The Lost Heir's Crown

Chapter 2: A Name That Is Not Mine

I slipped the notebook into the inner pocket of my uniform and fastened the last button.

One hundred days.

It was far better than thirty. At least it did not sound like a door that had already closed.

But one hundred days was nowhere near enough to let me relax.

I did not know who wanted Avery Vale dead, what the original Avery had uncovered, or how the book had continued after my own death.

I had only read the first half.

I knew Crown Prince Lucien Veyre would eventually be drawn into a war of succession. I knew the bloodline of the lost Aurelia dynasty had not truly ended. And I knew no one at St. Aurelius Academy was as simple as they looked.

But Avery Vale?

In the original novel, he was only a name.

A background character who died in winter, whose cause of death was dismissed in a single sentence.

And now, I was him.

Two knocks sounded at the door again.

“Avery, are you all right?”

I drew in a breath and opened it.

The boy outside was half a head shorter than I was, with light-brown hair as disheveled as though he had just climbed out of bed and a crooked uniform tie. He had been looking down at a pocket watch, but when he heard the door, he looked up and visibly froze. This had to be Theo.

“What is it?” I asked.

Theo blinked.

“Nothing.” He tucked the watch back into his pocket. “It is just... you look a little different today.”

My back went rigid at once.

The binder hurt every time I breathed. Was my collar straight? Was my voice too high? Would the way I walked give me away?

But Theo only looked at me in confusion for a moment before scratching his head.

“Never mind. Maybe you finally got enough sleep.” He turned toward the corridor. “Come on. Breakfast is about to start.”

I followed him.

The dormitory corridor was long, its dark wooden floor divided into squares by the misty morning light. Most doors along either side were shut, each nameplate carved with a family name and a silver crest.

Blackwood.

Ashcroft.

Veyre.

Vale.

I looked back at the room I had just left.

The word “Vale” on its nameplate was old, its edges even rusted. Beside the polished, gleaming names of the other noble houses, it looked like something barely kept after everyone else had forgotten it.

Theo followed my gaze.

“Do not mind them,” he said.

“Mind what?”

“The things they say.”

I did not answer.

Theo seemed to take that as confirmation, and his voice softened. “What happened last night... Miles and the others will not bring it up again. At least not to your face.”

Last night?

I had no memory of it, so I could only probe along the lines of what he had said.

“What did they say?”

Theo’s steps faltered.

He turned back to look at me, an odd expression on his face.

“Avery, are you really okay?”

“I drank too much last night.”

It was a low-risk answer. Alcohol and memory loss sounded plausible enough.

Theo clearly did not quite believe me, but he did not press further.

“You got into an argument with someone outside the West Tower,” he said. “Miles Ashcroft said you had damaged his cufflink, and you said that even if something like his fell into a fountain, no one would want to fish it out.”

I fell silent.

That did sound... exactly like something the original Avery would say.

Sharp. Guarded. Pushing people away before they could do it first.

“What happened after that?” I asked.

“Elias took you away.”

Elias.

The eldest son of House Vale, Avery’s nominal older brother.

The original novel had little to say about him, only that he was an almost perfect noble heir: calm, restrained, always courteous and distant toward his illegitimate younger brother.

People who could not be read were usually harder to deal with than those who were openly cruel.

At least you could see cruelty coming.

Theo led me down a spiral staircase and through a gallery hung with portraits of the academy’s past top students.

Each portrait bore a name, a family, and a rank beneath it.

Reading the gold plaques, I saw one rule with startling clarity.

Here, a name was not merely a name.

It was a ticket, a weapon, and a verdict.

“The academy has four tiers in all.” Theo saw me staring at the walls and began to explain. “You know this: the top hundred are Crown Rank. They can live in the main tower and have access to private training grounds and the library. The top fifty may attend royal observation classes. The top ten...”

“Can decide everyone else’s fate?” I asked casually.

Theo laughed, but he did not think I was joking.

“More or less.”

He pointed to an absurdly tall blackwood door at the end of the hall.

“Students like us had better stay out of their way.”

Students like us.

I did not correct him.

In the academy rankings, Avery Vale stood at two hundred and seventeen. He had no powerful family behind him, no outstanding grades, and no talent anyone had reason to fear.

In the original novel, he was not even an ordinary student.

He was the person everyone knew they were allowed to look down on.

“Are you going to the ranking wall today?” Theo asked.

“The ranking wall?”

“It updates on the first day of every term.” He hesitated. “I know you do not like looking at it.”

Of course I did not.

But I needed to know where I stood. I needed to know who was watching me, and I needed to find out as quickly as possible how many enemies the original Avery had left behind.

“I am going,” I said.

Theo looked genuinely startled, as though it was the first time he had heard me volunteer for something like this.

“All right.”

He did not ask why.

That eased something in me.

The breakfast hall was on the east side of the main building. The moment we approached the entrance, voices inside surged out like a tide.

The clear clink of silverware, chair legs scraping against the floor, and hushed conversations that were still not even trying to hide their gossip.

I paused outside the door, unconsciously pressing a hand over the notebook inside my uniform.

If the original Avery hated this place, I could not blame him.

The long tables were divided by family and rank. Senior nobles in immaculate clothes sat near the fireplaces, laughing as easily as though there had never been any danger in the world; in the corners were scholarship students, members of lesser branches, and those with poor rankings.

Everyone knew exactly where they were supposed to sit.

