I woke up on Friday morning to the smell of toasted pine nuts, fresh rainwater, and the sound of steel cutting through empty air at sixty miles an hour.
Pulling a wool cardigan over my linen sleep shirt, I padded barefoot down the narrow wooden stairs from my loft and peeked through the archway into the back conservatory.
Morning sunlight was streaming through the newly glazed crystal roof, turning the hanging baskets of creeping thyme and silver-leaf sage into cascading chandeliers of green and gold. In the cleared centre aisle between the potting tables, Seraphina was going through her morning forms.
She was barefoot on the warm flagstones, wearing her dark training trousers and a simple cotton tunic. In her right hand, the Ashen Bough moved like a stroke of dark lightning.
With her secondary meridians permanently expanded by last night’s Draught of the Abyssal Tide, she wasn't holding back to protect her lungs anymore. Every time she pivoted and swept the wooden blade through a figure-eight arc, a crisp, singing ribbon of silver-white kinetic aura trailed three inches behind the edge—not scattering wildly into the room, but clinging tightly to the Mythril-grain wood without scorching a single rosemary leaf on the tables beside her.
Sitting in a neat row atop the stone workbench, watching her every swing like a panel of extremely tough judges, were Pip and Tax Evasion. Their two heads—one round clay, one fat marmalade fur—tilted left, then right, then left again in perfect synchronization with her sword tip.
“Show-off,” I said fondly, leaning my shoulder against the doorframe.
Seraphina halted mid-lunge, stopping the tip of the Ashen Bough half an inch from a hanging terracotta pot without the chain so much as swaying. She lowered the blade and turned to face me.
Even after forty minutes of heavy aura drills, she wasn't breathing hard. A light, healthy flush coloured her cheekbones, and the chronic, pinched tension between her shoulder blades had vanished completely.
“Good morning,” Seraphina said, reaching for the linen towel draped over the workbench to wipe the back of her neck. “Pip boiled water on the side burner twenty minutes ago. I didn't know which tea leaves you use in the morning, so I didn't touch the jars.”
“Black Assam with a slice of dried orange peel before noon; chamomile is strictly for winding down or calming terrified customers,” I said, walking over to the stove to drop two spoonfuls of dark leaves into the brass infuser. I glanced down at the stone floor beneath her bare feet. “How do the lungs feel?”
Seraphina looked down at her own hand, flexing her fingers around the smooth root-hilt of her sword.
“Like somebody took a fifty-pound iron vest off my ribs,” she admitted quietly. “I ran through the entire Fourth-Form Vanguard sequence three times before the sun cleared the trees. Normally, my vision starts greying out by the second transition. Today, my core didn't even dip below eighty percent.”
“That’s because you’re finally running on an unobstructed engine,” I said, pouring two mugs of steaming black tea and sliding one across the stone table toward her. “Which is good timing, because if my understanding of aristocratic teenage psychology holds up, our morning rush is going to be much nastier than Garrett’s squad of bruised meatheads.”
Seraphina took a sip of the hot tea, blinking slightly at the brisk, citrusy bite of the orange peel before nodding in approval. “You think Lady Clara talked?”
“I didn't even need Clara to talk,” I replied, picking up my chilled porcelain mortar and a fresh jar of clarified sweet almond butter. “All Clara had to do was sit down at the Rose Spire breakfast table at seven-thirty this morning with glowing, poreless skin while the rest of the first-year girls looked like they’d been dunked headfirst into a vat of boiling lobster broth.”
As if on cue, the distant nine-o'clock bell chimed across the Academy spires.
I spent the next forty-five minutes whipping up a massive triple-batch of Porcelain-Frost Meridian Cream, dividing the snowy, iridescent soufflé into twenty small cobalt-blue pots.
Wait—nineteen cobalt-blue pots.
For the twentieth jar, I used a heavy, faceted crystal cosmetic pot with a gilded brass lid that I had salvaged from the bottom of Evelyn’s old noble vanity trunk before forfeiting my dorm room. Into that single crystal pot, I stirred an extra two drops of pure Elder Hydro-Spirit Dew left over from the mushroom cap’s stem, plus a pinch of crushed, iridescent Moon-Moth Scales from the previous tenant’s spice rack.
[Alchemy Success!] [Item Crafted: Sovereign-Grade Starlight Veil Cream (1x Exclusive Jar)] [Quality: Gold-Tier (96% Purity)] [Effects:
All thermal-blocking benefits of Porcelain-Frost Cream, extended to 48 hours per application.
