Reianna watched the carriage with her teacher and her former bully pull away. Gerenet-Shr had put her in her carriage, but she had gotten back out because she wanted to watch him leave. Even though she was headed to see her actual parents, she felt as if part of her was being taken away as she watched him go.

  It wasn’t until Natt put her hand on her shoulder that Reianna realized Natt had gotten out as well. She looked up at her beautiful teacher, then back to the carriage that was vanishing down Dyntril’s main drive.

  “Have you ever been to the camps?” Reianna asked.

  “No.”

  They watched a bit more.

  “Come on. It’s going to take several hours to get there,” Natt said and got back in the carriage.

  Reianna hopped in after her.

  Once she was on, the carriage shook to a start. Natt smiled at Reianna. “Are you excited to see your parents?”

  “Yes.” She was excited, yet nervous at the same time. She wasn’t the same girl who’d left home a year ago. A year ago, she’d taken four days to walk to school. That was the first time she’d even seen a carriage, and she’d gawked at it. Now she was annoyed that the public carriage they were using didn’t ride as smoothly as Billiam’s had.

  “Feel free to sleep if you want,” Natt said as she closed her eyes. She then rotated on the carriage bench, pulled her legs up, and leaned her head against the window.

  “Tired?” Reianna asked.

  “Yeah, it’s been stressful.” Natt didn’t open her eyes.

  Not wanting to bother her teacher anymore, Reianna pulled out her tattered book. She opened it up to one of the pages with an illustration. She ran her fingers over the young woman’s face, the Lightress.

  Natt shifted in her seat, and Reianna turned the page. She didn’t know if she was self-conscious because she was looking at the picture like a child, or if she was worried Natt might have caught the reverence with which Reianna had been looking at the picture.

  “Tales of the Lightress?” Natt asked.

  Reianna closed the book. “The Lightress’s Other Tales,” Reianna answered.

  Natt closed her eyes again. “Oh, have you read the other two?”

  “There are two more?” Reianna sat up.

  “Yeah.” Natt yawned. “That’s the second volume of tales. Tales of is the first volume. Final Tales is the last volume. Tale for tale, The Lightress’s Other Tales has the best ones, but my favorite two are in Tales of the Lightress and Final Tales.”

  “I thought there was just this one.”

  “What’s your favorite tale?”

  Reianna looked at the book in her hand. Which was her favorite? “The Parade.”

  Natt cracked an eye open again. “The Saintess’s Parade?”

  Reianna nodded. “The Saintess is the savior, but she couldn’t have done it without the Lightress guiding her. Without the Lightress, the Saintess would have been lost in the dark.”

  “That is a good one. In Tales of, there’s ‘The Lightress and the Darkness.’ It’s just a beautiful story that I think you would love. I don’t want to spoil it, but it has the same theme that the most benign-seeming changes have a greater impact than you can imagine.”

  “I’d like to read it someday.”

  Natt shifted in her seat. “I’ll take you to get a copy once we get home.”

  Soon after saying that, Natt’s breath deepened, and she gave a little snore.

  Once more, Reianna ran her hand over the brown cover. She wanted to read the other tales, but she knew none of them would hold the special place in her heart that the five tales within her book did.

  Holding her book, Reianna sat back and closed her eyes. Despite the rattle of the carriage, or maybe even because of the rattle rocking her like a newborn in a crib, she was getting sleepy as well.

  Lying down on the carriage bench, Reianna hugged her book to her and closed her eyes. She was excited to get more tales of the Lightress. She wondered if the tales were just fables or if they were true.

  What was life like before the interface? How had the Lightress, the Saintess, the Warrior, and the King lived? How had their lives changed with the sudden arrival of the interface?

  Would it be the same as how she had lived her life before Gerenet-Shr taught her to read and gave her access to the interface? She doubted that. Other people around her could use the interface, but the four heroes, they were the saviors.

  “Reianna.”

  She awoke to Natt calling her name. Her book had fallen on the floor; she sat up and picked her book up. Glancing out the windows, she saw short, one-story buildings with wavy roofs.

  “We’re here.”

  The sun hung low in the sky, giving the world an orange tint.

  “The buildings here are so beautiful.”

  Natt nodded. “Most of them are relics from pre-interface times. Of course, they’ve been updated to use the interface, but the structures themselves have been preserved.”

  Reianna gawked at them.

  “I bought my parents’ house back when I was a duchess.”

  “What’s that sound?” Reianna asked.

  “The ocean,” Natt answered.

  Whipping her head around, once more, Reianna’s gaze focused out the window.

