And just like that, the day of the ball arrived.
Both families dressed to the fullest. The girls wore gowns that swept the floor with quiet authority, and the men were fitted in layers of dark, tailored cloth that made them look precisely like what they were — people accustomed to rooms where appearances carried weight. Alavan moved through it all as though born in formal wear, which he more or less had been. Leom wore it with the same ease, like a second skin he kept in a wardrobe for occasions such as this.
Ivel stood in front of the mirror and tugged at his collar.
"I don't know how people don't simply burn up in this."
He looked at himself for a long moment.
"Well." He exhaled. "At least I don't look bad."
The carriages that came for them were, if anything, finer than the ones that had brought them to the capital in the first place. They rode to the center of the city, where guards stood in formation around the base of a tower so large it stopped being a tower and became something closer to a declaration. A palace, though the word felt insufficient standing beneath it.
They passed through the gates.
Ivel stopped walking.
The architecture was unlike anything he had seen — engravings worked into every surface with the patience of people who had understood that the building would outlive them and had carved accordingly. It was old, unmistakably so, medieval in its bones, and yet something had been done to it over the centuries that had brought it forward — modernized without diminishing, refined without erasing. The result was a place that felt like it existed slightly outside of time.
They were led inside and announced to the hall.
"Leom of Revenant — and Alavan of Frost."
Heads turned. A great many of them. Royals and warriors both, the kind of people who recognized family names the way others recognize faces — immediately, and with full understanding of what recognition means.
Leom was absorbed into a wave of greetings within moments, people closing in from every direction with the enthusiasm of those who had been waiting for a chance to speak with him. Ivel watched this happen, took a quiet step sideways, and slipped away before anyone thought to include him.
He drifted through the banquet hall at his own pace.
His sisters had performed the same disappearing act, he noticed — they were somewhere across the room, keeping their own company, looking entirely unbothered about it. He made a mental note to ask them how they had learned to do that so efficiently.
He found the food.
It was, as with everything else in the capital, unreasonable in its abundance. He stood before the table and felt his mouth begin to betray him before he caught himself, pressed his lips together with dignity, and stepped back. He would eat later. He was saving himself.
He was still considering this noble decision when someone tapped his shoulder.
"Sneaking away, I see."
Verna stood beside him, looking entirely at ease in a gown that made her look like she had been designed specifically for rooms like this one.
"I wouldn't want to get caught in all of that," Ivel said, nodding toward the crowd still surrounding Leom.
"I don't blame you. I'm not fond of large crowds either." She glanced toward the center of the hall. "Though my role tonight is essentially to stand in a visible location and look presentable, so there is that."
"Must be a difficult life."
"It has its moments," she said, smiling.
A beat passed.
"When does the tournament begin?" Ivel asked.
"Today they'll announce the participants. The bouts start tomorrow."
"I see." He paused. "Will you be entering?"
Verna smiled — the slow, deliberate kind.
"You'll find out when everyone else does." She glanced back toward the hall. "It was lovely talking, but I can't leave my mother alone with my father for too long. If you'll excuse me."
She moved away through the crowd with the practiced ease of someone who had been navigating rooms like this since before she could form complete sentences, leaving Ivel standing at the edge of the food table with no answer and a mild sense of having been outmaneuvered.
He sighed.
"I suppose I'll find out with everyone else, then."
He wandered.
The hall was full of faces he didn't recognize, many of them around his own age — dressed well, carrying themselves with the particular confidence of people who had been told from birth that they were worth watching. He looked at one, then another.
"Is everyone from a royal family extraordinarily good-looking," he said, to no one in particular, in a tone of mild grievance.
"Alone as always, I see."
He spun.
Vas stood behind him — dressed, for once, in something that matched the occasion. Dark and fitted and sharp at the collar. And, notably, without the wine bottle.
"Gods," Ivel said. "Why must you always appear out of nowhere."
Vas cleared his throat and looked elsewhere for a moment.
"Are you prepared for the tournament?" he asked, in the tone of a man changing the subject.
"I think so. I don't know what the others are capable of, but as long as everyone is still in the genesis stage I should be fine."
Vas considered this briefly.
"In this age group there isn't anyone who has reached the next stage. Very few have even shaped their core yet." He paused. "So in terms of raw advancement, the field is relatively even."
Ivel nodded slowly.
"Good. I don't want to deal with too much imbalance." He thought for a moment. "Though quality will still matter. Who do you think I need to watch for?"
Vas answered without hesitation — as though he had known the question was coming long before it was asked.
"Those light bastards. Always the most trouble. They can heal themselves at will and strip mana from anything around them." He said it with the flat certainty of someone who had dealt with this personally and had not enjoyed the experience.
Ivel stared at him. As though a shock running through his body he had heard the name of the light family before but where, though for the moment he was more shocked about their power.
"What kind of quality is that."
"A formidable one. Though it has its limits — when the ambient mana is too dense, they struggle to fully suppress it. It isn't perfect." Vas paused. "But it's close enough to be a serious problem."
Ivel exhaled through his nose.
"Well then. This should be interesting."
Vas turned and looked at him directly.
"You best win."
Ivel blinked.
"I thought you'd be hoping your own family would take it."
Something shifted in Vas's expression — not quite closed off, but careful. He let the word sit in the air between them for a moment before he spoke.
"Family," he said.
He left it there, as though the word itself was the entirety of what he wanted to say about the matter.
"I have no reason to root for anyone in particular," he said finally. "It wouldn't change anything either way."
Ivel looked at him — at the careful nothing of his expression, at the way he had said that one word and then stopped — and thought several things he chose to keep to himself.
Before either of them could say anything further, a stillness moved through the hall.
At the top of the palace stairs, the king had appeared.