Lunch, as it turned out, was an incredibly awkward affair when one half of the table was silently screaming internally and the other half was a seventeen-year-old chain-smoker doing her best impression of a well-mannered lady.
Sera had stubbed out her cigarette the moment our father’s footsteps sounded down the hall, and now sat with her hands folded primly in her lap like she had never held anything more scandalous than a teacup in her entire life. The transformation was almost impressive. Almost.
’Ten out of ten deception. Would not have guessed she was smoking on the balcony thirty seconds ago.’
Our father, Baron Alaric Rhys, swept onto the balcony with the unhurried confidence of a man who had never once doubted his welcome anywhere in his own house, which, to be fair, was probably a reasonable thing to be confident about. He was tall, greying at the temples, posture straight enough to make my own spine ache in sympathy.
"Good morning, children."
"Good morning," I replied.
My father studied me a beat too long, the exact look adults gave children they suspected of hiding something and could not quite decide was worth pursuing. Then he let it go and took his seat, and I used the silence that followed to actually think.
’Okay. New plan. I do not actually need a crash course on Valemont. I read two hundred Chapters of this thing, I already know there is a kingdom, I already know there is a king, I already know the academy eats up half the plot. What I do not know is anything about my own family, because shockingly, the book was never about us.’
I got my chance an hour later.
Once my father had disappeared to handle whatever mysterious business barons apparently handled and Sera had been dragged off by our mother to discuss the horrors of an autumn gathering, I slipped into the study I vaguely remembered existed and pulled the first promising-looking book off the shelf. It was thick, leather-bound, and smelled like it had not been opened since my actual, original body was still in diapers.
"An Overview of Valemont and Her Noble Houses," I read aloud, quietly, mostly to make sure my voice still worked. "Perfect."
I dropped into the nearest chair and started reading, skimming past the parts I already knew from the book, the cobblestone streets, the gas lamps, the rigid social classes stacked on top of each other like a very polite, very oppressive layer cake. Formal titles for everything, an alarming number of unspoken rules about who was allowed to speak to whom, and enough emphasis on "proper conduct" to make me suspect that somewhere in this world’s history, someone had personally invented the concept of side-eye.
’Yeah, yeah. Victorian England with a magic system stapled on top. Knew that already.’
I flipped forward, past the Kingdom of Valemont and Kingsmere, past King Alfey the Second, none of it new, all of it exactly as background-decoration as it had felt back when I was reading it as a NovelBin at two in the morning.
’The book barely spent a paragraph on any of this either, to be fair. It was too busy following Sera and everyone circling her life to care about geography.’
House Rhys got exactly one paragraph, which felt almost insulting given how much of my current existence depended on it. This part, at least, was actually new. The book had never once bothered to explain where I came from, because the book had never cared about me being anything other than a name mentioned in passing.
"House Rhys," I read under my breath, "founded by Duke Rhys, granted lands in service to the crown during the border wars three centuries past. The ducal title did not survive intact through subsequent generations, divided across heirs until only a modest barony remained in the family’s possession. House Rhys is noted for its enduring prestige despite its comparatively limited holdings."
I stared at the page for a long moment.
’So we used to be a big deal. Then several generations of Rhys men apparently could not divide a dukedom without setting it on fire, and now we are... a small deal with a fancy name.’
I almost laughed. It tracked, honestly. My father had that exact energy, all posture and pride and not a whole lot of actual land to show for it. The kind of family that got invited to things because of their name and then had to be strategic about which invitations they could actually afford to accept.
’Old blood, small purse. Got it.’
I closed the book, sat back, and let the rest of the information settle in alongside everything my borrowed memories were already quietly sorting through in the background. It was not a lot to work with, honestly. A modest barony with a proud name, a king I would probably never meet, and a sister who was currently somewhere in this house being lectured about an autumn gathering she clearly had no intention of caring about.
[NOTE: The Rhys name grants limited social access disproportionate to the Host’s material resources.]
The text blinked into existence without warning, exactly as helpful and exactly as vague as it had been on the balcony.
’Oh, now you show up. Where were you five minutes ago when I was squinting at three-hundred-year-old genealogy.’
The system, predictably, said nothing back.
I found Sera later that afternoon, back on the balcony, cigarette already lit, staring out at nothing in particular with the same tired boredom she always seemed to be carrying around like a second robe.
"Did you know we used to be dukes?" I asked, dropping into the chair beside her.
She glanced at me sideways. "Used to be. Very load-bearing words in that sentence."
"I read it in a book."
"You read a book. Voluntarily." She took a slow drag, unimpressed. "Are you feeling alright, Eddie?"
’If only you knew.’
"Just curious," I said instead, and let it drop.
Sera exhaled a thin stream of smoke toward the sky, entirely unbothered by the family history, the kingdom, the king, any of it. "For what it is worth, being a small name with a big reputation has its uses. Nobody expects much from us. Which means nobody watches us that closely either."
I looked at her for a moment, really looked, and something about the way she said it settled into my chest with more weight than I expected.
’You have absolutely no idea how much I am counting on that.’
I did not say it out loud. Instead I just sat there beside her, watching the smoke curl up into a sky that had no idea what either of us were actually planning, and for the first time all day, it felt like maybe, just maybe, I had a plan worth building.