Linnet's pov I knew something was wrong the moment I heard the laughter, because in all my twenty years of living in Silverbrook House, that sound had never once been meant for me. It spilled out of the dining room as I stepped through the front door with rain dripping from my braid and my satchel pressed against my ribs as I stood in the hallway with a foolish, trembling hope blooming in my chest. Today was the day the Moonvale letters were due. Three months of sleepless nights over healing texts had led me here, and I had bled my fingertips raw grinding herbs and sat beside my grandmother's sickbed until dawn memorizing the pulse points of a wolf's wrist. If anyone in this family deserved good news tonight, it was me. I walked into the dining room smiling. "I'm home," I said softly. "Did the letters come?" My mother turned with her wine glass lifted and her cheeks flushed with joy, and my smile wavered, because that joy was not aimed at me. It was aimed past my shoulder at the girl seated at the head of the table, small and pale and wrapped in a borrowed shawl, with silver hair curling around her face like a halo. "Seraphine got in!" Mother cried. "Our Sera has been accepted to the combat academy in the central region! After everything she has suffered, can you imagine?" Seraphine ducked her head with a shy little smile, and the whole family cooed over her as though she had won a war. My heart lifted and fell in the same breath. Seraphine was my younger sister, returned to us only last spring after nine years of wandering outside the pack, and I had wept with pure happiness the day she came home. I had given her my warm bedroom and my winter coats and the best of every meal, and I would have given far more if anyone had thought to ask. "That's wonderful," I said, and I meant it, even as a strange cold crept up my spine. "Congratulations, Sera. But where is mine? I was expecting the Moonvale healing letter today." Nobody answered. Father studied his plate as if it held the secrets of the world, and my brother Corvin leaned back in his chair and watched me with that flat, weary look he wore whenever I had disappointed him. Then I saw it. Two envelopes lay side by side on the polished table. One was thick cream paper stamped with the silver crescent of the central academy, already torn open and handled many times. The other sat apart from it, thin and grey and sealed with black wax, and the name written across the front was mine. I picked it up with shaking fingers and broke the seal. *Northfang Combat Academy, Frostmere Territory. We are pleased to inform Miss Linnet Averly of her placement.* I read it once, and then again, and then a third time while the room went strangely quiet around me. "This is wrong," I whispered. "I never applied here. I applied for healing at Moonvale, and my acceptance was supposed to be right here on this table." "It was," Father admitted at last, in the tone of a man confessing he had misplaced his keys. "But Seraphine had been placed at Northfang first, and she found the climate far too cold and the schedule far too harsh. So we spoke to the registrar and exchanged the two places." "You exchanged them." My voice cracked on the word. "You gave away my future without asking me?" "Don't be so dramatic," Corvin said, and he rolled his shoulders with a sigh that I felt like a slap. "Sera has spent nine years sleeping in barns and forests. Her body is frail and her wolf hardly stirs. She would not survive a single winter in Frostmere. You are strong and healthy, Linnet, and your wolf can adapt anywhere. It is simply the sensible choice." "Sensible for whom?" I asked, and the effort of keeping my voice low made my hands shake. "I spent three months preparing for healing. All of you watched me do it." "And you will have plenty of time for healing later," Mother said gently, as though soothing a fussy child. "Your sister needs this chance now, darling." I laughed, and the sound came out thin and wounded. "I have understood everything in this house for years. I understood when you gave Sera my bedroom and my coats. I understood when you asked me to cover her chores and her tutors and her debts, and I never complained once, because I love her." "Then prove it," Corvin said, and his eyes turned cold as river ice. "Stop being so selfish over a piece of paper." Seraphine lifted her glossy eyes, and her lip trembled so prettily that every head in the room swung toward her. "Please don't fight because of me," she whispered. "Linnet, if it hurts you so badly, take Moonvale back. I will go to Northfang. I will freeze if I have to. I truly don't mind." The effect was immediate. Mother wrapped both arms around her, and Father patted her hand while Corvin dropped to one knee beside her chair with a tenderness I had not seen on his face in years. "Don't you dare, Sera," he said fiercely. "Nobody is sending you anywhere that will hurt you. Linnet is the strong one, and she will manage." Then he looked up at me with open disgust, and the look landed like a fist. "Look what you did. You made her cry on her first night of celebration." I stared at the four of them, huddled together like a single creature with no room left inside it for a fifth, and