Page 18 of Academy of the Wicked, Year Three (The Paranormal Elites of Wicked Academy #3)
The Burden Of Duality
~NIKOLAI~
S leep eludes me like smoke through fingers.
I lie on the packed shadow-earth, staring up at the non-sky of this realm where darkness folds into itself in gradients that shouldn't exist. The others breathe with the rhythm of exhaustion—Cassius's shadows coiling protectively even in sleep, Gwenivere's child-form curled against him like trust made manifest, Atticus sprawled with vampire grace that persists even unconscious, Mortimer's scholarly posture maintained despite slumber, and Zeke. ..
Zeke who sleeps like a cat, one eye occasionally cracking open to scan for danger before closing again.
The purple-gold fire crackles nearby, casting shadows that move wrong—independent of their sources, reaching toward things that aren't there. In this light, everything looks like memory or prophecy, never quite present.
My chest feels tight. Not from the realm's hostility toward my Fae nature—I've grown accustomed to that particular pain.
This is different. Older. A constriction that started when Gabriel mentioned the tradition of fate-reading, when he looked at me with those ancient eyes in a child's face and knew something I'd forgotten.
Or tried to forget.
The memory rises like bile, acidic and unwanted.
I am six years old.
Not Nikolai yet—that armor would come later.
Just a little girl in ceremonial robes that itch against skin too young to understand why this matters.
The throne room of the Fae Court stretches impossibly vast, crystal walls refracting light into rainbows that should be beautiful but feel like judgment.
My parents sit on their paired thrones—Mother's carved from living wood that still blooms with impossible flowers, Father's hewn from stone that hums with the heartbeat of the earth itself. They look down at me with expressions I don't yet know how to read.
Pride? Concern? Something harder to name?
The Fae Elder stands between us, and even at six, I know he is ancient beyond measure.
His hair flows like liquid moonlight, pooling around feet that don't quite touch the ground. His eyes hold the depth of every secret ever whispered in forest clearings, every promise broken under starlight. When he looks at me, I feel seen in a way that makes me want to hide.
But you don't hide from fate-reading.
It's tradition. Sacred. Necessary.
He stares into my eyes for so long that tears begin to form—not from emotion but from forgetting to blink. The silence stretches until even the air seems to hold its breath.
When he speaks, his voice carries the weight of prophecy.
"She is prosperous."
My tiny heart swells with relief. Prosperous is good. Prosperous means I haven't failed before I've begun.
"Power will flow effortlessly to her, and she's destined to bridge the gap between those of darkness."
Mother's pleased intake of breath is audible even from her throne. Father nods slowly, approval radiating from his rigid posture. This is what they wanted to hear—their daughter will matter, will forge connections that strengthen the realm.
But the Elder isn't finished.
"But not as a female."
The words fall like stones into still water, sending ripples through the throne room's perfect silence.
"She must strive to be male, or else failure and devastation are imminent otherwise."
I don't understand. My six-year-old mind can't process what he means. Boy? Girl? I'm me. Isn't that enough?
The Elder's eyes never leave mine as he continues, each word precise as a blade between ribs.
"Karma at the hands of the throne that was not meant to be in your bloodline. Tainted and cursed, you will only succeed by being the male you should have been. Not whom you are now."
Father clears his throat, the sound sharp enough to cut crystal.
"This must be a joke, yes?"
His voice carries the particular tone of royalty unused to being contradicted. The kind of voice that reshapes reality through sheer expectation of obedience.
The Elder doesn't even turn to acknowledge him. Instead, he asks a question that makes the temperature drop ten degrees.
"Why did you terminate the second child?"
The words don't make sense. Second child? I'm an only child. Always have been. The nursery held one crib, the portraits show one baby, the stories all speak of the singular princess born under the blessed moon.
But my parents...
Mother's sharp intake of breath sounds like breaking glass. Father's face transforms—not the gradual shift of changing emotion but an instant transition from composed ruler to something raw and dangerous.
"I don't know what you speak of," Father says, but the words emerge forced, each syllable fighting against truth that wants to escape.
The Elder's gaze finally shifts from me to my parents, and his expression carries disappointment so profound it feels like the world's axis tilting.
