The hour of peace didn't shatter; it just... dissolved. The sun was dipping low, painting the garden in shades of deep amber and long, stretched-out shadows that made my half-finished bench look like a row of jagged teeth.
The gate clicked.
Avaris didn't jump, but the air around her tightened. She stood up, brushing the soil from her apron with a sharp, rhythmic flick of her wrists. I stood up too, my knees popping—a painful reminder that I am a man of the library, not the field.
"They're on time," I noted, checking my watch. "Precisely on time."
"That's worse," Avaris whispered.
We walked into the kitchen just as the door opened. Arin and Lysa drifted in, and for a moment, they looked exactly like the children of a boring scholar and a village mother. Arin was humming a tuneless song, swinging his satchel, and Lysa was already unpinning her cloak with practiced, bored movements.
"We're home," Arin announced to the kettle. "Is there bread? I feel like I haven't eaten in three decades."
"You ate four hours ago," Lysa said, rolling her eyes.
I leaned against the doorframe, watching them. I was looking for the variables. Torn sleeves? Scuffed knuckles? A certain "haunted" look in the eyes?
Nothing. They looked... scrubbed.
"How was the Practical Wing?" I asked, trying to sound like a father asking about a math quiz.
Arin stopped mid-swing. He looked at me, then at Avaris. He gave us a smile that was so wide and so innocent it practically set off alarm bells in my head.
"It was very educational, Father," he said. "We practiced... falling. Mostly falling. I am very good at hitting the floor without breaking."
"And the instructor?" Avaris asked, her eyes scanning Arin like she was looking for a hidden wound.
"Instructor Kael is very dedicated," Lysa replied, her voice smooth and empty. "He spent most of the afternoon explaining why we shouldn't overthink our movements. He likes 'instinct.'"
"Instinct," I repeated. "And did you show him any... instinct, Arin?"
Arin patted his satchel, where the wooden spoon was safely tucked away. "No, Father. I was a leaf in the wind. A very clumsy, heavy leaf. I tripped three times. Instructor Kael said I have the coordination of a newborn calf."
He looked proud of that. Too proud.
I looked at Lysa. She met my gaze with a flat, unblinking stare that told me absolutely nothing.
Avaris moved then, crossing the room to Arin. She reached out, her thumb catching a smudge on his jaw. Not dirt. Not ink. It was a fine, white powder.
"Chalk?" I asked.
"Stone-dust," Avaris said quietly. She rubbed the dust between her fingers, her face hardening. The stone in the Practical Wing was reinforced granite. You don't get that on your face from "tripping" on a mat.
"The floor was very dusty," Arin said, his smile not wavering by a single degree.
I looked at my wife. I saw the way she looked at that dust. She knew what it meant. She knew what kind of force it took to grind that stone into a powder fine enough to coat a boy's cheek.
"Go wash up," Avaris said, her voice tight. "Both of you."
As they scrambled upstairs, the house felt small again. I walked over to the table and sat down, my legs feeling heavy.
"He's lying, isn't he?" I asked the empty room.
Avaris didn't answer immediately. She stood by the sink, staring at the dust on her thumb.
"He's not lying, Ilyas," she said, turning to me. "He's managing us. Just like you manage your students. Just like I..."
She stopped.
"Just like you what, Avaris?"
She shook her head, the mask of the quiet wife sliding back into place. "Just like I manage the laundry. Dinner will be ready in twenty minutes."
I sat in the fading light, listening to the sound of my children laughing upstairs, and I realized that the "peace" we had found in the garden wasn't a sanctuary. It was just a ceasefire.
I sat at the table, the grain of the wood feeling rough beneath my palms. Upstairs, the floorboards creaked—the familiar, light rhythm of Arin and the steadier, deliberate weight of Lysa.
Avaris was at the stove. She wasn't looking at me, but I could see the tension in the line of her back. The "hour of peace" from the garden had evaporated, replaced by the cold reality of that white stone-dust she had found on Arin's cheek.
"Albrecht is playing a deeper game than I calculated," I said softly, my voice barely carrying over the bubbling of the stew.
Avaris didn't turn around. "It's not the Principal I'm worried about, Ilyas. It's the boy. He came home and looked me in the eye while he told me he spent the day 'falling.' He didn't blink. He didn't even twitch."
"He's a child of the Academy now," I said, though the words tasted like ash. "He's learning that information is a currency. He's protecting us. In his own way."
"He shouldn't have to protect us from the truth," she whispered.
She finally turned, holding a wooden spoon—a normal one, not Arin's "research" tool. She looked at me, and for a moment, the distance between the scholar and the mystery-wife felt like a canyon.
"If that was granite dust on his face, he didn't just 'fall.' He hit something hard enough to pulverize stone. Or something hit him."
My mind immediately began branching into Future Nine.
Branch A: Arin was forced into a duel with an instructor.
Branch B: He was demonstrating "Kinetics" to a group of onlookers.
Branch C: The Empire was there, watching, and he had to prove he was "boring" by taking a hit that should have killed a normal boy.
I felt the familiar, violent pull of my footnotes. "I'll go to the Academy early tomorrow. I'll speak to the registrar. I can check the supply logs for the Practical Wing—if they're replacing mats or repairing floorstones, I'll know."
"No," Avaris said, her voice sharp. "You stay in your library. You stay 'The Scholar.' If you start poking around the Practical Wing, you become a variable they have to solve."
The stairs creaked. The children were coming down.
"We act as if nothing is wrong," she commanded, her face smoothing into that perfect, domestic mask. "We eat. We talk about grammar. We let them think they've succeeded."
"And if they haven't?" I asked, standing up as Arin burst into the room.
"Then we wait for the world to show its hand."
Arin slid into his chair, his face scrubbed pink and his hair damp. He looked perfectly, aggressively ordinary.
"Is it stew?" he asked, eyes bright. "I hope it's stew. I feel like I could eat a whole cow. Or at least a very large goat."
I sat down, picking up my napkin. My hands were steady, but my mind was already writing the first page of a new, hidden ledger.
"It's stew, Arin," I said, forcing a smile. "Now, tell me... how was your grammar lesson? I hear the subjunctive mood is particularly treacherous this time of year."
Lysa sat down, catching my eye for a fraction of a second. She knew I was fishing. I knew she knew.
And so, we began the most dangerous dinner of our lives: a meal where every "pass the salt" was a tactical maneuver.