I slept like I'd been dropped from a height. When the door flew open, I jerked upright so fast the room swam.
Sunlight slanted in low and cruel. A figure filled the frame, silver hair catching it first, then the compact line of her shoulders. For one stupid second I thought I'd slept through the bell.
"Lune?" My voice scraped. I was already half out of the blankets, one leg in my trousers, heart hammering the same rhythm as yesterday's disaster. "How late am I? Did I miss breakfast?"
"Relax." She didn't step in; she owned the threshold, arms folded. "The first bell hasn't rung. I'm here so you learn the tie properly. I'm not dragging myself to your room every morning like a nursemaid."
Air rushed out of me. I sagged onto the edge of the mattress, then remembered I wasn't dressed, and grabbed for my shirt like it might shield me.
"You scared me," I said.
She dipped her chin once. Her gaze flicked over me, caught, and she turned so fast it could have been practised: a sharp pivot, then she sat on the foot of my bed, back to me, facing the corridor as if the stone outside were fascinating.
"Dress," she said. "Quickly."
The coldness was abrupt. I looked over and saw the tips of her ears, pink against silver.
If the pink meant embarrassment, she would hate that I had seen it. If it meant anger, I was already late to the lesson. I decided not to guess out loud. In this house, other people's feelings were intelligence you gathered quietly, not something you named unless you had rank to spare.
I pulled on the rest, looped the unfinished tie around my neck, and cleared my throat. "Ready."
She stood across from me, and without ceremony slipped the silk free. The brush of her knuckles against my collar was brief.
"Watch," she said.
She lifted the tie to her own throat, fabric dark against her skin, and worked slowly this time: loop, tuck, tension, adjust. The bow seated itself neat as a seal on a letter. She held my eyes for a moment until I nodded, then undid it and held the length out between both hands.
"Your turn."
I tried. I trapped a finger, pulled the wrong tail through, watched the whole thing slither apart in the mirror like something alive refusing to obey.
"I don't know where I'm going wrong," I muttered. My reflection looked honestly offended on my behalf.
Lune exhaled. "Move."
She climbed onto the bed behind me. The frame creaked. Then her knees brushed the back of mine through cloth, light as a warning, and her hands closed over my wrists.
"Like this," she said, voice at my shoulder.
Her palms were cool at first, then not. She guided my fingers through the steps, slow enough that I could have followed if my head had stayed where she wanted it. Porcelain was what came to mind as I watched her delicate fingers against mine.
The bow formed under our hands. I felt the final tug through my own joints and through hers, as if we'd tied one knot with four hands and no spare attention left for anything else.
"Edgar."
"Mm?"
"Are you listening?"
I blinked. In the mirror her eyes were level with mine, unimpressed.
"Yes," I said. "I think I've got it."
Her brows lifted. She let go, stepped down, and put half the room between us in a heartbeat.
"Tomorrow you do it yourself," she said. "I'll inspect. If you were paying attention, it will be right. And the handkerchief …"
She came back because she had to, not because she lingered. Her arms crossed in front of me from behind, smaller than the space really wanted; she had to stand close to reach, her chin barely clearing my shoulder, breath stirring the hair at my ear when she leaned in to see her own work.
"The fold sits here," she murmured. "Angle it like this. Guests notice before they notice you."
Warmth at my ear. The mirror showed two faces inches apart, hers serious, mine doing a poor job of looking serious back.
I nodded. Speaking felt risky. "Yes. Got it."
She rolled her eyes anyway, as if I'd failed a test she hadn't written down.
"Good."
She was at the door before I'd fully turned. One hand on the frame, she glanced back, voice pitched lower than her lecture tone.
"Breakfast?"
The morning bell chose that moment to rip down the corridor, not a suggestion, a blade.
"I'll be right behind you," I said, and grabbed my jacket, one shoe half on as I hopped for the other.
When I looked up, the passage was empty except for retreating footsteps and the swing of silver hair. I leaned out, watched her small figure cut left toward the stairs, hips swaying slightly with speed, and shut that observation down hard.
What are you doing? I asked myself, and had no good answer.
I straightened my lapels, breathed once, and ran.
The galley smelled different in the first minute after the bell: not stew or bread first, but scalded milk and iron from the kettles, as if the room itself had been woken too fast.
No one was joking today. Shoulders brushed without apology; someone's elbow caught my ribs on the way to the serving hatch and muttered nothing by way of sorry. I understood. Yesterday I'd learned what happened when you treated time like it belonged only to you. My stomach still remembered hollow hours in the ballroom; it cramped now at the smell of food, eager and resentful at once.
