Two weeks passed in a rhythm that felt, against all odds, like a heartbeat. The blanket no longer felt like betrayal or a chain, it was a fact, as much a part of the shack as the warped walls and the scent of woodsmoke. Aki woke with it pulled to her chin, the wool now carrying the familiar, comforting smells of Valeria's herbs and the slum's damp. Her first thought was no longer one of suspicion, but a quiet, settled acknowledgement. Ghosts can have haunts. This one is ours.
Outside, Higaru coughed itself awake with the usual cacophony of misery, but inside, the air held a new, profound stillness. A peace, fragile and stolen, but real. Shiro was already up, moving with a purpose that had been carved into him over twenty days of relentless, loving correction. His hands, for the first time in his memory, were clean, the grime stubbornly banished from under his nails. His posture, once a permanent defensive hunch, had been straightened by Valeria's constant, sharp tapped reminders between his shoulder blades. He checked the wooden medallion at his belt, not for anxious comfort, but out of habit, a touchstone.
When the boots sounded in the alley at dawn, two pairs, one measured and firm, one lighter, quicker he was at the door before the first knock could land. Valeria entered with a basket draped over her arm, from which emanated the impossible, heavenly scent of actual bread, still warm from some oven far from Higaru. Kuro trailed behind her, bleary eyed, his usual severe composure softened by sleep. He was mid complaint.
"... an absolutely barbaric hour. The sun isn't even a concept yet, it's a rumour!"
Valeria didn't turn, reaching back to smooth his sleep mussed hair, her fingers deliberately tangling in his silver streak. He swatted her hand away with a grumble.
"Stop. You've already made me look like a deranged hedgehog."
"You're a hedgehog who needs to eat," she said, her voice warm with morning roughness.
She set the basket down, tore a generous piece from a small, golden loaf, and without ceremony, held it to Shiro's mouth.
"Open. You're still all ribs and angles. You eat like a bird picking at scraps. Today, you eat like my growing boy."
Shiro flushed, a protest forming, but she pushed the bread gently against his lips. He obeyed, taking a bite, the flavour of pure, untainted grain exploding on his tongue, so rich it was almost overwhelming. He chewed, embarrassed and grateful.
"I can feed myself," he managed around the mouthful.
"You can, and you don't," Valeria stated, feeding him another piece anyway, her eyes crinkling at his mortified expression. "Consider it target practice."
Kuro, seeing this, reached over and plucked a piece from her other hand.
"If he gets hand fed that means your bread is mine. It's only fair."
"Fairness is for ledgers," Valeria said, but she let him take it, then pinched the cheek he was chewing with. "Manners. Don't snatch. Ask."
"You wouldn't give it to me if I asked," Kuro retorted, but he was smiling faintly, the ritual of the complaint as comfortable now as the dawn itself.
Aki watched from her pallet, maskless. The absence of that internal wall still felt strange, a vulnerability like a layer of skin had been peeled away, leaving her tender but alive. When Valeria brought her a cup of tea, their fingers brushed in the transfer. The touch was no longer an event. It was punctuation. A comma in their shared sentence.
"You're making them soft," Aki remarked, her voice still raspy but clear. There was no barb in it, only a wry observation.
Valeria snorted, settling on the stool she'd commandeered as her own.
"I'm making them precise. Precision requires discipline. The softness" she gestured at the two boys now bickering over who got the crust, "that's their own doing. A catastrophic failure of my rigorous training."
Shiro's internal thought was a quiet, terrifying quake, Before them, I was a ghost story carved on a rotting wall. Now I have a mother who forces bread into my mouth and a brother who steals it from her hand. My fate is being rewritten. Not in wood, but in something stronger. In habit. In presence.
Later, Valeria sent the boys to fetch water from the well, a task that now took three times as long as it should, filled with protracted arguments conducted in low, intense voices. In the quiet shack, Valeria stirred a thin broth in the pot, her movements economical. The firelight caught her profile, and Aki saw it again, the brief prismatic fracture in her eyes, a flash of hidden spectrum, like a knife's edge turned to catch the sun.
"Your eyes do that thing," Aki said. It wasn't an accusation. It was an observation offered between family, a note passed across the space they now shared.
