Page 80 of The Vampire Castle in the Sky

“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 Icould, 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 youallowedme 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, wasto 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 Icouldchange 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.”

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