The room had the feel of a blade being sharpened: everyone still civil, but only because civility was faster than stopping to argue.
Lune had saved me a sliver of bench by the wall, not by guarding it, by simply being small enough to leave a gap. She didn't look up when I wedged in. Her plate was already half cleared, eggs cooling at the edges, porridge a neat trench she'd carved through the middle with mechanical precision.
I ate faster than taste allowed. Porridge burned the roof of my mouth; I swallowed anyway. Across from us, a maid scraped her spoon once, twice, checking the door as if Watson might materialise from the woodwork. No one told stories. Even Angus, visible through the pass, moved with his shoulders high, shouting orders that weren't banter, only coordinates.
Lune nudged a napkin toward my knee without looking at me, the same way she'd adjusted the handkerchief in the mirror: correction offered sideways, no credit expected.
I wiped my mouth, folded the napkin the way she'd shown me, and set it down parallel to my plate edge.
Only then did her fork pause for half a second. She didn't praise. She didn't need to. The silence beside me felt fractionally less like frost and more like something we were both holding level, one breath at a time, until the next bell told us to move.
I followed close behind Lune like someone trying to match a step they didn't yet understand. She led me into the dining hall.
Yesterday it had felt endless. Today it felt alive.
People moved through it in lines that weren't lines at all, crossing, turning, slipping past one another without stopping. Tables stood half-dressed, some already perfect, others stripped back to bare wood. Linen lay in neat stacks at one end; silver gleamed in trays at another. The room wasn't quiet anymore. It breathed. Footsteps, cloth, the soft clink of glass meeting wood.
I slowed without meaning to. Lune didn't.
She stepped into the current as if it parted for her, then glanced back just long enough to see I'd fallen half a pace behind.
"Keep up," she said.
I closed the gap.
We stopped at a stretch of table already marked out by a row of folded napkins and three place settings set to her standard. The rest lay waiting.
"This section," she said. "We need to reset it for this evening, a smaller service but it still matters."
I nodded, already reaching for a cloth.
Her hand caught my wrist before I touched anything. Not hard, but enough.
"Watch first."
She moved quickly, but not hurried. That was the difference. Each piece went down cleanly, decisively, no pause between decisions. Plate. Alignment. Glass. Cutlery. Her hands never hovered. They landed.
Someone passed behind her with a tray; she shifted half an inch without looking and the tray slid by, untouched.
"Like that," she said, stepping back. "And keep pace with the room. Don't slow it down."
Then she was gone, already crossing to another table, folding into the work as if she'd always been there.
I stood for a second longer than I should have, then I started.
Plate first. Straight. I checked the edge against the table line, adjusted a fraction. Too slow. I felt it immediately, the way the room moved around me. A footman passed at my shoulder, faster than I'd expected. I pulled my elbow in, nearly clipping him anyway. He didn't look at me. Just adjusted and kept going.
I reached for the glass. Hesitated. Set it down. Lifted it again to correct the spacing. Behind me, someone clicked their tongue. Not at me, not quite. I tried to move faster. My hands didn't trust it yet. Each motion carried yesterday's weight, the need to get it exactly right pressing against the need to keep moving at all.
A tray came through, low and fast. I didn't see it until it was nearly at my back.
"Move." The word cut through the noise, quiet but absolute.
I stepped aside at once, more instinct than thought. The tray slipped past, the edge of it close enough that I felt the air of it against my sleeve. I realised a second later I'd stepped into the exact space that had opened. The man carrying it didn't break stride and neither did I.
I set the next fork without checking it twice. It wasn't perfect, I adjusted. I moved to the next setting. Cloth. Plate. Glass. Cutlery.
Faster now, not rushed. Just… decided. A shadow crossed the table. I glanced up, it was Lune. Her eyes flicked over the setting in front of me, then the one beside it, and finally my hands. No comment. Only a slight correction. She shifted a glass half a hair's width to the left, so slight I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't been watching for it.
"Better," she said. Then, without looking at me, she set a folded napkin down beside the next empty space. "Continue," she added, already turning away. So I did.
This time, I didn't stop between movements. The room still moved around me, but it no longer felt like it might knock me over if I misstepped. I began to see the spaces as they opened, the brief gaps where a hand could move, where a plate could land without getting in someone else's way.
Once, I reached for a knife at the same time as another hand. I pulled back at once. "Take it," the other butler said, already reaching for the next. No irritation. No pause. I took it, placed it and moved on. Time slipped by, not lost, like yesterday. When I finally straightened, it was because there was nothing immediately in front of me left undone. I stepped back, just enough to see it properly. It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't wrong either.
