The Academy's upper halls were different from the main corridors.
Less grand, more intimate, but every detail was exquisite and expensive.
The walls were a sort of translucent stone, not quite glass, but lit from within by a cold, melancholy glow.
I got the sense that most of the Academy's real work happened up here, far from the bustling dormitories and the public-facing lecture halls.
And not even a second later we were inside…
The Director's office was like being dropped into the center of a paradox.
The entry was a serene library: wall-to-wall shelves, each shelf lined with books in perfect gradient, and an overstuffed armchair that looked as if it had never once been sat in.
But the office proper—beyond an arch of living silver—was a live observatory.
The floor was dark, polished stone, shot through with veins of gold and blue like a star map.
The far wall was a single seamless window, showing not the city, but the night sky in fast-forward with stars and constellations wheeling in impossible orbits.
At the center, behind a floating desk of black stone and pale light, sat Alice d'Árcenne.
I had never met her. But the instant I saw her, some part of me knew I was looking at a peer.
Not by age, but by something much rarer.
She was beautiful, yes, but not in the way a person is beautiful. She was beautiful in the way a glacier was beautiful, or a thunderstorm, or a theorem so perfect it hurt to look at.
Alice d'Árcenne's hair was a length of silken white, loosely tied and trailing down one shoulder. Her eyes were blue and bottomless, and when she looked at you it was like the air between you froze solid.
Her robes were deep blue velvet, edged in a script I could read if I squinted and let my soul go slightly out-of-focus.
She wore a mantle of starlight that shimmered as if alive, and at her breast was the sigil of House d'Árcenne—though somehow, the accent of her presence turned the whole thing into a declaration: I am not only the Head of Solaris. I am everything House d'Árcenne has ever been.
Whaaa…
She didn't offer a seat… she conjured it, a gesture so smooth it made the ornate armchair appear out of nothing, then slide into place behind me as if the office itself had planned for my arrival.
She gestured with one long finger, and I sat.
Corwin stood behind me, somewhere between a supplicant and a man about to be shot for treason.
His eyes were glued to the floor, and I could feel every muscle in his back trying to shrink him out of existence.
"Thank you for attending on such short notice," Alice d'Árcenne said.
Her voice wasn't loud, yet it resonated with a clarity that I felt in my chest.
I didn't trust myself to reply, so I nodded.
"I have reviewed the event logs from your entrance," Alice continued, eyes flicking from me to my father, "and I am told you encountered difficulty at the security arch. Can you explain?"
"The guard said it was a calibration issue. Something about the cargo interfering with the arch's baseline?" I blinked, rehearsing the script.
Her lips quirked, as if I'd produced a mildly interesting error in a proof.
"Indeed. The crate you delivered caused our highest-grade anomaly alert. The entire array was momentarily saturated. The official report blames the crystals, but—"
"My son is a good boy. He's never shown any… instability. And the crate was sealed at the estate. If there was an issue, it must be with the packing."
"Your devotion to your son is admirable, Master Corwin." Alice's smile was pure glass. "We are not here to assign blame. We are here to understand. That is the purpose of the Academy, is it not?"
The silence that followed was so absolute I could hear the sound of the constellations on the window behind her.
Alice d'Árcenne's gaze sharpened, aimed straight through my skull.
She said my name once, without question.
"Aurelian."
My blood froze.
How does she even know me?
She should not have known me—not my name, not even my existence. For the Director to address me directly, after a single anomaly at the arch, suggested a review so granular it bordered on obsession.
She'd picked me from the ground up like an insect under a lens.
"Aurelian, has your presence ever caused difficulty in magical environments before?"
"Ma'am?" I played it flat. I let a slight confusion slip into my brow, a twelve-year-old's best attempt at unguarded earnestness.
"Magical arrays, resonance events, objects behaving… unusually," she clarified, her fingers steepled so lightly it looked like they might float away.
"Anything of that sort."
I could see the trap for what it was. She wasn't asking if I'd ever caused trouble. She was asking if I'd ever slipped, if I had a history of shedding power without noticing.
She was searching for a breach in my cover story, hoping I'd betray myself by over-explaining.
I weaponized the blandest truth I could muster.
"No, Director. The estate appraisers said my mana pool's shallow. I can't even light a focus crystal. I always mess up the calibration. That's why—" I bit the sentence off, as if embarrassed.
"That's why I never thought I'd pass the preliminary tests," I finished, adding just enough self-doubt for authenticity.
However Alice d'Árcenne's left eyebrow ticked upward a millimeter, then settled.
"I see." The words were gentle, but heavy as a headstone. "How... interesting"
She let the line sit, watching to see if I'd squirm.
But Alice d'Árcenne was made of colder stuff. She wrote something in a small, glassy notebook that seemed to absorb her pen's movements rather than display them.
When she finished, she slid the pen aside and regarded me with a new kind of calculation.
"This incident will be expunged from the official record. Your family is not to be inconvenienced further. The incident will be logged as a standard recalibration error with no follow-up."
Corwin's relief was a physical thing.
He bowed so quickly he nearly lost his balance, mumbling gratitude and apologies in the same breath, but Alice barely acknowledged him.
Her gaze flicked to me, lingered, then returned to its frosted infinity.
"You are dismissed," she said.
We turned to leave, but I could feel her attention on me like a thread tied to the back of my neck.
The door had almost closed behind us when she spoke again:
"Aurelian."
For a moment I froze at the sound of my name.
Alice didn't look up. She addressed the letter on her desk, the words for me but her eyes on the future.
"In six weeks, the Academy entrance examinations will commence. Your cousins from the main branch are among the candidates. You should consider applying. It would be of great interest to the faculty to have a more representative cohort. I trust you'll inform your family of this opportunity."
She looked at me, then, with the full force of whatever engine ran behind those eyes.
"That is all. You may go."
By the time we reached the bottom of the stairs, Corwin's posture had gone from catatonic to merely shell-shocked.
He said nothing for a long time. It was only in the safety of the carriage yard that he let out a strangled laugh.
"They'll never let in a Bourne from our branch. Not really. Even if you beat all the others, they'd call it a... fluke and move the goalposts. Still, you heard the Director. You'll have to try, now."
He laughed again, but even he could hear how bitter it sounded.