  “We can’t see it from here, but we will be able to see it from my house.”

  “I’ve only seen the river that runs through Kruami. I never thought I’d get to see the ocean!”

  “My house is on the beach.”

  “Sand?!” Reianna bounced on her seat.

  “Yes, sand.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Putting both hands on the windowsill, Reianna continued to stare out the window, then she caught sight of it: endless water.

  “Wow!”

  “It’s something, isn’t it?”

  “Do people go in it?”

  Natt shook her head. “It’s too dangerous with the sea Yani. They’re much more aggressive than normal Yani, and harder to fight too. But as they can’t leave the water, we just ignore them.”

  “Oh…”

  Natt got up and sat next to Reianna. “We can dip our toes in, though.”

  Turning her head to look at Natt, Reianna asked, “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  She looked back out the window with a huge smile. She would perk up every time the ocean came into view from between houses.

  After travelling another twenty minutes, the carriage came to a stop in front of a large house. It had a north and south wing with a giant front door in the middle main part of the building.

  “This is us,” Natt said.

  “Wow…”

  The two women got out of the carriage, and the driver headed off. A carriage sat in a paved area in front of the house. They walked past it to get to the front door. Natt didn’t knock; she just opened it.

  “We’re here!” she called out.

  A woman with light azure hair came running into the main foyer. “Reia!” She ran over and crashed into Reianna, hugging her and kissing her forehead, the top of her head, her cheeks, everywhere her lips could reach without breaking her hug.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  At a more leisurely pace, a man with the same silver hair as Reianna’s limped in. “Hey, Reia.”

  “Hi, Daddy.”

  Reianna’s mom finally let go so that her daughter could go give her father a hug. Despite his limp, he picked Reianna up in a big hug so that her feet dangled off the floor.

  “I’m happy to see both of you, too.”

  She looked at her parents. Her mother was wearing a nice dress. Reianna had never seen her mother in a dress before. Her short, close-cropped hair was styled. Someone other than her father had cut it. Highlights lit up her eyes and cheeks.

  Her father wore a suit she’d seen some teachers wear. It had a tie, vest, and tailored coat over matching pants. His silver hair wasn’t tussled like before, but combed nicely. His silver beard was no longer haphazard, but neatly trimmed, with his cheeks and neck clean shaven.

  Out from under the dirt and grime of their lives, Reianna had never realized how good her parents could look. “You guys look amazing…”

  Her mother ran her hand through Reianna’s hair. “Your hair has gotten so long! It looks so nice. I love your braid. Marcob, doesn’t she just look so wonderful? Our daughter is beautiful!”

  “She takes after you, Loria.”

  Reianna’s mom stood and went over to Natt. “Miss Cormick, thank you so much.” She took Natt’s hand. “Thank you. Thank you.” Letting go of Natt’s hand, Loria hugged her.

  Natt hugged her back. “Your daughter is truly special.”

  At last, Loria let go and looked at her daughter. “She is?”

  “Mom, Dad, I’m a mage.”

  They looked at her.

  “Oh…that’s…nice?” her mom said.

  “What’s a mage?” her dad asked.

  Natt cleared her throat. “They’re an incredibly rare type of hunter. Your daughter is a national treasure.”

  Marcob blinked. “Well, if that’s what she wants to be.”

  Putting her hand on her daughter’s shoulder, Reianna’s mother gave it a squeeze. “Reia, you don’t have to be anything you don’t want to be. I told you, you didn’t have to volunteer.”

  Reianna hugged her mother. She didn’t want to explain that it wasn’t a choice. Her parents were as illiterate as she had been. The old lady next door, who’d read her the Lightress’s tales, was the only person she knew who was literate. The book had been hers originally.

  “Well, someone had to do it, Mom.”

  “We’re not rehashing this,” her father said. “She’s already there. I don’t need another round of arguing over Reianna being there or not when nothing will change.”

  Just then, a man and a woman came in. It was obvious they were Natt’s parents, and Reianna could see why her teacher was so attractive.

  Her mother had long, bone-white hair tied up into a tight bun. Her dress fit her in perfect ways that made Reianna’s mother look like she was still dressed in rags. Her skin was blemish-free, and her rose-red lips and light blue eyes stood out on her pale complexion.

  Natt’s father had light-blue hair and a matching mustache. Even in his old age, his clothes failed to hide his muscular arms and chest. He, too, had the same color eyes as Natt and his wife.

  “Why, hello there, young lady,” he said and held out his hand. Reianna put hers in it, and he kissed it. Reianna’s father frowned.

