Chapter 24: Heir’s Return
I found Tessira standing at the edge of the forest.
The moonlight fell over her figure, casting a shadow across the ground. She wasn’t moving. Just watching the place I’d come out of.
"Tessira."
She turned. "You left."
"I had something to take care of."
She said nothing.
"What are you doing out here?" I asked.
"Waiting."
"For what."
"You."
"How did you know I left?"
"I woke up. And you were not there."
I looked at her properly then bare feet, the hem of her sleeping clothes damp from standing in the wet grass, arms wrapped around herself against the cold.
She’d come straight out here. Hadn’t even stopped for shoes.
"You should be asleep."
"You should not have left."
Fair point.
"It wasn’t safe out there. That’s why I didn’t wake you."
"I do not care if it is safe."
I didn’t have anything to say to that.
She closed the distance between us and took a fistful of my sleeve, the way she always did, except her grip was different tonight. Tighter. Like she was checking I was still solid.
"I’m here," I said.
"I know." She didn’t loosen her grip. "Do not do it again."
"...I won’t."
She glanced down at my hand at the compass still resting in it, faint light pulsing along its edge.
"What is that."
"Something I went to get."
"Something worth leaving for."
"I’ll explain it on the way back."
She nodded once. Didn’t let go of my sleeve.
We walked back toward the city together, and the whole way, neither of us said anything else.
***
The car left at first light.
Sebastian drove. Tessira slept against the window within the first hour, her head tipping slowly toward my shoulder until it just stayed there. I let it.
The land changed as we went.
The plains gave way to forest, the forest to foothills, and the foothills to something colder—the air sharpening, the grass thinning, patches of frost clinging to shadowed ground even at midday.
By the sixth hour, snow.
Heavy. A fine dust of it drifting past the window, settling on bare branches, on stone markers along the road.
Tessira stirred once, looked out at the white world going by, and went still.
"It’s cold," she said.
"You’ll get used to it."
"Will I."
"No," I admitted. "But you’ll stop complaining about it eventually."
She almost smiled at that. Didn’t quite commit to it.
It was midnight when I woke.
The mana density around the carriage had spiked suddenly. Sebastian had already increased our pace.
A sound.
Then a dagger struck the window.
Crack. Crack.
The protection spell flickered, light skating across the glass like a held breath.
Tessira woke instantly, her grip on my arm tightening before her eyes had even fully opened.
Sebastian brought the carriage to a stop.
Knock. Knock.
Two measured taps against the front panel.
"Young Master. Are you alright?"
"Yes," I said, not dropping my guard.
I kept one hand resting on Tessira’s head and opened the window with the other.
"Sebastian. What’s going on?"
"It appears some rats have decided to make themselves known... Give me a minute. I’ll be right back."
I nodded once.
He was gone before I could say anything else there one moment,
Tok... tok...
A minute later. Another knock.
"Young Master. We’re ready to continue."
"...Huh."
I stared at the window for a moment before opening it.
What the hell did he do.
Sebastian stood in the moonlight outside, posture perfect, expression composed.
His clothes were soaked through with blood.
I closed the window without a word.
Tessira didn’t sleep again for the rest of the night. Her grip on my sleeve never loosened, not once, her eyes fixed on the door like the rats might still find a way through it.
We reached a village by morning.
By the eighth hour past the village, the trees thinned and the mountains came into view distant, grey-white, the kind of scale that made the car feel very small.
"Almost there, Young Master," Sebastian called back, as if the night before hadn’t happened at all.
I leaned toward the window.
The Amagi estate sat at the base of the range, half-swallowed by its own shadow even in daylight. Dark stone walls. Towers that looked older than the empire itself. Banners hanging still in air too cold for wind.
It looked exactly like it had in the novel’s descriptions. Exactly like a place built to be feared rather than lived in.
Tessira leaned forward to look too.
"This is yours?"
"My father’s. Mine, eventually. If I don’t get disowned first."
She didn’t laugh. Just studied the place with careful attention she gave everything new.
"It is big," she finally said.
"It’s compensating for something."
That got the almost-smile again.
The gates opened before we reached them. Servants lined the courtyard in two neat rows, heads bowed, the welcome that made my stomach tighten before I even understood why.
Then I saw him.
Standing at the top of the entrance steps, still as the stone around him, was a man I only knew from memory that wasn’t mine.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. Hair the same black as my own, streaked grey at the temples. A presence that filled the courtyard without him doing anything at all.
Duke Lucian Amagi.
My father.
Tessira’s grip on my sleeve tightened.
I didn’t blame her.
The carriage stopped. Sebastian opened the door: clean now, not a trace of last night on him anywhere.
I stepped out into the cold, and my father’s eyes found me immediately sweeping over the changes, the weight I’d lost, the way I held myself now. Something flickered across his face.
"Itsuki," he said. Just that. Testing the shape of it.
"Father."
Neither of us moved for a moment.
Then he descended the steps, slow and deliberate, Every servant in the courtyard looking at nothing in particular.
He stopped in front of me. Studied my face.
"You’ve changed," he said.
"I’ve been training."
"I can see that." A pause, longer than it needed to be. "Why."
I held his gaze.
"Because I decided to."
His expression shifted.
"We’ll discuss it," he said. "Inside. Out of the cold."
His eyes moved past me, to Tessira, still gripping my sleeve, still watching him with open, unguarded wariness.
"And who is this?"
I felt her hand tighten further.
"A friend," I said. "She’s staying with us."
He looked at her a moment longer than was comfortable. Then, without another word, turned and started back up the steps.
"Come inside. Both of you."
I glanced at Tessira.
She glanced at the estate the towers, the stone, the cold pressing in from every direction and then at me.
"It is very big," she said again, quieter this time.
"Yeah," I said. "Let’s go see how big."
We followed him up the steps, into the shadow of the house I was supposed to inherit, toward whatever came next.
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