The Upper Merchant Quarter smelled of pressed lavender, beeswax floor polish, and the quiet, suffocating arrogance of old money.
Unlike the chaotic cobblestone alleys of the Lower Quarter, the streets up here were paved with wide, cream-coloured flagstones swept clean three times a day by municipal golems. The shopfronts didn't have creaky wooden signs; they had bay windows of curved crystal displaying velvet-draped mannequins, gilt-edged spellbooks, and silver tea services that cost more than a farmer’s homestead.
Walking down the middle of Silkweaver Row beside me, Seraphina looked like a wolf pacing through a parlour of prize poodles.
Her spine was military-straight, her left hand resting lightly near the two matte-black Null-Ether Eclipse Grenades clipped to the back of her belt, while her right thumb hooked over the dark wooden root-guard of the Ashen Bough. Every time a liveried footman or a pair of strolling noblemen glanced at her faded, patched scholarship tunic, Seraphina returned their stare with such flat, unblinking readiness to commit violence that they hurriedly crossed to the other side of the pavement.
“Stop scowling at the pedestrians,” I murmured, adjusting the strap of my leather coin satchel as we stopped in front of a tall, narrow townhouse with Madame Vivienne — Couturier to the Peerage etched in gold leaf across the glass door. “If you scare away all the rich idiots on the street, Madame Vivienne will charge me an inconvenience fee.”
“I’m not scowling,” Seraphina said, looking warily up at the display window, where a mannequin was dressed in a towering confection of peach-coloured taffeta and forty yards of Brussels lace. “I’m assessing lines of sight. And if you try to put me in anything the colour of a bruised peach, I’m resigning.”
“I promised you charcoal wool and silver trim, didn't I?” I laughed, pushing open the heavy glass-and-mahogany door.
A tiny silver chime rang overhead.
The interior of Madame Vivienne’s salon was draped in burgundy velvet curtains, illuminated by warm, floating glow-globes that cast zero unflattering shadows. Bolts of imported silk, spider-weave linen, and winter cashmere lined the towering walnut shelves.
Standing behind a polished cutting table in the centre of the room was Madame Vivienne herself—a sharp-eyed half-elf woman who looked forty, was actually closer to a hundred and twenty, and wore three silver tape measures draped around her neck like ceremonial chains of office.
In Crown of Thorns, Madame Vivienne’s shop was where high-level players came in Act Three to craft enchanted light armour disguised as formal court attire. In the early lore, however, she was notorious for turning away Dukes’ daughters if she didn't like their posture.
Before Vivienne could look up from her chalk patterns, a familiar, shrill voice echoed from the raised circular fitting dais at the back of the salon.
“—no, no, the cerulean satin makes me look exactly like a first-year! Bring out the gold-embroidered brocade you had shipped from the capital last week, Jenny! If I am to stand beside His Highness at the Equinox Pavilion on Friday, my sleeves must match the Solaris sun-crest!”
I paused two steps inside the door.
Standing atop the mirrored fitting pedestal in her silk chemise, while two exhausted seamstresses pinned the hem of an ivory underskirt around her ankles, was Lady Genevieve of House Laurent. And lounging on the velvet settee beside the dais—looking thoroughly bored while flipping through a catalogue of ceremonial sword-tassels—was Prince Julian Solaris, accompanied by Lord Garrett of House Redgrave, whose right wrist was still faintly stained purple from my liniment.
Of course Julian was here. According to the game’s social calendar, Saturday afternoon was when the Student Council President did his formal inspection of the Equinox committee’s wardrobe budget.
At the sound of the door chime, Julian glanced up from his catalogue.
When he saw me standing on the burgundy carpet in my clean riding jacket—with Seraphina standing half a step behind my shoulder—he froze, dropping the booklet onto his boots.
“Evelyn?” Julian stood up so fast he nearly tripped over the gold fringe of the settee. On the pedestal, Genevieve spun around so sharply that one of the seamstresses nearly stabbed her in the calf with a pearl-headed pin.
For a beat, I noticed that Genevieve’s jawline was completely smooth and unswollen—proof that she had religiously applied my Starlight Veil Cream last night—though the sight of me immediately brought an angry flush right back to her cheeks.