  “So this is the amazing girl who has half the nobility atwitter,” Natt’s mother said. She bowed to Reianna. “I am Annora.”

  “Davion née Baronet,” Natt’s father said.

  Reianna looked at Natt.

  “It means he’s a former baronet, but retired, and his child is still noble,” Natt explained. “My mother was never noble, so she’s just Annora.”

  “I see.”

  “My baby’s still noble in my heart,” Davion said.

  “Umm, Annora? What did you mean about my daughter?” Loria looked nervous.

  “Her school has tournaments. She’s been in two of them and has won both of them. It’s unheard of for a commoner.”

  “That’s actually why I moved you here,” Natt told them. “A lot of people want to get to your daughter, and if they can use the two of you, they will.”

  Loria clasped her hands together and brought her fingers to her lips. Marcob wrapped his arms around his wife. They both looked at their daughter with glistening eyes.

  “Why did you guys think you moved here?” Reianna asked.

  “We just assumed it was a thing that happened to parents of the students.”

  Reianna rolled her eyes. “Did that happen to any of the other kids and parents who went before me?”

  “They all came back in a box before a month passed,” Marcob said to his daughter in a flat tone.

  “Oh…” Reianna looked at the floor. She’d forgotten that one detail. The reason she was at the school was because all the others had died, but she’d forgotten that they’d died so early into the school year.

  Natt clapped her hands. “Let’s speak of happier things! You don’t need to worry about your daughter. Basque and I will take care of her. Soon, you’ll have your own house like this and only have to entertain as much or as little as you would like.”

  “Who’s Basque?” Reianna’s father asked.

  “He’s my teacher! He’s incredible! You guys would love him! Maybe you can come to one of the next tournaments to watch and meet him there! What do you think, Natt?”

  She looked at Reianna. “We’ll have to see. Don’t get your hopes up, though.”

  Reianna frowned. “Does that mean I have to hide my parents away forever?” she asked.

  “Probably just until you graduate. Once you officially become noble, no one should be able to touch you or them.”

  Reianna looked at her parents with sad eyes.

  “It’s okay, baby,” her mom said. “You don’t need to worry about us. Davion and Annora take good care of us. They even let us bake for them.”

  “Your father makes excellent bread,” Davion said.

  Reianna nodded, then yawned, even though she’d slept the entire journey.

  “Oh, goodness! Look at us just standing in the foyer when you’re both so tired. Come,” Annora reached a hand out and waved Reianna closer. Reianna obliged, and Annora put her arm around Reianna’s shoulder.

  She led Reianna into a large sitting room, twice the size of her sitting room at Dyntril. “Loria, would you like to show your daughter to her room? We’ll wait here. We can have supper once you’re back.”

  “Yes, Annora. Come, Reia.”

  The other adults situated themselves in the living room, while Reianna’s mom led her away.

  “So, are you really liking school?” her mother asked as soon as they were out of earshot of the others.

  “Gere—Basque and Natt are the best,” Reianna said as they went upstairs.

  “She can’t hear you now. You can tell me the truth.”

  “That is the truth. Mom, we’re like the first class ever not to have a single student die after the first year. It’s all thanks to Basque and Natt.”

  Loria nodded, but she still frowned. They left the stairwell, and Loria led her daughter to an empty room. While it had a sitting area, it wasn’t split off from the bedroom.

  “Annora said you can use this one.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  She nodded. “Oh! Your stuff! Should we go down and get it? Do you need help?”

  Reianna shook her head. “I’ve got it all right here.” She pulled a bag out of her storage.

  Loria jumped back. “Goodness, Reia! Are they teaching you magic at that school?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “It’s just the inventory from the interface. Everyone has one; we just need to be able to read to use it.”

  Her mom took a step back. “Alright, well, I’ll let you get situated. I’m so happy to see you!”

  After giving Reianna another hug and kiss, she left. Instead of unpacking, Reianna sat on the edge of her bed. Something felt off.

  She was happy to see her parents. She loved them and missed them, but Reianna felt like there was a distance between them. Her mother was all smiles and joy, but there was a stiffness there.

  In the past, her mother would have stayed to help, not scurry off at the first chance she got. Her father hadn’t even looked in her direction when she left.

  But she had changed as well. She was no longer that innocent girl who’d left her parents’ house a year ago. She wondered if things would return to normal or if things would get worse from here on.

  Maybe that’s what “you can never go home again” meant.

  One of the main materials used in our products doubled in price, essentially removing all profits...

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