Chapter 62: Two Weeks

Dinner was already going by the time I dragged myself into the dining room, and the smell hit me before anything else did, roast beef, buttered green beans, bread so fresh it was practically still breathing.

My stomach made a noise loud enough that Sera glanced up from across the table just to smirk at me.

"There he is," Mother said, beaming like I had just walked in wearing a crown instead of the same clothes I’d left in that morning.

"What?" I asked, sliding into my chair.

"Nothing." Her smile only got wider, which was somehow worse than an actual answer.

Father didn’t even look up from carving the roast. "How does it feel?"

"How does what feel?"

"Being a knight."

I looked down at myself, half expecting to find I had sprouted a cape. "Still feels like being hungry, mostly."

That got a real laugh out of him, the kind that shook his shoulders. "Fair enough."

Mother’s smile softened into something quieter, the pride still there but mixed now with something that looked suspiciously like she might cry into the potatoes.

"Knighted by the King himself. At fifteen." She pressed a hand to her chest like she was trying to keep her heart from wandering off. "I still can’t believe it."

"Honestly? Neither can I."

Sera leaned back, arms crossed, wearing the exact expression of someone who’d been saving a line all day. "You should’ve seen your face after he slapped you."

"You weren’t even there."

"I don’t need to be. I know your face."

Father snorted into his water glass. "He really hit you that hard?"

"Yes."

Mother’s fork clattered down against her plate like it had personally offended her. "He hit you?"

"Mother. It’s part of the ceremony."

"I know that." She sniffed, gathering herself back up with visible effort. "I simply didn’t picture it as quite so... enthusiastic."

"It’s fine, I promise, I still have both cheeks."

She studied me for a long moment, like she was checking for bruises through sheer force of maternal will, then finally relaxed.

"I’m glad." Her voice dropped, gentler now. "I’m glad you’re home, Edmund."

The words landed somewhere soft in my chest, and for a second I forgot to be embarrassed about it. "Me too."

For a while it was just good, ordinary chaos.

Father wanted every detail of the ceremony and made me repeat the boring parts twice. Mother kept interrupting to ask if the throne room really was as big as people said, eyes wide like a kid hearing about a castle for the first time.

Sera contributed exactly one useful comment and eleven unhelpful ones. 𝘧𝓇ℯℴ𝓂

It was good. It was normal. Which was probably exactly why I nearly let the rest of it slip past without saying anything at all.

"There’s actually something else," I said, and immediately regretted how ominous that sounded.

Mother’s head snapped up so fast I worried about her neck. "What is it?"

"We’re getting a new instructor."

Father raised one eyebrow, unbothered. "Oh?"

"Apparently. Starting tomorrow."

Mother relaxed, delighted by this harmless little update. "Well, that could be good for you."

"Maybe." I took a breath, because apparently I needed one. "And in two weeks, we’re going back to the Realm of the Evil."

Silence dropped over the table like someone had thrown a blanket over it. Mother’s hand froze mid-air, a piece of bread hanging there like it, too, had lost the will to move. Father’s easy expression folded shut. Sera, who had never in her life stopped mid-bite for anything, stopped mid-bite.

Mother recovered first, and not gently. "You’re going back? There?"

"Yes."

"All four of you?"

"Yes."

Her eyes went sharp, searching mine like she could find a different answer hiding somewhere behind my face if she looked hard enough. "Why?"

"Training and advancing, apparently."

"Training and advancing." She repeated it like the word had personally wronged her.

"That’s what we were told."

She set her hand down flat on the table, very deliberately, the way people do when they’re trying not to do something more dramatic with it. "You’ve already been there once."

"I know."

"And you saw what it’s like there."

I didn’t answer right away, because there wasn’t an answer that would make what came next any smaller.

"Edmund." Her voice stayed level, but underneath it was stretched thin as glass.

"You’re fifteen. You were knighted today. You should be celebrating, not packing to go back to somewhere people—" She stopped herself, jaw tight, and started again more carefully. "Somewhere people die."

Father reached over and folded his hand gently around hers. "Audrey."

She let out a breath that seemed to take something with it.

"I know." Her gaze came back to me, softer now, fierce and sad all at once. "I’m proud of you. More than I know how to say properly."

She tried to smile and mostly succeeded. "But I’m still your mother."

"I know."

"So naturally, I’m terrified."

Nobody said anything for a second. Sera looked between us like she was watching a very slow tennis match. Father kept his hand over Mother’s, steady, saying nothing because there wasn’t really anything useful to add.

I set my fork down. "We’ll be careful."

Mother laughed, short and a little bitter around the edges. "Everyone says that right before they’re not."

"I mean it."

"I know you do." She reached across and took my hand instead, and I could feel it shaking, just slightly, just enough that I wished I hadn’t noticed. "Just come home."

"I will."

She held on a second longer, then squeezed once and let go. "Good."

Father cleared his throat, visibly relieved to have somewhere else to put the energy.

"Well. This new instructor had better know what he’s doing." A grin crept back onto his face, wicked and sudden. "And if he doesn’t, I’ll be having a word with him."

Sera nearly choked on her water. "You? Terrifying an Awakened teacher?"

"What?"

"You would scare him worse than anything Edmund’s fought in that Realm."

"That," Father said, pointing his fork at her like a sword, "is precisely the plan."

Mother laughed for real this time, bright and sudden, and the whole room seemed to unclench with her, the way a held breath finally lets go.

I picked my fork back up. The conversation wandered off into safer territory, some letter Sera was expecting, whether the roast needed more salt, whether Father’s new horse had a name yet. But under all of it, the two weeks sat quietly at the table with us, patient, uninvited, waiting its turn.

Outside, the gas lamps along Ashwell Row flickered on one by one, gold against the dark.

I looked around at them. My mother, still glancing at me every few minutes like she was memorizing my face. My father, pretending to be relaxed and doing a terrible job of it. My sister, already halfway to teasing me about something else entirely.

I finished my dinner and tried not to think too hard about the fourteen days standing between me and the Realm.