"No, no, it's the fork first. Work inwards, remember, dear?"

I rolled my eyes as the Imperial woman spoke again, guiding my hands back to fold primly in my lap and rearranging the silverware I so venomously despised. Soup spoon. Dessert spoon. Tea spoon. Who needs this many spoons!?

"Now, try again. Shoulders back, good posture. Napkin folded in your lap, elbows off the table - and don't muss your sleeves. Go on."

"I don't want to." I growled, crossing my arms and biting back a curse that had already gotten me in trouble once. My governess tutted behind me.

"Good young ladies do as they are told."

"I don't want to be a good lady!" I snapped, glaring at the center of the plate as though I could turn it to ashes if I stared hard enough. Madame Tucket hemmed behind me, clucking her tongue in the way only she could and leaning over the table, glaring down.

"So you want to be a bad lady? Lonely and unmarried, mm?" She moved her hands on her hips, brows raised. "End up a poor old spinster like me?"

Bad? I looked my nursemaid over - her plump, rouged cheeks, lips pursed, her hair whipped into a tight bun perched gingerly atop her head. Long nails that terrified me, a wrinkled brow, wide and stout and plain. Were you ever bad?

At the thought of becoming like her I grimaced, shifting back in my seat to return to my dreaded lesson on table etiquette. As she prompted and pushed for proper names and uses I felt a flicker of something inside – some memory yawning and perking up, making me smile a hidden smile. Flowers, instead of spoons.

With a reluctant sigh she dismissed me. I practically fled when the lesson ended, lifting up my skirts and racing down the echoing halls upstairs and towards the only place I now really thought of as home. The smells of leather and parchment and age welcomed me, books with fine bindings peering down upon the intruder as I moved past. I dragged my fingers over their spines, relishing their textures and feel, sliding two away and gathering them in my arms.

Sovngarde and Song of the Alchemists. I smiled, cradling them close before laying them out on the desk, moving aside another book that made me frown – The History of House Toltette.

Stepfather - Marquis over these lands. Toltette. I refused to call him anything else. My mother's marriage to him was a betrayal to me. I took what little comfort I could in solitude, in skipping lessons on poise and tucking myself into the worlds Falrung and Papa introduced me to so long ago. I spent hours there, whispering spells, memorizing ingredients, stumbling over words and tracing the greying sketches of Nordic gods.

Not exactly the appropriate activities of a young noble girl, even an upstart. But I'd have it no other way. I clung to those pieces of my past, the freedom they afforded me to be myself.

"Gabriel!"

"Damn!" I leapt up, gathering my treasures and glancing wildly around the room. I could her the click of mum's feet in the hall, her summons for me that I scurried from. Under the desk? No, she caught me last time. I dashed to a shelf, slipping between it and the wall and wincing at the hollow thud as my back landed against it.

Hollow?

"Come along, Gabby, it's time for afternoon lessons. Don't keep Madame Tucket waiting!"

I pursed my lips, slipping onto my knees and dragging my hands over the wall section. There - my finger slipped on the tiniest crack. A panel! I caught my breath, pulling back, a flush of excitement dancing through my chest.

"Gabriel, you do not want me to have to come find you."

Well, now or never. Grinning, I moved my books under my arm and pried the panel open. On hands and knees I clambered inside, closing the wall behind me just as the door outside opened.

"Gabby?"

Darkness. I crept inside, listening, shaking cobwebs that tangled in my hair. There wasn't much room - just enough to tuck myself in, my knees bent just so with my feet perched against the opposite wall. A perfect sanctuary. A haven, a -

A hideaway.

I felt a sweet shiver as my father's words echoed in me, the smell of dried herbs and illness leaving me as soon as it came. A hideaway. Papa's had been a place of learning and healing, where he fostered my love for alchemy and the unknown, raised me amongst dried wormwood sprigs and glass bottles.

Maybe...

I tapped my fingers against my knee, the spell blooming in my mouth and flooding the nook with light. I squinted, drawing my book open with the other tucked at my side. Mum at last relented, the sound of her footsteps fading as I fingered the crisp pages of parchment.

Sneezing as dust swirled around me, I spread Song of the Alchemists on my lap and began.

"When King Maraneon's alchemist had yet to leave his station..."

"Gabby, where have you been? What did you get into this time?"

Mum fretted over me as I sat by her side at dinner, fluffing my hair and grimacing at the puff of dust that fell from it. "Did you go cobweb hunting? You missed your history lesson, too. Your father won't be pleased."

I bit back a scowl. He isn't my father.

"That's so gross, Gabby." My sister scolded, glaring at me from across the table. Anya – a perfect image of my mother, always poised, always dutiful. "We eat here. You're going to get dust everywhere."

I opened my mouth to protest but mum spoke first, a shiver sliding down my skin at her words, her soft and bittersweet laugh.

"Dusty. Just like your father's name."

My real father, Jacques Dust. I mouthed the name. Dust.

... I'll never take Toltette's name.

It was then, with my breath caught, that I knew.

"Good evening, Abelle." I glanced up as Toltette swept past, followed by the scent of ink and fine musk as he lay a chaste kiss on her brow. His gaze swept over us, eyes landing on me with a frown. "Children. Gabriel Toltette, you know better than to show up filthy to supper. Go and clean up immediately."

