"Marie, Marie, Marie."
His powers were built for connecting with minds. Reading them. Influencing them. But Mana Threads had their uses too. Even as the alarm tone pulsed through the walls of the underground chamber, he extended a single thread behind him. It traveled like a whisper along the floor, climbed the doorframe, and wrapped itself around the locking mechanism of the heavy door at Marie's back.
The bolt slid home with a soft click that was swallowed by the alarm.
Nobody would be entering this room.
"Impressive operation you have here," Alphonse said.
Marie recognized who the voice belonged to.
"Even more impressive," she said, "is that you managed to find this place."
"Not really." Alphonse answered. "It was simple. I just had to play with the elevator a bit."
Marie's eyes tracked him as he crossed the room.
"You saw me coming down?" she asked.
"Yes."
A pause.
"There's no flaw in your security," Alphonse continued. He stopped beside the bank of tall windows that looked out over the underground chamber's central floor. "Perhaps I'd only suggest changing the elevator settings so it doesn't show that you're in the basement."
He said it as if he were commenting on the weather. As if the fact that he had infiltrated the most closely guarded secret in the Valois family was a minor observation.
Marie studied him.
It had been years since she'd last seen Alphonse. The boy she remembered had been quiet. Watchful, yes. Intelligent, certainly. But not like this.
Not this cold, unhurried confidence.
She tried to read his face.
Is he a threat or an ally?
And if he's a threat... how far am I willing to go?
Alphonse turned from the window. He crossed back to the armchair he'd been sitting in earlier and lowered himself into it. One leg crossed over the other. His forearms rested on the chair's arms.
"How did you build this empire?" he asked. "Just curious."
"I didn't build it."
Marie's hands hadn't left the armrests. Her fingers were still, but the tendons beneath the skin were tight.
"The casino and its other businesses have been with the Valois for several generations. I just improved here and there." A slight pause. "With the advances we've had in magic."
She returned her gaze to the papers on her desk. Upcoming deliveries. Shipment manifests.
"What did you think of the operation?" she asked.
Alphonse was quiet for a moment.
"Impressive," he said. The word was sincere. "I would have never imagined something like this. Especially managing such a massive secret."
"That part is simple." Marie turned a page. "With a few magical contracts, you can ensure that everyone keeps their mouths shut."
"And the empire?" Alphonse leaned forward. "Have they never tried to stop you? Never come close to discovering it?"
"A few times."
Marie set the page down.
"However, we've had princes and princesses attending our events. If anyone tries anything, we can use them as protection."
Alphonse absorbed this. His expression didn't change.
"I see. One last question."
Marie waited.
"Slaves," Alphonse said. "Selling women. Doesn't it affect you? Or your assistants?"
The question was delivered without judgment. Without revulsion.
He was simply asking.
Marie's answer came without hesitation.
"No."
She met his eyes.
"And you don't seem to mind either."
Alphonse's brow shifted.
"Why it doesn't?"
"All noblewomen are just luxury slaves," Marie said. "They are traded and sold to other families. Maybe not for gold coins. But at the end of the day, it's just another transaction."
Her voice was flat. The tone of someone stating a mathematical truth that required no defense.
"Your mother, for instance." Marie's fingers pressed against the desk's surface. "She was sold to the Hohenbergs to pay off a gambling debt your grandfather had."
The word sold landed in the room like a stone dropped into still water.
Alphonse could feel it.
A wave of hatred coming from her. Yet, her face showed nothing.
"Interesting," Alphonse said quietly. "She never mentioned that part."
A beat.
"However, in this regard, I'm different."
Marie's eyes narrowed.
"I do care," Alphonse said. "For my family, at least."
"Really?"
Marie leaned back. The leather of her chair creaked.
"And when Sophie has to be betrothed? What will you do then?"
The question was a trap.
The nobility's marriage market was not optional. It was the mechanism through which power was distributed, alliances forged, debts settled. To reject it was to reject the entire system.
She thought she'd backed him into a corner.
Alphonse smiled.
"I'll tear Alexander's throat out," Alphonse said, "if he even considers doing that."
The words were spoken at conversational volume.
That was what made them terrifying.
Marie searched his face.
Even if it's true, she thought, could he do anything against Alexander? Maybe it's just the delusion of a child.
Alphonse stood.
He didn't linger. Didn't wait for her to process or formulate a response. He simply rose from the chair and walked toward the exit.
"You know you can't mention this," Marie said to his back. "To anyone."
Alphonse stopped.
He didn't turn.
"Yes."
A pause.
"Just don't involve Sophie or Isabelle. They seem strong on the outside, but they wouldn't have the stomach for all this."