Across the room, Lune paused at another table. Just for a second. She didn't look at me directly, she didn't need to. Her gaze passed over the line of settings I'd completed, then moved on. No correction came.
I turned back to the table as another stack of linen appeared at my side, and set my hands to the next stretch without waiting to be told. The task started to feel like a rhythm I had only just begun to learn. Each beat, a little improvement. Repetition stacking into muscle memory. I am getting the hang of it, I thought.
Pride tried to rise; I pushed it down. Pride made you reach for the wrong latch. Better to keep the feeling small: progress, not proof.
It didn't feel like much time had passed yet, but the bell for the first lunch shift chimed. Everyone observed, quickly fixing up some final details and within a breath, departed. When I looked up, Lune stood across the room, watching me.
"That wraps up the dining room for today. Off to lunch with you. I must attend Lady Mia's lunch. Once you are finished, report to Watson. He wants to go over some etiquette training with you."
I made my way back to the galley, slower this time, not because I could afford to be, but because I understood now that there was a pace to follow, even between tasks.
Lunch was not the crush that breakfast had been.
The benches were only half full, gaps left where others would come through later in the rotation. A few staff still ate standing, but most had managed to sit, shoulders lower, voices quieter. Conversation existed, though it stayed close to the table, practical things more than stories.
I took a seat at the end of a bench, this time without needing to force space for myself. A bowl was set in front of me, something simple, meat and broth, still warm. I did not rush it. That was the first difference.
The smell still pulled at me, my stomach tightening in anticipation, but I forced myself to slow down, to eat at a pace that felt controlled rather than desperate. The food tasted better for it, or maybe I simply noticed it this time.
Across from me, a pair of maids spoke in low voices about linens, one of them tracing something in the air with her finger as if mapping out folds. A guard at the far end leaned back slightly, eating with the steady patience of someone used to waiting.
I finished the last of the broth and set the spoon down, taking a moment to check myself before standing. Napkin folded. Bowl pushed forward just enough. Small things, but they felt like part of the work now, not something separate from it.
As I stood, Angus caught my eye from the pass. "Better today," he said, not loud, not making a show of it.
"I ate," I replied.
"Aye, that helps," he said, the corner of his mouth lifting. "Try keepin' that habit."
"I will."
He nodded once and turned back to his pots, already elsewhere in his mind.
I stepped out into the corridor again, the noise of the galley falling away behind me. The keep felt different in this hour. Not empty, never that, but less crowded. Movements were more deliberate, less frantic, as if the whole place had settled into the next part of its day.
Watson's office waited where I remembered it, the door still slightly ajar. I paused outside for half a breath, straightened my cuffs out of habit more than necessity, and knocked lightly against the frame.
"Come." Watson did not look up immediately when I entered. His quill moved a few strokes more across the page before he set it aside with care, aligning it neatly against the edge of his desk as if even that small act were part of a larger standard.
"Ah, Edgar. We shan't be staying, we will be headed to the training room." He smiled and exited the office, less a walk and more a controlled glide, as though he moved without drawing attention.
The room he led me into was plain compared to the dining hall, though it held all the same elements in miniature. A narrow table stood at the center, already set with a single place. A tray rested nearby, polished to a dull gleam, a covered dish placed at its center.
Watson paused beside it, hands resting lightly at his sides. "You have been working in the hall this morning," he said.
"Yes, sir."
"I can tell." His eyes flicked once over my posture, my hands, my stance, taking in more than I could track. "You have improved since yesterday." The words landed differently from Lune's. Less weight, perhaps, but no less precise.
With Lune, improvement felt like earning the next hour without a lecture. With Watson, it felt like being measured for a uniform that might not exist in my size.
"Thank you, sir."
"We shall see how well that holds under scrutiny." He turned slightly, indicating the tray. "This afternoon, you will learn to serve. Not simply to carry, but to present. There is a distinction, and most never grasp it properly." He stepped forward. "Watch," he said as he lifted the tray. There was no visible effort in it. The weight did not shift his shoulders nor alter his balance. It rose as if it had always belonged in his hands, settling into place with quiet certainty.
"Your grip is here," he said, though his fingers barely seemed to hold it at all. "Firm enough to control, light enough that it does not show." He walked, not fast but measured. Each step placed with the same intention as his hands, the tray held level without a tremor, without even the suggestion of adjustment. He reached the table and turned while lowering the tray in one smooth motion. The dish did not rattle and the lid did not shift.
"Show me," he said. I stepped forward and lifted the tray. It felt heavier than it should have.
I adjusted my grip, then adjusted it again, trying to find something that matched what I had just seen. My fingers tightened instinctively, shoulders bracing against the weight. Watson said nothing.
