"Rose," the brown-haired girl called after her.
Rosette turned away. "I don't want to talk about it anymore."
"Rose, wait—"
She pulled the door open and gasped.
A blond-haired boy stood on the other side of it, looking exactly as startled as she was.
He stumbled back a step, going red. "Sorry! I'm sorry. I was — I was listening. I got curious, and then I just kept standing here, which was rude of me."
He glanced down at his shoes, collected himself, and then looked up with a shy, earnest smile.
"Why don't you want to join our family?"
First His Grace, and now Daniel, Rosette thought, overwhelmed. They both want an answer and I don't have one.
Outside in the corridor, Lucas was explaining to his sister that Daniel had come on ahead by himself, because their father had mentioned they might be getting a new younger sibling and Daniel could never wait for anything.
"Am I making you uncomfortable?" Daniel asked.
"No," she said quietly.
He sat down on the floor so that his eyes were below hers. "Then can I hear your answer?"
The directness of it surprised her. She looked down sadly at the boards between them.
"Do you dislike me?" she asked. "You already have a sister and a brother. There's no reason to welcome another one."
Daniel tilted his head, confused — and then broke into an enormous smile.
"I think it's a great idea."
"What?"
"Why wouldn't it be great to have a pretty little sister like you?" he said cheerfully.
Rosette stared at him, entirely stunned.
"And Belle and Lucas will like you too," he added. "I promise. Belle acts fierce but she's the worst of all of us about small things."
"D— Daniel," she stammered.
He's like a puppy, she thought, feeling her face heat. A happy one. He hasn't stopped smiling once.
And then the thought turned over, the way her thoughts always turned over, and she saw the other Daniel — the gloomy man who walked with a cane, whose leg had been ruined in a terrible carriage accident.
He had never wielded a sword again. She remembered how people had begun to whisper that he would never be a worthy heir, and how he had stopped correcting them.
The ducal house had investigated the accident exhaustively. The culprit was never found.
"Rosette?" Daniel said.
The thought came at her like a blow. Will Daniel lose his leg again? Even now — even with me not there to cause it?
She clenched her fists at her sides. She had not turned back time to be comfortable. She had turned back time to atone for what she had done, and to help the Adrien family, and she could do neither of those things from inside an orphanage.
"Rosette? Are you all right?" Daniel had hold of her shoulder. Then his hand flew to her forehead and his voice pitched up in panic. "You're burning up! You're — someone help, she's burning up!"
She stood swaying in front of him, flushed with fever, and the room slid sideways, and she fell forward into it.
Casting a spell beyond one's limits brings on grave illness. It cannot be forced out. It passes only with time, or through the intervention of a skilled mage — a figure with light in its hands, bent over a sleeping child.
Rosette lay in a narrow bed and could not understand it. Why hasn't my mana stabilized? I've done this a thousand times. It should be simple.
She grimaced as another wave rolled through her. Her new body was far weaker than she had ever anticipated. She had been treating it like her old one, and it was not her old one.
What's happening to me, she thought weakly, and lost the thread of it.
Then something changed. Something warm and soft, close by.
She opened her eyes.
Duke Adrien was sitting at her bedside. "Are you awake?"
Her eyes flew open the rest of the way. Duke Adrien—
"I'm sorry," he said. "I startled you. Did I do something wrong?"
Rosette bit her lip, flustered, and could not think of a single appropriate thing to say.
"I'm sending my own mana into you," he explained. "It's not healing. It only guides yours, and calms it — mine is steadier than yours right now, that's all." He was holding her small hand in his, and she could feel it: a gentle current running up her arm, spreading warmth through her chest and out to her fingertips.
"I'm not a mage," he admitted. "I don't know if it helps at all. Does it? Do you feel any better?"
She nodded.
He was quiet for a moment. Then, gently: "Is it true that you feel uncomfortable in our household?"
She flinched.
"I'm not trying to force you," he said, with a kind smile. "I've thought about it. I was too hasty. I made the offer standing in a courtyard with mud on my boots, and I never once asked what you wanted."
Rosette looked up at him, and her face softened.
"So here is another offer. Let me sponsor you instead. Whatever you want to become — a mage, a scholar, anything — I'll fund it, and you'll owe me nothing, and you may stay exactly where you are."
His voice is as warm as his mana, she thought.
He smiled at her and waited.
I'm still not ready, she thought. I don't think I'll ever be ready.
She took hold of the blanket with both hands and gripped it hard, and made her decision.
The Duke watched her in silence.
She would go with them. She would live in that house, at that table, under that crest, and she would change the future that was coming for all of them. Helping them was the only true atonement she had to offer, and she had not come this far to hide in a dormitory while it happened all over again.
Later, at the orphanage gates, the Duke took his leave of the man in the green suit, who thanked him for the unexpected visit.
"Joseph," the Duke called.
A blue-haired servant came up the path buried behind a stack of parcels so tall he was navigating by memory.
"Share these among the children," the Duke told him.
The man beamed over the top of the pile. "They'll be delighted, Your Grace. Truly. I only wish I could have brought more — I was short on time."
The Duke looked at the tower of gifts and wondered exactly how much more the man believed he could have carried.
"I'll be stopping at the Imperial Palace," he said, and a faint smile crossed his face. "I intend to finish the adoption procedures."
The Imperial Palace rose white and enormous over its gardens, terrace after terrace of clipped hedges and still water, immaculate in the afternoon light.
Inside, in an opulent sunlit hall, a blond-haired aide stood at attention and could not quite hide his astonishment.
"Duke Adrien himself, come to submit adoption papers? Your Grace, a clerk could have—"
At the far end of the hall, behind a desk the size of a boat, sat the stern, dark-haired man who ruled it all: Emperor Richard Nhard.
"It's fashionable this season," the emperor observed. "Nobles adopting children for charity. Half the great houses have taken in a foundling to be admired for it."
"This is not a whim," the Duke said firmly.
He was thinking of a very small girl weeping until she could not breathe.
"Rosette is gifted enough that she is already using healing magic. Not theory. Not a parlor trick with light. She healed a dying child in the street with her hands."
The emperor's brows rose. Somewhere behind his eyes he was seeing it too. "So a child with that kind of talent has appeared, has she. Then we should think about an imperial engagement while she is still unattached—"
"Far too soon," the Duke said, dismissing it flat.
The emperor laughed. "They say you're cold-blooded, Adrien. That you're warm to precisely three children and one student and no one else living. And here you are, making room for a fourth."
Behind him, at the edge of the hall, a silver-haired boy stood with his back to the room.
The Duke thought of a small, innocent-looking girl in a simple blue dress, standing very quietly in a hallway that was too big for her.
"Give the documents to me," the emperor said, settling behind his ornate desk. "I'll accept them myself."
"You have my thanks, Your Majesty."