As they finished their pleasantries with the people around them, I noticed Ilsa moving toward me with the twins close behind.
Great. Just when I thought this night could not get any worse.
Roderic had already drifted away with Harren, the two of them likely caught up in whatever preparations still needed making before the Rite was announced, which left Ilsa free to peel away from the rest of her family and make her way toward me instead, a subtle smirk already settled across her face.
I remained where I was, in the corner I had claimed for myself, with no interest in entertaining whatever this family had planned for me tonight.
Apparently, that was asking for too much.
"Yun, you seem to be doing well since the last time I saw you," Ilsa said as she closed the distance, the mockery in her tone impossible to miss and loud enough to draw the attention of everyone standing nearest to us.
Heads turned toward me again, and the same displeased looks returned to most of their faces.
"To think you even managed to receive a Mark," she continued, stopping a few steps away with her thin smile fixed in place. "Honestly, I never expected that from you."
From what I understood, the old Yun had always taken it. He had never pushed back against anything she said to him, which was probably exactly what she expected now, another chance to put me down while assuming I would simply absorb it the same way he always had.
She really had no idea how wrong she was.
I did not care what this family thought of me, not really, not when none of it was mine to carry in the first place. I was not Yun.
And I definitely was not about to stand here listening to that annoying voice of hers.
"Thank you, aunt, for stating the obvious," I said, a small, unbothered smile tugging at my mouth as I held her gaze without flinching.
She clearly had not expected that. Her smirk faltered for only a second, her steps stalling as a flicker of real anger crossed her face before she smoothed it over again.
"Confident, are we?" she asked, recovering quickly, though her voice had cooled into something sharper.
"That is new for someone carrying that filthy Death blood in him. Tell me, does that Aspect of yours actually listen to you, or is it just as unreliable as your mother’s turned out to be?"
To think she would target Rhea that brazenly. Her hatred for Yun’s mother really did run deep, and from the way a few people in the crowd carefully avoided looking at either of us, it seemed the rest of the house knew it too.
If this had truly been Yun standing here, maybe those words would have reached him. Maybe they would have drawn out the response she wanted, anger or hurt or some sign that she had managed to get beneath his skin.
Unfortunately for her, Yun had been dead for two months.
And to me, her words meant nothing.
"It listens well enough," I said. "Better than most people in this hall listen to reason, from what I have seen tonight."
The amusement in her eyes drained away fast, replaced by something colder.
"Tell me, everyone, should he really be allowed to participate in the Rite? Someone like him, carrying that treacherous blood?"
Her gaze slid back to mine, that same thin smile widening as she added, "Because if you ask me, a blot like him only sours the pristine name of our house."
The whispers started almost immediately, spreading through the small crowd as disdain opened across more than a few faces.
Yet standing there beneath all of it, with every hostile look the hall had to offer aimed squarely at me, I felt nothing at all.
No anger. No hurt. Only a calm clarity I had not expected to find in a room full of people who had already decided to hate me.
A short laugh escaped before I could stop it, and Ilsa’s head snapped toward me at the sound, the whispers around us dying almost instantly.
"Well, if I am that much of a blot, dear aunt, then why not simply let me be?" I said, keeping my tone light. "I am sure I will be powerless enough to do nothing during the Rite."
Her jaw tightened. She looked ready to retort, but Kessler shoved past Wren to plant himself beside his mother first, a sharp frown already fixed on his face.
"Mother, he is right. He will not have his sister there to save him," he said, looking to Ilsa before turning the same frown back toward me.
Whatever had been building on Ilsa’s face vanished the moment he said it, replaced by that satisfied smirk from before.
"You are right, Kessler. We should not worry ourselves with his fate now, should we?" She turned to leave, though she paused long enough to throw one last line over her shoulder.
"Oh, and dear Yun, I do hope you survive the Rite. Who knows, your luck surviving the Trial might just run out."
She laughed under her breath, short and mocking, before continuing on. Kessler gave me one final smirk and fell into step behind her.