“What is she doing in here, Madame Vivienne?!” Genevieve demanded, clutching a bolt of gold brocade to her chest. “This salon is reserved for the Peerage and the Equinox Committee! Does a Class-Three weed-peddler from Bramble Lane even have the five-gold deposit required to stand on this carpet?”
Lord Garrett, standing behind Julian’s chair, looked deeply uncomfortable. Unlike Julian and Genevieve, Garrett had actually spent Thursday afternoon swinging a heavy broadsword without his ulnar nerve screaming in agony thanks to my five-gold liniment. He shifted his weight and pointedly stared at the ceiling chandelier, refusing to back up Genevieve’s sneer.
Madame Vivienne didn't look at Genevieve. The half-elf tailor slowly lowered her Tailor’s Shears onto the walnut table, adjusted her pincenez glasses, and looked at me.
“Lady Vance,” Vivienne said, her voice like dry silk sliding over steel. “Your father’s account with this establishment has been frozen since the autumn of last year. If you are here to pick up the rose-velvet ballgown you ordered in August, I am afraid I have already sold the fabric to Baron Vane’s niece.”
“Thank goodness,” I said cheerfully, walking up to the cutting table and resting my hand on the wood. “That rose velvet made me look like an upholstered footstool anyway. I’m not here on my father’s tab, Madame Vivienne, and I’m not buying a ballgown. I’m here on a commercial cash account to commission two bespoke pieces of working attire before Friday noon.”
I unfastened my leather satchel, pulled out a stack of ten heavy royal twenty-gold coins—two hundred gold crowns in solid, clinking bullion—and stacked them in two neat, gleaming towers on the corner of her cutting table.
The sound of two hundred gold crowns hitting solid walnut in cash was louder than a thunderclap.
On the pedestal, Genevieve’s mouth snapped shut. Beside the settee, Julian stared at the gold towers as if I had just pulled a live rabbit out of my ear. Even Madame Vivienne’s sharp elven ears twitched upward by a quarter of an inch.
Most noble houses bought their clothes on annual credit lines that they only settled after the autumn harvest taxes came in—and usually after six months of haggling by their estate stewards. Walking into a high-end couturier and dropping two hundred gold in upfront coin was the kind of move reserved for merchant princes or visiting royalty. This story is hosted at novelping . com.
“Cash,” Madame Vivienne murmured, stepping around the table to run a single, manicured fingernail down the milled edges of the gold stack. “And no tulle, I take it?”
“Not a single inch,” I said, stepping aside and gesturing toward Seraphina. “First, I need a formal combat-grade Long Coat for my Head of Security. Tailored dark charcoal storm-wool, lined with silver-threaded Iron-Spider silk across the vitals, high standing collar, gusseted shoulders for zero blade restriction, and split tails weighted with lead shot so the hem clears her scabbard on a fast draw.”
Madame Vivienne’s eyes shifted to Seraphina.
For five seconds, the half-elf couturier didn't look at Seraphina’s frayed scholarship tunic or her cheap boots. She looked at the way Seraphina stood—the effortless, lethal equilibrium of her weight, the broad, swimmer-like line of her shoulders, and the dark Mythril-grain wooden blade resting at her hip.
As an artisan who secretly crafted high-tier battle gear for the Imperial Vanguard, Vivienne recognized a masterwork frame when she saw one.
“Iron-Spider silk lining requires a Grade-4 reinforced needle and double-locked seams,” Vivienne said, her professional demeanour sharpening instantly from bored shopkeeper to master armorer. She pulled a silver tape measure from around her neck. “Step onto the second block, Miss Valerius. Let me see your shoulder rotation.”
Seraphina blinked, glancing at me for confirmation. When I gave her an encouraging nod, she walked over to the smaller oak fitting block opposite Genevieve’s dais and stepped up onto the platform.
“Wait a moment!” Julian stepped forward, his face flushing with that familiar, bewildered indignation that always seemed to hit him whenever I spent money without crying about him. “Evelyn, have you lost all sense of proportion?! Iron-Spider silk costs eighty gold crowns a yard! You are buying military-grade officer attire for a scholarship student just to guard a potion booth?!”
