How to Hold a Phantom

He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living creatures.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

———

I pulled out a fresh piece of parchment and began drafting a letter, the scratching of quill against paper filling the silence between us. "Then we need to make this official. Tomorrow morning, I'll request an audience with my father. I'll explain that my time at the academy has made me realize how... inadequate... I am at managing basic responsibilities." The words felt like acid on my tongue, but the discomfort was a small price for survival.

Lyra watched me write, her crimson eyes tracking every deliberate stroke of the quill with that unsettling intensity she never tried to hide when we were alone. "You'll present yourself as incompetent," she stated, not asked.

"Worse. I'll present myself as helplessly dependent." I paused in my writing to meet her gaze directly, something I'd never do in public. "It's the perfect cover. What kind of threat could a noble possibly be if he can't even dress himself without assistance? If he trembles at the thought of managing his own schedule?"

The smile that crossed her lips was razor-thin and twice as sharp, a glimpse of the predator beneath the maid's uniform. "They'll see exactly what you want them to see. A harmless shadow not worth remembering."

"A pathetic child who needs a nursemaid." I returned to the letter, outlining my request in terms that would make any self-respecting noble cringe with secondhand embarrassment. My handwriting deliberately wavered in places, reinforcing the image of a nervous, uncertain young man. "The beauty is that it serves multiple purposes. I get you positioned at the academy where you can be my eyes and ears, I reinforce my reputation as harmless to the point of being pitiable, and I give my family yet another reason to dismiss me as irrelevant. The more they underestimate me, the more freedom I have to move."

The trifecta of strategic humiliation. Alex from three months ago would be horrified at what I'm willing to sacrifice for survival.

"There will be resistance," Lyra observed. "Lady Vivienne won't want to lose a servant to your 'frivolous needs.'"

"Let me worry about Lady Vivienne." I signed the letter and set it aside to dry. "Your job is to be ready when opportunity presents itself."

I stood and walked to the window again, this time to check the position of the moon. Past midnight—late enough that any reasonable person would be asleep. Which meant this conversation needed to end soon, before someone noticed the candlelight under my door.

Time to send her off with marching orders and hope she doesn't do anything too creative while I'm not watching.

"That's enough for tonight," I said, turning back toward the desk. "You should return to your quarters before—"

"Master." Lyra's voice stopped me mid-sentence. She'd risen from her chair and was standing with her hands clasped behind her back, the picture of a dutiful servant. But something in her tone made the hair on my neck stand up.

"Yes?"

"When you speak to your father tomorrow... when you make yourself appear weak and dependent..." She took a step closer, and I could see the fire burning behind her composed expression. "I want to watch."

Of course you do. Because watching me humiliate myself in front of my family is apparently your idea of entertainment.

"That can be arranged," I said carefully. "Though I'm not sure why you'd want to witness such a... degrading display."

"Because," she said, her voice dropping to something just above a whisper, "it will be beautiful."

I stared at her, trying to parse the meaning behind those words. Beautiful. She thought watching me grovel would be beautiful. Either she had a seriously twisted sense of aesthetics, or she understood something about my plan that I hadn't fully grasped myself.

Or she's just that devoted to the idea of serving me that she finds any expression of my will inherently attractive. Which is... concerning.

"Lyra," I said, my voice flat and controlled. "Tomorrow, I will grovel before my father. I will beg him for a leash, so the world can see what a helpless dog I am."

I looked directly into her burning red eyes, letting her see the cold calculation behind my own grey ones.

"And you, my dear Lyra, will be the one holding it."

Her breath hitched. The sound was soft, barely audible, but in the quiet of my chambers it might as well have been a shout. Her eyes widened slightly, and for a moment her carefully maintained composure cracked to reveal something raw and desperate underneath.

Pure, ecstatic devotion.

Well. That answers that question. She doesn't just want to serve me—she wants to own me. Or be owned by me. Possibly both.

"Yes, Master," she whispered, her voice thick with something that might have been tears or might have been something else entirely. "Yes."

I nodded once, a sharp, dismissive gesture. "Then get some rest. Tomorrow will be a long day for both of us."

She moved toward the window, her usual route for departing my chambers. But at the sill, she paused and looked back over her shoulder.

"Master? Thank you."

"For what?"

"For trusting me with this. For letting me..." She struggled for words, her eloquent reports suddenly failing her. "For letting me be useful."

"Just don't make me regret it," I said.

She smiled then, a expression of such genuine happiness that it was almost painful to look at. "Never."

And then she was gone, slipping through the window like smoke, leaving me alone with my plans and my doubts and the growing certainty that I'd created something far more dangerous than I'd intended.

I blew out the candle and sat in the darkness, listening to the house settle around me. Tomorrow would bring new challenges, new opportunities, new ways to dance around the edges of disaster while maintaining my facade of incompetence.

But tonight, I allowed myself a moment of honest reflection. In three weeks, I'd transformed a traumatized servant girl into a devoted intelligence operative. I'd manipulated family dynamics to position myself for academy infiltration. I'd begun building a network that could potentially reshape the entire narrative I was trapped within.

Not bad for a useless third son.

The question was whether I was building tools for my survival, or weapons for my destruction. With Lyra, the line between the two seemed to blur more each day.

Guess I'll find out tomorrow, when I prostrate myself before Father and beg him to let me take my pet monster to school.