Getting dressed was its own nightmare.
The maid I never caught her name she laid out an outfit that was somehow entirely white and yet impossibly complicated. There was an inner layer, an outer layer, something that wrapped around my shoulders like a silk chain, and a cloak that pinned at my collarbone with a silver brooch shaped like a bird.
I had never worn anything that required a brooch in my life.
"Arms up, Princess."
I obeyed like a mannequin. The maid laced and pinned and adjusted, and I stood there trying to look like this was normal. Like I hadn't been wearing the same three rotation outfits for the past years. Like I hadn't put on a hoodie this morning, wait, no. That was yesterday. That was a different life.
My hands wouldn't stop trembling. I clenched them into fists behind my back where no one could see.
The King didn't escort me to the carriage. He was already outside, standing rigid by the castle steps, staring ahead at nothing. Lara had been taken away by a nurse, still clutching her doll, still looking at me like I was vanishing. I wanted to run back to her. I wanted to tell her the truth, that her real sister was somewhere else and I was a fraud and I had no idea what I was doing.
Instead, I walked down those stone steps with my chin up, because that's what princesses do, and apparently that's what I was now.
When I got there, I meet four people were standing near the carriage.
They were all around my age, seventeen, maybe eighteen. And I knew absolutely nothing about them.
The book had described Rayl's history, the kingdom, the war, the ultimatum. But the pages about the Academy, about who she'd meet, what she'd face those were blank. Empty. I was flying blind with a stolen face and a heartbeat that wouldn't slow down.
The first one to notice me was a guy with ash-blonde hair that fell over his eyes in that effortlessly messy way I could never pull off. He had warm brown eyes genuinely warm, which felt out of place in a kingdom that seemed to run on ice and he smiled at me like we were friends.
"Princess," he said, with a small bow. "I'm Jaxon Hail."
His hands were rough and Calloused. I noticed because he extended one to shake mine, and it felt strange against my new, impossibly soft skin. He was lean and athletic looking, the kind of guy who probably ran every morning and enjoyed it. Who enjoyed running. I couldn't relate.
"Rayi," I said, because what else was I going to say? Hi, I'm actually a high school student from a town you've never heard of and I have no idea who any of you are?
Next to him, arms crossed, was a girl who looked like she'd been carved from a single block of ice. She had Jet-black hair in a sharp bob. Silver eyes that caught the light and threw it back like mirrors. She didn't smile. She didn't nod. She just looked at me or through me, and I had the overwhelming feeling that she'd already decided I wasn't worth her time.
"Mira Sol," she said, not a greeting. But a labeling.
Behind them, there was two more. A small guy with mousy brown hair and thick round glasses, one lens cracked, chewing on a strand of his own hair like it was a stress relief toy. He looked like he was about to faint. And beside him, a girl with auburn hair shaved on one side and a thick scar running down her neck, wearing heavy boots that clanked against the stone. She stood like a soldier and looked bored with everything.
Neither introduced themselves. The nervous one seemed physically incapable of it. The scarred one seemed physically unwilling.
I filed away what little I could observe nervous boy, tough girl, cold girl, kind boy and tried to match the energy. Regal. Quiet. That's how Rayi would act. That's how the book made her sound.
I hoped I was pulling it off. I probably wasn't.
We boarded the carriage. It was too small for five people, which felt intentional, like the kingdom couldn't even afford to send us comfortably. As the door closed, I caught the murmurs of servants on the castle steps.
Cursed blood.
They're sending the cursed ones.
Shame. Shame on the South.
The words landed like slaps. I'd read about the prejudice, that the other kingdoms feared and despised the Southern Kingdom because of the blood magic incident. But reading "they were ostracized" and hearing someone whisper "cursed blood" two feet from your face are completely different experiences. My jaw tightened. I said nothing. Rayi wouldn't say anything.
The carriage lurched forward.
Inside, there was awkward silence. Mira stared out the window. While the nervous boy fidgeted. The tough girl picked at her boots. Jaxon sat across from me, and after a long moment, he spoke.
"Nervous?" he asked, Gentle like he actually cared.
"A little," I admitted. Then, because I was desperate for information, any information, I added, "What's the Academy like?"
He thought about it for a few seconds. His brown eyes crinkled slightly, not quite a smile but close.
"It will be hard," he said. "But we'll make our kingdom proud."
Hard classes, I assumed, Hard exams, Hard social hierarchies, maybe, like a magical Ivy League. I could handle hard. I've been handling hard my whole life the good, quiet, obedient kind of hard that never actually killed anyone.
I leaned back against the velvet seat and watched the Southern Kingdom scroll past the window the white towers, silver bridges, a sky so blue it didn't look real.
I was nervous. My hands were sweating. I had no idea what I was walking into.
But underneath the fear, buried so deep I barely recognized it, there was something else.
Excitement.
I'm going to a magic school, I thought, like an idiot. This is going to be amazing.