I had spent the last day quietly memorizing every corner of the house I now lived in, and it was only today, wandering the halls with nothing particular to do, that I finally admitted to myself why.
’I am trying to remember this. All of it. Just in case.’
Rhys Manor sat at Number Nine, Ashwell Row, a quiet street on the respectable edge of the noble district, the kind of address that told you everything about a family’s standing without anyone needing to say a word out loud. Not grand enough to be Kingsmere’s inner ring, where the truly powerful houses kept their sprawling estates, but far too dignified to be anywhere near the merchant quarters either. A modest three-story manor of pale grey stone, ivy climbing one entire side of it like it had been personally invited, with a low iron fence out front and a garden my mother apparently took great pride in, though I still could not tell most of the flowers apart.
It was, in a word, comfortable. Old money without excess, respectable without being flashy, exactly the kind of house that belonged to a family with more history than land.
’I like it here,’ I thought, a little surprised at myself for meaning it. ’I actually like it here.’
Tomorrow, I would leave it.
The realization sat differently than I expected. I had known the date for days now, circled quietly in my own head ever since my memories first settled in, but knowing a date on a calendar and actually feeling the weight of it arrive were two very different things. Tomorrow, Sera and I would take the carriage to Kingsmere. Tomorrow, the Royal Academy would swallow up the version of my life that still felt, against all odds, almost normal.
I found Sera in the sitting room that afternoon, curled into the corner of a couch with a book open on her lap that she did not appear to actually be reading.
"You are staring again," she said, without looking up.
"I am allowed to stare. It is my sister-appreciation hour."
’Feels so cringe to be honest,’ I thought.
That got her attention. She lowered the book with an expression somewhere between amused and suspicious. "My what."
"Sister-appreciation hour," I repeated, dropping onto the couch beside her with the shameless confidence of someone who had decided embarrassment was simply not going to be a factor today. "It is a very important tradition. I invented it approximately four minutes ago."
"You are so weird, Eddie."
"You say that like it is not clearly working, because you have not actually told me to leave."
Sera rolled her eyes, but there was no real bite behind it, and after a moment she set the book aside entirely, giving up the pretense of reading it. "Are you nervous? About tomorrow."
’A little bit terrified, actually. But not for the reasons you would guess.’
"A little," I admitted instead, which was true enough to not feel like a lie. "Mostly just weird thinking about actually leaving the house. I have gotten used to it here."
"You have been here your whole life."
"I know. That is exactly why it is weird."
She studied me for a moment in that quiet, appraising way she had, the one that made me wonder sometimes if she noticed more about me than she let on. Then, apparently deciding whatever she saw was acceptable, she leaned back into the couch cushions and let a small, genuine smile slip through.
"I liked it there," she said. "The academy, I mean. Before all the political nonsense started mattering, back when it was just classes and the library and occasionally setting something on fire by accident in the training yards."
"You set things on fire?"
"Once. Maybe twice. It was an accident both times, and I stand by that completely."
I laughed, the real kind, not the nervous performance I had been doing for most of the last week. "I cannot believe I am related to an arsonist."
"Allegedly," Sera said primly. "Nothing was ever proven."
We sat there for a while after that, talking about nothing important, the kind of easy, aimless conversation I suspected I was going to miss more than I currently understood. Sera told me about the academy library, the courtyard with the fountain nobody was supposed to swim in but everyone eventually did anyway, a professor with an infamous habit of falling asleep mid-lecture. I mostly listened, filing every detail away, half because I genuinely wanted to know and half because some quiet, careful part of me understood that these small, ordinary things were exactly the kind of thing my borrowed memories of the actual novel had never bothered to include.
’This is the part the book skipped. This right here. This is the part worth protecting.’
The next morning arrived faster than I felt entirely prepared for.
The carriage sat waiting in front of the manor by the time I made it downstairs, our trunks already loaded, our father offering a brief, formal farewell that still somehow managed to feel warm underneath all the stiffness, our mother fussing over Sera’s collar in a way that made my sister roll her eyes with obvious, practiced patience. And then, almost before I was ready for it, the two of us were settled inside the carriage together, wheels creaking against the cobblestones as Rhys Manor slowly shrank behind us.
Sera sat across from me, watching the passing streets through the window with an expression I had not seen on her yet, something lighter than her usual composed boredom, something that looked almost like genuine excitement.
"You seem happy," I said.
"I am happy," she said, not even pretending otherwise. "I like the academy, Eddie. I know that probably sounds strange coming from me."
"A little," I admitted. "You mostly seem like the type of person who finds joy in being unimpressed by things."
"I contain multitudes." She finally looked away from the window, catching my eye with something warmer than her usual dry wit. "It is good, being back there. You will understand once we arrive."
I watched her for a long moment, the easy, unguarded happiness on her face, so far removed from the tired, cigarette-smoke version of her I had first seen on the balcony that morning weeks ago, and thought back to the sitting room the day before. The ridiculous "sister-appreciation hour." The way she had actually laughed, really laughed, instead of just tolerating me.
’That was not nothing. I did that.’
[PLOT POINT SYSTEM: Objective progress detected.]
[+5 PLOT POINTS AWARDED]
[REASON: Host’s direct actions measurably improved the Objective’s emotional state.]
I blinked at the sudden text, then, very quietly, allowed myself a small smile of my own.
The carriage rolled on, carrying us both steadily toward Kingsmere, toward the academy, toward everything I had spent two hundred Chapters reading about and absolutely no Chapters preparing for.