The guards at the gate stand straighter when we return.

  Their salutes are crisper. Their eyes sharper.

  And no one calls me young lord.

  Not tonight.

  The Larkin estate rises quiet and orderly in the breaking dawn, all high spires and frost-laced ironwork, its balconies silvered by the soft hush of early light. Lanterns burn low in their sconces. Footsteps are hushed across the marble floors. The staff does not sleep, but neither do they speak. They watch me pass like a ghost returned from fire.

  I climb the grand staircase alone. My guards halt at the landing without needing to be told.

  My door is already open.

  Inside, my chambers are pristine, as always. The hearth glows faint with banked embers, waiting to be stirred. The radiator hisses quietly in the corner, its warmth steady and unintrusive. My linens are smooth. The basin filled. The lamp turned low, casting the room in soft amber.

  Isla rises as I enter, moving toward the hearth to light it fully, but I raise a hand to stop her.

  “I’ve had enough fire for one night.”

  She pauses, then nods. Without a word, she crosses to me and kneels to unlace my boots. I let her.

  One. Then the other.

  Pulled free with gentle, practiced care.

  When she reaches for the buttons of my coat, I lift a hand again.

  “I can manage.”

  She hesitates. Her brow creases. “You need to wash. You’re covered in soot. If you get in bed like that, it’ll take the maids half the morning to—”

  “Then they’ll be angry with you,” I say, voice soft. I shrug out of the coat. “Because you didn’t bathe first. You’ll ruin my nightclothes just touching them.”

  She opens her mouth. Closes it. The heat behind her eyes is something between frustration and concern.

  “I can wash myself,” I say. Firm. Final.

  Reluctantly, she nods and stands. “I’ll be back shortly.”

  The adjoining door clicks closed behind her.

  I strip down to my shorts. Splash water from the basin, run a damp cloth over my face, my neck, my arms. The rest, the grime, the sweat, the smoke baked into my skin, I leave. My body is too tired to feel it.

  I walk to the balcony doors. Open them.

  The cold air rolls in like a tide.

  The Larkin estate grounds stretch out below me, hedges rimmed in frost, statuary and fountains catching the first gold threads of morning light. My bare feet press against the chill of the stone floor. I step outside.

  I don’t shiver.

  The cold is clean.

  It cuts through everything, the noise, the ash, the breath of burning resin still clinging to the back of my throat. I sit down against the carved marble railing, legs threaded through the balustrade, arms curled around them. Let the cold wrap me in silence.

  I don’t think.

  I just listen.

  To the wind brushing slate roofs.

  To the slow ticking of the corridor clock through thick glass.

  To the groan of a garden gate shifting in its hinge.

  And then, carefully, I begin to draw mana.

  A slow thread through my core. Down my arms. My legs. Into my bones.

  I don’t cast. I cleanse.

  I build pressure until it pushes outward, subtle, steady, and begin flushing my system. Drawing out the trace elements of the fire, the clinging residue of combustion: toxins from lacquer smoke, metallic particulates, airborne alchemy gone to ash. The fire dirtied more than just my skin.

  And as I work, I think.

  Of filters. Of ventilation.

  Of how to build safety into a system that sees fire as just another risk, not a wound.

  That’s when Isla returns.

  Barefoot. Silent.

  She steps through the open balcony doors like a shadow draped in frostlight. Her shift is pale linen, cinched at the waist, hem trailing just above her ankles. The estate-gray overcoat hangs loosely around her shoulders, the sleeves pushed to her elbows. Her hair is still damp from washing — tied back neatly, but strands cling to her neck and cheeks, catching the breeze.

  She sees me sitting on the cold stone, shirtless, legs dangling over the edge like a ghost child left out in winter.

  But she says nothing.

  She crosses to me in silence, crouches low beside the railing, and lays a hand gently on my arm.

  It’s warm. Clean. Real.

  I don’t move.

  She doesn’t ask what I’m doing. Doesn’t scold me for being barefoot in the cold or sitting on marble that will leech heat straight from the spine. She doesn’t need to. She knows me better than that.

  But after a moment, she shifts.

  Her hand presses slightly into my arm, and I feel the intention before it forms, she means to lift me, to carry me back to the warmth of the bed.

  “Wait.”

  She stops mid-motion.

  Completely still.

  I turn my head toward her, just slightly. “Isla…”

  She sees my eyes.

  And she gasps.

