The rain hammered against the stone walls of Thornhaven Castle, each droplet a reminder of another dreary autumn in the southern provinces. Adrian Thornwood pressed his back against the cold corridor wall, close enough to the study door to hear every word, yet far enough to maintain the pretense of coincidence should anyone emerge.
"The Black Stone territory?" His father's voice carried the weariness of a man who had buried too many hopes. "That's barely a settlement anymore, Klaus."
"Precisely, my lord." The steward's tone was clinical, detached. "Three years without tax revenue. The iron mines collapsed, the soil yields nothing but stones, and the last census counted fewer than two hundred souls. Even the garrison has dwindled to eight men—hardly enough to deter bandits, let alone..."
"It's perfect."
Adrian's breath caught. His stepmother's voice was soft, almost gentle—the tone she used when serving poisoned wine in crystal goblets.
"Perfect?" Lord Edmund Thornwood's chair creaked.
"For Adrian." A pause, deliberate and measured. "My lord, you know I harbor no ill will toward your... toward Adrian. But he's twenty now. The servants whisper. The bannermen ask questions. After what happened at the Spring Tournament—"
"He was injured."
"He fled." The gentleness never wavered, which somehow made the words cut deeper. "Before the third bout even began. You saw Lord Mercier's face. The other nobles... they laugh, Edmund. And when they laugh at your son, they laugh at House Thornwood."
Adrian's fingers curled into fists, nails biting into his palms. The cold stone against his back felt warmer than the memory of that day—the jeering crowd, the weight of his brother's sword in his hand, the sudden overwhelming certainty that he would die if he stayed in that arena.
Victor would have stayed. Victor would have fought with a broken arm and won. But Victor was two years dead in the northern campaigns, and Adrian was very much alive and very much a coward.
"Black Stone is exile," his father said quietly.
"It's an opportunity." Isabella's voice brightened with carefully crafted optimism. "Let him prove himself away from... expectations. If he succeeds, he returns with honor. If he fails..." She left the sentence unfinished, a blank space for Edmund to fill with his own conclusions.
"And if I send Thomas instead? He's younger, but he's already awakened as a Sequence 9 Flamebinder. The boy has potential—"
"Thomas is nine years old and still cries for his nurse at night." Now there was real warmth in Isabella's voice, a mother's fierce protectiveness. "Would you send a child to a lawless frontier? Would you risk your last—" She caught herself. "Adrian is a man grown. This should be his burden to carry."
Your last legitimate son, Adrian finished silently. The words she'd swallowed. Victor had been the heir, the prodigy, the Sequence 7 Stormcaller who could summon lightning at sixteen. Thomas was the spare, the young Flamebinder with his father's chin and his mother's cunning.
Adrian was the embarrassment. The middle son who had awakened nothing, manifested no abilities, failed every test that mattered. The boy who looked too much like his dead mother and not enough like a Thornwood.
Footsteps echoed from the servants' stairs. Adrian pushed off the wall, affecting the posture of someone who had just arrived, not someone who had been eavesdropping on his own dispossession.
"Master Adrian!"
He turned to find little Thomas racing down the corridor, his too-large sleeping robe flapping around his ankles. The boy's face was flushed, his dark curls wild from sleep.
"Thomas, you should be in bed—"
"I heard Mother and Father arguing." The child grabbed Adrian's hand with both of his own, squeezing tight. "They're trying to send you away, aren't they? To that horrible place up north?"
"Black Stone is east, actually." Adrian managed a smile, kneeling to meet his brother's eyes. "And who says it's horrible? Maybe it's an adventure waiting to happen."
Thomas's lower lip trembled. At nine, he was still young enough to believe in adventures and old enough to recognize lies. "Viktor used to say that. Before he left for the war."
The name hung between them, a ghost that haunted every corridor of Thornhaven.
"Viktor was a hero," Adrian said softly. "I'm just... me."
"You're my brother." Thomas threw his arms around Adrian's neck with the uncomplicated fierceness of childhood. "I don't want you to go. Everyone I love goes away and doesn't come back."
Adrian held the boy close, breathing in the scent of soap and woodsmoke from the nursery fire. Over Thomas's shoulder, he saw the study door open.
Isabella emerged first. She was beautiful in the way of a master painting—every feature precisely arranged, her auburn hair swept into an elegant coil, her green dress cut to suggest rather than reveal. She saw Thomas clinging to Adrian and something flickered across her face. Not quite guilt. Perhaps recognition of a complication.