"And do you?" his grandmother asked.
Alphonse nodded once.
He didn't give her the luxury of a spoken response.
"Interesting." Marie's voice shifted. "Perhaps we can talk about how you can help me with the casino."
"Maybe." Alphonse reached the door. "But that's for another time."
He vanished.
One moment he was standing at the threshold. The next, the space he'd occupied was empty.
Marie didn't move.
She extended every sense she possessed. Every thread of perception. She swept the room with everything she had.
Nothing.
He had disappeared from existence.
"Tell your lovers that I don't need guards following me."
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere.
"Leave them to Sophie."
Then silence.
Marie sat in her chair.
The blush crept up her neck before she could stop it. A flush of genuine embarrassment that burned across her cheeks.
He'd seen it.
Her moment with the assistants. The private indulgence she maintained behind closed doors.
He was here from the beginning.
Alphonse woke early.
The bedroom was dark. The sounds of the household stirring, footsteps in distant corridors, the muffled clatter of a kitchen being brought to life, reached him through the walls.
He dressed without hurry.
By the time he descended the stairs, Marie and Sophie were already seated at the breakfast table.
His grandmother occupied the head. Her clothes were immaculate. Whatever the previous night's revelations had cost her internally, the mask was back in place.
She glanced at him as he sat down.
He held her gaze for exactly one second before reaching for the bread.
Sophie sat across from him. Her hands were wrapped around a porcelain cup. Steam curled upward and dissolved against the underside of her chin.
She was nervous.
The anxiety radiated from her in waves that Alphonse didn't need magic to detect. Her foot bounced beneath the table. Her thumb traced circles against the cup's handle.
He ate while the two women discussed the capital. Places they should visit. What to expect from the academy.
"The test is conducted within the Academy itself," Marie explained. "It's not far from the bay, but it should take a few minutes by carriage."
She set her knife down.
"I recommend leaving early. The tests are done in order of arrival, and it usually gets crowded."
Sophie nodded. Her cup was still full.
"Eat," Alphonse said.
His sister looked at him.
"You need the energy," he said. "Eat."
She drank.
The carriage was waiting.
Alphonse climbed aboard after Sophie. The vehicle lurched into motion before he'd finished settling into his seat.
Throughout breakfast. Through the walk to the courtyard. Through the process of boarding the carriage.
He felt his grandmother's eyes on him.
Not just hers.
The assistants. The three of them had positioned themselves at various points along the route from the dining room to the front entrance.
Each one had watched him pass with the particular attention of people who had been briefed.
She told them.
The assessment was automatic. Marie had informed her inner circle about last night's encounter.
The carriage rolled through the streets.
The city's residential quarters gave way to the waterfront district. Buildings thinned. The smell of salt air replaced the smell of commerce. Gulls wheeled against a sky the color of hammered tin.
The road climbed.
A hill. Gradual at first, then steepening as the carriage's wheels found the paved switchbacks that wound toward the summit. The horses leaned into the grade. The vehicle creaked and swayed.
At the top, the road leveled, and the view opened.
The Imperial Academy.
A stone bridge spanned the gap between the hilltop and an island that rose from the waters of the bay. The bridge was old. Its pillars were thick with centuries of salt weathering and mineral deposits.
Beyond the bridge, the island.
It was larger than he'd expected. The buildings covered it in a dense arrangement that climbed from the waterline to the island's highest point, where a castle sat against the sky.
Every building on the island was part of the Academy.
Lecture halls. Laboratories. Libraries. Training grounds. Administrative buildings. Dormitories. The infrastructure of an institution that served not only to form the new generation of mages and scholars but to research, to train, to advance the collective understanding of mana and its applications.
The Academy wasn't just a school.
It was a city within a city.
Sophie's hands tightened around the window frame.
"How are you feeling?" she asked.
Her voice was small. Her fingers were trembling against the wood.
"Calm," Alphonse said. "We've trained for all the tests. I have no doubt we'll do well."
Sophie nodded.
She wished she had his confidence.
The carriage crossed the bridge. The stone hummed beneath the wheels. Below, the waters of the bay churned gray-green against the pillars.
The castle entrance loomed ahead. Massive oak doors, banded with iron, stood open. Beyond them, a courtyard paved with cut stone and bordered by columned walkways.
The carriage stopped.
"Sir." The coachman half-turned on his bench. "This is the drop-off point. No carriage can go beyond this."
"Thank you for your services."
Alphonse pressed a gold coin into the man's palm and stepped down.
Sophie followed.
They walked through the courtyard.
