The exams may not have gone down by the book, but at least the ordeal was now over and I could relax a little. The rest of July still lay ahead and August, the summer at its hottest, and half of September, and maybe for the first time in my life, I had plans to take it easy. But when did things ever go as planned?

  Already that very night, a new surprise crisis caught me unaware on our home turf. An intense test of wills that put academic puzzles to shame. I didn’t think I’d ever experienced such a sense of powerlessness before, and would gladly have gone through another halfway of arcane puzzles instead of whatever this was. But there was no escape. I could only sit still in my chair and endure it.

  The site of battle was the dinner table at eight o'clock.

  Nothing off with the service itself.

  The main course was juicy salmon, grilled to perfection. Marinated asparagus and foamy, browned butter sauce, with a glass of fruity, sharp Shiraz to go with. The house cook had outdone himself again.

  But I couldn't focus on the celebration of my taste buds.

  “—Hey, Hope,” Ms Asia’s scalding tone reached out to me across the white tablecloth. Her voice had never held such a chilling edge to it. “Would you do me a favor and ask that person why she's chosen to come ruin our pleasant evening today, of all days?”

  “...”

  “—Hey, Hope,” said Liesebeth Ruthford, the master of the household, in a voice no less arctic, seated at the end of the table. “Could you kindly tell that person it should be only natural that I come to my own house to celebrate my own adopted daughter on the day of her great success. On the other hand, one might want to inquire why this poorly disciplined stray has decided to so suddenly, unbidden and unannounced, crawl back to darken the house she was supposed to have departed for life.”

  “...”

  I said nothing, experiencing stormy winter winds on a night of July.

  I was pretty sure these two knew each other's circumstances even without my summary. They were grown adults and not so helpless that they couldn't easily find out whatever they cared to know. It wasn’t possible for Ms Asia to return to her birth city without any word of it reaching the General, who had even arranged an escort for her. Neither could Ms Asia have expected to spend all summer in the Ruthford house and never run into her family here.

  They were talking nonsense.

  But why did they insist on mixing me into their circus act?

  “Anyway, congratulations, Hope,” Ms Asia said on a gentler note. “I always knew you would pass with flying colors. Unlike the gorilla at the table with us, you have a bright head on your shoulders. In the brief time we've known each other, you've given me all new hope for the Ruthford name, which I’d thought lost to the dogs. Pun intended.”

  “The results haven't been announced yet,” I pointed out. “It’s still possible I might not make the cut.”

  That was nonsense too. The results were fixed from the start. But I couldn't tell my aunt that, since she wasn't in the know. I could only lie through my teeth. Had I ever said a truthful word in my life? Not that anyone here listened to anything I said, either way.

  “Yes, congratulations, Hope,” said the General. “Unlike my unlucky sister, who was born without guts or a backbone, you have the bravery and strength of will to see things through. You never balk away from a challenge and finish what you start. So you have been for as long as I’ve known you, and I cannot express how proud I am of you. I may rest easy, knowing you are my heir, and not that blathering cockatrice.”

  “It was only a school assessment, not a battle against the demon lord,” I said. “Also, I think choosing a noble heir based on whether she can get into secondary education is setting the bar too low.”

  I was getting worried about the future of this household myself. Though it wasn’t even my household.

  “You should cut that orangutan some slack, Hope,” said Ms Asia. “In her eyes, being capable of anything more than chopping up people like pork on Yuletide is a feat worthy of awe. At least, it’s always been beyond her.”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Hear that, Hope?” retorted the General with a dry chuckle. “Rich words, coming from someone who failed to enroll in Belmesion, unlike literally every other member in our clan since its founding days. You shouldn’t even speak of education with a bird-brain, who had to get her diploma from some backwater ethnostate!”

  At this, Ms Asia’s face visibly reddened. It was a shot that hit, with how proud she was of her time in Aschtelt. But even then, she wouldn’t address her sister directly. She swiped her wine glass from the table, emptied a third of it, and then said to me,

  “Hope. Try not to hear such slander. I would gladly have gone to Belmesion, or whatever other institute approved by my sister and our esteemed parents, if they weren’t in such a rush to disown me. But since that couldn’t be done, I had to pick a school that didn’t offer a pity curriculum for thugs, and which actually expected you to get in by personal merit!”

  Naturally, the General, the seasoned tactician that she was, wouldn’t miss such an easy opening.

