The sun was most of the way down by the time the royal party arrived, the sky behind the Blaze estate a deep amber that turned the white stone of the mansion's exterior briefly gold. Levi stood in the entrance with Melissa and Sylvia and watched a car more deliberate than any car he'd seen outside of a military convoy pull through the gate and come to a stop on the forecourt.
A butler opened the rear door.
Queen Abigail of Olympia stepped out first — tall, composed, with the particular quality of ease that came from having spent a lifetime in rooms where everyone was watching. She had Sylvia's colouring and Melissa's posture, and she moved up the red carpet toward them with the unhurried certainty of someone who had never needed to hurry in her life.
Behind her came Charlotte.
Levi's first impression was that she was about their age — seventeen, maybe eighteen — and that she carried herself with the specific confidence of someone who had been told since childhood that rooms adjusted to her rather than the other way around. She was dressed well, moved well, and was currently wearing an expression of polite assessment that she aimed at the three of them with the methodical quality of someone ticking off a checklist.
Beside him, Sylvia had gone very still in the way that calm people go still when they are actively choosing to be calm.
"Queen Abigail," Melissa said, with warmth and a slight inclination of her head. "Welcome to the Blaze Mansion. It's an honour to have you and Princess Charlotte join us this evening."
"Please," said Abigail, reaching forward to take Melissa's hands. "Enough of that. We're family." She smiled — genuine, unperformative — and turned to Sylvia. "Sylvie. You look well."
"Thank you, Aunt Abigail," said Sylvia.
Charlotte, beside her mother, looked at Sylvia. "Sylvia," she said. Her tone was entirely neutral, which somehow made it worse.
"Charlotte," Sylvia said, in exactly the same tone.
Abigail appeared to file this under known quantities and moved on. Melissa turned to Levi. "This is Levi. Tonight's guest of honour."
Charlotte looked at him. The assessment was brief and direct — not unfriendly, exactly, but without particular warmth. "This is who the banquet's for?" She tilted her head slightly. "I was expecting someone more — I don't know. Impressive-looking."
Levi looked at her. He thought about responding. He decided, after a moment's consideration, that he was genuinely too tired from the entrance exam and too full of anticipatory hunger for Chef Jeff's feast to have this particular argument tonight. "Hello," he said instead.
Charlotte blinked. This was clearly not the response she'd been expecting.
Sylvia, beside him, had gone a different kind of still.
"Charlotte," said Abigail, with the measured tone of someone who had said this name in this tone many times and had not yet run out of patience, but was aware of the supply. She put a hand briefly on her daughter's shoulder — not a gesture of comfort but of redirection — and turned to Melissa. "Shall we go in?"
"Absolutely," said Melissa, with the bright expression of someone choosing optimism as a strategy.
As they moved toward the entrance, Sylvia appeared at Levi's shoulder. "I apologise in advance," she said, quietly, "for whatever she does next."
"She's not that bad," said Levi.
Sylvia looked at him. "You've known her for forty seconds."
"Forty instructive seconds."
✦ ✦ ✦
Chef Jeff had, as promised, done something that remembered it had an occasion.
The banquet table at its full length was a different object from the dining table Levi had been eating at for the past week — wider, longer, set with the kind of care that turned a meal into a statement. Candles down the centre. The good dishes, which Levi gathered were distinct from the everyday dishes by the way the butler carried them. Platters of food appearing from the kitchen in a sequence that suggested planning rather than abundance for its own sake.
Melissa had invited the household staff to join them — the maids, the butler, Chef Jeff himself, who accepted with the gracious modesty of someone who knew the food was good and didn't need to say so. The table filled. The candles did their work. Something about sixteen people around a table in the warmth of an evening shifted the atmosphere from celebration into something simpler and better — just people, eating well, talking.
Levi ate. He talked when talked to and listened when he wasn't, and let the evening move around him the way a current moves around something that has learned to stop fighting it. He watched Charlotte across the table — she was composed in the formal setting in a way she hadn't been on the forecourt, easier in her conversation with Abigail and Melissa, laughing once at something Chef Jeff said with a laugh that was entirely unguarded.
Different, he noted. Or rather: more.
Sylvia, beside him, was focused on the food with the dedication of someone who had been promised a feast and intended to take the promise seriously.
"You're staring," she said, without looking up.
"I'm observing," said Levi.
"At Charlotte."
"At the table in general."
Sylvia glanced sideways at him, briefly — something that wasn't quite an expression, just a quality of attention that lasted half a second before she returned to her plate. "She's different when she's not trying to get a reaction," she said. "I know that. It doesn't make the trying less annoying."
"Fair," said Levi.
They ate. The candles burned down a quarter of an inch. Somewhere down the table, Abigail said something that made Melissa laugh properly — the full version, the one that surprised her — and the sound of it filled the room briefly and then settled.
