“What?”

  The word left Mrs. Elsa before she sat down.

  It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. It landed flat on the table between them, heavy with arithmetic already running behind her eyes.

  Eric did not attempt to decorate it. He had clearly spent whatever courage he owned explaining on the walk here, because now he stood with his hands behind his back like a boy awaiting sentence.

  Soliana remained upright across from the desk, palms pressed along the seams of her sleeves, attention forward.

  Mrs. Elsa looked from one to the other, then back again, recalibrating the problem now that it had faces.

  “Two weeks,” she repeated.

  Eric nodded.

  Mrs. Elsa leaned back in her chair. Wood creaked once. She rubbed the bridge of her nose, then dropped her hand and fixed Soliana with a look that measured height, posture, stubbornness, and the likelihood of collapse.

  “No,” she said.

  Simple. Immediate.

  “You wait the year. You rotate. You learn where things are, who answers to whom, how to move without being noticed. You build tolerance before someone starts grading you on it.”

  Eric nodded again, almost relieved to hear the refusal spoken out loud.

  Soliana did not.

  Mrs. Elsa continued, voice steady, professional, the rhythm of someone listing facts that had buried many people before.

  “The qualification exists to remove uncertainty. It assumes preparation. It assumes familiarity. It assumes you have already failed privately before you fail publicly.”

  Her fingers tapped once against the table, aligning the idea.

  “You are not there.”

  Eric cleared his throat. “I told her.”

  Mrs. Elsa glanced at him. “And?”

  “She won’t budge.”

  Mrs. Elsa returned her attention to Soliana.

  That required a different calculation.

  Soliana felt it happen. The measuring. The quiet rearranging of expectations, strengths, limits. She had been weighed like this before, enough times now to recognize the sensation as routine.

  She did not rush to fill it.

  Her hands remained where she had placed them, thumbs resting along the stitching of her sleeves, the fabric warm from the pressure. She had practiced that stillness in corridors, in doorways, in the seconds before someone decided whether she was in the way.

  Mrs. Elsa waited.

  Eric shifted beside her, ready to speak again, ready to rescue, to soften, to propose compromise that would make this survivable.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Soliana knew the shapes those rescues took. She had been handed them her whole life. Later. Not yet. When you’re ready. After you learn.

  She breathed in once, steady, not deep enough to shake her shoulders, and let the silence continue doing its work.

  Mrs. Elsa would refuse.

  That part had already happened.

  Soliana lifted her head a fraction, enough to meet the woman’s eyes without challenging them, and opened her mouth.

  “Please,” she said.

  Nothing elaborate followed it. No explanation arrived to carry the word, no attempt to make it noble. It stood there by itself, unprotected.

  Mrs. Elsa did not answer immediately.

  Outside the windows, someone crossed the courtyard below. A bell marked the quarter hour. Paper shifted somewhere in the building like a distant tide of work continuing without interest in them.

  Eric felt the stretch of it. He shifted his weight, then stilled himself, aware movement would count as interruption.

  Soliana remained where she was.

  Mrs. Elsa watched her longer than comfort allowed.

  When she finally spoke, it was with the tone of someone adjusting damage rather than granting permission.

  “I cannot prepare you for the test,” she said.

  Eric released air, though he didn’t know yet if that was good or bad.

  “There isn’t time to build foundation,” she continued. “And pretending otherwise would be dishonest.”

  Soliana nodded once.

  Mrs. Elsa studied that nod, then went on.

  “But I can prevent one form of stupidity.”

  Eric blinked.

  Mrs. Elsa’s chair slid back as she stood.

  “I’ve seen you carry, lift, endure,” she said to Soliana. “You are not afraid of work.”

  Soliana’s eyes widened.

  “You really believed we hadn’t noticed you?” Mrs. Elsa asked.

  Soliana faltered. “I—”

  Mrs. Elsa shifted the stack in her arms and pressed the edges flat with her thumb.

  “Just because no one stopped you,” she said, “doesn’t mean no one was aware.”

  Soliana’s breath caught.

  “We knew who you were,” Mrs. Elsa continued. “We knew your name. We knew you kept volunteering for work that wasn’t yours.”

  Soliana stared at her.

  She had thought she had been careful. Small. Out of the way.

  Mrs. Elsa went on, matter-of-fact.

  “Its hard not to ask questions when the new girl looks a bit too similar to the Prince’s caretaker you know.”

  No judgment followed it.

  No comfort either.

  “Frankly,” she said, “We thought you were just a good kid helping out.”

  She gathered several papers from her desk and stacked them beneath her arm.

  “Anyway, lets not get off topic.”

  Mrs Elsa straightened her back, as if to signal them that the next part should not be ignored.

  “What you lack right now is orientation. Vocabulary. You step into rooms without knowing what has already been decided inside them.”

  Soliana listened without moving.

  Mrs. Elsa walked toward the interior of the office, expecting them to follow. They did.

  “I can correct that much,” she said. “Not the rest.”

  Eric glanced at Soliana as if to confirm she understood the scale of the offer.

  Soliana did.

  Mrs. Elsa stopped at a cluster of desks near the wall, where two very familiar heads were bent toward their assignments with an enthusiasm so immediate it could only be fear.

  Roland wrote fast. Anastasia wrote faster. Neither looked up.

  Mrs. Elsa placed her papers down.

  “Good,” she said. “You’ve discovered productivity.”

  Pens did not pause.

  Mrs. Elsa pulled another chair from the side of the room and set it down between them.

  Wood scraped.

  Roland’s writing grew smaller.

  Anastasia’s grew violent.

  Mrs. Elsa turned to Soliana.

  “Sit,” she said.

  Soliana did.

  Roland glanced sideways, then gave a small smile that she could only assume as acknowledgement.

  Anastasia whoever isn’t so indirect.

  “Oh hey Soliana! What are you doing here?”

  Soliana opened her mouth but didn’t find the right words. Instead she raised her hand and simply waved.

  “She will be joining you two for the next two weeks.” Mrs Elsa interrupted, “I hope you don’t mind, your highness?”

  Her eyes turned to Roland, who nodded in return.

  “I don’t mind.”

  Mrs. Elsa then gathered a thick booklet from the top of her stack and placed it in front of Soliana.

  “This book contains the known history of Arcadia,” she said. “Names. Geography. History. Ill give you a brief rundown with the topics we’ve covered so far for today.”

  She took her own place at the front of the table.

  Eric remained standing for a moment, unsure if he had been dismissed or adopted.

  Mrs. Elsa glanced at him.

  “You can leave,” she said. “You are not needed here.”

  Eric scratched his cheek.

  “Can I stay? I don’t really want to go back to training yet.”

  Mrs Elsa raised an eyebrow before ignoring him.

  “Its your choice.”

  Mrs. Elsa opened her ledger.

  She glanced at her students, then at the book, then at the students again.

  She then took a deep sigh.

  “Very well.”

  Mrs. Elsa began.