Rule of Autumn, Week 2, Day 8

  Nora stood, staring at the head of the dinner table. It wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last. But that did not lessen the irritation she felt. She wished it were solely Eighth Day that the woman seated within the dining room showed her face. Unfortunately, over the past month, Mallorica had made herself a nuisance.

  “Don’t you have a border to survey?” Nora said, taking a seat at the opposite end of the table—as far as she could get from the woman everyone knew as her mother. Despite the words, Nora’s tone was simply tired. She’d just wrapped up training with Dame Arella in pursuit of another sword Skill.

  Mallorica narrowed her cobalt eyes as she read the paper in her hands, but did not otherwise acknowledge Nora.

  Erie and Helena were both in the dining room, and they tried to contain their wariness at the upcoming interaction. But Nora could see the false smiles on their faces and the harsh set of their shoulders. Since the arrival of the Duchess, the whole manor had been this way. Waiting for an explosion.

  As the two of them laid out dinner, Mallorica finally looked up. “When was the last time you spoke with young Lord Horus?”

  Griselda would be immensely proud at the pleasant look on Nora’s face, at the way she kept her arms far from the table, at the way, when she spoke, her tone was mild. “Which one?”

  “Younger,” Mallorica said, folding up the paper and placing it to the side of the table.

  “Sixth Day. We had a runic algorithm test—which he failed spectacularly.” The key, Nora had found, to interacting with Mallorica was to just get it over with.

  “And your score?” As always, her gaze sharpened when asking Nora a question. As if she expected Nora to cower, to fade away, to simply cease to exist at the mere hint of pressure.

  >She wouldn’t have been incorrect. That was very much what it was like when I was a child.< Eunora chimed in.

  “Fine,” Nora said, the pleasantness in her voice fading. “As always.”

  She halfway wanted to ask ‘why’, but Mallorica would ignore the question and just tell Nora whatever she felt like saying instead.

  The woman in question tapped her nails along the wood grain before pausing.

  “You will tutor young Lord Horus, then.” Mallorica declared it as if Nora was under her control—another pawn to sacrifice to get to the enemy king.

  Nora’s gaze hardened, the eyes she’d inherited from her mother matching in intensity. “That won’t be necessary.”

  Mallorica’s mouth pressed into a line. “I will decide what is necessary.”

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  Taking a bite of her food, Nora chewed slowly, ignoring the piercing gaze of the woman. Until, after a small swallow, she said, “Eddy and I already study together.”

  Nora wished it were a lie. One of the regular social events Griselda had established was a grouping of the local nobles for a ‘knowledge share,’ which mostly consisted of them all complaining about their tutors—while Nora and Uriel sat and silently wrote down random questions from the lessons and tested each other. Occasionally, one of the others would join them, though it could hardly be called often.

  “Knowledge shares are glorified play times, Eunora.”

  And there it is, Nora bemoaned internally. I can’t even go by a nickname in this house with Mallorica here.

  Quickly, Nora ate a few more bites of dinner before standing. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t sneak something from the kitchen later.

  “Your presence leaves me feeling delighted, as always, Duchess.” It took everything in her not to say, ‘Delighted to be leaving.’

  Mallorica turned back to her food and continued eating. Just as Nora was turning on her heel, her mother spoke again.

  “Sit down. I did not dismiss you.”

  Straightening her back, Nora did no such thing. “Yes, well, I have plans. This chat will have to wait.”

  And then she was gone, slipping into [Silent as a Shadow]. Nora could feel Mallorica pushing on the Skill with her aura, trying to break it, to crush it, to force Nora into existence once more. But the Level 40 advancement, the final Level of the Skill, allowed the girl to jump between shadows, not simply walk among them. She was already out the door and down the hall when her Skill finally collapsed around her.

  As she slipped into her room, Nora rushed to her bed, plopping violently down onto the plush comforter face down.

  Then she screamed. Again. As she had nearly every day for a month. Eventually, she pulled her head back from the mattress and began ranting to herself.

  “That presumptuous, condescending, absolutely abhorrent—”

  “Those are some fancy words,” Noir laughed, sliding out of her shadow and forming the shape he’d become most comfortable in—a shadow boy with curly hair. It didn’t escape Nora that it was much like what Theo had looked like when he’d passed through Fellan over a year and a half before.

  Noir hadn’t grown any friendlier to Theo in the time since Theo’s apology, but Nora had a feeling it was more about looking similar to Nora than it was about Theo at all. He even matched her height—nearly a head and a half taller than when she’d found her way to Fellan.

  With plenty of new Skills to complement her growing body.

  Nora turned to Noir, a malicious glint in her eyes. “You’re right. She deserves the worst words, the simple words, the crude words.”

  Noir climbed onto the bed next to Nora, splaying out. “Maybe we should call Cthari. She’d train the anxious energy out of you.”

  With a groan, Nora flipped over and laid next to her spirit. “You know I can’t.”

  As is, the majority of Nora’s spirits had left the manor. Not permanently, but on missions. Three were following a Knight Charlatan on the way to Juvel. Five remained with their contractors at all times. Several stuck with the 43rd contingent—Nora’s contingent—of the Dusk knighthood. One was with Theo. The rest were circling the woods around the manor, being sure that any freshly formed monsters were crushed before the Dusk was needed.

  It helped Nora sleep at night to know there wasn’t a horde of Blights encroaching on her location.

  Or, if there were, she would at least know about it in advance.

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