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Thea

E sperida Aventine was floating against the seamless backdrop of a celestial cavern, a place beyond sound and movement where all was stillness and clarity.

In the absolute darkness, it hurt to look at her, for she was a single star, brilliant and pure white from the strands of her hair to her billowy dress, undulating like a cloud around her bare feet.

For a long while, I could only squint at her, shading my eyes with my hands until I realized that I, too, had turned into a wisp of translucence, the shape of my fingertips traced with silver light.

An outcry of every emotion a body was capable of feeling escaped me and echoed around the bleak nothingness that enveloped us. I wanted to break down sobbing, only I didn’t think it was possible in my new incorporeal form.

“I… I missed you so much,” I stammered, and before I knew it, Esperida was surging forward, her phantom body embracing mine.

To my further astonishment, I felt her as though she were flesh and bone, our mutual intangibleness made solid upon contact. But there was strangeness to it too. She was cold as ice to the touch and didn’t smell like herself. She used to wear this perfume, an unexpected scent, peppery and a little masculine. Now she was like a handful of stardust, her barely-there essence slipping between my fingers.

“Oh sweet child,” she sighed, dotting my forehead with kisses. “I missed you too. Both of you. More than you know.”

“Am I dead?” The question left me with a ragged sigh, my chest cracking open. I touched my fingers to my throat, where I should be feeling the throb of Arawn’s hands. But there was only the dull memory of his maddened face hovering over mine. In terms of physical agony, I was as unfeeling as a block of wood.

Esperida laughed. “Of course not, silly. This is not where your story ends. It is only where it changes .”

I stared at her, too dazed to form complete judgments just yet. “But I see you… I feel you…”

“That is your magic, Thea. That is what you do. You see things. You feel things. Things that others cannot.” Her expression grew stern as she hooked two fingers under my chin. “And then you doubt your own eyes. Your own instincts.” She shook her head. “Not anymore.”

“Not anymore,” I promised, for I didn’t think it was wise to argue with a ghost.

A ghost.

“It was you!” I exclaimed. “You were the light in the mirrors. You were watching us…” As my lips formed the words, a sequence of moments flickered before my eyes: the glimpses of white light, the constant sense of being watched, the hands that had pulled me out of Arawn’s hold and into the mirror. It had all been her. “You saved me.”

Esperida smiled brightly. There were not good enough words to describe her smile, the untamed wildness of it, the way it made you feel special and blessed just to have witnessed it. “No, sweetheart,” she hummed. “You saved yourself. I can’t touch living things. I can’t touch anything that exists out there. If I could, I would have stopped Arawn from the beginning. I can’t even stray far from the mirrors. They are the in-between that I belong to now. But you allowed me to touch you. Your magic did, for it too is a thing between worlds.”

I gazed around at the shapeless, endless gloom, more baffled than ever. “I thought the mirrors were portals.”

“They are.”

“But this is not a room in the Castle.”

“No, it’s not,” she agreed, gently urging me to turn around and see that the other side of the path was not as bleak as the one I was looking at.

The darkness broke into fragments like the ground breaks over new roots, and white veins of light seeped through, growing larger and wider the closer they curled around the iridescent oval shape floating in the midpoint of it all.

“This,” Esperida sang in my ear, “is the Castle’s heart.”

Awestruck, I whirled to meet her colorless eyes. They sparkled like pearls in the dim.

“You see,” she began, ushering me forward, “our two souls, the Castle’s and mine, bonded a very long time ago, and ever since I died, the Castle hasn’t been feeling very well. I was supposed to cross to the other side with Eron, but the Castle didn’t let me. It keeps me here with it. My soul, at least. It spends almost all of its energy trying to retain our bond. That is why its magic falters and even fails at times. That is why it’s not protecting you the way it should. It protects me instead. It refuses to let me go.”

I recalled all the wondrous outbursts of magic the Castle had graced us with the past few days and how it had all reverted to its original somber state. It still obeyed Hector’s commands, for they too were bonded, but its volition, its sparkle and soul, were still devoted to Esperida alone.

And now she was looking at me the way I was supposed to be looking at her. As if I were a savior. As if I were her last and only hope. “What… What can I do?”

