"Would this invitation have reached me if my family name was not Olarion?"
The question had been building since the recruitment grounds, since the third recruiter that afternoon had looked straight past her rank to the crest stitched over her heart. She had carried it up the Council steps without meaning to ask it, and now that it was loose in the room, she found she regretted only how long she had swallowed it.
'Everyone counts the name first.'
She had spent years trying to make people count something else first: the footwork, the forms, the nights spent grinding her continuation past the point her knee could forgive. Being called swift, precise, disciplined, those she could accept as earned. Being called an Olarion, as if the rest were incidental, made her ribs close around her breath, whether the speaker meant it as insult or compliment.
