Overnight, I had gone from the forgotten dreg of a fallen house to the sole heir of the most powerful Duchy in the kingdom.
To be honest, I was not grateful.
The time in my life when I needed a father was a distant memory, a faded tapestry of a childhood spent hungry and afraid. What remained was the sharp, vivid memory of my mother's hardship. Raising a child alone, with no coin and no name to speak of, was a special kind of hell. There were more nights we went to bed with empty stomachs than full ones, more days I spent watching my mother weep silently than seeing her smile.
Through all those years, I had cursed the memory of the man who had done this to us. This trash father, this ghost who had abandoned us.
And now, with the snap of his fingers, he was back. Not a ghost, but a Duke. A king in all but name. And the story had changed. It was all a misunderstanding. He had loved her all along. He had been searching for us.
I couldn't stomach it.
But then I would see them. My mother, tormented by a guilt that was not hers to bear, weeping in his arms. "I'm sorry, Yuri. I was a fool, and I made you both suffer for it."
And he, this granite-carved monster, would look flustered, clumsy. He would hold her and murmur that it was his fault, all of it, that she had done nothing but survive. And my mother, my strong, unbreakable mother, found solace in those simple words. She would lean into him, and in that simple gesture, I could see two decades of fear and loneliness melt away.
I saw the love and trust between them. And that was the end of my rebellion. Before he was my father, he was the man my mother loved. I could not stand in the way of her happiness, not after everything she had endured. So, I accepted him. But acceptance and forgiveness are two very different things.
Life in Dragon's Tooth Citadel was a jarring, alien experience. The servants bowed, their eyes never meeting mine. Their deference was a heavy cloak I didn't know how to wear. The suffocating opulence, the endless halls of cold stone and priceless tapestries depicting the bloody history of his house… none of it felt like home.
Honestly, I didn't have time to feel much of anything. My life had improved on paper, but the reality was a new kind of torture.
"The Duke Pendragon is a fucking lunatic," I muttered, my cheek pressed against the frozen dirt of the training yard.
The moment I had formally accepted my station, he had declared, "Good. Your instruction as heir begins at dawn."
"What?"
"Commander Andorra will meet you in the yard. Be there."
Heir? Me? The girl who had failed the Royal Magus Collegium entrance exams three times? The girl whose own Aether was a pathetic, slumbering trickle? It was insane. Knights, true knights from noble bloodlines, began their training with a sword in hand before they were ten. Their bodies were conditioned from childhood to channel the raw, violent power of their Aether. I was twenty years old.
When I presented this logical, rational argument to him, he had merely smiled. A terrifying, predatory expression.
"Do not worry, daughter. If you dedicate every waking moment for the next three years to the blade, you will learn. I would expect proficiency from a corpse if I gave it that much time."
It was not a joke.
At dawn, I learned the sword until my arms felt like they would fall off. In the morning, I studied Ancient Draconic Runes, Dynastic Histories, and the grim ledgers of the Northern Houses. The afternoon was spent in agonising Aetheric conditioning, trying to coax the dormant power in my blood to wake, a process that felt like being slowly set on fire from the inside. The evening was spent on battlefield tactics and monster lore, learning the weaknesses of the Frost-Wyrms and Yetikin that plagued these lands. Every night, he would test me, and I would fall into bed, bruised and exhausted, only to be hauled out again before sunrise.
That had been my life for a month. He was proud of how I endured, but it wasn't enough for him.
"You have spent a month on the basics," he announced one day. "It is time for you to spar."
There was no intermediate stage in his mind. I was thrown to his knights, the hardened veterans of the Order of the Hydra. At first, they went easy on me. Then my father threatened to have them flogged for their pity, and the mercy vanished. After weeks of being systematically beaten into the ground, a desperate, rebellious spark finally ignited in my soul.
This morning, I had thrown my practice sword down.
"You two seem so happy together," I'd spat, glaring at him and my mother, who was watching from the ramparts. "Instead of tormenting me, why don't you just make another heir? A son, this time. One you can mould from birth."
His response was chillingly calm. "Your mother's body is too frail to bear another child. Besides, an heir already exists. Why would I risk her for a second?"
"But surely you would prefer an heir who isn't incompetent! I am no Pendragon!"
I had chosen the words I thought would wound his pride the most. The laughter he gave in return was not amused. It was deadly.
"Incompetent?" he'd said, his voice dropping. "It is a luxury that you have the breath to worry about such things. It is my failing. I have not been training you hard enough."
He gestured for the knight I was facing to step aside. Then he drew his own blade and became my opponent.
It wasn't a spar. It was a deconstruction. He didn't just beat me; he dismantled me. He broke my guard, my stance, my spirit. And when I was on the ground, disarmed and gasping, he did not stop. He stood over me, his Aether flaring, a crushing, invisible force that felt like my soul was being torn from my body. A strange, shimmering energy, my own terrified Aether, began to leak from me, a silver mist rising from my skin. It was agony.
