No one warns you that silence has weight.
You only realize it once you start carrying it alone.
By the time the week settled into routine, Crestwood felt disturbingly functional. Group projects progressed smoothly. Clubs flourished. Student engagement metrics rose, just as the reports predicted.
Everything was working.
Mark joked about presentation formats. Liana obsessed over color palettes and layout symmetry. Seraphine Roth contributed efficiently, politely, without ever once steering the conversation anywhere dangerous.
No one slipped.
No one hesitated.
No one remembered.
That was the hardest part.
During one study session, Mark frowned at his tablet.
"You're really good at this observing thing, Elena," he said casually. "You notice details the rest of us miss."
I smiled. "Someone has to."
He meant it as a compliment.
It felt like an accusation.
At lunch, conversations drifted toward ambition. Careers. Politics. Service. The same polished ideals echoed everywhere, framed as gratitude.
"This academy gives us everything," a student at the next table said earnestly. "We owe it our loyalty."
I kept chewing.
They weren't wrong. That was the problem.
Loyalty, when nurtured gently enough, stopped feeling like a demand.
In debate forum, I spoke once. Carefully. About balance. About stability. About the dangers of disruption without foresight. The applause came quickly.
Too quickly.
Afterward, Liana squeezed my arm.
"You're really good with words," she said. "You always know exactly what to say."
I wondered what she would think if she knew how much I was not saying.
At home, I continued the act.
I laughed at dinner. I helped my sister revise for an exam. I listened to my parents talk about work at the Montague estate, about menus and schedules and small, ordinary worries.
They were safe.
Because I was quiet.
That night, I dreamed of fire again. Not roaring flames. Just embers, glowing beneath ash, waiting.
When I woke, my hands were clenched so tightly my nails had drawn blood.
At Crestwood the next morning, a notice appeared on the main board.
Leadership evaluations upcoming. Participation mandatory.
I stared at it longer than necessary.
Leadership.
Another word that sounded harmless until you learned how it was used.
Across campus, Prince Kaelith Altherion walked through marble corridors lined with portraits of rulers who had survived by mastering restraint.
He paused briefly at a screen displaying student analytics.
Elena Winter.
Engagement: exemplary.
Behavior: compliant.
Risk indicators: none.
On paper, she had vanished into perfection.
He turned away.
Somewhere deep inside him, something tightened.
Because he knew what silence cost.