Page 44 of Academy of the Wicked: Year Three

We are not a kind people, whatever our beautiful facades suggest. Cruelty runs through our bloodlines like sap through trees—essential, nourishing, part of what makes us what we are.

If my twin existed, if he died or was killed because my parents wanted simplicity over destiny's messy truth, does that make me a murderer by existence? A thief of life I didn't know I was stealing?

Would his survival have meant mine never had to matter?

The thought brings unexpected grief. Not for the loss of a sibling I never knew, but for the possibility of insignificance. Of being allowed to be small, unimportant, free from the weight of prophecy and expectation.

Would it have stopped me from having to embark on this journey of self-hatred that led me to the academy? Would it have prevented the mockery, the touches, the?—

I'm standing before I realize it, bare feet silent on shadow-earth.

My body moves without conscious direction, drawn by something between instinct and exhaustion. The others remain asleep—even Zeke's occasional eye-crack doesn't track my movement. The realm itself seems to part for me, creating a path that shouldn't exist.

Or maybe it recognizes something in me now.

The same brokenness that built it.

Each step takes me further from the fragile safety of our camp. The rational part of my mind screams warnings—this realm wants me dead, I'm vulnerable alone, danger lurks in every shadow. But rationality lost its hold somewhere between remembered prophecy and present despair.

My parents plotted and killed my sibling.

The truth of it sits in my chest like swallowed glass. Every breath cuts a little deeper, spreading damage that will never fully heal.

Would that sibling have been everything I'm not? Strong where I'm weak, certain where I doubt, male where I'm forced to pretend? Would he have been Nikolai in truth rather than performance?

Could he have risen to the throne without the constant fear that someone will see through the disguise to the frightened girl beneath?

I don't know when the tears started, but they trace hot paths down cheeks that feel too soft, too vulnerable for this place of shadows and flame. The salt stings where it touches lips bitten bloody from years of holding back screams.

The memories I've tried so hard to bury claw their way up.

The first time they called me wrong—not mistaken but fundamentally incorrect, a error in the universe's code that needed correcting.

The first time someone's hand lingered where it shouldn't, justified by my wrongness making me available for correction.

The first time I realized that being female in the Fae Court meant being less than furniture—at least furniture had consistent purpose.

The systematic destruction of every soft part of me, replaced with edges sharp enough to cut anyone who got too close.

And through it all, the constant refrain:Be male. Be what you should have been. Be anything but what you are.

So I became Nikolai.

Built him from broken pieces and desperate hope. Learned to walk like someone who owns space rather than apologizes for occupying it. Learned to speak in registers that commanded rather than requested. Learned to be everything I wasn't and nothing I was.

But here, in this realm that sees through all pretense, the performance falls apart.

I'm just Nikki.

Female. Weak. Unwanted.

A burden on companions who need strength I don't possess, carrying dead weight through trials that demand more than I can give.

The ground beneath my feet changes, heat rising through shadow-earth.

I look down to find myself at an edge I didn't know I was approaching.

Lava bubbles inches from my toes, molten stone that moves with its own current. The heat should hurt—should blister skin and sear lungs. But all I feel is numb recognition.