I felt something that had been bending inside me for years go perfectly still. "Did any of you think to ask what I wanted?" I said. The silence that followed was not awkward. It was the plain, honest silence of people who had never once considered the question. I nodded slowly, as if the answer had been spoken aloud. I folded the grey letter along its creases and tucked it into my satchel beside my healing notes, and I turned and walked out with my spine straight and my eyes burning. I did not slam the door. I closed it softly behind me, and somehow that was worse. Upstairs, in the narrow little room they had moved me into after Seraphine arrived, I sat on the edge of the bed with my phone clutched in both hands and my whole body trembling as I scrolled to a name I had been avoiding for weeks. Professor Halden Valdez, Northfang Combat Academy. He had approached me at the regional healer trials last autumn, a weathered man with a scarred jaw and tired, kind eyes. He had told me the border garrison needed healers who could fight, and that a special enlistment path existed for those willing to skip the academy years entirely. I had laughed politely and refused, because I had a dream and a family who needed me close. I drew one shuddering breath, and I typed. Professor Valdez, this is Linnet Averly. If your offer still stands, I accept. I do not want the academy program. I want to join the garrison unit directly. His answer came within minutes, steady and careful. Miss Averly, are you certain? Once you join the unit, you cannot return home whenever you wish. Your life will no longer belong to your family. It will belong to the border. I looked at the thin wooden door of my room, and at the muffled laughter drifting up through the floorboards, and a warm, stubborn spark kindled beneath the ache in my chest. It was small as a candle flame, but it was mine. I have already made up my mind, I wrote. Please send me the arrangements.

Linnet's pov By morning the enlistment papers had slid beneath my door in a plain brown envelope, and I sat on the floor of my narrow room with the pages spread around my knees and read every line twice, because I had learned long ago that nobody in this house would ever read anything on my behalf. The pickup was set for seven the following evening at the old watchtower gate on the edge of the Silverbrook woods. A transport would collect me there, and I was to bring one suitcase and one identification card and nothing else that tied me to the pack. I confirmed the time with Professor Valdez in a short message, and then I pulled my suitcase down from the wardrobe and began to pack with steady hands. I folded my plain grey sweaters first, then my worn boots, and between them I tucked the little leather healer's kit my grandmother had given me, with its tiny silver scissors and neat rows of dried yarrow and willow bark. I packed my notebooks last, thick bundles bound in string, every page crowded with my own cramped handwriting. A knock sounded, and Corvin leaned into the doorway without waiting to be invited. "You are sulking in here like a wounded animal," he said. "Come down and help Mother with the seating chart for Sera's dinner tomorrow." "I'm busy," I answered, folding a sweater with great precision. "Busy packing for the frozen north?" He gave a short, dry laugh. "Fine. While you are at it, pack Sera's school trunk too. She has no idea what to bring, and you always know these things." I straightened and looked at him properly, this brother who had once carried me piggyback through a blizzard when I was seven when I had twisted my ankle on the ice. I searched his face for that boy and found only a stranger. "I will not pack her trunk," I said quietly. "And Corvin, there is something I need to return to you." I crossed to the closet and lifted the heavy wooden box he had stored in my room for two years, because his own was too cluttered and I had never once complained. I set it into his arms and watched his brow furrow. "What is this?" "I am giving back your things," I said. "I am giving back the household accounts to Mother, and the garden schedule, and Father's medicine reminders. I have kept all of it running since I was fourteen. I wrote everything in a binder, and it is waiting on the kitchen counter." He stared at me, and then he shook his head with a scoff. "You are really committed to this performance, aren't you? Go on and make your point. When you are finished, come apologize to Sera." "It is not a point," I said. "It is a handover." He walked out without answering, and I listened to his footsteps fade with a strange, hollow calm. I spent the rest of that day drifting through the house like a ghost with a checklist. I wrote out the pharmacy schedule for Father's aching joints and labeled every jar in the pantry and hung the spare keys on a hook with a neat paper tag. When I finished, I stood in the kitchen and understood how many invisible threads I had been holding together with my own two hands, and how quietly this family had let me do it. Nobody noticed... Nobody had asked a single question. That evening Mother found me in the hallway, wearing the soft, coaxing smile she saved for the moments she wanted