Toltette.

I bit my lip, digging my nails into my palms until the word burst hot and sickly from my throat.

"No."

"No isn't an option, young lady."

"Don't call me Toltette. I'm Dust."

I heard mum's sharp intake of breath behind me, Toltette's brow raised and lips pursed.

"Your father's filthy name?" He whispered, dangerously quiet before his voice rose. "You would call yourself after a backwards -" his face flushed. "The man who chose a filthy Nord over his own wife – "

"Davide," Mum hissed, putting her hands over my ears as I went slack jawed.

Over his wife?

"She needs to know, Abelle!" Toltette hissed, eyes piercing through me. "He was a filthy scoundrel, dragging your mother into poverty, letting you rot in filth so he could stay with that Nord."

Nord?

Falrung.

I shuddered, turning wide-eyed to my mum who watched Toltette with tightly pursed lips. Finally she snapped, voice raised and sharp as a slap. "Enough!" A deep breath and her composure returned, head tilting, eyes slowly closing. "Please, Davide. No more."

The room went silent. Anya stared, a forkful of mutton lowered back to the plate. Toltette's face turned a shade of sour milk.

"I apologize, dear. I lost my temper." He paused, gazing at mum with an a bow of his head before taking his place at the table. "I simply hoped the child I raised would respect me more than him."

"It's just a phase," mum murmured before we all went quiet again, our inner turmoil concealed in a family dinner. I excused myself as soon as I could and ran upstairs to my room, huddled on my bed with a book, hiding away from it all.

Dragged us into poverty, let us rot in filth.

What did he mean?

"Gabby?"

I tightened my grip on the book as though I could hold my attention to it better. Trying and failing to ignore Anya's soft voice, her footsteps behind me. "Go away."

"I'm sorry about what happened at dinner. Papa just loses his temper, you know that."

I bristled at that, at her calling him – him, papa. She circled around and closed in, then put a hand on my book and pushed down, forcing me to meet her gaze.

"You know they just want to give us the best life they can."

"I don't know that." I tried to slam the book closed on her invading hand, but she was faster. Coolly she examined her nails, then looked pointedly back at me. A sigh.

"You're too little too remember, Gabby. What it was like before." She spoke softly, but firm – silk-clad steel, just like maman. Little wonder it had been so easy for her to accept this, over the years. "We were always hungry, always sick. It wasn't even a real village, just desperate people looking for help from the chapel."

"And papa did help them." In contrast my voice was raw, cold and sharp in my throat. I put down the book and hugged myself tight. "He was a good man. They both were."

"They were." She smiled, took my hand. Damn you, I thought. Damn you for being so strong and so untouchable, even as she pulled me into a hug like she had when we were children. "It's complicated, what happened. But we've got a better life here. That's all maman ever wanted for us – and papa too, I bet."

A part of me knew she was right. We lived in comfort and luxury now, never wanting, never scraping by, never huddling in fear as plague or harsh winters decimated our world. But I couldn't accept it, not entirely. Anya sighed against my head, then laughed.

"You really wanna call yourself Dust?"

"Yeah." She sat beside me as I spoke, the high bed creaking under our weight. "I think – I like it. It was his. From the old days, he said, back in Skyrim." An inheritance of sorts, something tangible I could keep close to me even so long after his death.

"He said it was from his great grandfather Dustin, remember? From his ancestors in The Reach, when he was a boy. Because he was an alchemist like him, like his grandmaman. Like you probably will be." Only in private did this side show – Anya's crooked smirk, secret and mischievous. "All covered in dirt from picking flowers."

I managed a grin of my own, even through tears. "I'd rather be covered in dirt than lace and perfume anyway."

Prim and proper. "You certainly smell like it."

"Ta gueule!" I grabbed a pillow and aimed for her head, and we spent the evening cleaning up the goose feather explosion that resulted. I was grateful for the distraction, grateful not to have to think on the hurt welling up inside until night fell and we separated, when my thoughts drifted back to papa again. An alchemist name – that settled it. I fell asleep on a deflated pillow with fists clenched and tears blinked back, the name held on my lips.

Mum thought it was a phase.

It wasn't.

I named myself, and more than ever I ran from my governess, from my lessons. I read as though starved, snuck into the kitchens and gardens to mimic concoctions, threw off the new responsibilities of a noble childhood whenever I could. When I asked mum the truth, she relented - papa, my dear father and Falrung were lovers in hiding. I wasn't too young to understand love, that my papa had somehow betrayed mum. That my childhood heros were entwined with deceit.

Still, I held them close, even as I extracted myself from the life maman had made here.

A new name. Renewed rebellion against who I was told to be. Gabriel Toltette had never existed, and Gabby died when she woke in Falrung's cold lap.

Maman had told me once, what my name meant. A blessing, she said, chosen by my father. 'Stendarr is my might.' Even then it was an irony I couldn't accept, knowing he had worked so hard and died anyway. That Stendarr had done nothing for him, and nothing for me.

No. Dust was my new name, my chosen name, one I kept close to my heart as I felt I could little else. It meant I belonged to no one but myself.