I took a step. The tray wobbled, only slightly, but I felt it. The imbalance running up through my arm and into my shoulder. I tried to correct it mid-step and nearly made it worse, my foot landing harder than intended.
"Stop." He said it calm. I froze. "Put it down." I did, careful, though the dish gave a faint sound as it met the table.
Watson watched me for a moment. "You are carrying the tray," he said, "as if it might betray you."
I hesitated. "It… feels like it might, sir." A faint shift touched his expression. Not quite amusement but not disapproval either.
"It will," he said, "if you treat it that way." He stepped closer. "Again. But this time, you do not fight it."
I lifted the tray once more.
"Too tight," he said immediately. I loosened my grip.
"Too loose." I adjusted again, uncertain.
"Do not search for the position," he said. "Settle into it."
I drew a breath, forced my hands to still, to stop chasing the weight and simply hold it. It steadied. Not perfectly, but enough.
"Walk."
I did.
Slower this time, but not hesitating. One step, then another. The tray shifted, just enough that I noticed, but I didn't try to correct it immediately.
"Good," Watson said quietly. "Let it move. Then guide it back."
I adjusted, small, controlled. The wobble lessened. We crossed the short distance to the table.
"Turn."
I turned too sharply. The tray tipped just enough to send a soft clatter through the dish. I winced.
"Again."
There was no irritation in his voice. No impatience. Just repetition, as inevitable as the task itself. I reset and lifted the tray, walking and turning before placing it down. Each time, something changed. My grip, my pace. The way I shifted my weight before turning instead of during it.
Watson moved around me, not interfering, only observing.
"Your hands are learning," he said at one point. "Your mind is still trying to lead them."
"I thought that was the point, sir."
"It is," he said. "At first. Then it becomes the problem."
I wasn't entirely sure what that meant, but I nodded anyway. Yesterday I had been trying to force everything into place. Today I was letting it settle where it was meant to sit.
We repeated the sequence again. And again.
Time stretched, not unpleasantly, but with a steady pressure. There was no rush here, no need to keep pace with a room that moved around me. Only the task, and the expectation that it would be done properly.
On one attempt, the tray settled in my hands without that initial struggle.
I repeated the motions of walking, turning and placing. The dish made no sound.
I looked up.
Watson inclined his head once. "Better."
The word felt earned.
"Tonight," he said, "you will assist in a smaller service. Nothing elaborate. A handful of guests, not a hall. You will not lead, but you will be seen."
A different kind of weight settled at that.
"Yes, sir."
"You will practice until you can carry without thinking about it," he continued. "Because when you are in front of guests, you will have no time to think about yourself at all."
I nodded, more seriously now. He stepped back, folding his hands behind him.
"Again."
I reached for the tray.
This time, it felt… not lighter, exactly, but less hostile. I lifted it, walked, turned and placed. Somewhere during the next repetition, I became aware that we were no longer alone. A presence at the doorway. Still and unmoving. I glanced up without meaning to.
Lune leaned against the frame, one shoulder resting lightly against the wood, arms loosely crossed. She wasn't watching me directly, not in the way she did in the hall. There was no sharpness in it, no immediate correction waiting to be delivered.
Her gaze followed the tray instead. The movement. The placement. As I set it down, something shifted at the corner of her mouth. Not quite a smile but close enough that I noticed. That is until she saw me looking. It vanished at once. Her posture straightened and the familiar edge returned as if it had never left.
"Don't stop on my account," she said.
I hadn't realised I had. Watson glanced toward her, then back to me.
"Continue."
I did. The next time I lifted the tray, my hands felt steadier than they had a moment before.
Watson let the silence sit for a moment after the last placement, as if even the absence of sound were something to be judged.
"That will do for today," he said at last.
Relief came, but not all at once. It settled the way the tray had, gradually, until I realised my shoulders had lowered without my noticing. "You will assist this evening," he continued. "A smaller service. Fewer eyes, but no less expectation."
"Yes, sir."
"You are not ready," he said plainly. "But you are no longer unprepared. There is a difference."
I inclined my head, unsure whether that counted as encouragement or warning.
Behind him, Lune had not moved from the doorway. Her attention shifted from the tray to me, and for a brief moment there was no edge in it, only assessment.
"Don't forget your hands," she said. "They know more than you think."
Then she pushed herself off the frame and was gone, footsteps fading into the corridor.
Watson turned back toward his office as if the lesson had already passed into memory.
"Report to the kitchen," he said. "You will need to be ready before the guests are."
I nodded and stepped out into the corridor, the quiet of the training room falling away behind me.
For the first time since arriving, the thought of being seen did not feel like something to survive.
It felt like something I might manage.