“Your Highness,” I said, turning to look at him with polite, secretarial calm while Vivienne began measuring the span of Seraphina’s back with lightning-fast clicks of her silver tape. “Last night at two-fifteen in the morning, two unidentified assailants attempted to break into my conservatory with an iron crowbar and a sack of illegal blight beetles. Given that the campus security wards clearly have holes the size of a carriage in them, investing in my Head of Security’s protective gear is a standard tax-deductible business expense.”
Behind Julian, Lord Garrett winced visibly, clearly having already heard the campus rumours about the two glowing blue infirmary apprentices sneezing their lungs out in quarantine.
Julian, however, stiffened in outrage. “If your shop was targeted by vandals, you should have appealed to the Student Council for a patrol detail! Not—not squander your family’s remaining gold turning Lady Seraphina into your personal mercenary!”
He turned toward the fitting block, his blue eyes softening into the earnest, protective hero-gaze that the game’s script usually deployed right before a romance flag triggered.
“Lady Seraphina,” Julian said gravely, taking a step toward her platform. “You do not need to subject yourself to this indentured servitude just to afford proper equipment. As Student Council President, I can authorize a special merit grant from the Royal Armoury this very afternoon—a genuine steel broadsword and a standard Vanguard breastplate, free of Evelyn’s ledger strings.”
In the original game, this was the exact scene where Julian gave Seraphina the Knight-Initiate’s Steel Blade (Attack +18)—a moment that earned him +20 Affection points because nobody else at the Academy had ever offered her a gift without demanding a favour in return.
On the fitting block, Seraphina held her left arm out horizontally while Madame Vivienne measured the length from her deltoid to her wrist.
She looked down at Julian from the five-inch height of the wooden platform.
“A Vanguard breastplate weighs twenty-eight pounds and restricts lateral torso rotation by fifteen percent,” Seraphina said calmly. “And I already have a sword.”
Julian frowned, glancing down at the dark, unvarnished wood of the Ashen Bough hanging from her belt loop. “That is a wooden training stick, Lady Seraphina. You cannot enter the Equinox exhibition bouts carrying firewood.”
“It hits hard enough,” Seraphina replied flatly, turning her head back toward me as Vivienne pinned a strip of heavy charcoal tailor’s chalk along her collarbone. “Evelyn. She’s asking if the high collar should have a silver hook-and-eye clasp or an open lapelled throat.”
I stepped up beside the platform, tilting my head to study the line of Seraphina’s neck and the sharp angle of her jaw.
If she wore a closed hook-and-eye collar, she would look like a traditional Imperial inquisitor. If we left the throat slightly open over a crisp white linen cravat with a silver lapel pin, half the girls in the Rose Spire—and probably half the boys in the Vanguard—were going to walk straight into flagpole posts watching her pass by.
“Open notched lapel with silver thread piping along the edge,” I told Madame Vivienne decisively. “And line the inner cuffs with dark violet silk so it shows when she turns her wrists back.”
Wait. Dark violet silk.
That was House Vance’s—my—signature colour. The words had slipped out of my mouth purely on aesthetic instinct before my brain caught up with the heraldic implication.
Across the room on the main dais, Lady Genevieve sucked in a scandalized breath. Putting your personal house colour inside a knight’s cuffs was one step short of tying a tournament favour around their bicep in front of the High Sovereign.
On the fitting block, Seraphina’s slate-gray eyes flicked down to mine. She knew Imperial heraldry well enough to know what violet silk on charcoal wool meant. Find the original chapter at novelping dot com.
She didn't object. She didn't ask to change it to blue or red.
“Violet lining on the cuffs,” Seraphina repeated quietly to the tailor, her gaze holding mine for a beat that felt warmer than the velvet curtains around us. “Make sure the stitching holds if it gets wet.”
“My stitching survives dragon acid, child, a little rain will not trouble it,” Madame Vivienne said dryly, jotting three rapid lines into her measurement book before turning her sharp half-elf eyes back to me. “That leaves eighty-five gold crowns from your stack, Lady Vance. What is the second garment?”