Valeria's spoon stilled for a half second before resuming its circular path. A faint tension entered her shoulders.
"They've always done it," she said, her voice carefully neutral. "A flaw in the glass. A trick of the light."
"It's not a flaw," Aki murmured, watching her closely. "And it's not the light outside. It's the light inside. The veil. You wear it for them." She nodded slightly toward the door, where the boys voices could be heard faintly, debating the declination of some star.
Valeria didn't deny it. Her jaw tightened minutely, a tell of deep held strain. She kept stirring.
"Some secrets," she said, the words measured and heavy, "are burdens. Not gifts. They are carried to protect, not to share."
Aki leaned forward, the blanket pooling at her waist. Her voice was soft but relentless, a gentle pry bar.
"You have been here for weeks. You have given Shiro something I've always wished for him to feel, a mothers love. You have healed my back when I was too stubborn. You have carved a space for yourself in our ruin and called it a home. We agreed, when I told you of my family, of the name buried, those types of burdens, are meant to be shared. Or they end up crushing the bearer."
Valeria closed her eyes. The confession hovered on her lips, a ghost she was trying to decide whether to clothe in flesh.
"Where I am from..." she began, her voice so quiet it was almost lost in the crackle of the fire. "It is a place where the light is... different. It behaves differently. To be from there, here... is to wear a disguise every moment. To hide what you are, because to be seen is to be..."
The door burst open, shattering the fragile moment. Shiro and Kuro tumbled back in, the water bucket sloshing, their debate having reached a heated peak.
"...but if you adjust for the precession over the last century, Polaris wasn't the pole star for the ancient navigators, you insufferable oaf!" Kuro was saying, his academic indignation fully awake now.
"So? It is now! You navigate by what is, not by what some dead guy with a seashell to his ear thought!" Shiro shot back, setting the bucket down with a thump.
Valeria's transformation was instantaneous. The vulnerable woman vanished, replaced by the wry, commanding presence they knew. The confession died, unspoken, folded back into the vault within her. She turned, her voice loud and teasing, a shield slammed into place.
"Shiro, you've spilled half of it. The Royal Academy Lumina Athenaeum won't accept a candidate who can't tell a water bucket from a sieve."
The phrase landed like a lightning strike. Shiro froze, his irritation forgotten.
"The... the Academy?" The words were a breathless echo.
His mind, which had been full of stars and arguments, went utterly blank, then flooded with a thousand impossible images. Valeria's eyes flicked to Aki's for a fraction of a second, a silent desperate promise of later, I will finish, I swear it, before she turned her full attention on Shiro and banked the wild hope in his eyes with a sharp, affectionate pinch to his cheek.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
"Don't shine too bright, little star. You'll attract moths. And moths in places like that don't just eat cloth. They bite."
Kuro, picking up the thread as if the tense, intimate moment before their entrance had never happened, dropped onto the stool.
"It's a den of vipers," he said, his tone casual, but his storm grey eyes were serious on Shiro. "Politicians offspring and merchant heirs all posturing and poisoning each other's tea over telescope time. But..." He shrugged one shoulder. "It's a den of vipers with the best library on the continent. With lecturers that know the sk.. stars like the back of their hand. With star charts that are.. forget the charts just know." He held Shiro's gaze. "You'd absolutely hate it. The pretension, the rules, the clothes. Which is precisely why I think you should go."
Shiro's mouth opened, but no sound emerged. The world had tipped on its axis. The Academy. It wasn't just a word, it was a door to a universe that existed in parallel to Higaru's rot, a place where the stars were studied with instruments, not guessed at through smoke. A future, a path, unspooled before him, terrifying and dazzling. His fate, which had been measured in scraps of wood and bowls of gruel, suddenly had a new unit of measurement. Knowledge.
The afternoon sun was high when Valeria set down her chisel with a definitive click. The usual workshop sounds ceased. She looked at Shiro, and all the teasing warmth drained from her face, replaced by a tempered steel seriousness that commanded the room.