He only stopped when I was a sobbing, broken heap on the ground.
Crazy bastard. Madman. Monster. He found his long-lost daughter after twenty years only to treat her like a faulty piece of equipment that needed to be hammered into shape. To him, I was just an accessory that came with my mother.
"It is time for your studies, my lady."
Commander Andorra's voice cut through my haze of pain and hatred. I pushed myself up, my entire body screaming in protest. Every muscle, every bone, ached. It would be easier to become a corpse than a knight at this rate.
As I stumbled, she caught my arm, her grip firm and steady. "It has been only a month since you first held a sword."
"Yes."
"Truly, only a month?" she pressed, her scarred face unreadable.
"Learning swordsmanship in the capital costs a fortune. We could never afford it."
"Then this is not talent," she murmured, more to herself than to me. "This is bloodright. Your body is awakening."
Awakening? It felt more like it was being torn apart. I didn't have the energy to argue. The people of the North had a fanatical reverence for the Pendragon bloodline. They would see whatever they wanted to see. I just shrugged and let her guide me away from the yard.
"That will be all for our lessons. You need not attend tomorrow."
Master Elian, my history tutor, closed his book. I wasn't surprised. He was the last one. My instructors for politics, etiquette, dance, and statecraft had all said the same thing and departed over the last week.
"Did I do something wrong?" I finally asked. "Is there some reason no one will continue my lessons?"
"On the contrary, my lady," the old man said, his eyes kind. "There is nothing more essential for me to teach you. All our goals have been met."
The same excuse as all the others. It made no sense. My training as an heir was complete in a month? It would be more believable if they were leaving because they found my progress insulting. But they had never shown any displeasure. They were always patient, always careful. So why?
"Is the standard of learning in the North… lower?" I asked, trying to find a reason. "Since you must focus more on martial matters…"
"It is not that our learning is shallow, Lady Seraphina. It is that your capacity is vast." Master Elian smiled faintly. "Do not blame yourself for your past failures. The Royal Magus Collegium is a pit of corruption. It has been for decades."
"That…"
"What use is there in writing an essay on the Aetheric resonance of High Elvish poetry when the seat has already been sold to a viscount's witless son? Do you know what the final essay question was on the exam you failed last winter?"
He leaned forward. "It was, 'Discuss the socio-economic impact of the reclamation of the Sunken City of Lyonesse.' An event that has not yet happened. The question was given in advance to a handful of preferred candidates."
I flinched. The reality I had tried to ignore, that my failures were not my own, settled in my gut like a cold stone. If I hadn't come here, I would have spent the rest of my life breaking myself against a system designed to keep me out. My mouth tasted bitter.
As Master Elian prepared to leave, he hesitated at the door. "If you do not wish to be a scholar, what you must cultivate now is not your knowledge, but your self-worth." He bowed deeply. "You are the blade of the North, my lady. On behalf of all your people, I ask that you begin to see yourself as we see you: as the most precious thing in this world."
I had no answer for him.
With half my day suddenly free, I found myself adrift. I had no hobbies, no friends, no purpose beyond the one my father was beating into me. I wandered back to my chambers and collapsed onto my bed. Something on the desk caught my eye.
A linen handkerchief, washed and neatly folded. The crest of a single black raven with a golden eye was embroidered in the corner.
"Why is this… ah. Cassien Ravenscroft."
I had forgotten all about it. The handkerchief given to me by Alistair's silent, broken brother on the day my world had fallen apart. Someone must have found it in my pocket and had it laundered.
Holding the soft linen, my thoughts drifted back to Alistair. To the man who was the true architect of my own private dungeon of self-loathing.
It was two years ago, in the spring. I met him in the Royal Library. I was exhausted from studying, broken down by poverty and loneliness. He was a sunbeam in my grey world, a beautiful nobleman who saw something in me. He offered warmth, and I, fool that I was, clung to it like a drowning woman.
When I learned he was a Marquis's son, a vulgar, desperate hope took root. Maybe this was it. Maybe my miserable life was just the prologue to a fairy tale.
I was young, and I was an idiot.
The reality was far crueler. He did not lift me up. He kept me in my place. He would praise my beauty but mock my ambition. He would whisper promises in the dark and then remind me in the light of day that I was a nobody, that I was lucky he even graced me with his attention. He chiseled away at my confidence piece by piece, until I believed his version of me was the truth.
He taught me to hate myself. He taught me that my blood was thin, my magic was worthless, and my only value was as a pretty, temporary amusement for a man far above my station.
I clutched the handkerchief, the memory of his voice echoing in my mind as clearly as if he were standing in the room. It was from a night near the end, after I had dared to suggest I could be of actual help to him, that I had ideas about how to counter his mother's political rivals. He had laughed in my face.
"Know your place, Seraphina," he'd sneered, his handsome face twisted with condescension. "You are a charming distraction, nothing more. A plaything. Did you truly believe a Fell could ever be anything else to a Ravenscroft?"