She arrived three days later.
Not announced with ceremony, but not hidden either. The younger sister of the heir carried herself with the confidence of someone who had never needed to prove her place. Her curiosity was sharp, but not careless.
I watched from the training yard as she was escorted across the grounds.
She noticed me immediately.
Not because I stood out—but because she noticed everything.
Later, when the archmage gathered us beneath the open pavilion, he did not frame this as a lesson.
"This is not training," he told her. "This is awareness."
She frowned. "That sounds like training."
He smiled. "It sounds like survival."
She glanced at me then, openly this time.
"You're one of the trainees," she said. Not a question.
"Yes."
She studied me for a moment longer than etiquette required.
"You don't look like one."
That was the first crack.
As we stood there—one born into authority, one surviving within it, and one who bent authority by existing—I understood something fundamental had shifted.
By refusing to leave, I had not avoided change.
I had invited it inward.
Magic would not pull me away from the blade.
It would grow beside it.
Quietly.
Dangerously.
And under far more eyes than before.