Relief braced the opal of her face. She squeezed my hands in hers. “I want you to talk to it. I want you to take my place. To become the new Lady of the Castle. It’s the only way to save them and free me. If the magic of the Castle gets restored, it will help you stop Arawn before it is too late.”

“Can’t you help me?”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. There isn’t much I can do anymore, and the portals are too unpredictable. You can easily get stuck in a loop of going in and out of here. If you want to reach Arawn in time, you’ll need the Castle’s magic on your side.”

Prickles of panic trailed up my arms. I staggered out of her reach. “But… why me? Why not Hector?”

She gestured at the twinkling oval-shaped object that was supposed to be the Castle’s very cause of sentience. “This is not something everyone can see.”

I blinked slowly, revelation washing over me. “Were you able to see its heart, to be in this space before you died?”

Her smile broadened. “No. Do you see now? Do you see how special your gift is?”

During my first week at Thaloria’s Academy of Magical Arts, I knelt before the high priestess as all first-years did and was told that my magic, the magic I’d spent a lifetime trying to harness, was to see things .

How disappointed, how wretchedly dejected I’d been to learn that I was not on the verge of becoming something greater than myself, that I was not there to escape my destiny, but to surrender to it. What a curse, I’d thought, to see what is to come and not be able to change it.

But what if I could change it? What if Hector was right, after all? What if destiny was really just another word for life and what you made of it?

Steadily, with my lungs filled with breath, I drifted toward the pulsing light, the heart of the Castle. Up close, it was less of an oval and more of a ball of energy burning into needle-thin beams of silver light.

Just like a star.

“Hello… Castle?” I ventured hesitantly, for there was really no stranger thing than accepting the strangeness of the world, the things that existed beyond the boundaries of our understanding.

Its voice was grand, depthless. It came from everywhere and nowhere. It came from inside me. “Hello, prophet girl.”

I stared at the star-shaped heart, drowning in waves of pure amazement. “Oh, I’m no prophet.”

There was a thoughtful respite, then a sigh of gentle resignation. “Why do mortals do this?”

“Do what?”

“Doubt yourselves,” the Castle nearly huffed. “Do you not see what destiny wants you to see? Do you not feel the gods of fortune guide your hands? Do you not hear the stars when they whisper their sacred stardust words? You hear me, after all. I am a star, too.”

“I… I thought you were a castle now.”

“Before I was a castle, before I was stone and glass and structure, I was magic—intention and possibility—and before I was magic, I was a star. You see, nothing is only one thing, and nothing is always the same thing. Change, I’m afraid, is inevitable.”

I gave the Castle a quizzical look. “Then why are you resisting it? You give very good advice. You ought to follow it every now and then.”

To my surprise, the Castle laughed, and it was a glorious, larger-than-life sound. “Ah, she’s a clever one.”

“What you’re doing is harming a lot of people, you know,” I said, solemnly now.

“How so?”

“Esperida needs to rest. And Hector needs you . Something terrible is going to happen here tonight, and you have to stop it.”

“And what about you, prophet girl? Do you not have the power to stop it?”

“I… You’re right,” I admitted with a heavy heart. “Destiny did warn me. The gods of fortune did show me their favor. But I didn’t listen to them. I was so afraid to make the wrong choice I ended up doing nothing at all. And now I fear they’ll forsake me.”

If the Castle had a face, I had a feeling it would be grimacing now, perhaps raising its brows in exasperation. “Did you fail to listen to them, or did you fail to listen to yourself?”

The answer was clearer than ever. Still, the words felt odd upon my lips, the admission too fresh, too tender. “I am my magic, and my magic is me. So I suppose I failed us both.”

“I am a lot like that too,” said the Castle in a strange, plaintive tone. “Inseparable from my magic, I mean. It tires me sometimes. And other times I don’t want to be myself at all.” There was a pause in which I felt the Castle’s very essence haloing over me. It was warm and sun-bright, and it filled me with hope. “It’s nice to find people who understand what that’s like.”

“You’re lonely,” I realized. “That’s why you’re not letting her go.”

“I was lonely,” said the Castle. “For a long, long time I was terribly, humanly lonely. Then she came, and everything changed.”

