A week into Melissa's absence, the Blaze mansion had found its own rhythm.
Looser than when she was there. Slightly more chaotic. But theirs. Levi had stopped thinking of the guest room as temporary. Priscilla had claimed a patio corner as her reading spot. Sylvia had started treating the kitchen as a place she was entitled to enter rather than visit.
It was Monday afternoon and they were on their second lunch when the doorbell rang.
The butler appeared in the doorway. "Lady Sylvia. You have a guest."
Sylvia looked up.
Charlotte was standing behind the butler the way Charlotte stood everywhere — as if the space had been arranged for her arrival. Casual clothes rather than palace formal, which made her look younger. She looked at Sylvia's expression with mild amusement.
"Your mother asked my father. My father told me. I came." She looked at the table. "You're having second lunch."
"It's not—" Sylvia stopped. "Yes. It is."
Charlotte's attention moved to Priscilla, who had set down her fork and was watching Charlotte with calm interest — the expression she used for things she hadn't encountered before. "You're Priscilla. Sylvia's mentioned you."
"Good things, I hope," said Priscilla.
"Accurate things. In Sylvia's case, usually the same." Charlotte pulled out the end chair and sat down without being invited, because of course she did. She looked at Levi. "And you're still here."
"Still here," said Levi.
"Good." She took a piece of bread from the basket. "What are we doing after this?"
Sylvia looked at the ceiling briefly. "Training. You can watch."
"Obviously," said Charlotte.
✦ ✦ ✦
The training field had the worn familiarity of somewhere that had absorbed work. Footprint patterns in the grass from their circuits. Priscilla's row of heavy stones. Sylvia's chalk sprint markers, half-faded.
Charlotte sat on the patio wall and watched. Priscilla took her corner. Levi and Sylvia stood in the field.
"Six forty and eight thirty yesterday," Sylvia said.
"Today we beat them."
They transformed.
The convergence of heat and static electricity and silver light made the air above the grass briefly interesting. Charlotte, on the patio wall, went very still. Not the stillness of someone unimpressed — the other kind.
They ran circuits, worked combat forms, pushed through resistance drills — all of it in the 3rd form, the Flux burning at its upper ceiling. Levi tracked the cost the way you track a fuel gauge: steadily, without alarm, noting where the needle was.
At six minutes fifty, his form gave out. He sat down immediately. Ten seconds better than yesterday.
Sylvia lasted eight minutes forty. She arrived at a kneel and converted it into sitting with the dignity of someone who had planned it that way.
"Better," they said, at the same time.
Priscilla held her 3rd form for eleven and a half minutes — drifting two feet off the ground, awareness extending in silent rings through the estate — before descending and opening her eyes. Small objects near her had migrated slightly during the session without her appearing to notice.
Charlotte had been very quiet through all of it.
"You three are actually serious about this," she said.
"Did you think we weren't?" Sylvia asked.
"I thought you were serious. I didn't know what serious looked like when all three of you were doing it simultaneously." Charlotte looked at the field — the worn grass, the chalk marks, the evidence of weeks of daily work. "The electricity and the fire. When you both activate at once — what does that feel like from inside?"
Levi considered it. "Like there's no distance between what you want and what happens. The gap closes."
Charlotte held that for a moment. Then: "You train every day."
"Every day," said Sylvia. "You have an instructor at the palace."
"Yes."
"What does he train you on?"
Charlotte was quiet for a beat — not evasive, just considering. "My ability. In case something happens." She said it with the matter-of-fact quality of someone who had already thought this through and arrived at a conclusion. "Royalty is a target. Better to have options."
"What is your ability?" Priscilla asked.
Charlotte looked at her — brief, not unkind. "I'll show you sometime. Not today."
Priscilla nodded easily. Sylvia, who was constitutionally less comfortable with open questions, opened her mouth. Levi caught her eye. She closed it.
Charlotte noticed. She looked at Levi with something warmer than her usual assessment. "You're learning."
"I've been paying attention," said Levi.
—
The second session started after recovery. Priscilla had moved to what she was calling spell architecture — sitting still, thinking hard, occasionally causing nearby objects to behave in ways that obeyed physics in unusual order. Charlotte watched from various positions, restless in the way of someone not used to being still who had decided to make an exception.
At one point she sat next to Levi while he recovered.
"The trial is in two weeks," she said.
"Yes."
"Ready?"
"Not yet. That's what two weeks is for."
She was quiet for a moment. Then: "My father trained under your mother briefly. Before she became legendary class." She said it without setup, the way Charlotte said things when she'd decided to say them. "He talks about her sometimes. He said she had a quality of certainty — not arrogance. She knew what she was doing and why she was doing it, and that combination was very difficult to argue with."
Levi looked at the training field. Sylvia was already into her second circuit, fire flickering at the edges of her hair. "Yeah," he said. "That sounds right."
"You have some of that," Charlotte said. "For what it's worth."
He looked at her. She held his gaze without ceremony, which was the Charlotte way, then turned back to the field.
"Thank you," he said.
Charlotte nodded once.
They watched Sylvia train in silence, and it was the comfortable kind.
✦ ✦ ✦
Later, after the second session wound down and they were cooling off on the patio, Priscilla tried again.
"The ability," she said, to Charlotte. "You said sometime."
"I did."
"Is sometime soon?"
Charlotte looked at the garden, then back at Priscilla. Something moved in her expression — the internal calculation of someone deciding how much to show and when. "When I think you're ready to see it," she said. "It tends to have an effect on people the first time."
"What kind of effect?" Levi asked.
Charlotte considered him. "The kind that changes how you see me." A pause. "I prefer to be known a little before that happens."
She said it without drama. Just fact, delivered with the same matter-of-fact quality she used for everything.
Nobody pushed further. But the question sat in the air above the patio long after the conversation moved on — what ability requires being known first? What could Charlotte possibly have that changed how people saw her?
Levi filed it where he filed things he intended to return to.
Which, lately, was getting quite full.