By the time classes ended, Amelia's earlier irritation had faded.
The problem was that nothing had replaced it.
Soren had already gone.
He had told her at lunch, and Amelia had known he would leave when he said he would.
He was not the sort to forget things like that, and tutoring with Lilliana was hardly unusual by now, yet knowing it in advance did nothing to make the fact less unpleasant once it happened.
She had watched him go anyway.
Only for a few seconds.
Not long enough for anyone else to notice, probably, but long enough for the corridor to feel wrong once his back disappeared around the corner.
Ordinarily, free time did not trouble her.
If lessons were over and no immediate obligation remained, she could do anything.
She could head to the training grounds and find someone willing to spar until one of them lost patience.
She could roam the academy without purpose.
She could sleep.
She could eat.
She could sit somewhere quiet and let the day pass around her without asking anything of it.
Usually that was enough.
Today, none of it sounded worth the effort.
The training grounds would still be there, but the thought of fighting with some overeager student felt dull.
Sleep, which so often appealed to her, seemed strangely empty when there was nobody to lean against first, nobody beside her, nobody whose presence turned stillness into something warm rather than merely quiet.
Even wandering felt pointless.
She could do it, but she would only be moving until the time passed.
There was no real desire in it.
Amelia stood in the corridor for a moment after the last of the crowd thinned, doing nothing at all.
Had Soren still been there, she would have followed without thought.
It would not have mattered where he was going.
Cafeteria, courtyard, library, city, nowhere interesting at all, any destination would have been enough simply because it was his.
In his absence, every option seemed to lose shape.
That realisation did not sit with her long enough to become embarrassment.
It simply existed.
With no better idea, she turned and began walking back toward the dorms.
The walkways were quieter at this hour, though not empty.
Students stepped aside when they saw her coming, some out of caution, some out of habit, a few because they were too slow to look away after stealing a glance.
Amelia paid none of them any mind.
Her feet carried her onward on instinct, her thoughts moving in the slow, directionless way they sometimes did when she had nothing in particular to focus on.
She reached her room earlier than usual.
The space inside was still, cool, exactly as she had left it that morning.
Nothing had been moved.
The bed had been made, the curtains adjusted, the faint scent of recently changed linens lingering in the air.
And on the desk, placed neatly where she could not possibly miss it, lay a letter.
Amelia stopped in the doorway.
For a moment she only looked.
Then her expression changed in a way it almost never did for anyone else.
Not dramatically, not with the easy transparency other people wore, but enough that there could be no mistaking it.
Her eyes widened a fraction, her ears lifted, and something tight and immediate moved through her face, anxiety first, then recognition, then something softer beneath both.
She crossed the room at once.
The seal was unmistakable, pressed in deep gold wax with the crest of the royal house of Einhardt.
She knew it before she was close enough to touch it.
Her fingers closed around the letter almost too fast, and when she broke the wax, the motion was less careful than it should have been, betraying a haste she would not have shown over anything else.
She unfolded the parchment.
Her eyes scanned the opening lines quickly at first, her breathing a little too shallow, shoulders faintly stiff with the old, familiar anticipation that always came with letters from home.
Not dread, not exactly, but never calm either.
Not when the sender was her father.
Then, line by line, some of that tension eased.
It was a familiar letter.
Not identical to the others, never that, but close enough in shape that she knew the rhythm of it almost at once.
[To Amelia,
I trust the academy has not yet found a way to bore you to death, though if it has, I expect the fault lies with the instructors rather than with you.
Your mother asks after your health daily. She also insists I remind you that meat alone does not constitute a complete diet, no matter how confidently you claim otherwise. I have fulfilled my duty in writing this sentence and will consider the matter discharged.
I am told your studies proceed without incident. Good. You have never lacked for strength, so I concern myself less with whether you can endure and more with whether the fools around you are wise enough not to become a nuisance.
Write and tell us how you are faring when you have the patience. Your mother complains that your replies are too short. I have informed her that brevity is preferable to silence, though privately I admit I would welcome more than two lines from my youngest daughter.]