It was, Levi thought, a good evening. A genuinely good evening, uncomplicated and warm, and he let himself be in it without the immediate reflex of thinking about what came after.
✦ ✦ ✦
After dinner, Melissa and Abigail migrated to the lounge with the ease of people who had established territories over many years and knew exactly where they were comfortable. The three teenagers ended up on the patio by the pool, in the way that teenagers at adult dinners always end up somewhere adjacent to the adults but distinct from them.
The night was warm. The garden behind the pool was dark beyond the reach of the patio lights, and somewhere in it something small was making noise at intervals. Sylvia and Levi sat at the pool's edge with their feet in the water. Charlotte arranged herself on one of the pool chairs with the posture of someone who had learned early that how you sit is a form of communication.
For a while, nobody said anything. The water made small sounds.
"So," said Charlotte. "You're from Velvetia."
"Yes," said Levi.
Charlotte considered this. The assessment in her expression was different from the one on the forecourt — less pointed, more genuinely curious. "I heard about what happened there. I'm sorry."
"Thank you," said Levi.
She nodded, once, and left it alone — which was, Levi noted, the correct response, and not the one he'd expected from her.
The silence that followed was comfortable enough. Then Charlotte looked at Sylvia. "You have a hot temper," she said, conversationally.
"I have a normal temper," Sylvia said. "You provoke me."
"I do," Charlotte agreed.
Sylvia turned to look at her. "You're admitting it."
"It's not a secret." Charlotte studied the surface of the pool. "You react. Most people at court don't react anymore — they've learned not to. It's exhausting, honestly. Everything very controlled and considered and nobody actually saying what they mean." She paused. "You always say what you mean, which is either admirable or alarming depending on the situation, but at least it's real."
Sylvia was quiet for a moment. "So you provoke me because I react."
"I provoke you because your reactions are genuine. Yes." Charlotte glanced at Levi. "I tried the same thing with you on the forecourt. You didn't bite."
"I was hungry," said Levi.
Charlotte let out a short sound that was almost a laugh. "Fair enough."
Sylvia was still processing. "That is genuinely one of the strangest things anyone has ever said to me, and I want you to know that I don't entirely forgive you for it."
"I know," said Charlotte. "I'm not asking you to." She said it without apology but also without deflection — just the straightforward acknowledgment of someone who had thought about this and arrived at honesty rather than performance. "I'm probably difficult. I've been told that."
"Frequently, I imagine," said Sylvia.
"By my mother, yes." The almost-laugh again. "She has significant experience with the subject."
Levi watched the pool surface. "You're not difficult," he said. "You're just misunderstood. Which isn't the same thing."
Charlotte looked at him. The assessment was different again — less cataloguing, more considering. "You're going to be irritating to argue with, aren't you," she said. "You don't get defensive. You just — observe things."
"I'm hungry and I went over a waterfall recently," said Levi. "I've recalibrated my priorities."
Charlotte looked at him for another moment. Then she looked at Sylvia. Something in her expression had shifted — not warmer exactly, but more present. Less performed.
"He's interesting," she said.
"Don't tell him that," said Sylvia. "He'll just observe it."
✦ ✦ ✦
It was Charlotte who suggested it, which was either inevitable or suspicious depending on how well you'd been paying attention.
"You're both in the top class," she said, looking between Levi and Sylvia with the expression of someone who had just identified an interesting variable. "You've both been training. I want to know which of you is actually better."
"That's not really how it—" Sylvia started.
"Levi said he's faster than you."
Sylvia turned to Levi. "You said that?"
"I said you're stronger. And that you're probably not faster than me." He paused. "Those are different statements."
"Well," said Sylvia.
"Well," said Charlotte.
Twenty minutes later they were in the training field, changed into gear, the garden around them dark and the patio lights doing their best from a distance. Charlotte had assumed the role of referee with the serene authority of someone who had always intended this outcome. Melissa and Abigail had appeared on the upstairs balcony, apparently drawn by the activity, and were watching from above with wine glasses and the relaxed interest of people who had decided to let this play out.
"Three rounds," Charlotte announced. "Speed, strength, combat. Majority wins. Questions?"
"No telestriding in the speed round," said Sylvia.
Charlotte looked at Levi. "Can you do that?"
"Technically."
"Then no. Fair enough." Charlotte looked between them. "Speed round: race to the palace, high-five the butler at the gate, race back. First one across this line wins." She drew a line in the grass with her heel. "On your marks."
—
They hit the fence simultaneously and went over it in a way that made Melissa, on the balcony above, pause mid-sip.
The city of Olympus at night was a different animal from the day — the broad streets quieter but not empty, lanterns lit along the main roads, the palace visible in the distance as a lit cluster of towers above the roofline. Levi ran through it in his 1st Form, Flux-enhanced and moving fast, the city becoming a blur of light and shadow on either side.
