Moonveil Academy: Trapped With The Five Kings

Chapter 75: The Tier List

Elara:

Mrs. Carter was an amazing cook. There was absolutely no doubt about that after an entire month of enjoying the meals she prepared for me at Moonveil Academy.

But Mrs. Nettle? That woman might as well have been a Michelin-starred chef in another life because whatever she had prepared for breakfast was on an entirely different level.

By the time I realized what I was doing, I had already finished half the plate in front of me and was reaching for another piece of toast. The food was warm, comforting, and somehow tasted like the kind of meal that could make someone forget their problems for a few minutes.

And considering the number of problems I had accumulated in the past month, I was more than willing to accept the temporary escape.

I had showered and changed into the clothes Mrs. Nettle had prepared for me before I even returned from my morning run, and when I finally finished eating, I looked toward the older woman standing nearby and thanked her sincerely.

She seemed to be somewhere in her fifties, with soft features and a gentle smile that immediately made something warm settle inside my chest. She waved away my thanks as though preparing food for a so-called Princess was nothing extraordinary, but I couldn’t help appreciating the small kindness.

It was also during breakfast that I finally met Master Brown. And if I had expected the person responsible for teaching me about my family to be some stern-looking man in his forties, I was very wrong.

Master Brown was seventy-six years old. Seventy-six. Yet if someone had told me he was in his late fifties, I would have believed them without question. His gray hair was neatly combed back, his posture was straight, and there wasn’t anything particularly fragile about him despite his age. More importantly, I learned that he had been my biological father’s personal advisor.

And if I needed to learn about House Argentis, my biological parents, royal customs, Starfall’s political structure, and everything else I had somehow missed during the first twenty years of my life, there probably wasn’t anyone better suited for the job.

He was strict, but there was a strange respect in the way he addressed me that made it difficult to decide exactly where I wanted to place him in my ever-growing mental hierarchy of people.

Eventually, I put him in the same tier as Jasper, Crazy, and Professor Fenrith - the people I didn’t completely trust yet but had no reason to distrust either. Mrs. Nettle, meanwhile, had immediately earned herself a place beside Myra, Violet, and Mrs. Carter.

Yes, I had created a tier list.

It wasn’t exactly something I had planned to do, but after everything that had happened during the past month, I had realized that I needed some way of categorizing the people around me.

Tier one was reserved for people I trusted and genuinely liked, and currently it was completely empty. Tier two was for those I was still cautiously observing but who had shown me enough kindness that I didn’t feel the need to keep my guard completely raised. Tier three was for people I simply couldn’t figure out yet.

And then there was the very last tier, where Reign and his friends had comfortably settled. They had earned that position themselves, so I wasn’t feeling particularly guilty about it.

The only person missing from the list was Esmeray. I couldn’t bring myself to put him down there with Reign, Kairo, Alaric, Lorien, and Liliana because he hadn’t treated me the way they had. But at the same time, I wasn’t ready to place him anywhere else either.

So for now, he remained outside the list entirely. Perhaps that was unfair, but I had learned one very important lesson since arriving in Starfall - people here were nothing like they appeared to be.

After breakfast, Master Brown finally explained how my lessons would work. To my surprise, Jasper would be attending them with me. Not because he needed to learn anything about the Argentis family - he had practically grown up around it - but because Master Brown believed Jasper and I needed time together.

"You are going to spend the rest of your lives together," he had said with such casual certainty that I nearly choked on my hibiscus tea. "It is important that you understand one another."

I still wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea of having someone magically tied to me for life without ever having been given a choice in the matter.

The blood oath had happened before I was old enough to even understand what it meant, and Jasper had apparently accepted it because that was what his family had done for generations. Part of me wondered whether there was some way to break the bond, but I didn’t dare ask. The very thought of asking whether I could free him from it somehow felt like I was committing some kind of royal crime.

So instead, I decided I would quietly search the academy library for information about blood knights and their bonds. If there was an answer, the library probably had it somewhere.

Since the mansion was nearly an hour and a half away from Moonveil, I eventually suggested that our lessons take place somewhere closer to the academy. There was no point in wasting three hours every weekend simply traveling back and forth when there were towns at the foot of the mountain that were far more convenient.

Jasper immediately agreed and said he would arrange everything. More importantly, he informed me that he would personally pick me up from the academy and bring me back every weekend.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about having a personal knight acting as my chauffeur, but I decided that was a problem for another day. At least it would make these lessons considerably easier.

Since I was already at the mansion, I decided to stay another night and return to Moonveil on Sunday evening. Technically, I had my special session with Lorien later that evening. But there was absolutely no way I was going back there and sitting across from him as though nothing had happened.

I wasn’t ready. Maybe tomorrow I would be. Maybe next week. Maybe never. Right now, all I could still remember was the look of horror on his face after he kissed me, followed by his repeated no and the words that had cut far deeper than they should have.

It was a mistake.

I had spent enough time pretending I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to force myself to face him just hours after waking up with those memories still fresh in my mind. For once, I wanted to give myself permission to avoid someone - not because I was afraid of him, but because I simply wasn’t ready to decide what I felt about what had happened.

So, for the first time since arriving in Starfall, I allowed myself to stay somewhere that wasn’t Moonveil.

And strangely enough, sitting there in that beautiful mansion surrounded by people who had apparently known me since before I could even remember myself, I didn’t feel quite as lost as I had the night before.