Page 53 of Academy of the Wicked: Year Three
Little Solstice
~GWENIEVERE~
Consciousness returns like bubbles rising through honey—slow, thick, inevitable.
I turn over, my small body adjusting against the shadow-cushion Cassius has unconsciously created beneath me. The first thing I register isn't sound but motion—frantic, desperate movement that disrupts the careful stillness of our makeshift camp.
Nikki sits bolt upright, gasping like someone pulled from drowning. Her golden eyes dart back and forth with the particular panic of those who've touched death and can't quite believe they've returned. She stares at her extended hand as if it's grown an additional head, fingers trembling with aftershocks of almost-ending.
I sit up, my child-form moving with the particular gracelessness of limbs that haven't quite figured out their proportions. Silver hair falls across my face—too long, always too long in this form—and I push it back with small hands that still surprise me with their diminutive size.
"If you're having an existential crisis, can you be quieter?"
The words emerge with perfect six-year-old irritation, though the vocabulary belongs to someone far older. Thedisconnect would be jarring if I thought about it too hard, so I don't.
Nikki blinks, her attention snapping to me like I've materialized from nowhere. The panic in her eyes shifts to confusion, then something approaching indignation.
"How can a kid even say existential crisis?" she mutters, still fighting for breath that won't quite come properly.
The thing is—I know what happened.
The knowledge sits in my chest like swallowed starlight, bright and burning and impossible to ignore. I felt it through the connection I share with Gabriel, through the bond that makes us one despite our desperate desire to be two. His emotions bled through while I pretended to sleep—the weight of her in his arms, the decision to save what asked to be destroyed, the terrible hope that maybe broken things can choose to heal.
But acknowledgment would mean explaining, and explaining would mean revealing truths we're not ready for. So instead, I choose deflection through obnoxiousness—a child's prerogative that I'm learning to wield like the weapon it can be.
Nikki blinks several more times, as if reality might rearrange itself into something more comprehensible if she just resets her vision enough. When that fails, she huffs with frustration that would be comedic if not for the tears still clinging to her lashes.
"Where's your brother?"
The question lands with weight she doesn't realize she's placing. Brother. As if Gabriel exists separately, independently, free to come and go as he pleases rather than trapped in the cage of shared flesh we've been forced to call home.
I shrug with elaborate casualness.
"I don't know. Last time I checked, we're the same person."
It's truth and lie tangled together so tightly even I can't separate the threads. We are the same—one body, one fate, one curse to bear. But we're also devastatingly different, and thatdifference grows wider with each passing moment in these trials that force us to confront what we are versus what we wish we could be.
Nikki pinches the bridge of her nose, the gesture so perfectly adult despite her youth that it makes something in my chest tighten.
"Never mind," she sighs with exhaustion that speaks of more than physical tiredness. "I'm switching to Nikolai since you clearly have a preference."
I open my mouth to protest—to say that it's not preference but ancestral memory, that the hatred isn't truly mine but inherited like a disease passed through bloodlines. But before I can form words small enough for this child-throat to speak, the transformation begins.
It's not like watching Zeke shift—that fluid transition between forms that speaks of harmony with one's nature. This is deliberate. Calculated. Nikki doesn't become Nikolai so much as she builds him from conscious choice, each adjustment a small death of who she was moments before.
Her features sharpen, jawline becoming more pronounced. Shoulders broaden while hips narrow. Hair maintains its golden shade but changes texture, becoming something meant to be styled rather than simply allowed to fall. Even her posture shifts—spine straightening, chin lifting, taking up space rather than apologizing for occupying it.
When it completes, Nikolai sits where Nikki was, wearing simple attire that somehow makes him look more vulnerable than any elaborate costume could.
I want to protest. Want to say that I don't hate her, that it's complicated, that centuries of rage against the Fae can't simply be turned off because I've learned its source. But the words stick in my throat like swallowed stones.
Instead, I pause. The need to rebel, to argue, to maintain the walls I've built—it dissipates like morning mist touched by sun. Something about seeing him choose this form to accommodate my irrational preference makes those walls feel less like protection and more like prison.
"Yup," Nikolai says, and even his voice carries different registers now—deeper, more resonant, designed to command rather than request. "Clearly, you have a vendetta against Nikki but not against me."
I pout, lower lip extending in the universal expression of childish displeasure.
"Maybe."