Sylvia was beside him. Slightly behind, but not by much — she ran with her enhancement ability threading through her legs, the Flux expressing itself differently from his, less electrical charge and more pure physical augmentation. He could feel the difference in the way the air moved between them.
He was holding back. Not significantly — just enough to keep the gap narrow without closing it, curious to see what she had.
The palace gate appeared. The butler was there, bewildered but present, and they each slapped his hand in quick succession — Levi first, Sylvia a half-step behind — and turned back.
The return leg was when Sylvia changed.
Levi noticed it first as a sound — a sharp exhalation of air, the particular displacement of something accelerating very quickly — and then she was past him. Not incrementally, not a gradual closing of the gap. Past him, in a single committed burst, fire erupting from her hands and feet in controlled jets that she angled like a rudder, her body horizontal, her trajectory aimed directly at the finish line.
She hit the flower garden instead.
The crash was thorough. A significant portion of what had been an impressive arrangement of cultivated flowers became significantly less impressive. Sylvia emerged from the wreckage at a diagonal, grass-stained and slightly singed, with the expression of someone doing arithmetic.
"Did I win?" she asked.
"By about four metres," said Charlotte, who was delighted. "One-nil."
On the balcony, Melissa looked at the flower garden. She took a sip of wine. "I'm going to have to explain this to the gardener," she said, to no one in particular.
—
The arm wrestling took place at the patio table, which was solid enough and at the right height. Sylvia rolled up her sleeve and ran enhancement energy through her right arm — the muscle definition shifting visibly as the Flux augmented it, her forearm becoming something that looked like it belonged on a person twice her size.
Levi looked at it.
"You can use your ability too," said Charlotte.
"I know," said Levi. He sat down across from Sylvia and clasped her hand. The grip was immediately difficult — he could feel the enhanced strength in the pressure of her fingers, a controlled force that was significantly beyond what the arm wrestling itself required. She was making a point.
"Three," said Charlotte. "Two. One. Go."
Sylvia moved immediately, driving his arm toward the table with the smooth application of augmented force. He stopped it at thirty degrees, holding the line through sheer Flux reinforcement in his arm and shoulder, feeling the strain in his elbow, the table edge pressing into his forearm.
She increased the pressure. He held.
It was, for about ten seconds, a static contest — two Flux abilities in direct opposition, neither of them particularly comfortable, both of them aware that whoever blinked first was going to lose quickly. Levi breathed through it. He wasn't going to win this by matching her strength directly — her enhancement ability was specifically built for exactly this application, and his electricity wasn't.
He shifted his grip angle by three degrees.
It was a technique from his mother's training notes — a manual she'd compiled over years of competitive sparring, full of observations about leverage and joint mechanics that she'd made him read and reread until he could recite the relevant sections without thinking. The principle was simple: at the right angle, the mechanical advantage shifts regardless of absolute strength. The wrist rotation transferred the load from her optimised forearm to her shoulder, which was enhanced but not specifically prepared.
He felt the resistance change.
He drove his arm down, and Sylvia's hand hit the table.
The silence lasted about two seconds.
"How," said Sylvia.
"Technique," said Levi. "Strength is about force. Arm wrestling is about angles."
Charlotte was writing something in a small notebook she had produced from somewhere. "One all," she said. "Combat round decides it."
Melissa, on the balcony, had lowered her wine glass. "I need to train them again," she said quietly, to Abigail.
"Clearly," said Abigail.
—
The combat round started without magic — a mutual, unspoken agreement that they'd see what the baseline was before escalating.
They'd trained together as children, which meant they knew each other's habits in the specific way that creates both advantage and blindspot. Sylvia knew Levi tended to set up combinations with a feint to the left. Levi knew Sylvia's footwork favoured a slight weight shift before she committed to a right hook. They'd spent years drilling these things out of their muscle memory and then years apart developing new habits, and the first thirty seconds of the fight was both of them quietly revising their models.
The exchanges were clean. They moved well — better than well — and Charlotte, keeping score at the edge of the field, had the expression of someone watching something worth watching. Melissa above had abandoned the pretence of casual observation and was leaning forward on the balcony rail.
"Two-nil, Sylvia," Charlotte called, as Sylvia's enhanced speed brought her inside Levi's guard for two quick strikes he didn't fully see coming.
He activated the 1st Form. The Flux spread through him in a wave — warmth becoming charge becoming the particular sharpened state of Electrified — and the world came into the slightly finer focus that the Form always brought. He moved through Sylvia's next sequence and found two openings.
"Two-two."
The fight found its rhythm after that — a genuine rhythm, the kind that only happens between people who are well-matched and both know it. Sylvia added fire to her fists and the strikes that landed hit harder; he shifted to his 2nd Form and the speed differential opened up enough to give him angles she couldn't fully cover. They traded blows with the focused intensity of people who were competing but also, underneath the competition, deeply curious about what the other had become.