Amelia skimmed the middle on instinct, not because she disliked it, but because she had read too many letters like this before.
Her father's words were always some mix of command, concern, habit, and restrained fondness trying not to look too much like fondness.
The shape of it was familiar enough that she could feel herself relaxing as she read, a faint warmth gathering under her ribs despite the repetition.
At one line, the corner of her mouth lifted almost imperceptibly.
At another, her shoulders loosened.
It was mostly the same, the same reminders, the same sideways worry disguised as practicality, the same refusal to say directly what he plainly meant.
Yet that sameness carried its own comfort.
It was predictable in the way only family could be.
Then her gaze reached the lower portion of the page, where the handwriting grew a touch less measured.
There, beneath the final line, was a short addition.
[P.S. I have also heard a piece of news more interesting than your lessons.
It seems you have made a friend.
Do not expect me to pretend this is a small matter. It is not. Your mother was so pleased that she had the kitchen prepare dessert before the messenger had even finished speaking, and I will admit I found myself asking for the messenger to read twice to ensure I had heard it correctly.
If the opportunity presents itself during the break, bring them home.
I would like to meet the person who has earned my daughter's regard, and your mother, as you may imagine, is even less inclined than I am to let such a matter pass unexamined.
No discourtesy will be shown to one you choose.
Take care of yourself
Your father]
Amelia read that section once.
Then again.
Her grip tightened around the paper.
The first feeling was not fear.
It was something brighter and softer than that, a brief flicker of happiness that escaped before she could stop it.
Her father had believed her.
Her mother had been happy at the news.
They cared.
They had taken it seriously because it was news about her friend, because to them the fact that Amelia had chosen someone at all mattered enough to disturb the whole palace for a day.
That part made her chest feel strangely light.
The problem was everything that followed it.
— Bring them home.
Amelia stared at the words.
Then at the line beneath.
— No discourtesy will be shown to one you choose.
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
That was not reassuring.
It should have been.
For most people, perhaps it would have been.
For Amelia, who had known her father her entire life and had also watched what happened whenever someone became important enough to be brought before the family, it had the opposite effect.
She lowered the letter by a fraction.
"Papa wants to meet Soren," she said aloud, voice quiet and flat with disbelief.
The room, unhelpfully, offered no answer.
Amelia looked back down at the page as if the words might rearrange themselves into something less dangerous if she glared at them long enough.
They did not.
This would not be the first time her father had asked for someone to be brought home.
He had asked her older siblings to do it before, sometimes with lovers, sometimes with companions, once with a person who had supposedly only been a political acquaintance and had still left looking as though they had survived an interrogation.
It always followed the same pattern in the end.
Formal greetings.
Polite smiles.
Questions that sounded harmless until they became too sharp to answer comfortably.
Standards presented as reason.
Concern dressed in royal clothing until the person standing under it realised too late how heavy it was.
Eventually, they all retreated.
Some came back less often.
Some not at all.
Amelia's ears dipped.
Soren was not like those people.
He was not a suitor.
He was not trying to gain anything.
He was simply her friend.
Her stomach tightened.
What if he decided Soren was irresponsible?
What if he decided Soren wasn't good enough?
Amelia sat down on the edge of the bed with the letter still open in her hands, posture straight with tension.
She read the lines again, then folded the page, unfolded it, and read them once more as though repetition might produce a loophole.
There was none.
— If the opportunity presents itself during the break, bring them home.
It sounded like a request.
It was not.
Amelia knew her father well enough to tell the difference.
She pressed the folded letter lightly against her knee and stared into space.
Part of her still felt faintly happy; she couldn't help that.
Her mother and father caring so much over something as simple, and not simple, as her having a friend tugged at a place in her she rarely let anyone see.
The rest of her felt increasingly certain that this was going to become a problem.
Amelia looked down at the letter one last time.
'I hope nothing happens…'
By the time she finally folded the letter properly and set it beside her, the conclusion had already settled into place, unwelcome and immovable.
A future meeting between the king of Einhardt and Soren Arden had now been decided.
Whether Soren wanted it or not, it was becoming inevitable.
————「❤︎」————