The silence after the bowing was not silence at all.

  It was a held breath.

  I stood at eleven years old in the center of the moonfire circle, my new title clinging to my skin like the scent of sacred incense. First of Her Name. Chosen. The words tasted of iron and pride.

  Mother's gaze burned colder than the ceremonial flames.

  "You will depart for the Grand Academy at thirteen," she said, each syllable a jewel placed precisely upon a crown. "Two years to prepare. Two years to become worthy."

  I bowed my head, the weight of expectation settling comfortably across my shoulders.

  This was my destiny.

  This was my honor.

  There was no room for rebellion in a heart that beat only for Duskbane.

  The next morning, my education intensified.

  Where once I had studied courtly manners, now I memorized the sigils of every noble house that might cross my path at the Academy. Where once I practiced the harp, now I learned to identify seventeen different poisons by scent alone.

  At dawn, I recited House histories from memory. At dusk, I sparred with twin daggers until my arms trembled from exertion. I was not allowed to show weakness. Not even to myself.

  "The Academy is not home," Mother said as she adjusted my posture during our daily walk through the moon gardens. "But you will make it yours."

  I nodded, straightening my spine further. The winter roses trembled as we passed, their petals folding inward like subjects bowing.

  "And if others challenge me?" I asked.

  Mother's smile was a sliver of moonlight on still water. "Then remind them why night always falls."

  When I failed, I failed in silence.

  On the fourth day of the second month, I collapsed during blade forms. I had not eaten that morning—part of a trial meant to teach me how hunger sharpens the mind.

  I woke on a cot in the healers’ wing, the scent of juniper and bloodroot heavy in the air. Mother stood over me, her hands clasped behind her back, her expression unreadable.

  “No apologies,” she said.

  I said none.

  “Failure is not a shame,” she continued, “unless it becomes habit.”

  I nodded.

  That night, I trained by moonlight until I could hold the blades without trembling.

  On my twelfth birthday, they came again.

  The Baron of the Western Vale presented a clockwork nightingale that sang only when wound with a silver key. “For your amusement, Your Grace.”

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  The Duchess of the Ebony Marches offered a book bound in bat-leather, its pages empty. “For your thoughts, when words fail others.”

  I accepted each gift with precisely twenty-three degrees of inclination—the exact angle Mother had decreed proper for receiving tribute from landed nobility.

  In the shadows, the priestess who had presided over my marking ceremony watched with hungry eyes. “She grows into her power,” she murmured to Mother.

  I did not preen at the praise.

  I simply stood straighter.

  For I was Nyx of Duskbane.

  First of Her Name.

  And I would make them proud.

  Later that evening, alone in my chambers, I opened the book.

  It was not entirely empty.

  On the first page, written in silver ink, was a single phrase:

  Power is never gifted. Only taken.

  I did not show it to Mother.

  The days that followed blurred into ritual and rehearsal.

  I met with oracles, who read my blood in obsidian bowls and declared storms in my future. I sat for portraits, dressed in raven-silk and stillness, painted into history before I had even begun to live it. I studied treaties and ancient wars. I memorized the proper forms of address for over seventy types of undead.

  One night, I dreamt of the Academy.

  Its spires were made of bone. Its gates were mouths that whispered when closed. Its halls were endless, but always watching.

  When I woke, I wrote down every detail in the leather book.

  Not because I feared it.

  But because I intended to master it.

  On the morning of my departure, winter frost still clung to the castle walls.

  I stood motionless as the handmaidens laced my traveling robes—midnight silk lined with raven feathers, the clasps forged from obsidian. Heavy. Perfect.

  Mother entered without announcement.

  She held no farewell gift.

  Only a single black rose, its stem wrapped in silver wire.

  “For your pillow,” she said. “So you remember whose soil grew you.”

  I held it gingerly.

  It smelled of blood and candlewax.

  The courtyard buzzed with silent preparation.

  Six black stallions.

  A carriage lined with spell-warded velvet.

  Twelve royal guards who would accompany me only to the border.

  The priestess approached, her shadow unnaturally long in the dawn light.

  “A final blessing, First Daughter.”

  Her fingers, cold as grave dirt, pressed against my forehead.

  “May the night hide what you must conceal,” she whispered.

  “And reveal what you must see.”

  I did not flinch.

  The streets of Noctis were a living tapestry of devotion.

  As my carriage passed, they knelt.

  Not in fear.

  In reverence.

  Vampires of every house lined the thoroughfare, their cheers like a wave of wings—sharp, rhythmic, hungry.

  “First Daughter!”

  “Duskbane’s Shadow!”

  “Chosen!”

  A child thrust forward a bouquet of night-blooming violets—

  A guard knocked her back with the butt of his spear.

  I did not turn to look.

  At the crossroads, where the Duskbane banners gave way to neutral territory, the captain of the guard bowed.

  “Your Grace.”

  I nodded.

  The rose in my lap had begun to wilt.

  The carriage rolled forward.

  We did not travel directly to the Academy.

  Protocol dictated a slow progression through each loyal province—one final parade of power before I vanished behind the Academy gates.

  In the valley of Veilspire, I was presented with a ceremonial dagger forged from starlight steel. In Gloamhollow, I danced the Shadow Waltz before an audience of weeping nobles, my feet moving in time with the rhythm of a song no one else could hear.

  They called me princess and predator, depending on their mood.

  At night, in my private tent, I slept with the black rose beside my head. I dreamt often.

  Sometimes of the Academy.

  Sometimes of the girl with the violets.

  A week passed.

  Then two.

  We reached the foothills of the Whispering Range—the final mountain pass before the Academy gates.

  Snow fell in gentle spirals, settling on the carriage roof like ash.

  I stood alone on a cliff’s edge while the guards made camp.

  The rose was gone now, left behind in a river along with its wire wrapping. I had removed the silver coil myself. It had cut my thumb.

  The blood had stained the petals.

  I had felt nothing.

  Now I watched the wind carve lines through the snowdrifts below. Somewhere out there was a place I had been shaped to enter. To conquer. To transform.

  But not tonight.

  Tonight, I remained First Daughter of Duskbane. Still untested. Still in between.

  The priestess had said the night would reveal what I must see.

  So I stood in it.

  And waited.