Cosmetic Overdrive: Surrounds the wearer’s cheekbones and collarbone in a microscopic, light-refracting ether mist that makes the skin appear literally radiant under ballroom chandeliers (+25 Apparent Charisma).
Warning: Prolonged exposure may cause severe jealousy in nearby rivals.]
“Why does that one get the gold lid?” Seraphina asked from the doorway, watching me polish the faceted crystal jar with a chamois cloth. She had pulled her boots back on and buckled her sword belt, looking every inch the stoic bodyguard again—except for the smudge of buttered toast crumb at the corner of her mouth.
I reached out without thinking and brushed the crumb off her lower lip with the pad of my thumb.
Seraphina froze entirely, her slate-gray eyes widening as her breath caught in her throat.
I pulled my hand back smoothly, pretending I hadn't noticed the sudden jolt of static between my thumb and her skin, and set the crystal jar on the very top shelf behind the front counter—completely separate from the nineteen blue jars on the velvet tray below.
“That,” I said, clearing my throat lightly, “is called price anchoring. When you’re dealing with ultra-wealthy nobles, if everything on your shelf costs ten gold crowns, they assume your shop is for poor people. If you put one single item on the top shelf and price it at two hundred gold crowns, two things happen: first, the ten-gold jars suddenly look like an incredible bargain. Second, the richest, most insecure girl in the room will buy the two-hundred-gold jar just to prove nobody else in the building can afford it.”
Before Seraphina could reply, the sound of an approaching carriage—no, two carriages, accompanied by the brisk clatter of at least a dozen pairs of expensive kid-leather heels—echoed down the cobblestones of Bramble Lane. Read this novel at novelping.com for the best experience.
I walked over to the front oak door, flipped the sign to OPEN, and stepped back behind the counter right beside Seraphina.
“Showtime, Lady Valerius,” I murmured. “Try to look intimidating.”
“I always look intimidating,” Seraphina whispered back, though the tips of her ears were still faintly pink from the toast crumb incident.
The brass bell above the door jingled.
It wasn't a stampede like the vanguard cadets yesterday; it was a rustling, perfumed invasion of silk skirts, lace parasols, and wide-eyed aristocratic panic.
Eleven first-year noblewomen from the Rose Spire crowded into the small storefront, craning their necks over each other’s shoulders to stare at the nineteen cobalt-blue jars sitting on my counter. Nearly every single one of them had a thick, patchy layer of white rice powder plastered over their foreheads, through which angry red blotches of Superficial Meridian Rosacea were visibly glowing like warning beacons.
Before any of the girls at the front could reach for their coin purses, a sharp, imperious voice cut from the back of the group.
“Step aside, ladies. Do not crowd the counter like fishwives at a dockside auction.”
The silk skirts parted instantly.
Stepping through the centre of the room, trailed by two nervous-looking viscount’s daughters carrying her shawl and parasol, was Lady Genevieve of House Laurent.
She was tall, impeccably dressed in a gown of pale aquamarine silk that matched her B-rank Water Affinity, with cascading blonde ringlets that had clearly taken two maids and a curling iron an hour to arrange. Unlike the other girls, her complexion was completely free of heat rash—cool, pale, and arranged in an expression of sugary, condescending triumph.
Genevieve stopped in front of my counter, her eyes sweeping deliberately from my plain linen work shirt down to my canvas apron, before settling on Seraphina standing quietly behind my left shoulder.
“Well, well,” Genevieve purred, tapping her folded ivory fan against her chin. “When Clara claimed at breakfast that our dear, fallen Lady Evelyn had set up an apothecary in a potting shed, I told the committee it couldn't possibly be true. Yet here you are. Selling homemade face grease out of a hovel, with the scholarship stray standing behind you like a hired thug.”
Seraphina didn't even blink. She just rested her right thumb casually on the dark root-guard of the Ashen Bough and stared at the exact bridge of Genevieve’s nose with the flat, unblinking stillness of a butcher evaluating a side of beef.
Genevieve’s smile twitched slightly; she shifted half a step to the left so she didn't have to stay in Seraphina’s direct line of sight.
“Good morning, Genevieve,” I said pleasantly, folding my hands on the oak counter. “Congratulations on inheriting the Chairwoman seat for the Equinox Ball. I hear the three-hour Starlight Illumination Weaver rehearsals are going wonderfully.”