Wren lingered a moment longer than the rest of them. Her eyes flicked toward me before dropping away just as quickly, unreadable, and then she turned and followed her brother without a word.
The rest of the small crowd took its cue from them, breaking apart and drifting back into their own conversations, though a few still threw me one last look of open disdain before losing interest entirely.
What an insufferable bitch.
Whatever she was planning, I already knew it was not finished. She had something in mind for the Rite itself, and I doubted tonight had been anything more than an opening move.
I was not going to let myself be played again. Not in this world of all places.
Needing a moment before dealing with anyone else, I pushed away from the wall and made my way toward the long table on the far side of the hall, picking up a glass of wine as I passed through the crowd.
The room had mostly settled back into its earlier rhythm of polite conversation and empty pleasantries, though the steady trickle of new arrivals had finally begun to slow.
When are they actually going to announce this and get it over with?
Twirling the glass between my fingers, I let my eyes wander over the room until they landed on a trio standing off to one side, deep in conversation with each other.
They looked to be around my age, and I did not need long to work out who they were.
The Morph family, headed by Joran Claiom, one of the few Transformed among the non-main-line members of the house. Entrusted by Harren himself with overseeing the affairs of the sub-lines and collateral branches, they were easily the strongest and most influential family outside the main bloodline.
Denn stood among them, the eldest of the three and Joran’s son. He had been Marked nearly two years earlier, and with the Rite held only once every three years, that made him one of the few people there who had already had real time to grow into his Aspect.
Beside him stood Sera and Tobin, siblings from elsewhere within Morph’s line.
Sera remained quiet, watching the room more than she took part in the conversation, while Tobin was the opposite entirely, restless even while standing still and shifting his weight as though he were looking for an excuse to start something.
Sera had been Marked around the same time as Denn, from what I understood, while Tobin had only been Marked recently, closer to my own timing than his sister’s.
Looking at them now gave me an almost strange feeling.
There were so many people my age, each one likely to arrive at Reliqua in a few years just as the protagonist had once been meant to do, yet none of them had ever appeared in my novel, not even in passing.
After all, the world had been entirely centred around him.
Now that I was part of the very background I had once ignored, it was strange to realise how much of this world existed beyond the one boy I had written everything around.
Well, I can still use them.
They must have noticed me watching, because Denn’s gaze drifted over and settled on mine, studying me for a moment. I braced for the same look I had grown used to receiving all night, though surprisingly it never came.
Instead, something closer to interest crossed his face. After a brief word to his siblings, he broke away from them and made his way over, with Tobin trailing a step behind while Sera lingered farther back, her attention still mostly elsewhere.
"You are Yun," Denn said, not quite a question as he stopped a respectful distance away. "Word has already made its way around the family about your Aspect. Unwritten, was it?"
"Word travels fast in this house," I said, looking past him toward Tobin.
"It really is an Aspect I have never heard of within the Domain of Dream," Denn said, an easy smile pulling at his mouth. "For what it is worth, I do not put much faith in what the rest of them have been saying about it."
Tobin, apparently uninterested in letting the conversation stay polite, cut in before I could respond.
"Unique Aspects are the ones actually worth watching in the Rite anyway. Everyone else in that arena is just going to be throwing the same shit at each other."
"Tobin," Denn said, though there was not much warning behind the name. He sounded more tired of it than angry.
Some of the tension left over from Ilsa finally loosened from my shoulders.
"I will take that as a compliment, then."
"Take it however you want," Tobin said with a shrug, though the grin on his face made it clear he meant it as one either way.
"You are not what the rumours said," Sera said quietly, soft enough that I nearly missed it beneath Tobin’s grin. She was not looking at me when she said it, her eyes still resting on the rest of the hall.
Denn glanced back toward his siblings, then returned his attention to me. After giving a short nod, he turned to head back, with Tobin and Sera already following close behind.
Well, at least not everyone in this house hated me quite as much.