The Astra estate had a particular stillness to it in the early morning, something that he had grown accustomed to for almost a decade now.
Every servant moving quietly, every door closing without a sound, the whole household operating like a mechanism.
Regulus stood in the entrance hall in his travelling clothes, dark and fitted, practical enough to move in and formal enough that no one would mistake him for someone who didn't matter.
Carlos had already seen to the luggage, three cases lined up by the door.
"You've forgotten nothing," Carlos said, appearing at his elbow.
He was a compact older man with grey at his temples and a permanent expression of disappointment except when he looked at Regulus, at which point the expression softened into something closer to fond exasperation. "I've packed the good ink. The Academy's supply is dreadful."
"You've been to the Academy?" Regulus said.
"I have not. I am making an informed assumption based on institutional procurement practices." Carlos straightened the collar of Regulus's coat with two precise adjustments. "Stand still."
Regulus stood still.
His father arrived first, which was typical. Vincent Astra was not a man who made people wait, not out of consideration, but out of duty.
He was tall, broad through the shoulders in the way that suggested he had once been broader.
He looked at Regulus for a moment without speaking, the way he often did, the way that used to make Regulus feel measured and found acceptable rather than actually seen.
"Do you have everything you need?" Vincent asked.
"Yes, Father."
"I will expect more of you than what The Academy expects of you." He paused. "You are aware of this."
"I am."
Vincent nodded, once, the motion carrying the full weight of everything he didn't know how to say out loud.
Then he crossed the hall and put a hand briefly on Regulus's shoulder, the gesture stiff but deliberate.
"Make us proud," he said, and stepped back, and that was that.
Regulus held his father's gaze for exactly as long as was appropriate and then looked away, because looking too long felt like something he couldn't afford right now.
Because, soon enough, he would have to bury the man in front of him, and that was only if he lived long enough in the first place.
He heard the sound of someone taking the stairs two at a time behind him, which was something their father had long since stopped commenting on.
Luther Astra arrived in the entrance hall slightly out of breath and grinning. Regulus paused momentarily, his chest felt heavy upon the sight of his brother.
He was twenty-four, broad-shouldered, with their father's face and their mother's eyes.
He was carrying something, a small wrapped package that he held out without preamble.
"From me," Luther winked. "Don't open it on the carriage, you'll lose half of it."
Regulus took it. "What is it?" He asked, his voice choking as he spoke. He couldn't meet Luther in the eyes while grabbing it.
"Something useful. Open it later." Luther dropped a hand onto his shoulder, heavier than their father's, more comfortable with the weight of it. "You're going to be fine, you know that."
"I know." He breathed out.
"I mean it. You're the smartest person in this family and I say that fully aware that it reflects badly on me." His grip tightened briefly.
"Central's gonna be full of people who've been told they're exceptional their whole lives. The majority of them aren't. You on the other hand are."
Regulus looked at him.
He had spent the last several hours cycling through every moment where it was mentioned his brother would commit murder, genocide, and every crime imaginable.
He knew his brother would come greet him, and he tried to prepare, to stay composed about it. He knew that the future of this family, the things that would happen in the near future.
He had been very reasonable about it in the dark of his room at three in the morning.
He found, standing here, that reasonable was harder than it had sounded.
Because Luther was looking at him the way he always looked at him, with uncomplicated warmth, like someone who had never once had reason to be anything else, and Regulus knew things about him that Luther didn't know about himself yet, things that made him feel like he was breaking apart.
"Thank you," Regulus said. It came out quieter than he intended.
Luther's expression shifted, something more careful moving through it. "Hey." He tilted his head slightly, the old gesture, the one that meant he was actually paying attention. "You alright?"
"Tired," Regulus said. "Didn't sleep well." He shifted his gaze to the ground.
Luther studied him for a moment. Then he let it go, which was either because he believed it or because he understood that pressing wasn't what Regulus needed right now, and either way Regulus was grateful for it.
"Sleep on the carriage," Luther said. "It's a long ride."
Carlos appeared at the door with the efficiency of someone who had been waiting for exactly this moment. "The carriage is ready, my lord."
Regulus picked up his coat. He said goodbye to his father, who nodded with the same indifferent look on his face.
He let Luther pull him briefly into a proper embrace, the kind their father didn't do, and held on for a second longer than he usually would have.
Then he walked out the door and got into the carriage and didn't look back, because looking back was not something he trusted himself to do cleanly.
---
Carlos settled across from him.
"The left side is better," Carlos said, nodding at Regulus's chosen seat. "You've chosen correctly."
"I've been told."
"By me. Several times." Carlos produced a small blanket from somewhere and set it on the seat beside Regulus. "Sleep if you can. We won't reach the city until morning."
The carriage moved. The estate fell away behind them, the gates passing the window and then the long road through the county, the land flat and pale in the early light.
Regulus watched it go.
Carlos fell asleep rather quickly, a testament to the close bond the two of them shared. Usually, butlers wouldn't dare even move wrong in front of their masters, yet Carlos had known him since he was a boy.
His chin dropped to his chest. His breathing evened out within minutes. Regulus envied the peace on his face.
He turned back to the window.
The road was quiet, the countryside dark on either side, the occasional light from a farmhouse or a waystation passing and disappearing.
The technology in this world, his world, was a mix of the medieval ages and the modern era.
Sure, they took carriages, but flying buses and trains existed. Hell, the only thing keeping his mind away from breaking down was the phone in his hand.
The rhythm of the wheels became steady. There was no internet or signal in such rural areas, and soon enough there was nothing left to hold the thoughts back with.
They came in the order they had been waiting to come in since he had woken up.
His father, standing in the entrance hall with his hand on Regulus's shoulder and that single careful sentence. Make us proud.
Then the image of him being stabbed in the heart by a familiar figure.
Luther, on the stairs, two at a time, grinning. The package was still in Regulus's coat pocket, unopened.
Luther, who was a saint, who helped the poor and the needy, who had taught him all he knew, and would soon turn into a monster.
Regulus's death. His death would do that to him.
That was the part he kept returning to, the idea of his own death was so haunting.
And the worst part? He didn't know how he would die, all he knew was a single line from a clunky paragraph, "Luther Astra joined The Circle of The Forgotten Lords after the death of his younger brother, one year after joining the academy."
That was all that stupid novel had told him.
One year.
One year from now he was going to die, or at least he was fated to die. A deeper part of him questioned the legitimacy of those words, but something inside him forced him to believe it.
One year from now, he would die and his brother would join a criminal organisation hellbent on destroying the world.
Regulus pressed his fingers against the cold glass of the window. His mind hardened, a growing anger seared in his chest.
He was alive. He was here, and he had information that no one else had, and there was time, there was still time, and he was not going to let the story run the way it had run in the novel because he was not a side character in someone else's narrative.
He was the one sitting in this carriage right now, he was the one who knew, and that had to count for something, it had to be enough, it was going to be enough.
His hands were shaking.
He looked down at them with a kind of distant surprise. The tremor was slight but consistent.
Across the carriage, Carlos slept on, unbothered.
Regulus turned back to the window. The countryside moved past in the dark, indifferent and endless, and the wheels kept their rhythm, and somewhere ahead of him the lights of the capital were waiting, and Central Academy, and everything the novel had told him was coming.
He breathed in.
He breathed out.
It didn't help as much as it should have.