Chapter 83: A Haven of Peace

— "Your manor, mistress, exists outside the space-time continuum. Do you understand what that implies?"

She nodded. One could arrive from anywhere, anywhen.

— "According to Cassian's texts, you are at the dawn of your life. But I come from the future... and I have a dilemma."

— "I'm listening."

Daryl inhaled, hesitant.

— "Let's assume, hypothetically, that you have forgotten who you were. And that I could help you remember. But you are happy as you are... except that without you and your abilities, the worlds are doomed. What should I do?"

— "Hypothetically, me forgetting? Impossible."

He dismissed the argument with a gesture. Very clearly.

— "Let's assume," she sighed. "For the greater good, I'd rather remember who I am."

— "You are my mistress. Your happiness comes above all else. Jeopardizing your joy... would be a betrayal of my function."

She thought for a moment.

— "In this hypothesis, do I remember Argy and Aaron?"

— "No."

— "Then it's not possible for me to be happy. If I order you to make me remember who I am... does that help you?"

Daryl's smile broadened.

— "A lot."

— "Then I order you to do it."

He burst out laughing.

— "It was that simple? I've been agonizing over this for two days..."

He bowed deeply and left, as if their conversation had never concerned an uncertain future.

Well then. The future promised to be eventful. At least she now knew that, hypothetically, she survived long enough to submit it.

She left the office and retreated to her room: she had come to read her journals, and who better than herself to reveal her future to her?

She resumed reading where she had left off.

A week passed without her noticing.

She swam, gardened, and got to know Cassie—whom she genuinely grew attached to.

Time flowed with an unusual softness, far from the chaos of the Academy, the brutal training sessions, and the revelations that now seemed to dictate her daily life. For once, nothing tried to hurt her, test her, or tear something away from her.

She could simply... exist.

The pool first offered her that strange calm she was beginning to like: the muffled silence underwater, the feeling of her body becoming lighter, movements turning fluid and almost meditative. Then came the garden, where Cassie patiently taught her how to care for rare plants without accidentally massacring them.

Blanche quickly discovered that gardening held something deeply soothing.

Hands in the damp soil, the scent of greenery, warm sunlight on skin... all of it felt absurdly normal compared to the rest of her current existence. Cassie talked a lot while working, sharing anecdotes with that warm spontaneity that made it feel as though she had known her forever.

And without really noticing, Blanche grew genuinely attached to her.

Because Cassie possessed that rare quality of people who make simple things pleasant without ever trying to impress anyone.

She even tried cooking...

Which, in hindsight, should have immediately been identified as a catastrophic idea.

At first, though, she believed in it.

Truly.

The ingredients were cut. The recipe seemed clear. The fire had not yet triggered any major diplomatic incident. For a few glorious minutes, Blanche was convinced she was completely in control of the situation.

Until she saw the terror on the siblings' faces.

The silence that followed was deeply telling.

Cassie froze with the cautious slowness of someone discovering a homemade bomb in her kitchen. Her brother, meanwhile, stared at the contents of the pot with the profoundly disturbed expression of people desperately trying to remain polite in the face of the inexplicable.

Even the smell seemed problematic.

Blanche looked at the dish.

Then at their faces.

Then back at the dish.

And honestly... even she was starting to have doubts.

She gave up immediately.

With relative dignity.

She continued her training with Cassian, impressive in martial arts.

The word was almost too weak.

The moment he moved, something in him shifted completely. His posture became fluid, grounded, as if every muscle in his body instinctively knew what to do before he even had to think about it. Where many fighters executed learned techniques, Cassian seemed to dance with violence itself.

Everything looked effortless in his hands.

Natural.

Terrifyingly precise.

His strikes were fast without becoming messy, powerful without sacrificing balance. Even when correcting her, his movements retained that calm precision that made every demonstration even more humiliating for her. A shift of a few centimeters was sometimes enough to throw her completely off balance.

And yet...

... he remained patient.

He repeated as many times as necessary, correcting her posture with his fingertips, adjusting the angle of her arm or the placement of her footing with a focused attention that pushed her to improve even further.

She progressed quickly with him.

Surprisingly quickly.

Her body began to understand certain movements before her mind did, reproducing sequences with new fluidity. Reflexes came more naturally, her speed increased, and several techniques that had once seemed impossible were gradually becoming instinctive.

But her movements still lacked precision.

And Cassian noticed immediately.

Every strike drifted slightly off.

Every stance lost a fragment of efficiency.

At times, she still compensated with strength, speed, or instinct instead of achieving that surgical accuracy of true experienced fighters.

Then she finally understood the value of Derek's lessons.

That obsessive attention to detail.

Those endless corrections.

That almost unbearable brutality when he forced her to repeat a movement until it was perfect.

Derek wasn't just teaching her how to fight.

He was trying to engrave precision directly into her body.

And suddenly, all those exhausting training sessions took on a different meaning.

She promised herself she would stop complaining.

Even if, honestly, Derek would probably remain insufferable no matter what.

In the afternoon—and what she thought was evening—she read, learned... and tasted all kinds of liquid poisons: gin, whisky, vodka, cider. The manor lacked nothing. Eternal sun, abundant food, omnipresent magic.

But she began to miss the others.

And especially, there was still no trace of the owner of the car that had hit her. Some passages in her journals were missing, deliberately blurred, likely meant for her to discover on her own.

Frustrated, disappointed, and before she could be noticed, she left her haven of peace and made her way back to the campus.