THE ACADEMY LIST

The steward's office smelled like old parchment and older resentment.

Lira stood just inside the doorway, hands folded in front of her the way she'd been trained —head slightly down, shoulders soft, small. Invisible. It was a posture she'd perfected before she was even old enough to understand why she needed it.

Steward Rennick didn't look up right away. He was a thin, papery man with ink-stained fingers and a permanent frown carved into his face, like smiling had once cost him something he wasn't willing to pay again. He shuffled through a stack of scrolls on his desk, muttering names under his breath, checking them off one by one.

"Name," he said finally, still not looking up.

"Lira, sir."

"Lira what?"

The question landed the way it always did. Small. Sharp. A paper cut in a place that had never quite healed.

"Just Lira, sir."

He glanced up then, just for a second, something almost like pity flickering behind his tired eyes before it vanished back into indifference. He found her name on the list near the bottom, she noticed, below every servant with an actual surname and made a mark beside it.

"You'll depart for Alpha Academy in three days' time," he said. "You'll travel with the household staff assigned to serve the King's children during term. Room and board provided in the servant's wing. You are not...." he said the word slowly, like he wanted it to sink all the way into her bones, "....enrolled as a student. You will not attend classes, trials, or ceremonies unless directly ordered to assist. Is that understood?"

"Yes, sir."

"You'll receive your uniform and duties list the morning of departure. That's all."

She turned to leave. She'd almost made it to the door when he spoke again, quieter this time, like the words had slipped out before he could stop them.

"For what it's worth," Rennick said, "the old Queen would've hated seeing you sent off like cargo."

Lira paused, her hand on the doorframe. She didn't turn around. She wasn't sure her face could hold whatever was happening behind it.

"She's not here to hate anything anymore, sir," she said quietly, and stepped out into the hall.

Word traveled fast in a house full of people with nothing better to do than talk about each other.

By midday, half the estate seemed to know Lira was being sent to Alpha Academy, and every single one of them had an opinion about it. The other servants whispered as she passed — some pitying, most amused, a few outright thrilled at the idea of watching her get chewed up by a school built for royalty. Only Ferra seemed to actually care, slipping her an extra piece of bread at lunch and muttering something about packing warm clothes because "royal children keep their castles cold enough to preserve corpses."

Sable, of course, found her before the day was even done.

"I heard you're coming to the Academy," she said, appearing in the servant's corridor like she owned the air itself. She probably believed she did. "Don't worry. I already told everyone what you are, so there won't be any confusion."

"And what am I?" Lira asked, before she could stop herself.

Sable smiled, slow and satisfied, like she'd been waiting all day for exactly that question.

"Furniture," she said. "Useful. Quiet. Easy to ignore."

She walked off laughing before Lira could find the words to answer, and honestly, there weren't any. There never were, not with Sable. Some cruelty didn't need a response. It just needed somewhere to land, and Lira had spent eleven years being exactly that — a soft place for other people's ugliness to rest.

She went back to work. Scrubbed. Folded. Carried. Disappeared into the walls the way she always did.

But that night, lying on the thin cot in the servant's quarters, staring up at a ceiling she'd memorized every crack of, she let herself think about it. Really think about it.

Alpha Academy.

A place built by kings for kings. A place with towers that scraped the sky and libraries older than the packs that ruled them and princes who'd probably never scrubbed a floor in their entire pampered lives.

She wasn't going as one of them. She knew that. She'd known it since the moment Ferra first said the word "enrollment" and Lira's heart had leapt for one foolish second before reality slammed the door shut again.

But she was going.

For the first time in eleven years, the walls of this house weren't going to be the only walls she knew.

Something about that —something small, stubborn, and stupidly hopeful...made her chest ache in a way that had nothing to do with cold marble floors or wine-stained fabric.

She closed her eyes. Three days.

Three days until everything changed, and she didn't even know it yet.