"Listen to me," she said, her voice low and clear. "If you go, you do not go as Shiro of Higaru. That boy does not exist to them. He cannot." She leaned forward. "You will be Shiro of House Malkor. A distant cousin from a fallen, rural branch. Your mother was a minor noblewoman with a head for numbers who married for love. She's dead. Your father was a dreamer who lost the family fortune charting comets. He's dead. You were raised by a half mad aunt (me) in the hinterlands who taught you stars from cracked old globes. Your carvings are crooked not because you learned in a gutter, but because your teacher was eccentric. Do you understand? Every detail. Your life depends on it."
Shiro nodded, his throat parchment dry. He was being given a past, a fictional but plausible history, to replace his true, shameful one. Then, a colder, more familiar fear doused the excitement. His eyes snapped to Aki, frail but alert on her pallet.
"Aki...," he began, the word full of dread. "If I go... who will look after her? I can't just leave her here alone."
Valeria's expression softened into something infinitely tender.
"You think I would leave my anchor unattended?" She shook her head. "No, little star. Aki will be coming with me tomorrow, after I see you off. She will be staying with your grandparents."
Shiro blinked, confused.
"My... grandparents?"
"In your story, Shiro of House Malkor," Valeria explained gently, "you have grandparents. My grandparents. They live in a quiet house with a garden that somehow blooms despite the city's grit. They are relentless in their love. They have already been told to expect their 'grandson's' dear sister, who needs clean air and quiet care while he studies. They will love her as their own daughter. They will fuss over her, feed her until she protests, and tell her stories by the hearth. She will be safe. Safer than here and loved, relentlessly."
The relief that washed through Shiro was so profound it made his knees feel weak. Not only a path forward, but Aki sheltered, protected, loved. It was more than he'd ever allowed himself to dream.
"I will be here at dawn tomorrow," Valeria continued. "I will bring you a simple grey tunic and trousers. It is plain, but clean and sturdy. It will serve for your first few days. The proper House Malkor uniform, the one with the sigil, is being tailored. It takes time. Kuro will bring it to you at the Academy as soon as it is ready." She looked at him intently. "If they know you're from here," she went on, her gaze piercing, "if they smell the gutter on you, they won't just mock you. They will dissect you. Rich children are emotional cannibals. They feast on weakness. Your weakness is your truth. So you bury it. Deep."
Kuro shifted beside him. His voice, when he spoke, was uncharacteristically solemn, stripped of all lazy arrogance.
"But don't worry just remember this: you're my brother now. That isn't just a feeling. It's a contract. In my... in our world, that means you answer to me. You protect my back, I shield yours. You get into trouble, I get you out. Or we both go down swinging. That's the tradition. That's the only rule that matters inside those stone walls."
Valeria's hand came to rest on Kuro's shoulder, a heavy, meaningful weight.
"You are his guardian in this, storm baby. His anchor in that sea of sharks. Don't let him drown."
Kuro's jaw clenched, a muscle ticking.
"You said you'd stop calling me that," he muttered, a flush of what looked like shame or pain rising on his neck.
"Did I? I don't remember. What I do remember is that you are my storm baby," Valeria said, her voice dropping, layered with a history only they shared. "Born in thunder and raised in gales. And you are also a lion. So you will act like one. You will guard your pride."
She reached out with her other hand and pinched both their cheeks, hard enough to bring water to their eyes, a physical brand of her command.
"You have one month before I return. One month to learn, to listen, to not stand out. Play nice. Don't burn the place down." Her expression grew stern, but her eyes were soft. "And I expect a letter from each of you. Every day. It doesn't have to be long. A line. A word. But you will write. Aki needs to know you are both breathing, and that you remember you are brothers."
She turned her focus back to Kuro, her voice doing that extraordinary thing again, cracking with a hairline fracture of pure maternal fear. Her thumb came up and brushed his silver streak, a gesture of such tenderness it stilled the air.
"And Kuro... don't do that thing you do when I'm not there. The mask. The icy distance. The voice that could freeze a summer lake. Your brother," she said, looking pointedly at Shiro, then back at Kuro, "needs you. The real you. The one who argues about star alignments at dawn. Not your fathers polished shadow. Promise me."
Kuro looked away, his storm grey eyes glistening. He swallowed, his throat working.
"I hate it when you do this," he whispered, raw.
