Chapter 169: The Hidden Threshold
Eva had known discipline before. But not like this.
The morning after her father's departure, a man arrived at the Ainsley's residence. He didn't wear the soft expressions of her past tutors. No kindly eyes. No hesitation. He spoke her name once and then said nothing more, gesturing for her to follow. He did not introduce himself. When she looked back toward the hall, there was no one watching. Her Maman wasn't there. Mére — Aunt Vivienne wasn't filming her. And Yue — Seraphina "Ina" — was nowhere near.
The hidden room her father had shown her a year ago had changed. The air was cooler, more metallic. The windows were blocked. The walls bore no decoration. Only three items existed inside: a desk, a mat, and a clock.
That first day, she was taught not to cry when her muscles failed her. She was taught to keep her spine upright no matter how many hours she was made to sit, to read aloud in G••••• while doing wall squats, to press her memory through pages of philosophy and then recite them, word for word, under time pressure. Every failure was marked with a cold silence from her instructor, and that silence weighed more than rebuke.
The second day, a different instructor arrived. This one smelled faintly of ash and leather, and he carried with him two wooden rods. "Balance," he said, tapping them together, "is neither given nor found. It is built."
He made her kneel on one leg and stretch the other backward while holding the rods parallel to the ground. If they dipped, she started again. Ten minutes. Then twenty. Then thirty. No talking. No water. No complaints.
By the third day, Eva was woken earlier than ever before — before the sun even brushed the windows of her bedroom. A woman now waited for her in the hall, her hair braided so tightly it looked painted on. She handed Eva a schedule. Every hour from dawn to dusk was accounted for: L•••• dictation, sprint drills, silent meditation, logic puzzles, endurance crawls, wilderness terminology, advanced mathematics, knot tying, simulated argumentation.
Eva blinked at the list, heart pounding, but her mouth said, "Yes, ma'am."
Before her papa left, he had crouched beside her on the edge of the bed, still dressed in his traveling coat. "We'll leave as soon as I'm back," he'd said, his hand resting heavily on her shoulder. "First the party. You'll wear what your Maman packs. You'll smile. But after that — it's just you and me in the wild. You understand?"
"Yes, sir."
"You'll listen to every person I bring into the hidden room, no hesitation. You'll treat them as me."
"Yes, sir. Understood. I won't let anyone know about this."
His eyes narrowed slightly. "What will you say to your Maman? To Vivienne?"
"That we're going to bond at the party. That it's a father - daughter trip."
He waited.
"That's what they think, and we are… but not the way they think."
"And if you tell Yue?"
"I won't."
"Because?"
"Because if I do, I'm nothing but a disappointment."
He nodded once. That was enough.
Now, Eva recited Spinoza's axioms while standing on a wobbling balance board, her bare feet gripping the unstable surface as her calves trembled with effort.
"Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow," she muttered through clenched teeth, sweat slipping down her temples. Her posture wavered, then corrected. "In nature there is nothing contingent… but all things have been determined… from the necessity of the divine nature…"
"Again," barked the woman beside her, expression unreadable beneath a crisp visor. "And slower this time."
Eva inhaled sharply, then repeated the line, each word precise, as if she could tame the shaking in her legs with logic alone. Her lips moved like a metronome, keeping pace with her breathing. Her eyes flicked upward only once — to see Seraphina watching from across the training hall. Not smiling. Just watching. It made her try harder.
Later, she panted between sets of jumping jacks, holding laminated plant toxicity charts in both hands. Her hair clung to her cheeks; her lungs were burning.
"What's the LD50 of oleander?" snapped the instructor, pacing beside her like a wolf.
"Less than 0.5 milligrams per kilogram," Eva gasped, bouncing in place. "Cardiac glycosides. Causes arrhythmia, nausea, coma —"
"Yew berries?"
"Taxine alkaloids," she said, louder now. "Fatal. No known antidote."
"And nightshade?"
"Atropa belladonna —" she stumbled on a jump, corrected, "– contains tropane alkaloids. Hallucinations, dry mouth, paralysis, death."