"You were destined for two. Male and female."
Father's hands grip his throne's armrests hard enough that the stone begins to crack—hairline fractures spreading like infection through pristine marble.
"The second one perished due to a tight cord," he states, authority trying to make lie into truth through repetition.
The Elder's laugh is wrong. Not mirthful or mocking but empty , like the sound joy would make if it gave up.
"Lie to me again, King, and it will be the last time I ever read your bloodline."
The threat lands with the weight of mountains. Without the Elder's readings, the Fae Court would be blind to future threats, unable to prepare for changes that could destroy everything. We need him more than he needs us, and everyone knows it.
Father's mouth snaps shut.
The Elder turns back to me, and his expression softens—not with pity but with something worse. Understanding.
"You will endure turmoil," he tells my six-year-old self, speaking as if I'm capable of comprehending the weight of these words. "Not at the hands of perfection, but at the sins of your parents who didn't prepare you."
Each word burns itself into memory with clarity that will haunt me for decades.
"Your femininity will be but a disadvantage, until destiny is ready for you to face the sins that lie deep within the depths of wicked lands that haven't touched the surface of true life in centuries."
He leans closer, and I smell something like autumn leaves burning, like endings and beginnings tangled together.
"Buried down under centuries of dismay, all at the hands of an envious child who was deemed worthless as you must feel now."
I don't feel worthless.
Not yet.
That will come later, after years of trying to be what the prophecy demands, after the whispers start, after the touches that weren't wanted, after the?—
"You will rise eventually."
The Elder's voice pulls me from future pain back to present confusion.
"A common connection of similarities in the depths of internal flames and despise for the Fae will invite you down the path of meeting one who is destined to claim you as your forsaken half should have gained."
The words tumble over each other, too complex for a child's comprehension but branded into memory nonetheless.
"You won't understand it now, but the opportunity will flourish where you'll be able to decide. To give a chance to the one who was perished by your parents' desperation for one heir, or to live a life of duality that will leave you heartbroken in the valley of death itself for all eternity."
He straightens, and distance returns to his ancient eyes.
"It's your call, child, but the trials ahead will be tedious. Perfection may be glitter, but it's not made of gold. It's simply coal painted with shimmering paint, surrounded by those who only wish for your downfall."
One more lean forward, one more moment of terrible intimacy.
"As soon as you realize and embark on your own journey to unravel the wickedness in your bloodline, will you discover the truth."
He turns away without goodbye or blessing. His footsteps make no sound as he leaves, but each one feels like another nail in a coffin I don't yet know I'm building.
The moment the throne room doors close behind him, Father's rage erupts.
"You will not listen to such foolishness!"
His voice carries the particular fury of those caught in lies they thought buried.
"What does Father mean?" I ask, voice small and confused.
The question is a mistake.
His hand closes around my tiny arm with force that will leave bruises shaped like ownership. Mother doesn't intervene—she never does when Father decides lessons need teaching.
I'm dragged from the throne room, small feet scrambling to keep up, ceremonial robes tangling around legs too short for his pace. The corridors blur past—crystal and starlight and beauty that will soon become the architecture of my nightmares.
The punishment chamber hasn't been used in decades. Dust motes dance in shafts of light that penetrate through cracks in ancient stone. The tools remain sharp though—Fae craftsmanship doesn't dull with time, only grows hungrier.
What happens next shapes everything I become.
My eyes snap open.
The memory shatters, leaving me gasping in the strange half-light of this realm. Sweat coats my skin like shame, droplets tracing paths down temples and pooling in the hollow of my throat. My hands shake—fine tremors that speak of adrenaline with nowhere to go.
I sit up carefully, trying not to wake the others. The motion feels wrong, and that's when I notice?—
My voice, when I whisper a curse, is higher. Softer.
I look down at hands that are smaller, more delicate. The shift happened while I slept, unconscious mind deciding which form felt safer for processing traumatic memory.
I'm Nikki now.
The feminine form I was told would only bring failure, sitting in a realm that actively hates my existence, surrounded by people who call me different pronouns than what I am depending on which face I wear.
But am I a split entity like Gabriel and Gwenivere?