something. "Darling, I have a small favor to ask," she said. "Could you pass your study notes along to Sera? Her academic foundation is so weak after all those years away, and your notes are so thorough." My fingers tightened around the strap of my satchel, where my notebooks pressed warm against my hip. "No, Mother," I said. "I need them." She blinked slowly. "Need them for what? You will be at a combat academy. You will not be studying herbs there." "I will need them for my future work. They are the only thing I own that is truly mine, and I am keeping them." For one dizzying second I thought she might finally ask what that future work was, and why her own daughter was carrying her whole life inside one bag. My heart actually lifted. "Don't be petty," Mother sighed instead, and patted my arm the way she would soothe a nervous mare. "You always do this when you are upset. We will talk after the dinner." She drifted away down the corridor murmuring about floral arrangements, and I stood alone in the lamplight with my heart sinking back to its usual cold depth. At supper that night, the family gathered around the long oak table, and Seraphine pushed her roasted chicken around her plate with a tragic little sigh. "I think Linnet is still upset about losing Moonvale," she murmured to no one in particular. "I hate that I am the reason she is so sad." "You are not the reason, sweetheart," Corvin said at once, and he glared at me across the candlelight. "Linnet simply has to learn that life does not always go her way." "Apologize to your sister," Father ordered, setting down his fork with a heavy clink. "Right now. You are spoiling her first celebration dinner since coming home, and I will not tolerate it." I laid down my own fork very carefully and folded my napkin and set it beside my plate. When I spoke, my voice came out calm and clear and far stronger than I expected. "I will not be attending the dinner tomorrow, Father." "Of course you will." "No," I said. "I am leaving tomorrow evening at seven, and I will not be here." Every face turned toward me, and I let myself hope, truly hope, that someone would finally ask where I was going, and why, and for how long. "Mother, did you invite the Harrowgate twins?" Corvin asked, turning away. "Because if we add them, we will need a bigger table." "Oh, I hadn't thought of that," Mother gasped. "Morax, we must send another invitation tonight." "Sera, darling, who else would you like to include?" Father asked warmly. "Anyone at all." Seraphine lifted her eyes slowly, and across the table they met mine for the briefest moment. In them glittered something small and sharp which was secretly pleased, like a cat watching a bird walk calmly into a trap. Then it vanished, and she was blinking sweetly at Father and rattling off a list of names. I sat in the middle of all that noise with my hands folded in my lap, and I understood something with terrible clarity. They were not ignoring me out of cruelty, or even carelessness. They had simply stopped seeing the empty place where I used to sit. I rose without a sound and carried my plate to the sink, and not one of them asked where I was going. Not one of them asked me anything at all. Alone in the kitchen, with cold water running over my trembling hands, I whispered a promise to the dark window and to the girl I used to be. "I will never wait for anyone to ask me again."

Linnet's pov The accusation came at half past five on the evening I was meant to leave, barely ninety minutes before the transport arrived, and I was kneeling beside my open suitcase with my grandmother's healer's kit in my hands when my bedroom door swung wide without a knock. Seraphine stood on the threshold with her fingers pressed to her lips and her eyes already swimming, and behind her loomed Corvin, tall and furious and breathing hard through his nose. "Linnet," Seraphine whispered, and her voice trembled like a plucked string. "I am so sorry to bother you. Mother's emerald brooch has vanished from the jewelry box, and I remembered you were near it yesterday when I asked for help with my gown. You did not want to help me, so I thought perhaps..." She trailed off with a small, wounded sniffle, as though the very idea pained her. I rose slowly and set the healer's kit on the bed. "You think I stole it." "We think nothing yet," Corvin snapped. "But you have been strange for two days, and Sera has never lost a single thing in her life. Move aside. We are searching your room." "You will do no such thing." He ignored me completely and strode across the floorboards, and when I stepped in front of him he simply set a hand on my shoulder and moved me aside like a chair in his way. Seraphine slipped in behind him with her head bowed and drifted toward the coat that hung beside the wardrobe. Mother and Father appeared in the corridor, drawn by the noise, and I turned to them with open, desperate relief. "Please, tell him to stop. He is tearing through my things." Father folded his arms. "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." "You are all letting him do this?" My voice cracked. "I am leaving in ninety minutes. I have a transport coming and a place waiting somewhere else entirely. Why on earth would