“An alchemist’s working coat for me,” I said, tearing my eyes away from Seraphina to step toward the fabric racks. “Deep forest-green storm-wool, tailored waist, no corset boning whatsoever, reinforced dragon-hide leather panels over the forearms so I don't burn my sleeves on the alembic, and twelve internal velvet-lined pockets along the inside of the skirt—sized specifically for two-ounce crystal vials and round gourd casings.”
[Alchemist’s Appraisal (Lv. 5) — Active]
[Commissioned Gear Preview: "Bramble-Ward Apothecary Coat" & "Silver-Ash Vanguard Greatcoat"]
[Crafter: Madame Vivienne (Master Artisan — Lv. 8 Tailoring)]
[Estimated Completion Quality: Gold-Tier Custom Attire]
[Projected Set Bonus (When worn within 30 feet of each other):
Proprietor & Protector: Increases passive Aura Regeneration of the guard by +15% and reduces Alchemical Quick-Draw time for the apothecary by 50%.]
A Set Bonus. Because we were commissioning matching Gold-Tier working coats from the same bolt of storm-wool at the same time, the game’s equipment system was registering us as a paired tactical unit.
Julian stood frozen between the two fitting platforms, looking back and forth between me discussing explosive-pocket dimensions with theEmpire’s most exclusive dressmaker, and Seraphina calmly allowing herself to be draped in my signature violet silk without giving his royal Armoury grant a second glance.
For a boy who had spent the last ten years believing the entire world revolved around who got to stand next to him at the Equinox Ball, realizing that he wasn't even the third most interesting thing happening in the room was visibly devastating.
“Come, Garrett,” Julian said tightly, snatching his ceremonial tassel catalogue off the floor and marching toward the exit so fast his white cape knocked over a basket of silk ribbons. “We have wasted enough time in this... tradesman’s shop. Lady Genevieve, the council expects the decorative budget finalized by five!”
The glass door slammed shut behind him, setting the little silver chime ringing like an alarm bell. Behind him, Garrett paused just long enough to shoot me and Seraphina a quick, apologetic two-finger salute before hurrying out after his prince.
Up on the main pedestal, Lady Genevieve stared at the door in outrage, having just been abandoned in her underwear by her own fiancé-prospect.
“Unbelievable!” Genevieve hissed at her seamstresses. “Pin that hem faster! If her working coat has twelve pockets, I want twenty crystals sewn into my train!”
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing out loud as I stepped up onto the smaller fitting block to trade places with Seraphina.
As I passed her on the wooden step, Seraphina reached out and caught my elbow lightly to steady me onto the block.
“Twelve pockets?” she murmured, low enough that only I could hear over Genevieve’s fussing across the room. “You only have six smoke bombs.”
“Right now I have six smoke bombs,” I whispered back, spreading my arms so Madame Vivienne could wrap the silver tape measure around my ribs—which felt gloriously free without a single piece of whalebone in sight. “By Friday afternoon, those other six pockets are going to be holding liquid flash-bangs, concentrated Pepper-Mint inhalers, and enough forty-gold restorative vials to buy out the rest of our street.”
Seraphina stood at the base of my fitting block, her hands resting calmly behind her back in a parade-rest stance as she watched Madame Vivienne chalk the lines of the forest-green wool against my shoulders.
“When do we pick them up?” she asked the tailor.
“Thursday afternoon at four,” Madame Vivienne replied around three brass pins held between her lips. “And bring the girl back with you for a final cuff adjustment, Lady Vance. If she keeps building shoulder muscle at the rate her aura suggests, I’ll have to let the seams out by a quarter-inch before Friday morning.”
Seraphina’s ears turned faintly pink, and she abruptly turned her attention toward examining a shelf of wool buttons with intense military concentration.
I smiled down at the top of her silver head, feeling the warm weight of my new [Sovereign of the Black Alembic] class humming quietly in my veins. Let Julian have his golden brocade, and let Corvus skulk around the infirmary with his Blood-Lotus ash. Come Friday at the Equinox Pavilion, Booth #44 was going to steal the entire show.