The space was alive with people. Hundreds of them. Young men and women in various states of preparation and anxiety.
Noble houses were well represented. Alphonse could identify them by their clothing, by the quality of their boots, by the way they held themselves in public spaces.
Commoners too. Fewer of them. Standing at the margins, their clothing plainer, their postures less practiced.
"Come closer!" A boy near the far end of the courtyard was shouting. "This will be the line for those who wish to take the evaluation!"
He pointed at the queue forming beside the castle's interior doors.
Alphonse took his place. Sophie stood behind him.
The line moved slowly.
Minutes stretched into an hour. Conversations rose and fell around them. Nervous laughter. Whispered speculation about what waited behind the doors.
Alphonse stood still. He didn't fidget. Didn't shift his weight. Didn't turn to examine the faces around him or engage in the social reconnaissance that every other noble heir in the queue was conducting.
He waited.
The line shortened. The large doors at the head of the queue would open, swallow a candidate, close, and remain shut for several minutes before opening again to release the tested and admit the next.
The doors opened.
"Alphonse von Hohenberg."
He walked through.
The room beyond the doors was vast.
A arena in miniature. Circular. High-ceilinged. The walls rose into tiered seating that surrounded the floor on all sides, packed with hundreds of spectators whose murmurs fell to a hush as he entered.
Hundreds of eyes.
The floor was polished stone.
Near the center of the room, a long table had been positioned perpendicular to his line of approach. Several figures sat behind it. Men and women in academic robes, their faces carrying the neutral, evaluative expressions.
As Alphonse approached, the man seated at the center of the table spoke.
"Alphonse von Hohenberg."
The voice was clear.
"We will begin your test. I am Gustav Obermann. I will be your evaluator and the Headmaster of the Imperial Academy."
Alphonse looked at him.
Gustav Obermann didn't match the title.
The word headmaster conjured images of age. White beards. Stooped shoulders.
Obermann was none of these things. He was young. His build was solid. His shoulders filled his academic robe in a way that suggested the muscles beneath it were not decorative. His jaw was clean-shaven, his eyes pale and direct.
Alphonse nodded.
Obermann's eyes held him for a beat longer than was comfortable.
"The first test will be combat," the Headmaster said. "You may use magic. However, your opponent will be equipped with a magic shield."
"Understood," Alphonse said.
A door at the far side of the arena opened.
A soldier walked through.
He crossed the floor with the measured stride. His armor was light. A breastplate. Vambraces. A half-helm that left his face exposed.
The soldier stopped three paces from Alphonse. He was taller. Not dramatically, but enough that he would look down when they engaged.
He drew his sword.
The point came up. Aimed at Alphonse's center mass.
Alphonse exhaled.
"Begin!"
Obermann's voice cracked across the arena.
The soldier came forward.
He was fast. Faster than the armor suggested. Three long strides closed the distance, and the blade came around in a vertical arc that would have split Alphonse's shoulder if it landed.
But Alphonse was already elsewhere.
Not physically. He hadn't moved his feet. Hadn't shifted his weight. Hadn't raised a hand or assumed a defensive posture.
He'd gone into the soldier's mind.
The threads were invisible. They crossed the space between them faster than the sword moved, faster than the nerve impulses traveling from the soldier's brain to his arms.
Two commands.
FEAR.
DANGER.
The soldier's body reacted before his mind understood what was happening.
His forward momentum died.
He leaped backward.
He landed in a crouch. The sword trembled in his grip. His legs were shaking.
His eyes were wide.
He didn't know why he was afraid.
That was the cruelty of it. The soldier's rational mind was screaming at him that there was no threat, that the boy standing in the center of the arena hadn't moved, hadn't attacked, hadn't done anything. But the rational mind had been overridden.
The arena went silent.
"My turn," Alphonse said.
His hands came up.
Fire bloomed in his palms. Two spheres of concentrated flame that materialized in the space between his fingers, each one dense and bright enough to cast sharp shadows across the arena floor.
The soldier saw them. His body tried to move. The fear was still in him, the planted command still echoing through his nervous system.
The first sphere launched.
It crossed the distance between them in a blur of orange-white light and struck the soldier in the chest. The impact drove him back a step.
The shield held.
The second sphere was already in the air.
It struck the same point. Center mass. The exact location where the first had landed.
The shield cracked.
A fracture ran through the ward-matrix from the point of impact outward, splitting the blue luminescence into jagged fragments that flickered and died.
The soldier stood in the center of the arena with a broken shield and wide eyes and legs that wouldn't stop shaking.
"Test completed!" Obermann's voice rang from the table.