“A true daughter of the Empire endures minor magical strain for the glory of the Crown,” Genevieve said loftily, glancing back at the ten blotchy-faced girls behind her. “Which is why, as Chairwoman, I cannot allow the ladies of the Rose Spire to rub unverified, commoner-grade concoctions onto their skin right before we present ourselves to His Highness. Who knows what sort of cheap tallow or toxic swamp weeds you’ve boiled in that back room?”
Behind her, two of the barons’ daughters looked devastated, their hands freezing halfway into their silk reticules.
In Crown of Thorns, this was Genevieve’s standard social move: isolate the target, invoke the authority of the Student Council or the Temple, and bully the lower-ranking noble girls into boycotting anyone she disliked.
Unfortunately for Genevieve, she was bringing courtroom etiquette to a street fight with an alchemist who had Level 4 Appraisal.
“Cheap tallow is terrible for the pores,” I agreed smoothly. “Almost as terrible as using an unrefined B-rank Water Affinity to manually suppress cranial heat during a Light-Weaving ritual.”
Genevieve’s fan stopped moving. “Excuse me?”
I tilted my head, letting my upgraded passive skill zoom in on the faint, bluish-violet shadow beneath the inner corners of Genevieve’s lower eyelids and the microscopic tremor in the ring finger of her left hand.
[Alchemist’s Appraisal (Lv. 4) — Active]
[Target: Genevieve Laurent] [Condition Detected: Sub-Dermal Hydro-Stagnation (Edema)] [Cause: Instead of venting the thermal feedback from the Light ritual outward, the caster is using cold Water Mana to trap the heat inside her facial lymph nodes.] [Prognosis: Skin looks pale and clear for the first 48 hours. At hour 72 (Saturday morning), the trapped lymphatic fluid will rebound, causing severe lower-jaw puffiness and temporary vocal cord hoarseness.]
“You don’t have a heat rash like the Fire and Wind girls because you’ve been circulating cold Water Mana under your cheekbones to keep the surface capillaries constricted,” I said conversationally, loud enough for every single girl in the silent shop to hear. “Clever trick for the first two days. The problem is, that thermal energy has to go somewhere. Right now, it’s pooling in the sub-mandibular lymph nodes right beneath your jawline.”
I pointed a finger at the spot just below her left ear.
“That’s why your left earlobe feels slightly warm right now, and why your ring finger has been twitching since you walked in,” I continued pleasantly. “By tomorrow morning, when the lymphatic seal breaks, the lower half of your face is going to swell up like a stung bullfrog for seventy-two hours. You won’t even be able to close your teeth properly until Tuesday.”
Gasps echoed around the cramped storefront. Every pair of eyes snapped toward Genevieve’s jawline.
Genevieve’s pale face flushed a violent, patchy scarlet. Her free hand flew up involuntarily to touch her left earlobe—which was, in fact, burning hot—before she snatched her hand down as if she’d touched a stove.
“Ridiculous!” Genevieve snapped, her voice rising an octave. “My water control is flawless! You are inventing ghost stories to frighten these girls into buying your ten-gold trash!”
“Maybe,” I shrugged, turning my back on her briefly to reach up to the top shelf and set the single, faceted crystal pot with the gilded lid onto the counter. “Then again, I predicted Henrik’s knee calcification to the minute, and I cleared Clara’s heat rash in sixty seconds flat. The nineteen blue jars on the tray are Porcelain-Frost Cream—ten gold crowns each, one per customer. They will clear existing redness and block thermal feedback through Friday night.” Find the original chapter at NovelPing.
Before Genevieve could even inhale to issue another boycott order, nine noble girls surged past her silk shoulders like starving piranhas, slamming ninety gold crowns onto my oak counter in a frantic blizzard of gold coins and polite elbows.
“One jar, please, Lady Evelyn!”
“Here is my ten gold—thank you, Lady Evelyn!”
“Do you have anything for split ends caused by wind-mana static?!”
Within ninety seconds, the velvet tray contained only ten blue jars, and the girls who had bought theirs were already retreating happily toward the porch, comparing the honeysuckle scent with relieved whispers.
Genevieve stood frozen in the middle of the floorboards, abandoned by her own committee, staring down at the single, glittering crystal jar with the gold lid sitting right in front of her nose.
