“Why aren’t we leaving?” I blurt out. “I mean, why are we still here, at the Lion estate?”

They all look at me, then at my dad.

His expression reminds me of the day he told me I was going to the Academy; it’s reassuring and sympathetic, with the recognition that he’s delivering difficult news. “We’re staying here.”

“Staying here?” I say in disbelief. “Do you mean for the next few hours, or—”

“For the foreseeable future,” he says, and my eyes nearly bug out of my head.

I swallow. “You can’t be serious. You want me to live here, in the Lion estate with Brendan.”

Aarya chuckles. “Just think, if you need to kill him, at least you’ll know where he is.” Even Aarya’s optimism is twisted.

“Dad?” I say.

My dad looks thoughtful. “We need to be here during the transition,” he says. “There will be some discord as a result of Jag’s death and it’s important that we get the Lions organized and cohesive as soon as possible.” He pauses. “But after all our affairs are in order, I’m not opposed to looking for a new location for the estate.”

I press my lips together. It’s not lost on me that I’m being selfish in requesting that a huge household of people shift because I don’t like the building, and if I’m being honest with myself, it’s actually not the estate that I don’t like—the estate is just a fancy manor house—it’s the idea of it that I’m resisting. But his response makes it easier; I’m calmed by the thought that I’m not trapped here, that my dad is listening, and that he cares how I feel.

I’ve never seen such utter shock in my friends, though, who like all Strategia tend to mute their expressions but are not doing so presently. They just keep glancing from my dad to me and back again, like we’re a puzzle they can’t solve.

Aarya looks like she might faint. “If my parents loved me that much, I’d never leave home,” she says. “Not for the Academy or any reason.”

I look at Aarya. That is by far the most vulnerable thing she’s ever said in front of me, no jokes, no sarcasm, just awe. And I realize that while I might be in a difficult situation right now, my dad truly loves me, and so I let it go, whatever frustration I was harboring. In that moment it disappears.

Chapter Twenty-nine