The instructor didn't praise her. She only handed her a heavier chart and added squat thrusts.
Then came the breath drills. Eva knelt on the padded mat, eyes closed. Her lungs ached from the previous session. Vivienne had warned her, this part was psychological. She hadn't been exaggerating.
"You will speak only M•••••••," said a voice beside her. "And if you falter, we start over."
Eva nodded.
She drew in a deep breath, held it, and began.
"春眠不觉晓,处处闻啼鸟."
"Spring sleep is not aware of the dawn, and birds are heard everywhere."
Her lungs strained as the seconds passed.
"夜来风雨声,花落知多少."
"The sound of wind and rain at night, how many flowers fall."
A buzzer. Forty seconds. Not enough.
"Again," the voice said.
She tried again. And again. Each time the timer reset with a sharp, humiliating buzz. Finally, on the fifth round, she made it to the last syllable before the breath gave out and she collapsed sideways, coughing.
"You're not drowning," her trainer said coolly. "You're just uncomfortable. There's a difference."
Eva stared at the ceiling, chest heaving, fingers curling weakly against the mat. "Yes, ma'am."
Later still, she was on the floor with a weighted pack strapped to her back, dragging herself forward on her forearms across smooth concrete. Every pull felt like her muscles were tearing themselves apart. The weight was too much. Her elbows burned, and her palms were raw.
A soft voice dropped beside her — barely more than breath.
"The wilderness does not care about your comfort," the woman said, almost gently. "Only your mind will keep your body alive."
Eva gritted her teeth, face against the cold floor, and forced her arms forward. One inch. Two. Her vision blurred.
"She's watching," whispered the same voice, this time with a faint smile. "You know she is."
Eva didn't need to ask who.
Of course Seraphina was.
So she crawled.
Not for praise.
Not for comfort.
But for control.
By the second week, pain was a constant. But it was quiet pain — managed, noted, folded and stored. Her fingers bled from climbing a bare rope nailed to the ceiling. Her thighs trembled after thirty minutes in the horse stance. Her knees burned from crawling across wood with a coin balanced on her back. And still, every time someone entered, Eva stood up straight, clasped her hands, and said, "Ready."
She stopped asking for breaks.
She stopped asking anything at all.
And when Seraphina knocked gently on her bedroom door in the evenings — those rare, beautiful evenings when Eva was allowed to return to her normal rooms — Eva only smiled, sat beside her, and said, "Everything's fine."
Because she couldn't tell her. Not even her.
She loved Yue too much to make her part of the secret. And she knew that if Yue knew, she would never allow it.
The instructors rotated. Each one with their own style, their own cruelty, their own precision. But they never hurt her — not directly. They didn't need to. Exhaustion did the work. Silence did the rest.
One instructor taught her to calculate wind speeds and distances using shadows and leaves. Another forced her to copy maps of the southern Australian bushlands by memory, then recreate them blindfolded. Another stood behind her while she ran drills on evasion, escape, and the construction of shelter using only rope, cloth, and knives.
Once, she was made to speak for five minutes on the Stoic response to suffering while submerged in a cold bath. If she stopped, she had to start over. She reached the end — finally — and her voice didn't even shake.
When her body ached too deeply, her mind began to separate. She would see the room without really seeing it. Hear the voice of the instructors without attaching emotion to it. Her mind grew sharper, faster, colder. She was still Eva. But there was now something else, something under the skin — like steel buried in silk.
And still, she was good. Always good.
"May I continue?" she'd ask after failing.
"May I begin again?" she'd ask after breaking.
"Yes, sir," she'd answer to every demand, every reproof.
She never asked when her father would return.
Because she already knew: when he did, it would only get harder.
But she would not fail him. She would not disappoint him. Not now. Not ever.
One night, as she folded her uniform and placed her notes in perfect order, she whispered quietly to herself in L••••, then in F•••••, then finally in E••••••.
"I can bear it. I can bear anything."
And she did.
Because this was the price of becoming what he wanted.
And maybe — just maybe — what she wanted, too.