The healer house opened its doors at dawn, and Aren was waiting outside when it did.
It was a narrow stone building at the edge of the lower city, close enough to the old Rift scar that the air always smelled a little like burnt metal.
Most of the patients inside had the same illness as Nell.
Most of them were poor.
That was how Rift sickness worked.
It hit the people who lived too close to the places where the world had cracked open, and those were never the rich.
The nurse at the front desk was the same tired woman from last night.
She looked at his swollen nose and said nothing about it, which he appreciated.
“She slept,” the nurse told him.
“A few hours.
That’s good.”
“Thank you.”
“Your friend came by an hour ago.
The girl with the brown hair.” The nurse checked her book.
“She paid for this week.”
Aren stopped walking.
“She asked me not to tell you,” the nurse added.
“So I’m telling you.
You should know who your friends are.”
He found Nell sitting up in bed by the window, wrapped in two blankets, reading a book with no cover.
She was small for twelve, with short dark hair and a face that was mostly eyes.
The grey shadows under her skin were lighter this morning.
On good days, you could almost forget she was sick.
She looked up and frowned at him.
“What happened to your face?”
“I slipped.”
“On a fist?”
“On several.” He sat down on the edge of the bed.
“How are you feeling?”
“Bored.
The nurse took my other book because she said it was too scary for children.” Nell held up the one in her hands.
“This one is about a farmer.
He has a cow.
That’s the whole story so far.”
“Maybe the cow does something later.”
“The cow had better do something later.” She studied him over the top of the page.
She was too smart for her age, and she always had been.
“You look sad.
Did something happen at school?”
Aren had spent years on a trading floor in another life.
He had lied to clients, to partners, to his own mother.
He was very good at it.
He found that he did not want to use any of that on Nell.
“Some people think I did something bad,” he said.
“I didn’t.
It’ll be fine.”
“Okay.” She went back to her book.
After a moment, without looking up, she reached over and put her small cold hand on top of his.
She left it there until the bell rang for the end of visiting hour.
He walked back up the hill to the Academy with the numbers running in his head.
Mira had paid one week.
That left three more weeks of treatment to cover, and forty gold crowns for the term fees if he wanted to stay a student.
He had three silver coins.
He had no family, no sponsor, and no reputation except the one he’d earned yesterday.
The one of a Thief.
And he had a blue screen that wanted him to help the person who had done this to him.
He had spent most of the night awake on his thin mattress, testing it.
The System answered when he thought at it, though it never said more than it wanted to.
He had learned a few things.
[Primary Anchor: Vivienne Ashgrave.]
[This Anchor is locked and cannot be changed.]
[Anchor slots: 1/1.]
[Returns are paid when an Anchor grows through the Host’s investment.]
He had not chosen her as his Anchor.
When he asked the System why it had chosen for him, it did not answer.
He had also asked what counted as an investment, and the System had given him the same reply three times.
[Anything given.
Anything risked.
Anything that helps.]
It was vague, and he did not like vague.
In his old life, vague contracts were the ones that ruined you.
But he understood the core idea well enough.
He had to find a way to help Vivienne Ashgrave grow, and she had to keep hating him while he did it.
The second part, at least, seemed easy.
First-years trained their mana sense in the east garden every morning.
None of them had awakened yet, so there was not much they could do with their power.
They sat on cushions on the grass, held a focus stone or a pendant in their hands, and tried to feel the energy moving around them.
The Awakening Ceremony was in six days.
The better your mana sense was before the ceremony, the better your chances of a strong class.
Everyone said so, though nobody could prove it.
Aren arrived late and took a cushion at the far edge of the garden, near the hedge, where the scholarship students always sat.
Heads turned as he passed.
Somebody whispered thief.
Somebody else laughed.
He ignored them and sat down.
Across the garden, under a white canopy, Vivienne Ashgrave sat with her circle of friends.
She held a silver pendant on a thin chain, a training focus with a pale blue stone in the center.
Her eyes were closed.Even the air around her seemed calmer than everyone else’s.
Even before her awakening, she was clearly the best in the garden.
Two girls from minor noble houses sat at her sides, and Darius Holt sat close enough that it looked like he belonged there, though she never looked at him.
Aren watched her for the whole hour without seeming to.
He watched the way she held the focus, the way she breathed, the way she rubbed her thumb across the chain every few minutes as if it bothered her.
At the end of the session, the instructor clapped once.
