Chapter 127: Between the Ghost and the Flame
The days turned quiet after Evelyn returned to F•••••.
Too quiet.
Without her mother's scent in the halls, Eva wandered the Ainsley estate in G••••• like a shadow unsure of its source. The eastern corridors still held echoes of her laughter, but they rang hollow now. The warmth of home had folded inward. It had begun to feel… rehearsed.
Even her dreams were beginning to change.
Each night, the garden she once conjured in sleep — where notes floated from her fingertips and Seraphina danced in moonlight — began to fray at the edges. In its place came flashes: a blade slicing through air, boots slamming into earth, Reginald's voice echoing like thunder from beyond the sea. Sand tables. Maps etched with red ink. Black seas filled with iron.
But she didn't tell anyone.
Not Mère - auntie Vivienne, who seemed so busy lately — her mind half - tugged toward some silent calculus. Not Seraphina, who video - called frequently but watched her too closely, with the kind of worry that made Eva feel like glass. And certainly not the new instructors.
Especially not them.
They were already watching her closely enough.
It began with light drills.
Two mornings a week. A mix of footwork and breathwork, balance and control. She liked the rhythm at first — the shapes of motion, the elegance of it. She imagined she was fencing Seraphina again in the orchard, each parry a gesture of love.
But her papa Reginald had sent new directives.
And his voice, even across oceans, could shift the weight of everything.
The instructors changed tone. Softer things disappeared. They no longer asked. They commanded.
"Again."
"Faster."
"Break the pattern."
They brought in tactical drills next — low - scale simulations at first. Strategic board games where kings fell like sandcastles under real pressure. War diaries written by generals she could not name. Every failure logged. Every success treated as expectation.
She didn't ask for rest. She didn't complain. She wanted to show them — show him — that she could handle it. That she wasn't delicate. That she wasn't just an heir wrapped in silk and affection.
By the third session, the soles of her feet were raw.
By the fifth, her foil wrist throbbed after every parry, but she held it steady.
By the seventh, her sparring partner — a grizzled man with a voice like gravel — swept her legs and sent her crashing into the dust hard enough that her ears rang.
She stood up without a word.
"Good," he said. "Do it again."
The next week, they changed instructors.
This one had a colder gaze. He didn't correct her form; he criticized her logic. Her choices. Her instinct.
"Sloppy. You're fighting like a civilian."
"She's six," another murmured once. The man didn't blink.
"She's a legacy. The war won't care about her age."
That night, Reginald's next directive came. It was handwritten. Sealed. Delivered by a private envoy in a red coat who said nothing but bowed with military precision.
Vivienne opened it first.
She read it once.
Twice.
Then sat silently in the living room for a full hour, the paper trembling in her lap.
The directive outlined a new phase: scenario - based simulations. Crisis modeling. No more fencing in orchards. No more rhythm games. This was immersion. Psychological readiness. Conditioning.
"Strategy is her second tongue," Reginald had written. "Unleash it."
And so, the world pressed harder.
They transformed the northern wing into a war room.
Sanded - down maps. Tactical grids. Miniatures and markers that Eva had to arrange at speed under time constraints. Three - minute battle scenarios. Twenty - second revisions. Rounds of "What would you do?" delivered with machine - gun speed.
The instructors didn't just observe. They tore apart her decisions. Not cruelly. Clinically.
"There's a hole in your flank."
"You left your supply lines exposed."
"This costs 4,000 lives."
She didn't cry. She studied harder.
She stayed up at night with old war almanacs, her little lantern flickering beside her. A stack of notebooks formed her growing archive — with color - coded tabs, new formations drawn in red pencil, corrections to centuries - old formations. Once, Vivienne found her asleep over a spread of naval blockade notes, her hair tangled around the pen still in hand.
From N•••••, Seraphina's voice arrived like distant warmth. They video - called, though less often now — time zone differences and training shifts made their schedules erratic. Seraphina never complained, but her silences deepened.
Once, during a brief call, Seraphina saw her fingers bandaged and her posture off.
"What happened to your wrist?"
Eva tugged her sleeve lower. "I slipped during drills."
"That's a lie."
Eva didn't meet her gaze. "It doesn't hurt."
There was a pause. Then,
"Do they think you're at war already?"
"They think I need to be ready."
"You already are."
Eva looked away. "Not enough."
Seraphina went still.
She didn't say the name aloud, but Eva knew she could hear it — Uncle Reginald, carved into the air like a vow. Like a ghost.
That night, Seraphina sent a package — it arrived two days later. Inside was a single photograph: the two of them in the orchard, fencing in playful stance, Eva laughing, Seraphina mid - pirouette. On the back, a single note:
"For when the world forgets your softness."
Eva kept it in her pocket during drills.
Even when it got soaked in sweat.
Even when it tore a little at the corner.
Vivienne noticed.
She noticed the new bruises, the tighter posture, the faint smell of copper that clung to Eva's undershirts at night. She confronted the instructors again. They bowed behind their orders.
"She's performing at exceptional levels," one said. "We're keeping it within limits."
Vivienne didn't trust their limits.
Still, she hesitated. Evelyn had entrusted her with balance — between discipline and warmth, training and childhood. And Eva… Eva insisted she was fine.
Until one evening, while pouring honey into her tea, Vivienne saw Eva's hand tremble.
Just once. Just barely.
But it was enough.
She sent a quiet report to Evelyn.
She knew the reply would come late, if at all.
Evelyn was buried in political arrangements. Negotiations with the Maxwell house. Silent movements behind the Liore royal veil. Her messages arrived in code now — faint, incomplete, veiled in layers Eva wasn't meant to decipher.
But Eva did.
She read between the lines.
She no longer asked when her maman would return. She simply stood at the corner of the estate where Evelyn once planted night - blooming jasmine and watched the dusk settle, as if trying to remember the smell of love.
Then came the twelfth morning.
The one they called "adaptive chaos."
No warning. No routine. No warm - up.
Just a field rigged with shifting terrain. Real - time decisions. A simulated siege where the rules changed every five minutes.
They took away her foil.
Replaced it with a practice dagger.
"Close quarters," her instructor said. "No elegance. Only survival."
Her strategy failed in the third round.
Then again in the sixth.
She adjusted. Calculated. Burned through every tactic she had learned.
Still, she was cornered.
Forced to fall back.
When the session ended, she didn't collapse. She walked to the edge of the field and sat beneath the oak tree near the boundary wall, covered in dust and sweat.
She stared at her hands.
Not trembling. Just still.
She wasn't crying.
She was thinking.
And that frightened Vivienne most.
That night, she found Eva alone in the library — again — sitting on the rug with a map of the Old Kingdom spread out in front of her and little markers arranged like a siege on her lap. A lantern flickered at her side. She had tried to read but the words were floating now.
She hummed softly — not quite a song. More like memory.
Lines from her maman's lullaby.
She stopped midway.
It didn't feel like hers anymore.
Her body ached.
Not just from bruises. From something deeper. Something in her marrow.
She looked down at the practice dagger in her lap.
"I'll do better tomorrow," she whispered. "I'll be better. I'll earn it."
The light trembled, then stood firm
Somewhere outside, the orchard rustled — as if the wind had paused to listen.
The next day wouldn't bring collapse.
But something was nearing. Something was sharpening.
And Eva, daughter of four legacies, heir of night - blooming jasmine and steel, folded the map without a sound.
She would rise again at dawn.
And the war would keep watching.