Chapter 53: Here To See You

We left Ethan Meuskate at his own doorstep, propped against the frame where his family would find him soon enough, and made our way home together without a word between us.

Sera walked half a step ahead the whole way, the way she always did when she didn’t want to talk about what we had just done, and neither of us broke the silence until we were both through the garden gate, past the roses that never seemed to know what season it was.

She peeled off toward her wing of the house with a muttered goodnight, and I went the other way, up to my own room.

I don’t remember getting into bed. I remember the weight of the day settling into my shoulders the moment the door clicked shut, and then nothing at all until morning found me.

When I woke, the light through the curtains had that pale, honest quality that only exists in the hour right after dawn, before the city has had the chance to stir the air into something dirtier.

I lay there for a moment, staring at the ceiling, running the previous night back through my head the way you would check a wound to see if it still hurt. It didn’t. That was either a good sign or a very bad one, and I decided not to think too hard about which.

Ordinarily, I take my breakfast alone. It’s easier that way, fewer questions, fewer expectant faces waiting for me to be someone I’m not entirely sure I am some mornings.

But today, for reasons I couldn’t fully explain even to myself, I found my feet carrying me toward the family dining room instead of the small table by my study window where I usually ate in blessed silence.

Father was already seated when I came in, a newspaper folded precisely beside his plate, untouched, the way he always left it until he had finished eating, as if reading while eating were some kind of moral failing.

Mother sat across from him with a cup of tea cradled in both hands, steam curling up past her face, and Sera was already at her usual seat, doing her best to look like she hadn’t been caught sneaking sugar into her porridge when I walked in.

"You’re up early for once," Father said, glancing at me over the edge of the newspaper before setting it aside entirely.

"Did you sleep well?" Mother asked, her tone carrying the same quiet warmth it always did.

"Well enough," I said, taking my usual seat, which felt strange to occupy at this hour.

A footman came around with the first tray, and the smell of it hit me before I’d even registered what it was: kippers, done the way our new cook did them, smoked and glistening faintly with butter, laid beside a mound of soft scrambled eggs that steamed gently in the cool morning air.

Toast sat stacked in a silver rack, the kind that keeps the slices upright and slowly turns them cold and leathery by the time anyone actually eats them, though nobody in this house had ever complained about it.

Beside that sat a dish of grilled kidneys that I never touched and my father always finished, a bowl of stewed fruit glistening dark red, and a pot of chocolate that Sera had clearly already gotten into, judging by the faint brown ring at the corner of her mouth that she hadn’t quite managed to wipe away.

"You’ve got something on your face," I told her, and Sera went scarlet and scrubbed at it with her napkin while Mother laughed into her tea.

It was strange, looking at her across the table like this, all sugar and embarrassment, when a few hours ago she’d been the one holding the blade steady over a screaming man.

I supposed we were both good at wearing whatever face the room needed.

I spooned some of the eggs onto my plate and let the conversation drift where it wanted to.

Father mentioned, without much enthusiasm, that the roads in Oakland were being repaved, a fact that seemed to matter to exactly no one at the table but him.

Mother asked whether I had been a noble properly in the academy. The honest answer was no. I told her yes anyway, because some lies are simply kinder than the truth, and she smiled like she believed me, because some kindnesses can go both ways.

For a while, sitting there with the smell of kippers and chocolate and warm toast filling the room, none of it seemed real.

Not the circle drawn in blood, not the red candles burning like something starving, not the sound a man makes when he screams and nothing comes out.

It felt, for the length of one unremarkable breakfast, like I really was just somebody’s son, sitting at a table that had been set the same way every morning of my life.

Then the bell at the front gate rang.

It wasn’t loud, not really, just a single clean note that carried through the house the way bells do when the walls are old enough to remember every sound they’ve ever held.

But something in it made Sera stop mid-sentence, her spoon hovering over her bowl.

Her eyes flicked to me for just a fraction of a second, and I knew she was thinking exactly what I was thinking, though neither of us could have said it out loud at that table.

Mr. Rowan set down the tray he had been carrying and left without a word, his footsteps unhurried and precise as they always were, fading down the hall toward the front of the house.

Nobody at the table spoke while he was gone.

Mother’s hands went still around her teacup.

Sera looked at me, then at Father, then back at her porridge, as if she had decided the safest place to keep her eyes was somewhere that couldn’t ask her any questions.

A minute passed. Maybe two.

Then Mr. Rowan’s footsteps returned, a touch quicker than they had left, and he stepped back into the dining room with his usual composure.

He looked at me, and only me.

"The Twilight Order is here to see you, my Lord."