"Thomas, darling." She moved toward them with the grace of a former court dancer. "It's far past your bedtime."
"Mother, please don't send Adrian away." Thomas pulled back from the embrace but kept one hand locked around Adrian's fingers. "He's done nothing wrong."
"Oh, sweetheart." Isabella knelt beside them, and Adrian caught a whiff of her perfume—roses and something sharper beneath. "No one is being punished. Your brother is going to manage his own territory. That's an honor, not a sentence. Don't you want Adrian to have something of his own?"
The way she said it, with such perfect maternal concern, almost made Adrian believe she meant it. Almost.
"He has us," Thomas said stubbornly.
Isabella's smile tightened at the corners. "Your father wishes to speak with Adrian. Come now, let's get you back to bed. You can say goodbye properly in the morning."
"Goodbye?" Thomas's voice cracked. "When are you leaving?"
Adrian opened his mouth, but Klaus emerged from the study, his steward's robes rustling. "Lord Edmund will see you now, Master Adrian." The title was technically correct and practically an insult—everyone knew he'd never inherit enough to be called 'Lord Adrian.'
"Go on," Isabella urged Thomas, her hand firm on the boy's shoulder. As she guided him away, she glanced back at Adrian. For just a moment, the mask slipped, and he saw the calculation beneath—measuring, assessing the threat he posed to her son's future.
Then she was all warmth again, whispering comfort to Thomas as they disappeared up the stairs.
Adrian stepped into the study.
The room smelled of old books, pipe tobacco, and disappointment. His father sat behind the massive oak desk that had served five generations of Thornwoods, his face half-shadowed by the dying fire. Edmund Thornwood had been a formidable man once—a Sequence 6 Knight-Commander whose aura could shake city walls. Now, at fifty-three, he looked carved from gray stone, worn down by grief and governance.
He didn't look up from the document he was reading. "How much did you hear?"
"Enough." Adrian closed the door behind him. "Black Stone. No revenue. Two hundred residents. A glorified fishing village, if the reports are accurate."
"They're worse than accurate. They're optimistic." Edmund finally raised his eyes. They were the same shade of steel-gray as Viktor's, as Adrian's own. "The last lord died of a fever two years ago. His widow fled back to her family in the capital. The sept is abandoned. The mill is burned. You would be going to a corpse of a settlement."
"Then I'll resurrect it."
The words surprised Adrian as much as they surprised his father. Edmund's hand, reaching for his pipe, froze midway.
"You'll... what?"
Adrian stepped closer to the desk, into the firelight. "Send me to Black Stone. I'll take the posting."
"Adrian, you don't have to—" Edmund's voice carried an unfamiliar note. Pity, perhaps, or its more palatable cousin, concern. "Isabella pushes because she fears for Thomas's future. She means well, in her way. But I won't exile my own son to satisfy—"
"This isn't about Isabella." Adrian surprised himself with the steadiness of his voice. For years, he'd mastered the art of making himself small, inconsequential, easy to overlook. Now, standing in the firelight with rain battering the windows, he felt something shift inside his chest—a locked door beginning to crack open. "It's about me. What I am. What I'm not."
Edmund set down the document. "You're my son."
"I'm your disappointment." Adrian said it without bitterness, simply as fact. "I'm not Viktor. I can't summon storms or lead cavalry charges. I couldn't even finish a tournament bout without running. Every day I stay here, I remind you of what you lost and what you're stuck with."
"That's not—"
"Father." Adrian placed both hands on the desk, leaning forward. "Let me go. Not because Isabella wants me gone, but because I need to go. Here, I'll always be the son who isn't Viktor. There..." He gestured toward the rain-dark windows, toward the east where Black Stone waited. "There, I'll just be Adrian. Maybe that's enough. Maybe it isn't. But I'd rather fail on my own terms than succeed at being invisible."
Edmund studied his son's face as if seeing him for the first time. The silence stretched, broken only by the crackling fire and the relentless rain.
"You've never spoken to me like this before," Edmund said finally.
"I've never had a reason to."
Something that might have been respect flickered in the old lord's eyes. He rose from his chair, walked to the window, and stared out at the darkness. When he spoke again, his voice carried the weight of a military commander making a tactical decision.
"Black Stone has no garrison worth the name. The treasury is empty. The people have forgotten they owe allegiance to anyone. You'd be starting from nothing."