“Things have to change again now.”

“I know.”

“You won’t be alone, though,” I reassured it. “Hector will be here. He’s a part of Esperida. That’s why you grant all of his wishes, no? And… and I will be here, too.”

The accusation came like thunder. “You left us before.”

“I will not leave you again,” I promised.

“I do not take prisoners, prophet girl.”

“I will not stay out of obligation—”

“Then why? To prove yourself worthy of owning me?”

I sucked in a breath, summoning my courage. “Living things cannot be owned. I do not own the wildflower when I pluck it from the soil. I do not own the wave when I swim in the sea. I do not own you when I walk through your halls. These are gifts, and I can only love them. I love this place. I love you . And I love Hector.” My voice broke, broke like my heart did at the faintest possibility of losing him tonight. I could not let it happen. I would not let it. “I haven’t told him yet. I need to tell him now.”

A path of black and white marble lit up next to me. The gleaming squares were surrounded by mirrors of different shapes and sizes. Some were large and straight as walls, others were curving overhead, enclosing the checkered trail until it seized before a larger, gold-framed mirror, the oval glass rippling with water.

“Then go,” urged the Castle. “Tell him. Save him.”

“Will you let Esperida go? Will you be with me now? I might need your help.”

“You don’t need me, prophet girl. You can win this battle on your own.”

I drew closer, close enough to see the star inside the heart of the Castle, pulsing with a life of its own. “You’re my friend,” I whispered to it like releasing a secret wish out into the universe. “I don’t have to need you to want you to be by my side.”

The star, the heart, the Castle, all the things it was and all the things it would be, broke out beaming, and as the radiance forced my eyes shut, my other eyes showed me what was going to happen if I didn’t go against destiny now.

“I should check on her,” Hector was saying, striding past the flush table of the dining room where they were all gathered, their candlelit faces glowing with impatience.

Arawn caught Hector’s wrist. “We all know how much you love your wife, Aventine, but for the love of the sky, can we get this over with?”

A twinge of panic pulled me out of the vision. I staggered to keep my balance, my chest shaking. “We have to hurry.”

The Castle cast its light down the checkered path, dazzling the marble. “This mirror will lead you straight to the dining room. I will stall them as much as I can. But you have to be the one to reveal this truth.”

“Why me?”

“Because this is not my story, Dorothea Valentia. It is yours,” said the Castle. “And you should never let other people write your story.”

I nodded firmly, making a silent vow both to the Castle and to myself. Then I gathered my skirts and rushed toward the mirror, checking over my shoulder for Esperida.

She reappeared beside me with a bright flare. “Please,” she implored, “tell Hector I’m sorry. Tell him that had I known I’d have him, I would have never taken the Vow. I would have never left him alone. Back then, Eron and I were so happy we were terrified to speak the word tomorrow, much less imagine the family and friends we would make along the way. And he was so fragile, so helpless. I’ve seen humans die from a cold. I wanted to bind myself to him. To be with him forever. I could not see the selfishness of it then. ”

“Esperida,” I breathed, recalling all the times Hector had pulled me out of cold drafts and grumbled to me about eating properly and lost his mind over the silliest scrapes—over a drop of poison. “Hector knows.”

“Tell him anyway,” she said, then with another flash of light spurred me forward. “Go. Go to him. Don’t worry about me.”

“Will I see you again?”

Her lips thinned, her eyes drifting downward. She didn’t have to say it. I knew the answer already. The Castle would let her go, and she would finally be with Eron, and I would never see Esperida Aventine again.

My eyes stung with phantom tears. “Goodbye,” I whispered.

She hugged me to her chest one final time. “Let’s not say goodbye. Promise to find me again. In another life.”

I laughed sadly against her shoulder. “I promise.”

I stayed to watch Esperida drift back toward the Castle’s heart, both of them glowing with the same silver fire until they became interchangeable. Until they became one.

Then I ran. I ran as fast as my body was able, grabbing my fate with my own two hands, ripping and pulling and molding the path before me. I stumbled but did not falter. I feared but did not stop. It gave me strength to know that even my mistakes were mine and mine alone. I was agency embodied. I was my own god of fortune. I was my own destiny.