The Duke’s Reborn Daughter Sometimes Chooses Violence.

“Really? All of that and she just…she just wants to be the new Princess?”

I grumbled as I flipped the very last page of the book I had been reading. It was a novel called: “The Hidden Star of the Academy”.

The premise follows a young orphan getting the chance to enter the Kingdom’s finest Magic Academy, where she interacts with the most eligible men in the entire Kingdom. She meets everyone from the Crown Prince of the entire Kingdom, to the son of the Kingdom’s strongest Knight, to a Saint attending the campus in secret.

The Heroine goes on all sorts of adventures, has all of the Male Leads fall in love with her and then…picks the worst one to marry.

“Damn it,” I grumbled, staring at the front cover of the offending book.

Well, aside from the ending, it was fun. How long had it been since I had read something just for fun? I didn’t remember.

Mindy was right. Reading could just be fun.

My room was sterile. In that space, even this colorful fantasy felt like a stolen treasure.

I gingerly rose, careful not to step on any of the other closed books as I moved over to an overflowing bookshelf. I started to carefully move some aside, intending to hide this novel between a row of more innocuous textbooks.

There were steps.

I froze mid-motion, then hastily shoved the books out of the way. I couldn’t let her see. That was the last thing I could let happen.

The door opened right as I tucked the novel in, but not before I could hide it from view.

“Ellaine, what are you doing?” Calm and smooth. Her voice was always calm and smooth.

“Nothing.” I turned around, trying to look natural.

My panic must have twisted my face anyway.

“Nothing?” She had a blank expression, one that slowly moved into a frown as she inspected me and took a step deeper into the room. “Nothing?”

“Y-yes.” I croaked out, took a step forward, making sure my body still covered the novel.

She looked past me at the bookshelf. Her frown deepened, and she took a few more steps. I tried to raise my hands even as she moved me aside as if I wasn’t even there.

“No, you can’t-!”

“Can’t?” A single word, and yet it had so much venom.

I froze in reflex as my mom reached inside the bookshelf and picked out the novel. She stared at its front cover for a brief second before she opened the front page. Her eyes scanned the words.

All I could do was stand in place. Stand so straight that my back hurt.

I didn’t dare to breathe. Didn’t dare to move a muscle. I had already done something she hadn’t wanted, and the last thing I wanted to do was make it even worse for myself.

My mother sighed, her expression softening. She reached out with her free hand, gently tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear.

“You’ve been reading this.” She said, finally.

“Y-yes.”

She snapped the book shut, her hand dropping from my hair to lightly pat my cheek. “You’ve been wasting your time with this…drivel?”

What could I do but agree? “Y-yes.”

The frown was gone from her face now. I preferred it to the emptiness it left. She opened the book again and grabbed it from either side. I knew what was going to happen.

“No-!”

Riip.

My voice died. The sound of my book tearing ran through me. It cut as surely as any sword.

My mother stared down at the now two halves of the book, almost dismissively letting them fall to the ground. She raised her foot, stepped on one of those two halves.

“You shouldn’t be wasting your time with this, Ellaine.” She sounded almost bored.

I fell to my knees, reached for the two halves. It wasn’t out of any great love for the book itself but because it had been a gift. A birthday gift Mindy had snuck in for me. The only one I’d ever gotten. Seeing it get torn tore something inside of me in turn.

“Did that girl give this to you?” My mother asked.

I stared up at her. Very slowly shook my head.

She bent down and stared directly into my eyes. “What did I tell you about lying, Ellaine?” My mother whispered. “What does a good daughter do?”

“S-she listens to her mother,” I whispered.

My mother slowly nodded and asked again. “Did that girl give this to you?”

I nodded, even as the gesture filled every part of me with shame. I was already lying on the ground, but it felt like that wasn’t low enough. Someone like me deserved some place far beneath even that.

“Sh-she did.”

My mother frowned. I don’t know why she did, surely she had figured out that much herself.

“Only listen to me, Ellaine. Only do what I tell you to.” My mother whispered. “Or….” She trailed off, her head tilting ever so slightly to the side.

“Or I’ll have to find another use for you.”

The words ran me through, surer than steel. I hadn’t heard them in a while. Yet, oddly, I felt like I had.

“Yes,” I said, robotically.

I had retreated somewhere in on myself, somewhere far away from this place, from this room.

“And if you ever-”

I woke up gasping for air.

My heart hammered in my chest. Loud, so loud it felt like it might burst free. I was sweating. I wiped some from my brow. Some of the wetness was around my eyes. A nightmare. That’s all it had been.

I took a shaky breath. Only then did I notice. The air in my room was thick; the glass of water on my nightstand rattled against the wood. The air tasted heavy. I stopped channeling.

Mask?

