I didn't do anything dramatic.
No confrontation with Greaves. No secret sabotage. No seven-year-old mastermind playing chess with an imperial bureaucrat. That would be stupid, and more importantly, it would be unnecessary.
Because the answer wasn't complicated. It was simple.
Father needed to be reminded of what he'd lose.
The next morning — the day Greaves was scheduled to deliver his preliminary assessment — I woke up early and went to the kitchen.
Mother was already there, as always, preparing breakfast. She looked tired. The past week had worn on her — the constant vigilance, the performance of normalcy, the knowledge that her family's future was being evaluated by a stranger.
"You're up early," she said.
"Can I help with breakfast?"
She paused. I'd never offered before. Not because I didn't want to, but because I'd been too caught up in my own thoughts — my theories, my observations, my plans. I'd been so busy analyzing the situation that I'd forgotten to be present in it.
My old life's mistake, repeating itself. Being so busy thinking about the problem that I forgot to live in the moment.
"You can set the table," Mother said.
I set the table. Carefully. Plates in the right spots. Cups aligned. Napkins folded the way Mother liked — triangles, not rectangles. It was a small thing. A daily thing.
When Father came down, I was already sitting in my seat.
"Good morning, Father."
"Good morning, Lucien." He looked surprised to see me up before the rest of the family. "Everything alright?"
"I wanted to eat breakfast with everyone."
A simple sentence. But something in it — maybe the earnestness, maybe the timing — made him pause. He sat down. Mother brought the tea. Celestine thundered down the stairs. Edric appeared with bedhead that defied the laws of physics.
Father blessed the table. The golden glow settled over the food. The warmth spread.
"Father," Celestine said through a mouthful of eggs, "tell the story about the beast tide."
"Which time?"
"The big one. When you held the barrier."
"You've heard it a hundred times."
"I want to hear it again."
So Father told the story. The beast tide of twelve years ago, when a minor Rift erupted in the eastern forest and hundreds of Aberrations — mostly tier-one beasts, but a handful of tier-two among them — swarmed toward Mireth. The town wards had held, but barely, and someone needed to reinforce the eastern wall while the church knights rallied.
Saint Aldric Ashveil, ten years younger and apparently much more reckless, had stood on the wall and maintained a Fourth Circle barrier for six hours.
"My hands were shaking so badly by the end that I couldn't hold a cup for three days," he said, smiling. "Your mother had to feed me soup."
"I did," Mother confirmed. "And I told you that if you ever did anything that stupid again, I'd fight the Aberrations myself just to get to you first."
"And I believed her."
"You should have. I meant it."
They shared a look — the kind of look that holds twenty years of marriage in a single glance. Fights and forgiveness, worry and relief, the accumulated weight of a shared life.
Celestine laughed. Edric smiled over his tea. I ate my toast and memorized the moment.
Greaves delivered his assessment that afternoon.
I wasn't in the room. This time, I didn't eavesdrop. I didn't need to. I sat in the garden, by the ward stone I'd once secretly modified, and waited.
An hour later, Father came outside. He stood at the garden gate for a moment, looking at his herb rows, his moonpetals, his whitestone ward pillar. Looking at his home.
Then he saw me.
"Lucien." He walked over and sat on the grass beside me. The most undignified thing I'd ever seen a Saint do. His robes got dirty. He didn't seem to care.
"How did it go?" I asked.
"Inspector Greaves has recommended me for transfer to the Central Diocese in Solanthis. A Fifth Circle parish, with resources, staff, and opportunities far beyond what Mireth can offer. It's a significant promotion."
My chest tightened. "And?"
"And I told him I'd consider it."
"Will you?"
He was quiet for a long time. The garden hummed. The wards pulsed. Somewhere inside, Celestine was arguing with Edric about something trivial.
"When I was young," Father said, "I wanted to be the greatest Saint in Verath. I trained, I studied, I pushed myself to the Fourth Circle by thirty — youngest in the province. I had ambitions. The Empire noticed me even then."
"What happened?"
"I met your mother. We married. We had Edric, then Celestine, then you. And somewhere along the way, my ambitions... changed shape. I stopped wanting to be the greatest Saint and started wanting to be a good father."
He looked at me. Those deep blue eyes.
"Greaves offered me the world. But my world is here."
"So you'll decline?"
"I'll decline."
The relief I felt was physical — a loosening in my chest, a warmth that had nothing to do with mana.
"Won't there be consequences?" I asked.
"Perhaps. The Empire doesn't enjoy being refused. But I'm a provincial Saint in a border kingdom, not a political threat. They'll be annoyed, not vengeful." He paused. "Probably."
"Probably."
"Ninety percent probably."
"That's not as reassuring as you think it is."
He laughed. A real, full laugh, and he pulled me into a hug. He smelled like incense and old books and the faintly electric scent of holy magic.
"You worry too much for a seven-year-old," he murmured.
"Someone has to."
He held me tighter.
Greaves left the next morning. At the gate, he shook Father's hand, nodded to Mother, and paused briefly when he passed me.
"Goodbye, Lucien. I hope you find what you're looking for."
"You too, Inspector."
Something flickered in his pale eyes. That same recognition from our earlier conversation — the look of someone who'd been asked are you happy and didn't have an answer.
He left. The church knights followed. The road swallowed them.
Mireth went back to normal.
And normal, I decided, was worth protecting.