| 001. The Great Escape |

  Privilege was impossible to escape from.

  Xenia Ishizaki paused at the balcony doors, one hand resting against the cool iron railing, and surveyed the gardens below. They were immaculate in a way that bordered on theatrical: clipped hedgerows, ornamental fountains, and intricate gravel pathways. Everything was arranged to suggest decadence.

  She felt a familiar flicker of distaste. To resent a place like this was vulgar. To abandon it was unthinkable. And yet here she was, running away from home.

  It must be madness to want to leave. Her life had been engineered to remove inconvenience: tutors on demand, drivers on standby, every tangible desire satisfied before it could fully form. With one notable exception. The house, so full of people, was devoid of intimacy or companionship.

  Her gaze drifted toward the lake.

  She remembered falling in as a child — her cousin Neil’s careless shove, the cold shock of water closing over her head, the humiliating panic of not knowing how to swim yet. Her mother’s arms had hauled her to the surface moments later, frantic and shaking. That had been before the inevitable decline. Before Ashley.

  Back when love had still been uncomplicated.

  The deterioration had begun somewhere between her mother’s social manoeuvring and her father’s increasing absence. Xenia was increasingly irritated, her parents increasingly argumentative and intoxicated. Then Ashley had arrived — the embodiment of a mistake no one knew how to account for.

  Her father’s infidelity introduced a variable the household never successfully integrated.

  Most unfortunately of all, their pride kept them living together in hatred, rather than separate and admit their marriage was a mistake.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Xenia had stayed too, for far longer than she should have.

  “You cannot seriously be doing this.”

  Ashley’s voice cut across her thoughts. Xenia turned, tightening her grip on the railing. Ashley stood framed in the doorway, red hair caught in the wind, arms folded in a defensive posture that did nothing to disguise her agitation.

  “Cannot?” Xenia asked calmly. “Is that really a meaningful word in this context?”

  Ashley’s expression hardened. “If you leave like this, your mother is going to lose her mind.”

  Xenia already knew that. She had considered leaving a note — something concise, logical, impossible to misinterpret — but it would not have mattered. Her mother would redirect the blame regardless. To her father. To Ashley. To circumstance. Never inward.

  It was not the house she was running from, nor even her mother’s temper. It was the inevitability of another confrontation, another cycle of accusation and withdrawal. She no longer had the capacity for it.

  No sooner had she thought that, when realisation slowly dawned. She didn't have to stay. She could enrol herself at Blake’s Academy a few years early and be free of the situation once and for all.

  “She’ll go mad regardless," Xenia pointed out, not unreasonably. "At least this will give her direction.”

  “If you leave, it’ll be worse,” Ashley said, beginning to let her desperation show. Xenia sighed and took in Ashley's lean and muscular physique, her internet worthy makeup, hair and branded clothing. Ashley was the sort of person Xenia's mother had always wanted Xenia to be. Their lives would have been so much easier if her mother could recognise how much they had in common.

  “Ashley, you’re perfectly capable of making your own decisions,” Xenia said, knowing how much the response would annoy her, and slightly relishing that fact.

  “Xenia, I can’t turn up at that school and demand to be admitted. The world doesn't work like that for someone like me.” For a bastard, she meant.

  “So come with me,” Xenia snapped, beginning to be irritated at having to repeat herself. They had covered this argument hours earlier when the moving van had arrived outside the main house. It had cost a small fortune to arrange last minute, but that was what credit cards were useful for. “I can make father understand. You don’t have to stay.”

  Ashley laughed without humour. “You think Blake’s will fix this?” It was unclear whether she had intended to mean their immediate situation or her circumstances.

  “I think distance will,” Xenia replied.