The Godblade asked. Its presence felt sharper than usual.

I didn’t answer. There were too many things it might have been asking about, and I didn’t want to think about any of them.

I took a few seconds to breathe in and out, enough for the hammering to die down. At least a little. One glance at the window was enough to tell me that it was still the middle of the night. Damn it. I always had trouble falling back asleep after waking up like this.

“Fucking bitch.” I whispered under my breath.

I had been having more of these nightmares lately. At least now I could actually remember them.

My mother was a strange woman, someone who both didn’t want me to ‘waste myself’ and yet someone who was terrified of me actually applying myself at the same time. Two lifetimes combined might not be able to understand her.

I slowly moved back until I rested against the backboard of the bed. I felt a little calmer now. The nightmare didn’t fade in the way dreams were supposed to, and so I wanted to take my mind off things.

“Hey, Vaelin,” I murmured. “Is it just me, or have you started to sound more…intelligent, lately? Just a little.”

The Godblade didn’t answer. Instead, I felt a dull thrum run somewhere inside my mind.

“Not an answer, you know.”

In the stillness of the night, I thought I heard…whispering? I blinked, stared at the door even as I moved my hand to the side.

It opened.

The Godblade was in my hand, not quite active, though I could make it so at a moment’s notice. Messy red hair stared back at me.

“You’re fucking energetic in the middle of the goddamn night,” Violet muttered, staring at me.

She was in her shift, presumably having just woken up herself. My tension faded. I dismissed the blade with a stray thought. Violet stepped in, and only then did I see that it wasn’t just her. Sere trailed behind her, peeking out at me from behind Violet.

Then, finally came Damian. He was at least dressed, though from his dishevelment it was clear he had put on his clothes very quickly. He was also trying very hard not to look at Violet or me. Presumably because of what we were wearing. Or what we weren’t.

“What’s…going on?” I finally asked the obvious question.

“Esra, you were leaking a lot of mana,” Damian spoke, still staring at the floor. His back was straight, his eyes squeezed shut or fixed entirely on a speck of dust near the carpet. The perfect picture of a knight trying not to look at girls in their night shifts.

“Leaking?” Violet snorted. “You were pouring it out. I fucking thought you were under attack.”

Sere nodded, agreeing with the assessment.

“Oh.” I felt awkward. Their rooms were the closest to mine, so it did make sense that they had been able to sense what they had. I appreciated their concern well enough, but I didn’t know what to do with it now.

“I’m alright,” I said. “Just a bad dream.”

Violet strode deeper into the room, yawned, and stretched her arms above her head. She proceeded to lie down on the floor, her back resting against my dresser. She slipped her arms behind her and pulled out…a whetstone and a small dagger. Where had she even been keeping those?

She began sharpening said dagger. The rhythmic shhhk, shhhk of steel against stone filled the room. Surprisingly, it wasn’t annoying.

Damian closed the door behind him and sank until his back was to the door. I felt the barest channeling of mana as he closed his eyes. A visualization exercise for his Gift that Estovan had shown him, I was sure. It felt like he was standing guard.

Sere moved over to my bed, pulled out a chair, and sat down right next to me. She pulled out her notebook. I thought she was going to write something, but instead she flipped the page and showed me a doodle of…a flower? It was a surprisingly nice drawing, far better than anything I might have made.

“It’s very pretty, Sere.” I smiled. “I didn’t know you could draw.”

Sere grinned, leaned in as she handed me the pencil and her notebook. She pointed to the space directly next to the flower she’d drawn.

“You want me to….”

Sere nodded.

I smiled, took the notepad from her, and began to doodle. I was afraid my own drawing would pale in comparison, yet perhaps that didn’t matter.

I spared a glance for Violet, still sharpening her knife. Damian, still practicing. No one had asked. I wondered whose idea that was. Probably Damian, though Violet must surely have stewed over it. It was…the right choice.

There was wetness around my eyes again. I moved to wipe it away with my arm. Right. I wasn’t in that room anymore. I never would be again.

Sere’s hand gently grabbed onto my wrist, gripping just tight enough to be comforting. I let out a long breath. Relaxed. All she did was nod, leaving me to my doodling.

I wasn’t a fool.

I knew why I’d had that dream, tonight of all nights. It hadn’t even been a day.

I finished the sketch of the flower. As I had expected, it wasn’t nearly as pretty as the one Sere had drawn. I moved the notebook over to her. “How does this look?”

She glanced at it, grinned, and nodded. Then, she began doodling again.

I looked down at her bright face, then over at Violet, lazily sharpening her blade, and finally at Damian standing guard at the door.

I let the quiet sit for a moment. The whetstone. The pencil. Damian’s back against the door.

The night didn’t feel nearly as dark now.