Morning came whether Leon wanted it to or not.
He was up before the birds finished deciding what to sing about, sitting on the edge of his bed staring at nothing in particular while his brain caught up with the rest of him.
The Aurenfall.
Right.
Yuki appeared at his door at some point with his clothes folded over her arm, ears forward, tails moving with the particular energy of someone who had been awake and ready for a while and had opinions about people who hadn't been.
She'd picked something out herself. A fitted white dress shirt, clean lines, dark trousers, a short structured outer coat in deep navy that sat well without trying too hard. Simple. Sharp. The kind of thing that said he belonged somewhere without screaming about it.
He looked at it.
"This is fine," he said.
Which from Leon was essentially a standing ovation.
He dressed, ran a hand through his white hair once, achieved nothing, and gave up. Grabbed his coat and headed downstairs.
...
Outside the estate the morning air was still cool. The car was already waiting, the Silford Crest sitting quiet and dark by the front steps, one of the guards at the wheel.
Leon came through the front doors and stopped.
No Yuki.
He looked at the door.
Looked at the car.
Looked at the sky.
He leaned against the side of the car and waited.
A minute passed.
Then another.
He checked absolutely nothing because he had nothing to check and that somehow made the waiting worse.
'Why,' he thought. Not for the first time and not with any real expectation of an answer. 'Why does it always take this long.'
It wasn't like she had that much to do. She had two tails and a pair of ears and silver hair that apparently sorted itself out. What exactly was happening in there that required this much time.
He genuinely wanted to understand.
He did not understand.
The mysteries of the opposite gender remained, as always, completely impenetrable.
The door opened.
Yuki stepped out.
White outer robe, fitted, with subtle gold trim along the edges that caught the morning light cleanly. Her silver hair was down, sitting perfectly, her ears angled forward. Two tails swaying behind her at a composed and unhurried pace.
She looked, objectively, like she had not been the reason they were standing in a driveway instead of already moving.
"You're ready," she said pleasantly.
Leon looked at her.
"I've been ready," he said.
"Shall we go then."
He opened the car door without responding.
Yuki got in first, settling her tails neatly.
Leon got in after her and pulled the door shut.
The guard at the wheel glanced back once, said nothing, and pulled out of the estate gates into the morning city.
Leon looked out the window at Everett passing by.
'Aurenfall huh'
What a pain.
…
The Aurenfall.
Once a decade. Every child twelve and under, noble or commoner, gathered in one place to be seen by the world. Talent got discovered here. Connections got made here. Reputations started here. For kids with no name and no backing this was the one door that opened regardless, all they had to do was walk through it.
And it all happened in Everett.
Which meant the entire human continent had spent the last several weeks pointed in one direction.
The capital was not ready for itself.
Leon noticed the moment their car turned onto the main road and immediately stopped moving.
Outside the window, Everett was unrecognizable.
The streets that normally had room to breathe were gone. In their place was everything. Carriages from half a dozen different kingdoms stacked behind each other with nowhere to go, flags hanging off their doors marking where they'd come from. Vaelthorns and older models mixed in between. People on foot cutting through the gaps because the gaps were faster. Vendors lining every available wall selling food, drinks, scarves in the capital's colors, little wooden tokens carved to look like the colosseum. A group of street performers had set up at a corner and drawn a crowd that was now contributing enthusiastically to the blockage.
The noise came through the glass muffled but present. Multiple languages. Laughter somewhere. A child crying somewhere else. The general sound of too many people in one place all convinced they needed to be somewhere.
A food stall had a line that wrapped around the corner and disappeared.
Two men were having an argument over a parking spot that neither of them was going to win.
Somewhere above it all, banners hung between the buildings, the Aurenfall crest printed large, blue and gold, swaying gently in the morning breeze completely unbothered by the chaos beneath them.
The guard at the wheel exhaled slowly. "Apologies my lord. The whole city is like this."
Leon looked out the window.
Everett on a normal day was alive. Today it was something else entirely. Every inn was full. Every restaurant had people spilling out the front. The guild building visible at the end of the street had a crowd around its notice board three people deep.
Everyone had come.
Of course they had.
This was the Aurenfall.
"It'll be a while," the guard said.
Leon sat back in his seat.
Yuki was watching everything outside with quiet attention, ears angled forward, taking it all in.
"Quite the occasion," she said.
Leon said nothing.
The car moved forward one meter.
Stopped.
He closed his eyes.
---
The ballroom occupied the top floor of the Grand Hall, a building that existed for exactly one purpose and only got used once a decade.
It showed.
The ceiling rose high enough that the chandeliers hanging from it looked almost distant, each one catching the light and scattering it across the room in slow drifting patterns. The floor was pale stone, polished until it reflected the chandeliers back at themselves, doubling the light. Long banners hung from the walls in the colors of every kingdom that had sent representatives, blue and gold dominating since this was Everett, but other colors threaded through as well, crimson, green, silver, a small forest of identity packed into one space.
Tables lined the edges of the room, draped in white, carrying more food than any reasonable number of children could eat, though Leon suspected several adults present were going to test that theory regardless.
A small ensemble played somewhere near the far wall, strings mostly, something light and unobtrusive that filled the gaps between conversations without demanding attention.
And the people.
Nobles in their finest, the kind that cost more than most households made in a year. Children dressed up and trying very hard to look comfortable in clothes that clearly weren't designed for comfort. Adults standing in clusters, talking, watching, calculating, the way nobles always did even when they were smiling.
It was loud in the particular way these things are loud. Not noisy exactly. Just full. Full of voices and laughter and the clink of glasses and the occasional too-loud reaction from somewhere when someone said something someone else found either very funny or very offensive.
...
Arlott sat near one of the side tables with Lena beside him.
He hadn't said much since they arrived. He rarely did at these things. He sat with his usual stillness, dressed in plain black, the kind of formal that didn't try to compete with anyone else's formal and somehow stood out more because of it. The scars along his jaw and forearms were visible in the chandelier light, old marks from a life most of the people in this room had never come close to living.
Lena sat beside him in a dark green dress, her raven hair pulled back, scanning the room the way she always scanned rooms now and then.
"He's late," she said.
"He'll come," Arlott said.
"You don't know that."
"I know him, Lena."
Lena didn't argue with that, though her expression suggested she wasn't entirely convinced either.
Across the room, near one of the far tables, Julian and Rosa stood with their mother.
Aria Silford didn't attend many of these events. Her health had kept her close to home more often than not over the years, and her presence tonight had drawn more than a few glances from people who clearly hadn't expected to see her. She looked well tonight though, composed, elegant in pale blue, Julian practically glued to her side with the kind of attentiveness he rarely showed anyone else. Rosa stood a little further off, greeting people Arlott vaguely recognized from other noble houses.
Arlott watched them for a moment.
Then his gaze moved on, the way it always did, taking in the room.
Every important name in the kingdom was here tonight. Guild masters. Heads of noble houses. People whose names carried weight in places far beyond Everett.
And near the raised platform at the far end of the ballroom, surrounded by a loose ring of attendants and a noticeably wider berth than anyone else in the room, sat the royal family.