  “Oh, pardon me, Hope,” she smugly interjected. “Here we celebrate your going to an academy that’s actually not worth celebrating at all, taking in thugs and fools out of pity! I must have been misinformed when I was told it’s the best on the continent. A lie perpetrated for 600 years!”

  Ms Asia turned a startled look at me.

  “No, Hope, that was not what I—”

  I shook my head. There was no way to focus on the food like this.

  “Give it a rest already. Don’t you think you both are being too childish now? Treating your only family like this in front of someone who has lost her own?”

  “...”

  The two turned their gazes down, at least a little ashamed.

  In all honesty, I felt no heartache over the family I couldn’t even remember anymore, so putting it like that was unfair. But it was probably the only way to get them to sort out their act.

  “My bad,” the General then said, both eyes repentantly closed. “Truth be told, I have nothing against that person and only wish her all the best in the career of her choosing. If there’s anything I do begrudge her for, it’s only the poor timing and manner of her departure. Right after the death of our father, when our mother was on her sickbed and most needed the support of her children. It was then that this person chose to burn her bridges. Only that, I don't think I can bring myself to forgive.”

  “Sorry, Hope,” said Ms Asia, her fists squeezed tight on the table. “I wouldn't want to show such a scene to you, when you’ve been through so much worse. But perhaps that person should've been there for her dear mother herself, instead of running around murdering people in the name of glory and kingdom. If our oh-so-great forebears all did that, maybe our house wouldn’t be what it is now.”

  “Ah, I would gladly have stayed comfortably home,” the General responded, her voice ringing hard like iron, “if it didn't also mean abandoning my remaining relatives and many other mothers and sisters and fathers and sons to the mercy of our enemies. I had to fight twice as hard on behalf of my naive sibling, who decided to walk the way of ‘cultured’ people—which is to roll over in the face of enmity! At least we still have a home now and don’t eat brains for dinner. I don't think wishing she’d been there for her own parent in the end is too much asked in comparison.”

  Ms Asia raised her voice,

  “Maybe she was sick and tired of being vilified for not wanting to be a wolf in human clothing! What else could I but leave, when treated like garbage from birth by those heartless parents? In fact, that was the very advice they gave me, more than once, when they still drew breath! ‘Leave!’ Only because I thought cutting up people and making babies for war was mad! Still, I had nothing but admiration for my high and mighty sister, who was everything our parents ever wanted—except a man. But if there's anything I do hold against her, it's for always siding with our father, and not once stepping up to defend my choices in life, as she should have! You know, being my only sister!”

  “...”

  This is damn terrible.

  Ms Asia emptied the remains of her wine glass with speed, stood, threw down her napkin, and strode out of the dining hall. In the suffocating silence that followed, I looked at the General, who resumed cutting into her salmon without an expression, as if nothing unusual had happened.

  “…Shouldn't this be the part where you chase after her?” I asked.

  “What could I say that wouldn't only wound her more?” she argued. “Leave the fool of a girl be. We must all bear our own scars.”

  Maybe there was greater wisdom hidden in her cynical words. Maybe it was only delusional rambling and escapism. Who was really right here and who was wrong, I couldn't tell. But I knew Ms Asia wasn't a bad person, and it pained me to see her like that. It was unpleasant.

  I wiped my mouth and stood.

  “Then I'll go.”

  “I'm surprised,” General Ruthford remarked when I passed her seat. “How did a weapon of mass destruction come to care so much about my sister? How do you suppose she would feel to be consoled by such a being, if she knew the truth? Of what you really are? You've heard her opinion on patriotism and killing in the name of homeland defense. And oh, how you’ve killed.”

  My feet paused.

  Was it wrong of me to act empathetic with my hands so stained in blood? Was it illegal to want to be kind despite having committed monstrous deeds? Was it betrayal of humanity in some abstract sense? Could you only be one or zero? Who decided that, and why did I have to obey their arbitrary rules?

  The General sighed and set down her utensils.

  “Get back to your seat, I'll go.”

  As promised, she left her chair and left marching out after her sister. Boldly, militaristically upright, but rigid, a bit wooden, ever so slightly wavering.

  You don't suppose she was nervous?

  Just to talk to her own family? That Iron Valkyrie?

  I returned to my seat, a little confounded. Dumbfounded, you might say. Then I glanced at Charlotte, who stood posted further behind, silent as a ghost, and pretending not to exist at all.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” I asked the maid. “Go spy on them! And by devil, don't let it get any worse.”