  A full breath drawn sharply between her teeth. Her hand recoils like she’s touched a live flame. She stumbles back a half-step, her heel slipping on the edge of the tile. Her gaze locks to mine; wide, startled, not with fear exactly, but with something ancient. She tries to hide the tremble in her hands, griping them together tightly.

  Recognition.

  A flash of something older than either of us, buried deep in the bones of this world: that instinct that knows when she’s stepped into a story larger than she was meant to touch.

  Shit.

  I forgot to dim the glow.

  I don’t know how bright it is this time, whether it's the soft shimmer of quiet working or the harder light that spills when the mana saturates marrow. But it doesn’t matter. She saw it. Felt it.

  Every life, every world, it’s the same.

  My eyes always glow when I use mana. Always. Sometimes like burning coals. Sometimes like drowned stars. But always, no matter the body or its shape. In places where magic is common, no one blinks. In lives where it’s rare, it draws fear. Or awe.

  Here, magic exists in abundance, but only in theory. Tied to the lattice. Locked tight.

  This world isn’t lacking mana. It’s hoarding it.

  I must remember: even with all its magic, here it is still dangerous to be too much. And people fear what isn’t accounted for. Especially when it moves like it remembers being free.

  I close my eyes. Exhale slowly.

  When I open them again, the glow is gone.

  “Isla,” I say again, softer this time. I extend a hand toward her, palm up. “Please sit. The fire got into us. More than smoke. I’d like to cleanse your system too. If you’ll let me.”

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  She hesitates.

  Not long, just a breath. A flicker of something in her eyes. Wariness, not of me, but of how little she knows me. What else I might be. What I’ve always been.

  Then she moves.

  Gracefully, without a word, she lowers to her knees beside me again and sits back on her heels. Her hand finds mine.

  “It would be an honor, master,” she says.

  Exactly what I expected.

  Exactly why I haven’t offered to ward her. Not yet. She’ll say yes. Always. Without question. Without pause.

  And I don’t want obedience. I want choice.

  But that’s for another day.

  Right now, she’s right to let me do this.

  She shivers slightly as the current enters her. Not from cold. Not from fear. Just sensation. The shift of heat and purity moving through her blood, her bones, her breath.

  I don’t push. I don’t probe.

  I cleanse.

  The way smoke settles in the lungs. The way ash lines the inside of the mouth. The unseen damage chemical fire does when it pretends it’s done.

  We sit like that in silence, the sun rising slowly behind us, warming the estate rooftops, gilding the trees beyond the garden wall.

  When I let go of her hand, I’m shaking.

  The weariness comes all at once. Deep. Final.

  She catches me before I slump. Scoops me up without asking.

  Her arms are strong, stronger than they look. She cradles me like something precious, but not fragile.

  Carries me inside.

  Lays me down in the bed. Tucks the covers up beneath my chin.

  I don’t remember closing my eyes.

  But I remember her sitting.

  She doesn’t leave. She settles into the armchair by the hearth, coat still on, hair still damp, hands folded in her lap.

  She watches.

  Not like a servant. Not like a nursemaid.

  Like a sentinel.

  The radiator hums. The fire settles. The day outside begins.

  And at last, in the silence of the Larkin estate —

  I sleep.

  ***

  A day and a half pass.

  The first, I sleep through most of.

  The second morning, I spend in near silence.

  No duties. No classes with Lord Alistair. No training with the estate guard. No questions. Just warmth, food, and stillness.

  By the afternoon, the bruises have faded. The ash is gone.

  But the city still smells faintly of smoke.

  The carriage rattles up the Citadel hill beneath a sky of pale blue and lingering cloud. Ivy clings to the old fortress walls. The flags over the outer ramparts hang slack in windless air, still stained with ash at the edges.

  Inside, the halls are colder than the estate, thicker stone, taller ceilings, but familiar. Echoed footsteps. The scent of ink and wax. Every corner edged with quiet gravity.

  I turn the last corridor myself. Isla follows three paces behind, hands folded neatly before her, expression unreadable.

  Outside the room I’ve claimed as my office, a boy waits.

  Sixteen, maybe seventeen. Tall in the way boys are when their height outpaces their muscle, all elbows and uncertainty, arms too long for his sleeves. He stands with his back straight and hands awkwardly clasped behind him, eyes fixed on the floor.

  He startles when he sees me.

  Not because I’m unexpected, he’s clearly been told who to expect. But because I am seven years old. And apparently, no one told him that.

  His brows twitch. His posture falters a little. A flicker of confusion, possibly even disbelief.

  I stop directly in front of him.

  “Yaerith,” I say.

  He snaps upright again. “Y-yes, sir.”

