Judith arrived without ceremony.
No thunder, no pressure in the air, no sense of someone important stepping into my life. She simply appeared one morning in the training hall, standing beside Melinda as if she had always belonged there. Her hair was lighter than my mother's, her smile softer, and when her eyes met mine, there was no measuring look in them. No curiosity sharpened into expectation. Just warmth.
That alone unsettled me.
I had assumed wrongly that anyone my parents called upon would resemble them in temperament. Focused. Severe. Disciplined to the point of coldness. Judith was none of those things at first glance. She knelt to my level, introduced herself as if I were any other child, and asked if I preferred sitting on the floor or at the table during lessons.
I hesitated long enough for her to laugh quietly.
"Floor it is," she decided, unbothered.
The first magic lesson didn't begin with mana or theory. It began with breathing. With feeling the stone beneath my legs, the air in the room, and the faint warmth left behind by sunlight through the tall windows. She spoke gently, guiding rather than instructing, and when my focus wavered, she didn't correct me. She waited.
Melinda said she wouldn't interfere.
That lasted less than a day.
She appeared during the second lesson, leaning against a pillar with a book in hand, pretending to read while very obviously listening. Judith noticed, of course. She always did. At one point, she paused mid-explanation and glanced over her shoulder.
"You're distracting him," Judith said lightly.
Melinda didn't even look up. "You're boring him."
"I'm teaching fundamentals."
"And I'm observing."
Their banter felt… strange. Comfortable. Familiar in a way I hadn't yet seen between my parents and anyone else. When Judith began explaining mana density, and Melinda corrected a minor phrasing, the discussion that followed went far beyond my level: Symbols, applications, failures, edge cases. Two high-level mages speaking freely.
I watched them both, quietly.
It felt like having two mothers.
The realization came without warning, settling somewhere deep in my chest. Judith wasn't replacing anyone. She wasn't competing. She was simply there, adding something new. Another presence that cared without demanding. I didn't know what to do with that feeling yet, so I held onto it.
Later that day, my regular lessons were postponed.
Wineston found me in the sitting room after lunch, hands folded behind his back, posture as immaculate as ever.
"Since our schedule has… adapted," he said carefully, "I thought today's lesson might take a different form."
A tea tray had already been prepared.
We sat across from each other, porcelain cups steaming softly between us. He poured with precision, as if even this was part of a curriculum.
"Today," he said, "I'll tell you two stories."
I waited.
"The first," he continued, "is about your father."
The room seemed to quiet itself.
Patrick Ayer had been born in Aramore.
Aramore was a city that never truly slept.
Built along the wide curve of the coast, it rose in layered terraces from the sea itself, white and sandy stone reflecting sunlight by day and lantern glow by night. The harbor was its heart, vast, restless, and perpetually crowded. Merchant ships from distant kingdoms anchored side by side, their sails marked with foreign sigils, their hulls carrying spices, metals, silks, beasts, relics, and rumors. The smell of salt mixed with incense, oil, and smoke, clinging to the air so deeply that even the inland districts carried the sea within them.
The lower districts were a maze of docks, warehouses, and markets. Cranes creaked endlessly, hauling cargo from ship to shore while dockworkers shouted in half a dozen languages. Fishmongers gutted their catch on stone slabs slick with seawater, while traders argued prices under awnings stitched from mismatched fabrics. Coins changed hands constantly, copper, silver, foreign mint, creating a ceaseless metallic murmur beneath the noise of the crowd.
Above them rose the merchant quarters.
Tall, narrow buildings leaned toward one another, balconies nearly touching across the streets. Ropes stretched overhead with drying nets, laundry, and banners bearing guild crests. The streets were crowded at all hours, packed with caravans that had reached the coast and sailors who had never intended to leave it. Taverns overflowed with life: laughter, fights, music played on instruments brought from lands beyond the map. Deals were struck over spilled ale just as often as they were in counting houses.
Further inland, the city widened and refined itself.
Here stood the estates of wealthy merchant families, stone villas with inner courtyards, fountains fed by aqueducts, and walls decorated with mosaics depicting sea monsters and their heroes, storms, and voyages long past. These families ruled Aramore not by title, but by trade. They funded fleets, controlled routes, and influenced kingdoms through coin rather than crown.
Temples dotted every district.
Despite its size, despite being rivaled only by Ayer and Eldoria itself, Aramore felt alive in a way few cities did.
It was loud. Chaotic. Excessive.
But it was also connected.
Every road led to it eventually. Every rumor passed through it. Every kingdom had a presence there, whether openly or in shadow. Information flowed as freely as goods, and it was said that if something happened anywhere on the continent, Aramore would hear of it before the capital did.
That was why its destruction shocked the world.
A city so rooted in stone, trade, and tide should not have vanished overnight.
And yet, by morning, Aramore was only silence where noise had once reigned, its harbor broken, its streets buried, its legacy reduced to memory and unanswered questions.
A coastal city that had fed the continent.
Gone.
Sand worms surfaced in the heart of the city.
No warning. No signs. Creatures that should never have been there erupted from beneath streets and homes alike, tearing through stone and flesh indiscriminately. Aramore was not deserted. It was coastal land, damp and unsuitable for such beasts. Even now, scholars could not explain it.
By dawn, the city was gone.
Some survived. Many did not.
Patrick's parents were among the dead.
He was underage. Alone. Taken in with other survivors and relocated to Eldoria, where the orphanage was administered directly by the royal family. It was there that his life shifted again.
The royal children often visited the orphanage.
At the time, there were four of them: Alaric, the first prince; Lucien, the second; Richard, the third; and Seraphina, the youngest princess. They played together, trained together, fought and reconciled like children always do. Patrick stood apart at first, quiet and observant… observant, but he was drawn in regardless.
They liked him.
One day, during a public outing, Seraphina was targeted.
The attempt was swift, planned, and would have succeeded if not for Patrick. He noticed the wrong movement at the wrong time, reacted without thinking, and put himself between the princess and her captor. Guards arrived moments later.
Patrick survived.
The king did not forget.
In time, he adopted Patrick into the royal family. Gave him the name Ayer. Treated him as a son, even if the world never fully forgot the difference between blood and bond.
Patrick enrolled in the Royal Academy soon after.
That was where Wineston stopped.
The tea had gone cold.
I stared into my cup, watching faint ripples fade into stillness. The story pressed against thoughts I hadn't known how to shape before. Loss. Survival. Choice. Not just the heroics, but what followed them. What remained after the city fell, after the rescue, after the adoption.
It explained things.
The way my father stood apart from factions. His neutrality. His silence when others boasted. Why did he value strength without cruelty, loyalty without submission?
Wineston watched me closely.
"I intended to teach this during your formal history lessons," he admitted. "Later. When you were older."
I looked up at him.
"You wanted context," I said slowly. "Not admiration."
His brows rose, just slightly.
"Yes," he said after a pause. "I did."
I thought of Aramore. Of a city erased overnight. Of a child who lost everything and still chose to stand in front of danger when it mattered.
"That kind of loss doesn't disappear," I said. "It just… shapes what comes after."
Wineston inhaled quietly.
"I didn't expect you to understand it like that," he said.
"I don't understand everything," I replied honestly. "But I understand why he doesn't take what he has for granted."
For a moment, Wineston said nothing.
Then he smiled, not his polite one, but something smaller, genuine.
"Perhaps," he said, "we will revisit these lessons sooner than planned."
I nodded, accepting the tea refill he offered.
Outside, the castle carried on as it always did, quiet halls, distant voices, the steady rhythm of a place built to endure.
And somewhere beneath it all, stories waited.
Not to be told all at once.
But when the time was right.