"Then I can't make it worse."
Edmund almost smiled. "The nearest settlement of any size is Ironhold, three days' ride. The roads are infested with bandits. The woods hold worse things—unlicensed Awakeners, feral Sequence breakers who couldn't control their powers. Without abilities of your own—"
"I'll manage."
"How?" Edmund turned from the window, and now his expression was troubled. "Adrian, I'm trying to understand. This isn't bravado or pride. You're serious. But you've shown no aptitude for awakening, no talent for combat, no head for governance. What's changed?"
Everything, Adrian thought. Nothing. He couldn't explain the certainty that had settled in his bones, the feeling that if he stayed in this castle one more week, one more day, he would calcify into the person everyone already believed him to be. Better to risk death in Black Stone than to achieve a living death in Thornhaven.
"Maybe nothing's changed," Adrian said quietly. "Maybe I've always been this person, and I just forgot. Viktor used to tell me I was brave when we were children. Before I learned to be afraid of failing to be him."
Edmund's expression softened, painful with memory. "Viktor saw the best in everyone."
"Then maybe he saw something real." Adrian straightened. "Send me to Black Stone, Father. Give me one year. If I can't make something of it—if I can't establish order, revive the economy, make the territory functional—then I'll come back and accept whatever position you see fit. Assistant administrator. Steward. Stable master. I don't care. But give me this chance."
The fire popped, sending sparks up the chimney. Outside, the rain began to ease.
Edmund returned to his desk and sat heavily. He looked older than he had at the start of this conversation, worn by the mathematics of fatherhood—one son dead, one too young, and this middle child who had just revealed a spine no one knew existed.
"You'll take Klaus as your steward," he said finally. "And twenty men-at-arms. That's all I can spare without weakening our own defenses. You'll have a budget of—"
"I'll take five men." Adrian's interruption earned a sharp look. "Anyone who volunteers. Not soldiers fulfilling orders, but men who choose to come. As for money..." He thought of the empty treasury Klaus had mentioned. "Whatever you think Black Stone deserves."
"That would be nothing."
"Then nothing it is."
Edmund leaned back in his chair, studying Adrian with an intensity that made the young man's skin prickle. Finally, he reached for a sheet of parchment and his seal.
"You'll leave in three days. That gives you time to prepare and say your goodbyes." He began writing, his hand steady despite the late hour. "I'll draft the official appointment and notify the regional governor. You'll have full administrative authority within Black Stone's borders, answerable only to me. That's more autonomy than Viktor ever had."
"Viktor never needed it. He had competence."
"And you have necessity." Edmund looked up. "That can be a stronger motivator. Your brother knew he would succeed, so he never learned to fear failure. You..." He paused, choosing words carefully. "You've already lived with failure. Perhaps that's its own kind of preparation."
It wasn't quite a compliment, but it wasn't pity either. Adrian would take it.
"Thank you, Father."
"Don't thank me yet." Edmund returned his attention to the document. "Black Stone is where lords send sons they wish to forget and criminals they wish to disappear. If you die there, Adrian, I may not even hear about it for months."
"Then you'll get a surprisingly pleasant surprise when I send my first tax report."
Edmund's pen paused. Then, for the first time in longer than Adrian could remember, his father laughed—a brief, rusty sound, but genuine.
"Viktor would have liked this version of you," Edmund said quietly. "The one with jokes and backbone. Where has he been hiding?"
Waiting, Adrian thought. Waiting for a good enough reason to emerge.
But what he said was, "Probably lost in one of the castle's many rooms. You know how easy it is to misplace things in Thornhaven."
He left before his father could respond, closing the study door softly behind him. The corridor was empty now, the servants retired, Thomas presumably asleep. Adrian walked slowly toward his own chambers, exhaustion finally catching up with him.
He had three days to prepare for exile. Three days to transform from the invisible son into something resembling a lord.
Outside, the rain had stopped completely. Through a narrow window, Adrian glimpsed the eastern sky, where the first hint of dawn painted the clouds silver.
Black Stone waited in that direction. His future, his gamble, his chance.
For the first time in years, Adrian Thornwood smiled.
He had no idea that in three days' time, on a muddy road between his old life and his new one, everything would change. That a voice would speak in his mind, offering power he'd never dreamed possible. That the lightning he'd envied in Viktor's hands would soon dance across his own fingertips.