  “Clerk from the Watch Dispatch. Assigned by Master Garin. Good handwriting. Sharp memory. Trusted to be quiet.”

  He nods, a bit too fast. “Yes, sir.”

  I tilt my head slightly. “And yet you look as though I’ve mistaken you for someone else.”

  “I just— I didn’t expect— I mean—” He swallows. “I was told I’d be reporting to the Archduke’s heir.”

  “You are.”

  A pause. He takes that in.

  Then nods, this time slower. Straighter. “Understood, sir.”

  “Good.” I push open the door to the office and step inside. “Come. We’ve work.”

  The room is as I left it, the long central desk littered with half-sorted packets of field reports, civic ledgers, warding drafts, and canal schematics. A fresh stack rests near the corner, stamped with the sigil of the Falkensgrave Watch. Another set, older, faded, soot-stained, waits for review.

  Yaerith hesitates in the doorway, then follows, eyes scanning the room.

  I gesture toward the side table. “Take inventory. Start with these. Sort by district, then by date. Any report missing time, origin, or commanding officer gets flagged. I want a full index before evening mess.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He sits and gets to work without complaint, without fidgeting. The scratching of pen against parchment begins almost immediately — smooth, efficient. I glance once at his posture; at the way he shifts his weight and anchors the ink pot. Competent. Young, but not green.

  It’s the kind of choice you make when you want to show respect without wasting time. Garin didn’t just pick a boy to humor me. He sent someone useful. Someone serious.

  I return to my own notes, sketching the southern quarter’s revised canal routing, marking where Isla reported a clogged sluice that needs clearing. I make a note to meet with the city engineers, another meeting they might actually attend this time.

  Yaerith clears his throat softly.

  “Sir? The notes from Riverbend Watch — do you want them indexed under the clockfire incident or separated out for infrastructure assessment?”

  I glance over at him. His tone is even. Not deferential, just professional.

  “Separate it,” I say. “Flag it as a sub-issue for the canal overhaul.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He dips his quill again and moves with certainty.

  For the first time, this office no longer echoes with someone else’s expectations. It hums with purpose now.

  Reports cover the surface of my desk. Neat. Complete. The seal of the main Watchhouse has arrived on every packet. More than that, each report is annotated. Handwritten notes from individual captains. Soot-blackened assessments from patrol leads. Full casualty logs. Routes taken. Water used. Damages recorded. Every piece of data I asked for… and a dozen I didn’t.

  They’re trying now.

  Trying to keep up.

  Trying to help.

  Trying to work with me.

  I lean back slightly, breathing in the paper-dust-and-ink scent of the office. It smells like a real post now. A functional one. My fingers trail across the spine of the thick fire chart, corrections already sketched in faint graphite.

  Across the city, repairs are beginning. Orders are being followed. And the title of City Office of Strategic Coordination finally means something.

  The city engineers arrive late.

  Of course they do.

  But they come.

  Six in all, bundled in soot-marked coats and waistcoats dulled by years of chalk dust, coal ash, and bureaucratic neglect. Their boots are thick-soled and scarred. Sleeves rolled past the elbow. Fingernails dark from oil and graphite. These are not men who pose for portraits. These are men who work — or at least used to.

  They file into the Citadel office with wary eyes and measured silence. They know they’ve been summoned, not invited.

  At their head is Master Alric Bent — gray-bearded, barrel-chested, with a squat frame and spectacles hanging from a brass chain like a weapon on a loop. He sits across from me with the slow care of a man whose knees remember every stair he's climbed in the city.

  “I admit,” he says, folding his hands over his belt, “I didn’t expect this office to request a direct audience. Least of all with the young master himself.”

  I offer a polite nod. “The last fire traced back to a collapsed chimney stack and a sewer main rupture. Both failures were cited in your quarterly risk reports. Both marked for maintenance last year.”

  Alric doesn’t flinch. “And neither addressed. I know.”

  “Why?”

  He hesitates. Just long enough to weigh whether honesty is worth the trouble.

  “That’s a matter of budget and prioritization,” he finally says. The answer isn’t false, but it’s not the whole of it, either.

  “No.” I tap the open ledger on my desk. “It’s a matter of communication. Of accountability. And starting today, that changes.”

  They glance at each other. Small movements. Shared tension. Not defensive, not yet, but careful. Engineers aren’t politicians, but they know when politics sits across the table.