I steal from Sera?" "Jealousy does strange things to people," Mother said sadly, and she would not meet my eyes. "If you simply return it, darling, we will not pursue the matter. We will let it go for the sake of the family." For the sake of the family. I nearly laughed, because they had just decided I was a thief and then praised themselves for forgiving me in advance. Corvin dragged my sweaters from the wardrobe and shook them out roughly, while Seraphine drifted closer to my coat with her tearstained face turned carefully away. And I, who had spent a lifetime learning to read the small signals of frightened and manipulative people, did what my grandmother had trained me to do in a sickroom full of liars. I watched her hands. It happened in less than a heartbeat. Her slender fingers slid inside the sleeve of her own shawl and emerged with a flash of green and gold, and then those same fingers dipped smoothly into the pocket of my coat and came out empty. My body moved before my mind had finished the thought. I crossed the room in three strides and seized her wrist, and my grip was far stronger than my family had ever bothered to notice. "Don't," I said, in a voice like cold iron. "Do not move." Seraphine gasped as though I had struck her. "Linnet, you are hurting me!" "I watched you," I said, turning to the others without letting go. "I watched her slip the brooch into my coat. It is in the left pocket. Check it, Corvin, and then check her sleeve for a thread from the clasp." He hesitated for the length of a single breath, and then he reached into the coat and drew out the emerald brooch, glinting in the lamplight like a cruel little eye. "It was in your pocket," he said grimly, rounding on me. "Exactly where Sera said." "Because she put it there!" "Let go of her," Father thundered. "You are not listening!" I released Seraphine at last and pressed my shaking hands against my ribs. "I am telling you what I saw with my own eyes. She planned this from the beginning, and every one of you walked straight into it because you wanted to." "That is a terrible thing to say about a girl who has suffered so much," Mother said faintly. "She is shifting the blame, Mother," Corvin said, and he did not lower his voice. "Thieves always do." I stared at him, and the last soft thing in my chest curdled. "I am your sister." "Then act like it." He turned to my desk, and his hand landed on the brown envelope that lay beside my passport, my enlistment papers. He tugged the first page free and glanced at the crest stamped across its top, and his lip curled. "The Northfang emblem," he said flatly. "You even packed the paperwork to make it look convincing. Pretending to leave, pretending to be wronged. You really will do anything for attention." He flicked the pages across the room, and they fluttered to the floor like wounded birds. "Please read them," I said, and I hated the tremble in my voice. "Just read the second page, Corvin. It is not what you think." "I need to read nothing." He scoffed. "Father, make her apologize." "Apologize to your sister, Linnet," Father said heavily. "Say it properly, and let us put this unpleasantness behind us." "I did nothing wrong." "Then why won't you say sorry?" Seraphine whispered through her tears. Then she leaned close, so close that only I could hear, and her breath brushed my ear. "You were always going to lose, big sister. You just took longer than the others." She drew back with a tiny, delighted curve at the corner of her mouth, and my blood ran cold. Corvin crossed to the bed and lifted the stack of leather bound notebooks I had tied with string, my three months of Moonvale preparation, my grandmother's remedies, my notes on herbs and pulse points and bone setting, my entire future in my own tidy handwriting. "Put those down," I said, and for the first time my voice rose into something close to a scream. "These can count as compensation." He pressed the notebooks into Seraphine's arms. "Sera lost her peace tonight, and she may as well gain something useful from it." "They are mine!" "They are family property, and you are family." He looked at me with unhidden contempt. "Stop making a scene." Seraphine hugged the notebooks to her chest and lowered her head with perfect, quivering humility. "Thank you, Linnet. I promise to take good care of them." My phone buzzed against my hip. I drew it out with numb fingers, and the message glowing on the screen was blessedly short. Transport arriving in ten minutes. Be at the gate. Something went very still inside me, so still I could hear the clock ticking on the far wall. I looked at my notebooks in my sister's arms, and at my papers scattered across the floor, and at four faces arranged before me like a portrait of a perfect and loving family. I knew I could not win this room. I also knew, with a certainty that startled me, that I no longer needed to. So I bent down and gathered my enlistment papers one page at a time, smoothing each crease with my thumb, and slid them back into the envelope. Then I closed my suitcase with a sharp click while I straightened to my full height, and for the first time in my life I looked each of them in the eye and held it. "Now," I said softly, "please move."