"Nine-nine," Charlotte said. Her voice had gone quieter — the announcer energy replaced by something more genuine, absorbed.
They faced each other across three metres of grass, both of them breathing hard. The score was tied. One blow each to finish it.
Levi felt the Flux surge in his right fist — static electricity gathering at his knuckles, dense and crackling, the kind of charge that was right on the edge of becoming something more. Across from him, Sylvia's fist was wrapped in fire that had moved from orange into a deeper, more serious register. Not decorative. Actual.
They moved at the same time.
And Melissa came off the balcony.
She covered the distance from the balcony to the training field in approximately no time at all, which was a reminder, in case anyone needed it, of why she was legendary class. She caught both fists simultaneously — Levi's crackling right and Sylvia's burning left — and held them, steady, absorbing the impact through her own Flux with the calm competence of someone defusing something that didn't know it was being defused.
The field went quiet.
"That's enough," Melissa said.
From somewhere behind her, Charlotte made a sound of profound disappointment.
"Aunt Melissa—"
"Charlotte." Melissa's voice didn't change register, but Charlotte stopped.
Melissa released their hands. She looked at Levi, then Sylvia, then back. Her expression wasn't anger — it was something more complicated and more important. The look of someone who had just seen something that required re-evaluation.
"Your forms are cleaner than they were three years ago," she said. "Both of you. The instincts, the transitions, the way you read each other — that's not just training, that's real development." She paused. "And that final attack would have put both of you in the recovery ward for a week, minimum, so don't look at me like that."
Sylvia closed her mouth.
"No winner," Melissa said. "That's the result. Argue with it later if you want — you've got three months before the trial and I imagine you'll have the conversation again then."
"She's right," Levi said, to Sylvia.
Sylvia looked at him. Her expression was complicated — competitive frustration and genuine satisfaction existing in the same space, which was the only honest result of a fight that close. "You're faster," she said, finally. "I'll give you that."
"You're stronger," he said. "And your hybrid transitions are better than I expected."
"Better than you expected," she repeated, in a tone that suggested this wasn't quite the compliment he thought it was.
"Better than anyone your age should be," he said. "That's what I meant."
She considered this. "Fine," she said. "That's acceptable."
Charlotte, who had been listening to this exchange with her notebook pressed to her chest and an expression that had moved through disappointment into something warmer, said: "This is the most interesting evening I've had in months."
✦ ✦ ✦
Chef Jeff's dessert was, if anything, more considered than the main course — individual portions of something cold and dark and complex that Levi couldn't have named but consumed with complete attention. The dining room had the particular atmosphere of the end of a good evening: candles burned low, conversation slower and easier, the formality of the beginning fully dissolved.
Levi sat back in his chair and looked at the table. Melissa and Abigail across from each other, still talking — quietly now, with the ease of two people who had known each other long enough that silence and conversation were equally comfortable. Sylvia beside him, working through her dessert with systematic pleasure. Charlotte across the table, engaged in something that wasn't quite an argument with the butler about the proper serving temperature of the dessert wine, which she appeared to be winning.
He thought about the fight. About the way Sylvia had moved, the hybrid ability shifting between fire and enhancement in the same combination with a fluency that shouldn't have been possible at seventeen. About the electric charge in his own fist, right at the end — the Flux had been reaching for something in that moment, something just beyond what he'd been using, and he'd felt it the same way you feel the edge of a thought you can't quite articulate.
He filed it. There was time.
Charlotte caught him looking at nothing and raised an eyebrow. "What are you thinking about?"
"The fight," he said.
"Who won?"
"Nobody. That's the interesting part."
Charlotte looked at him for a moment, then at Sylvia, then back. Something in her expression settled into a different configuration — less the evaluating look from the forecourt and more the look of someone who had found the evening worthwhile.
"Same time next month?" she said.
"Ask the gardener first," said Levi.
Charlotte laughed — properly this time, the unguarded version — and the sound of it joined the rest of the evening: the candles, the quiet conversation, the settled warmth of a house that had been full of people and was beginning to remember itself.
It was late by the time the royal party left. Levi stood in the entrance with Melissa and Sylvia and watched the car pull away down the drive, Charlotte's face briefly visible through the rear window — not the forecourt expression, something more open than that.
Sylvia stood beside him. "She's still exhausting," she said.
"Yes," said Levi.
"But less than I expected."
"Yes."
Sylvia glanced at him. "You're going to say you told me so."
"I wasn't going to. But I could."
She made a sound that was not quite a laugh but was adjacent to one, and went inside. Levi stayed a moment longer in the cooling air of the evening, looking at the drive where the car had been, the garden quiet and the stars above the estate doing what they always did, indifferent and reliable.
He went inside. The house was warm.