  I push a sheaf of vellum across to Alric. Hand-drawn overlays of the southern ring. My own design: adjusted waterflow routes, marked stress fractures in sewer walls, annotated clearance depths for drainage tunnels that haven’t been touched in twenty years. At the bottom, a set of color-coded schematics mapping firewatch patrol rotations against known traffic blocks.

  I take them through it piece by piece, the realignment of patrol paths to avoid traffic congestion during work hours, new waste drop sites coordinated with Forgewell cart routes.

  “Storm runoff from the Marrow Hill crest backs into the Commons once every four weeks,” I say. “The system’s misaligned by seven degrees along the midline. Two grates cleared and one manual redirect sluice installed here—” I tap the map, “—and we reduce street flooding by forty-two percent.”

  Alric squints at the diagrams. Then reaches for one. His fingers trace the theoretical cistern system at the edge of the Forgewell quarter.

  “You want to build this,” he murmurs.

  “We will build it,” I reply, calm and firm. “The plans are drawn. If city funds fall short, the Larkin estate will underwrite the difference. But tell your bookkeeper: if House Larkin provides a crown, we audit every receipt. And every hand it passes through.”

  That gets a reaction.

  Not anger. Not insult.

  Respect.

  But also something else.

  Unease.

  Alric leans back, folding his arms. “I file our budgets clean,” he says. “Same format every time. But the allocations come back thin. Always. Twenty percent shaved for ‘security levies,’ another fifteen for ‘inter-council programs’ I’ve never seen in practice. It's like digging a canal with half a shovel and a full mouth of excuses.”

  “Who approves the reallocations?” In another life, they called it skimming. Here, they call it governance.

  A pause. He doesn’t want to say it. But he does.

  “Letterhead reads Treasury Office. Seal's been the same the last five cycles — Lord Corvis.”

  I glance up from the page. “Baron Taven Corvis? Head of the Artisan Oversight Guild?”

  He nods. “The very one.”

  “Why is his seal on Treasury documentation?”

  No one answers.

  Not because they don’t know, but because it’s not their place to know. Or question.

  But I will.

  I mark it in ink. Circle the name. Let the silence hold.

  “I’ll need a copy of the most recent ledgers,” I say at last. “And any amendments. No matter how minor.”

  Alric nods slowly. “You’ll have them.”

  They rise after an hour. No smiles. No excuses.

  But there’s a difference in the way they carry themselves. A weight lifted, or perhaps shifted. Their spines straighter. Their silence heavier. They may not trust me yet, but they understand one thing now — I am not playing at power.

  When they pass Isla in the outer corridor, they nod. Not out of politeness, not deference, but recognition. They don’t know what she is, not really. But they can feel it. Just like they can feel the change beginning.

  Two engineers refuse to speak inside the Citadel. One won’t meet my eyes. Another fakes a limp just to leave early. Fear doesn’t need a name to be recognized.

  Yaerith finds a note tucked into his binder.

  Folded tight.

  Five words only: They know. Be careful.

  Let them think they know.

  I have Yaerith draft a summons for the Treasury heads. Review it. Then crumple it.

  This office does not reach into the Treasury, not officially. Not yet. But the Heir to the Archduke?

  I smile. Thin. Cold.

  Let them try to ignore that.

  In the days that follow, the city begins to move differently.

  Not with fanfare. Not with proclamation.

  But in rhythm.

  Trash carts begin their rounds before sunrise. The reek of days-old refuse fades from the alley mouths of Forgewell and the mid-market spines. Watch patrols stop missing rotations. Civilians stop needing to shout to get a lantern replaced.

  A water main bursts in the South Edge? The engineers arrive within the hour. And for the first time in years, they bring schematics with them.

  Street children walk to temple school without stepping over sewage runoff. The grates on Marrow Hill are cleared. Commons Market stops flooding during morning spill.

  It’s nothing glamorous.

  But it is real.

  The people feel it. And they begin to look.

  When I pass through the city square now, they don’t cheer.

  Falkensgrave’s working class doesn’t cheer.

  But they nod.

  They make space without being asked. And more than once, I’ve caught them whispering, behind cupped hands, behind half-lowered eyes, about the child of the Archduke who speaks like a tactician and walks with a knife-shadow at his side.

  They call me Little Lord Blackwood.

  Not as insult. Not even out of confusion.

  As memory.

  The name belonged to a duke before the ministries, before the estates rose like fortresses above the Commons. A man who walked the gutters and spoke with the guilds. A lord who ruled because he served first.

  I am not him.

  But the city remembers.

  And so do the ones who fear that kind of memory.

  Because with respect comes resentment.

  And the highborn? They whisper louder than they think.