Two weeks passed the way weeks tend to when you spend most of them getting knocked flat on your back by a man in a wheelchair.
Draeus had taken to smiling whenever he sent me sprawling, which I had decided was either encouraging or deeply unsettling, and possibly both at once. He shared his personal rankings for the year yesterday, a list nobody asked for and everybody desperately wanted to see anyway, pinned to the board outside the training hall like some kind of public execution notice.
I ranked fourth.
Not first. Theodore Hans, son of Viscount Burzing Hans held that spot, unsurprisingly, with the kind of margin that made the number feel almost insulting. But fourth, out of an entire year of first-years, was nothing to sulk over.
Vane had softened too, in her own particular way. She still corrected my posture with the same clipped precision as the first week, still counted my missteps out loud like a woman keeping score in a game only she understood the rules of, but somewhere in the last two weeks a small, private smile had started sneaking through whenever I got something right. It never lasted more than a second. I had started looking forward to that second more than I probably should have.
Eniphia, meanwhile, had gone from unnervingly calm to something closer to fond, in the way a woman surrounded by candles and dead things could be fond of anyone.
Merrow, on the other hand, remained exactly as chaotic as ever, and today’s lesson proved it.
"Now," he said, holding up a crumpled cigarette between two fingers like it was evidence in a trial, "if any of you clever little people think smoking inside the Realm of the Evil sounds like a fantastic idea, let me disabuse you of that notion right now."
He tossed the cigarette into a jar already half full of similarly confiscated contraband.
"Tobacco has a scent unlike anything else in that place. Unorthodox creatures will smell you from farther away than you can possibly imagine, and they will come running, or crawling, or whatever unpleasant method of locomotion they prefer. So, no smoking."
Someone near the back groaned audibly.
"Alcohol will not attract them," Merrow continued, "but it will make you dizzy as absolute hell, and dizzy people die first in there. So do not drink either. I would prefer you all graduate with your heads still attached to your bodies."
’Fair enough logic, honestly.’
The class ended not long after, and instead of being dismissed the way we usually were, we found ourselves herded toward the main hall alongside every other first-year in the Academy. The murmuring that followed us in was thick enough to taste.
The headmaster stood at the front once everyone had settled, a tall, severe-looking man I had only seen twice before, both times from a considerable distance. He waited for silence with the patience of someone who knew it was coming regardless.
"This year’s graduation requirements have been finalized," he said, without preamble. "To graduate from your first year, each of you must independently earn one thousand pounds, through business, trade, or any legitimate means you devise. You must also reach Bronze Core."
’One thousand pounds.’
’My father earns five thousand pounds a year, and he is a Baron. And to even reach Bronze Core in the first place, I need to survive a trip into the Realm of the Evil.’
I felt the number settle somewhere uncomfortable in my chest.
The headmaster continued, mentioning that an Awakened-rank item, the kind occasionally dropped by creatures inside the Realm, could sell for as much as two hundred and fifty pounds on its own. That math did not make the wall in front of me feel any smaller, but it did make it feel slightly less impossible.
Then came the part that actually mattered.
"Teams," he said, "will be formed in the traditional manner. One Bronze Core upperclassman will act as Captain, leading four first-years into the Realm together. You can make your first trip two weeks from today."
We were dismissed shortly after, and I said my goodbyes to Ferguson and Desmond outside the hall before climbing into the waiting carriage with Sera, Eliza, and Arthur, the two of them were invited for dinner at our manor tonight.
The carriage rattled forward, wheels catching against cobblestone, and for a while nobody said much of anything.
Then Arthur sighed, stretching his legs out as far as the cramped space allowed.
"So," he said. "What’s up."
I looked at him.
"I am going to the Realm of the Evil as soon as I possibly can."
"No, you are not," Sera said immediately, not even looking at me.
"Why not?"
She huffed and turned her face toward the window, offering no further explanation, which was somehow more infuriating than an actual argument would have been.
Arthur glanced between the two of us, clearly enjoying himself far too much, before turning to me with an easy grin.
"If you are going, I am going too. We all need to graduate eventually. Might as well do it fast. Do the math, Ed, if we finish this quickly enough, we could be Barons by twenty."
’That is a genuinely tempting sentence.’
Eliza said nothing, staring out at the passing streets with an expression that gave away considerably less than her brother’s. She and Sera had not graduated yet themselves, both still chasing a far crueler number, five thousand pounds and a Bronze Core of their own, though they had a bronze core, earning five thousand pounds was not a child’s play.
Sera still refused to look at me.
I decided, for now, not to push it.
Outside the window, Kingsmere rolled by in the fading light, and somewhere underneath all of it, the number one thousand sat quietly in the back of my mind, patient and unbothered by how impossible it felt.