"I know," she whispered back, her own eyes bright. "But promise me."
He looked at the floor, gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.
"I promise."
Shiro watched, a confusing mix of awe and anxiety churning in his gut. Storm baby. A lion. My brother. My fate is bound to his. And he is bound to her. We're not just a family. We're a constellation, separate points of light, but the same picture, holding each other in place. He also noted, with a distant part of his mind, how naturally Kuro had said "houses" and "our world," the aristocratic plural he'd never used before.
While the boys were later bent over a fresh plank, Kuro's hand guiding Shiro's as they attempted the complex nebula of Orion's sword, Aki watched them. She saw the easy way Kuro corrected Shiro's grip, not with condescension but with a focused patience he reserved only for these moments. She saw the silver streak in his hair, the severe cut, the way he held himself even when relaxed, a posture that wasn't taught, but inherited. She saw the way Valeria looked at him, with a love that was fierce, proud, and deeply, deeply protective. A love that spoke of legacy. Of bloodline.
The pieces, which had been hovering at the edge of her understanding for two weeks, finally clicked into place with a soft, irrevocable sound in her mind. The silver streak. The way he speaks of 'the court.' The way Valeria serves him, not just as a servant, but as a guardian of something precious. The Butcher King's heir. Shojiki Oji's grandson. A prince.
Her eyes met Valeria's across the room. Valeria, who was watching the boys with a soft smile, felt her gaze and looked over. In that silent exchange, Aki saw the confirmation. Valeria gave a nearly imperceptible nod, her expression both pleading and resolute.
Aki's own heart clenched. She looked at Shiro, her brother, who was laughing at something Kuro had said, his face alight with a simple, unburdened joy she hadn't seen in years. He was happy. He had a brother. He had a future.
Quietly, so only Valeria could hear, Aki breathed the words, "Don't tell Shiro Kuro is a prince... he's not ready for that world. Not yet."
Valeria's shoulders relaxed a fraction, a silent thank you. She nodded again, more firmly this time.
"Let him find his footing first," she murmured back. "Let him have a brother before he has to understand what a prince truly carries."
They held each other's gaze, a pact sealed in silent understanding. They would let Shiro have this, this pure, uncomplicated bond. The truth of Kuro's birthright was a storm on the horizon. For now, they would let him bask in the sunlight of friendship.
As dusk began to pool in the corners, Valeria made the final announcement while packing her satchel.
"Tomorrow dawn, then. A new uniform, a new story, a new day." She looked from Shiro to Kuro, her eyes pools of unmasked sorrow. "And the day after tomorrow, I leave for the southern provinces. Diplomatic duties for House Malkor. The King demands a presence. I must go for a month."
Panic, cold and sharp, flashed across both boys faces. Shiro's knuckles whitened on his chisel. Kuro went rigid, his expression shutting down, the icy mask Valeria feared already beginning to form at the edges.
Seeing it, Valeria dropped to her knees in front of them, disregarding the dirt floor. She took one of each of their shoulders in her strong hands, her grip anchoring.
"You are not alone," she said, her voice thick with emotion. "Do you hear me? You have each other." She looked at Shiro. "Your sister will be safe." She turned to Kuro, her thumb stroking his cheek. "And you. Remember your promise. No masks for your brother."
She leaned forward and kissed Shiro's forehead, a seal, a blessing, a transfer of courage.
"Another day of family when I return. A month is nothing. A single phase of the moon."
She stood, ruffling both their heads one last time, mussing hair that would now have to stay mussed without her. She slung her satchel over her shoulder, gave Aki a long, speaking look full of promises and fears, and stepped out into the gathering dark.
The door closed. The shack held its breath, then exhaled into a new kind of silence. It wasn't empty. It was charged with the weight of tomorrow, of separation, of a daunting future now shared, and the tangible thread of daily letters that would tether them across the distance.
Shiro's internal thought was a fierce, trembling vow. One month without her. But Aki is safe. I have a brother. I have a haunt that is now a home. And I have a future. It is no longer carved in scraps of rotting wood. It is written in starlight, in secrets, in the promise of a family that chooses to return, and in the words I will send to her every single day.
How Will Shiro Get On In The Academy?
