge, wanting things he won't take.

Alone…

As time goes on, like a ticking clock, only time of hesitation has continued its journey with him through the years, as theworld has left him to be alone because his nature to them deserves to be just that.

Abandoned.

Discarded.

Trapped in his own dismay.

"This is what you're fighting," I realize, understanding flooding through me. "Not external enemies but internal possibilities. You're so afraid of what you could become that you're paralyzing yourself."

"Better paralyzed than monstrous," he responds, but the certainty is cracking.

"You're not a monster," I tell him, finally reaching him in the center of the shattered mirrors. "You're just someone who's been alone so long you've forgotten that shadows can protect as well as consume."

My hand reaches out, not hesitating despite the writhing shadows that could destroy me if they chose. They part for me, recognizing something that Cassius himself seems to have forgotten.

"I trust you," I tell him, my palm pressing against his chest where his heart beats with rhythm that matches mine through our bond. "Not because you're safe but because you choose to be safe for me."

The shadows still.

All of them, all at once, freezing mid-writhe as if reality itself has paused to process this declaration.

"That's not enough," he whispers, but his hand covers mine, holding it against his chest. "Trust isn't enough to change nature."

"It's not about changing nature," I explain, understanding arriving as I speak it. "I’m not asking you to change, my King. It's about accepting it. You are shadows. You are darkness. You are everything people fear when the lights go out."

His expression shifts to pain, as if I'm confirming his worst fears.