Her left earlobe was throbbing. I could practically see the hamster wheel spinning behind her horrified blue eyes: What if she’s right? What if I wake up tomorrow looking like a bullfrog in front of Prince Julian?
“And... and what is that one?” Genevieve asked stiffly, pointing the tip of her ivory fan at the crystal pot while trying desperately to sound bored. “Why is it not in a cheap blue jar like the rest?”
“Oh, that’s not for the general committee,” I said, reaching out as if to put the crystal pot back on the top shelf. “That’s Sovereign-Grade Starlight Veil Cream. Distilled from a fifty-year-old Elder Hydro-Spirit Cap and infused with iridescent Moon-Moth scales. Not only does it drain sub-dermal lymphatic swelling in ten minutes, it weaves a microscopic veil of light-refracting ether over the cheekbones so the wearer literally glows under ballroom chandeliers. Unfortunately, there’s only one jar in existence, and the ingredients are far too expensive for a student budget.”
Genevieve’s hand shot out, her white-gloved fingers hovering an inch above the gilded lid.
“How much?” she demanded, her chin Tilting up to a forty-five-degree angle. “House Laurent does not operate on a student budget, Evelyn.”
“One hundred and fifty gold crowns,” I said without blinking.
Behind me, I heard Seraphina inhale a tiny, silent breath through her nose—the moral equivalent of a choked laugh.
Genevieve didn't even flinch at the number. In fact, the sheer absurdity of the price tag visibly reassured her aristocratic soul; if it cost as much as a thoroughbred warhorse, it had to be worthy of an Earl’s daughter.
“And for another twenty gold,” I added smoothly, leaning across the counter to lower my voice so the lingering girls on the porch couldn't hear, “I’ll sign a standard non-disclosure receipt guaranteeing that I never mention to anyone at the Rose Spire that the Chairwoman bought her complexion from Bramble Lane.”
Genevieve glared at me with pure, unadulterated venom for three full seconds. Then, she yanked open her silk reticule, pulled out a stamped Imperial Gold Bank Note for two hundred crowns—the smallest denomination her father apparently gave her for pocket money—and slapped it onto the wood.
“Keep the thirty gold change as an advance on next month’s jar,” Genevieve hissed, snatching the faceted crystal pot off the counter and shoving it deep into her velvet muff. “If my jawline swells by so much as a millimeter tomorrow morning, Evelyn Vance, I will have my father’s knights burn this glasshouse to the ground.”
“Apply a pea-sized drop below each ear before bed, and drink a glass of plain water without mana in it,” I called out cheerfully as she spun on her heel and marched out the door with her two bewildered attendants scrambling after her. “Have a lovely weekend, Chairwoman!”
The brass doorbell gave a final, triumphant ding as the last silk skirt vanished up Bramble Lane.
Silence fell over the sunlit shop.
I looked down at the oak counter. Sitting beside my brass cash box was ninety gold in solid coin, and a crisp two-hundred-gold Imperial bank note.
Two hundred and ninety gold crowns in twelve minutes.
Slowly, Seraphina stepped up beside my elbow, looking down at the bank note with an expression of profound, existential awe.
“You told me earlier you were going to price it at two hundred,” she said quietly.
“I discounted it to one-fifty so she’d feel like she won the negotiation, which made her tip me thirty out of pure spite,” I explained, picking up the two-hundred-gold note and snapping it briskly between my fingers. “Never underestimate the profitability of noble vanity, Seraphina. Your forty-gold debt on the ledger? Officially wiped clean as of ten seconds ago. Consider it your security bonus for staring at her nose until she panicked.”
Seraphina looked from the bank note up to my grinning face.
For the first time since I had woken up in this ridiculous game three days ago, she didn't just twitch the corner of her mouth. She let out a genuine, quiet laugh—a low, clear sound that made her slate-gray eyes crinkle at the corners and took five years of grim battlefield weight right off her face.
“You’re terrifying, Lady Vance,” Seraphina said, shaking her head as she reached for her mug of black tea. “Much scarier than when you used to throw fireballs in the courtyard.”
“Wait until you see what I do during midterm exam week when the third-years run out of focus potions,” I promised, tucking the bank note into the hidden lining of my ledger. “Now finish your tea. We have ten blue jars left on the tray, three hundred gold in the bank, and I promised Pip we’d go down to the Lower Quarter market before noon to buy him a copper-plated coal scuttle.”