Students stood, stretched, and started toward the main building.
Vivienne rose with her friends.
As she stood, the thin silver chain slid off her wrist and fell into the grass beside her cushion.
She did not notice.
Her friends did not notice.
Darius was too busy talking to notice anything.
Aren noticed.
He stood up and crossed the garden.
It was a long walk.
By the time he reached the white canopy, half the first-year class had stopped to watch the thief walk up to the Ashgrave heir.
He bent down, picked up the pendant, and held it out.
“Lady Ashgrave,” he said.
“You dropped this.”
The garden went quiet.
Vivienne turned around.
Up close, she was even more striking than she was from a balcony.
She had silver hair pinned up neatly and grey eyes that did not seem to blink very often.
She looked at the pendant, then at his face, and then at the bruises on his face.
He smiled at her.
It was a good smile, polite and warm.
He had used it to close a hundred deals.
One of her friends laughed.
“Look at that.
The thief is returning something.”
“Probably checking if it’s worth stealing first,” said the other.
Darius stepped forward, his hand already closing into a fist.
Vivienne lifted two fingers without looking at him, and he stopped as if someone had pulled a leash.
She took the pendant from Aren’s hand.
Her fingers did not touch his.
“You’re smiling,” she said.
“It’s a nice morning, my lady.”
She watched him for a long moment.
He had expected contempt, or maybe amusement.
What he saw instead was something closer to irritation, the look of someone who had followed a recipe exactly and gotten the wrong dish.
“Don’t,” Vivienne said quietly.
Then she turned and walked away.
Her friends hurried after her.
Darius gave Aren one long look that promised another visit to the floor, and followed.
[Investment recorded.]
[Vivienne Ashgrave.
Hostility: 94% → 96%.]
Aren let out a slow breath.
Well.
That part works.
Mira caught him behind the library that afternoon, which was where she always caught him when she wanted to yell without an audience.
“Have you lost your mind?” she said.
“Did Holt hit you so hard that something fell out?”
“Good afternoon to you too.”
“Don’t.” She crossed her arms.
She was shorter than him by a head, but she had always stood like she was taller.
“The whole class saw you.
You walked up to her like a dog bringing back a stick.
The girl who…
everyone knows her family’s men searched your room, Aren.
Everyone knows.”
“I know.”
“Then why?”
He could not tell her about the System.
He could not tell her about the other life, the trading floors, or the blue screen in the rain.
He could see how it would sound.
I’m helping her because a magic window told me to.
Mira already had twenty demerits because of him.
He was not going to make her think he had also lost his mind.
“I need to stay at this school,” he said instead.
“I need it for Nell.
Making the Ashgraves angrier isn’t going to help me do that.”
Which was true.
It just wasn’t the exact reason.
Mira stared at him.
Some of the anger went out of her face, and what came in to replace it was worse.
It looked like disappointment.
“I paid for this week,” she said.
“At the healer house.”
“I know.
The nurse told me.” He swallowed.
“Mira, I’ll pay you back.”
“I don’t want you to pay me back.
I want you to not do that.” She pointed back toward the east garden.
“I stood up for you in front of the whole Academy yesterday.
And today you’re her lap dog.”
She walked away before he could answer.
He did not try to stop her.
That night, he sat on his mattress in the cold scholarship dormitory with the window open and the city lights below.
Somewhere in the Ashgrave wing of the Academy, Vivienne was probably sitting at a desk with a silver pendant in front of her, wondering why the boy she had ruined had smiled at her.
The blue screen opened on its own.
[Primary Anchor progressed: Mana Sense threshold reached.]
[Source: Investment recorded this morning.]
[Return generated.]
[Host has not awakened.
Returns cannot be released to an unawakened body.]
[Return stored.
Stored returns will be released at the Host’s Awakening.]
[Awakening Ceremony: 6 days.]
Aren read it slowly, and then he lay back on the mattress and stared at the cracked ceiling.
So the returns were real, but he could not touch them yet.
Every investment he made before the ceremony would wait in the dark until the day he put his hand on the crystal.
In his old life, he would have called that a locked position.
You could not sell, you could not cash out, you could only keep buying and hope the market held.
He had six days, three silver coins, one angry best friend, and a sister who needed more than a week of medicine.
And somewhere above him sat the best asset he’d ever owned, alone in her room, hating him a little more every hour.
He closed his eyes and started making a list of everything Vivienne Ashgrave would need before her awakening.