And everyone watched to make sure no one sat in the wrong place.

Theo led me toward a corner.

Two boys in dark-blue uniforms passed us. One of them saw me and deliberately slowed down.

“Vale.”

His gaze traveled from my tie to the tips of my shoes, his mockery undisguised.

“You actually dare come out for breakfast? I thought you would keep hiding in the bathroom until the Winter Trials were over.”

Theo went rigid at once.

I stopped and looked at him instead.

He was probably taller than I was, broad-shouldered, with the contempt of someone who had never truly lost written all over his face. A silver wolf was engraved on his chest badge. Good family, and surely a decent rank.

The silver-wolf crest... Then this must be Harlan Crowe.

“You are very concerned about me?” I asked.

He blinked.

“What?”

“From the bathroom to the Winter Trials, you have planned my life out quite thoroughly.” I kept my voice even. “If you are so interested in it, perhaps you should ask the instructor why you lost the obstacle course to someone ranked one hundred and eighty-nine last time.”

The area around us suddenly went quiet.

The boy’s expression changed.

Theo yanked at my sleeve.

I knew I should not take things too far.

The original Avery had been withdrawn, gloomy, and unwilling to socialize for a long time. If I suddenly became confident and kind, standing up for everyone, people would notice something was wrong far too quickly.

But that did not mean I had to keep playing a useless thing everyone could trample.

I could be cold.

I could be difficult.

I could be disliked.

As long as I did not seem like someone else.

“You had better remember who you are, Vale,” the boy said in a low voice.

“Funny. I am learning,” I said.

He glared at me, then turned and walked away.

It was not until we sat down that Theo seemed to find his voice again.

“Have you lost your mind?”

“Maybe.”

“That was Harlan Crowe. His father is the quartermaster of the Northern Territories, and his sister joined the royal retinue last year. He will not forget this.”

I picked up a slice of cold bread and broke it in half.

“Then let him remember.”

Theo looked at me as though I were a stranger.

I lowered my head to avoid his gaze.

I could not let him get used to this version of me too quickly.

I could not explain the car crash, waking inside a novel, or the future so absurd it felt like a dream.

And I could not make him my friend simply because he was the only person who did not seem hostile to me.

Had the owner of this body been driven into a dead end because he revealed his weak points too easily?

I did not know.

But until I had an answer, I did not need friends.

I needed to survive.

After breakfast, Theo led me around the main building to the academy’s central square.

Quite a few students had gathered there already.

At the far end of the square stood an obsidian wall three stories high, its surface reflecting people like still water. Golden names ran from top to bottom. The first few surnames were impossible to miss.

First: Lucien Veyre.

Second: Cillian Blackwood.

Third: Miles Ashcroft.

...

I kept looking downward.

Two hundred and seventeen.

Avery Vale.

There was no family crest beside the name, only a small gray mark, like a stain casually left behind by the system.

“No change this year,” Theo said quietly at my side.

“Mm.”

“Two hundred and seventeen is not that bad,” he offered, without much conviction. “There are more than four hundred students in the academy.”

Looking at that line, I suddenly understood why the original Avery had grown quieter and quieter.

Here, ranking was not a grade.

It was humiliation put on public display.

Every day you walked past that wall, you had to see exactly how far you were from being respected.

Hoofbeats sounded on the other side of the square.

The crowd seemed to part under an invisible force, opening a path on its own.

I looked up and saw several senior students coming from the training grounds. The one in front wore black riding clothes, morning mud still splashed on his boots. He did not look at anyone, yet there was an oppressive force to his stride that no one could ignore.

Someone murmured, “Blackwood is here.”

Cillian Blackwood.

Second place.

One of the people in the original novel least willing to follow the rules.

I only meant to glance at him, but as he passed, our eyes met before I could stop it.

He stood a head taller than those around him. The fitted black riding clothes outlined clean, powerful lines across his shoulders and back, but his movements were lazy, almost careless. Deep copper-brown hair was tousled by the wind and fell across his forehead; a faint old scar above his right brow added a trace of wildness to a face whose bone structure was sharply aristocratic.

His eyes were a very dark gray-green, like a forest beneath an overcast sky, or a lake that did not reflect light before a storm.

He did not stop.

He only looked at me for one second.

It was so brief that I almost thought I had imagined it.

Then he headed straight toward the dormitories.

Theo visibly relaxed.

“Do not look at him,” he said. “Cillian Blackwood hates being stared at.”

“You know him well?”

“Everyone in the academy knows that.”

I said nothing more.

When the crowd in the square gradually dispersed, Theo led me back toward the dormitory. Along the way, he pointed out the natural philosophy classrooms, the dueling grounds, the herb greenhouse, and the training tower where students had to report before the Winter Trials.

I memorized every location.

Escape routes.

Places to hide.

Corridors with few people.

And the exits nearest the infirmary.

“You really are strange today,” Theo finally said as we neared the dormitory. “You never used to ask about any of this.”

“The old me was not very smart.”

Theo opened his mouth and somehow could not find a response.

The look of his mind going blank nearly made me laugh.

But then, the sound of a lock turning came from the end of the corridor.

A door was pulled open from inside.

Cillian Blackwood leaned against the doorway, still dressed in his black riding clothes. When he saw me, one brow lifted slightly, as if confirming something interesting.

“Vale,” he said.

“You actually looked people in the eye today.”