For three seconds, I thought Seraphina was going to clamp her jaw shut and let her lungs paralyze out of sheer, stubborn principle.
Her slate-gray eyes were fixed on mine from just inches away, blown wide with adrenaline and exhaustion, searching my face for a flicker of cruelty or triumph. When she found nothing there except mild irritation that my hearth rug was getting soaked, her throat gave a weak, involuntary spasm.
I tipped the crystal vial.
The luminescent silver liquid slid past her lips. Almost immediately, the Moon-Drop Restorative went to work.
Unlike standard Temple potions—which forced a violent, burning surge of light magic through the veins to cook out impurities—hydro-ether stabilization worked like cool mountain water flooding a parched riverbed.
A faint, silvery sheen rippled beneath the pale skin of Seraphina’s throat. She sucked in a sharp, shuddering gasp as the neurotoxin binding her diaphragm dissolved. The terrifying bluish tint around her fingernails receded into a healthy pink, and a full-body tremor racked her frame as feeling rushed back into her numb extremities all at once.
“Ah—” Seraphina hissed, her right hand flying up to grip her injured left shoulder as the peripheral nerve-numbing agent collided with the retreating venom.
“Don’t tense up,” I instructed, stepping back and corking the empty vial with a neat pop. “The Bitter-Root Ginger takes about forty seconds to numb the surface lacerations. Until then, it’s going to feel like someone poured hot static into your collarbone. Breathe through your nose.”
Seraphina pressed her forehead against her knees, breathing in slow, ragged counts. Water dripped steadily from the tip of her silver ponytail onto the hearthstones, hissing softly against the warm bricks.
While she recovered from the metabolic shock, I walked back behind the counter, grabbed a roll of boiled linen bandages, a jar of rendered beeswax salve, and a pair of blunt steel shears. I also nudged the severed head of the Spined Rift-Stalker away from my boots using the iron fireplace poker.
Even dead, the thing was hideous—like a cross between a starved wolf and a porcupine made of black obsidian, with six milky eyes and a jaw full of needle-like teeth.
[Alchemist’s Appraisal (Lv. 2) — Active]
[Item: Adult Spined Rift-Stalker Carcass (Head & Neck)] [Bounty Value: 15 Silver Crowns at the Academy Warden’s Office.] [Hidden Alchemical Value: The two sub-lingual venom sacs beneath the tongue remain intact. If extracted within 2 hours of death and preserved in high-proof grain alcohol, they yield 4 ounces of Pure Shadow-Palsy Reagent (Market Value: 60 Gold Crowns).]
Sixty gold crowns of high-tier paralytic reagent, and she had dragged it through the mud on a hemp rope to turn it in for a measly fifteen-silver bounty. My merchant soul wept.
When I turned back to the hearth, Seraphina had straightened up on the wooden stool. Her breathing was steady now. She was flexing the fingers of her left hand—slowly at first, then closing them into a tight, stable fist.
She stared down at her palm in disbelief.
“That wasn’t a basic antidote,” she said quietly. Her voice had lost its raspy, suffocating edge, returning to its natural, low alto. “Rift-Stalker palsy takes three days of bed rest and two Temple purifying rites to clear from the mana channels. My arm feels... completely fine. Better than before the fight.”
“Temple priests are extortionists who water down their purifying tinctures so you have to pay for three sessions instead of one,” I said, walking back over with my shears and bandages. “Take off the jacket—or at least slip your left arm out. The venom is neutralized, but those claw marks are four inches long and full of forest dirt. If they get infected, you won’t be swinging a butter knife for a month.”
Seraphina flinched backward slightly as I raised the shears, her hand instinctively dropping toward the sword lying on the floorboards beside her boots.
I stopped and leveled a flat, unimpressed stare at her.
“Lady Valerius,” I sighed, resting a hand on my hip. “Think about this logically for five seconds. Ten minutes ago, you were completely paralyzed on my floor with zero mana in your reserves. If my grand villainous scheme was to murder you, shave off your eyebrows, or dump more ink on you, I wouldn't have wasted a forty-gold Silver-Tier potion waking you up first. I would have just rolled you into the bushes out back and gone to bed.”
Seraphina’s jaw tightened. A faint, embarrassed flush crept up the sides of her neck—whether from the warmth of the fire or the undeniable logic of my point, I couldn't tell.
Slowly, keeping her slate-gray eyes locked on my hands, she unfastened the brass buttons of her torn Academy tunic and shrugged her left shoulder out of the wet wool sleeve.
Beneath the jacket, her thin cotton undershirt was soaked crimson and shredded down to the collarbone. Even in the dim light of the hearth, it was obvious she wasn't built like the delicate noble girls in the Rose Spire. Her shoulders were lean and corded with compact, swimmer-like muscle, crisscrossed with a dozen faded white training scars from years of relentless practice.
Fresh blood was welling sluggishly from three parallel gashes across her deltoid, though the angry purple swelling from the venom had already vanished.
“Hold still,” I murmured, stepping between her knees so I could reach the angle of the wound properly.
Up this close, I could feel the ambient heat radiating off her skin. Seraphina went rigid as a statue the moment my fingers brushed her bare shoulder. I ignored her tension, dipping a clean linen cloth into warm water from the hearth kettle to wipe away the clotted blood and pine needles.
“Why were you past the iron boundary fence?” I asked conversationally as I worked. “The first-year combat syllabus doesn’t cover Grade-3 Rift beasts until the winter solstice. And the Outer Perimeter wards aren’t supposed to let anything bigger than a Thorn-Hound through.”
“The ward-stone at Sector Four is cracked,” Seraphina said stiffly, staring straight ahead at the middle buttons of my linen shirt because she had nowhere else to look. “I spotted the tracks during the afternoon orientation run. If I waited until morning to file a report with the Wardens, the Stalker would have moved deeper into the safe zone where the herbology students forage.”
“So you went out alone in a rainstorm to kill it yourself.”
“It was there. I had my sword.”
“You had a standard-issue pig-iron longsword with a chipped crossguard and zero healing potions,” I corrected dryly, scooping a generous dollop of beeswax and crushed nettle salve onto my fingers. “This won't sting, the ginger already deadened the nerves.”
I smoothed the cooling green salve over the three jagged cuts. Despite my warning, Seraphina’s breath hitched—not from pain, it seemed, but from the simple, unfamiliar sensation of someone tending to her gently. In the game’s backstory, Seraphina was an orphan raised in a strict border garrison; she patched her own wounds with sewing needles and cheap whiskey.
As I wrapped the clean linen bandage snugly around her shoulder and under her arm, her gaze drifted up to my face. Without the sneer and the heavy court makeup, and with my dark hair tied back in a messy ribbon to keep it out of the alembic, I probably looked very little like the screaming noblewoman from the Atrium that morning.
“Why are you doing this, Lady Vance?” she asked softly, her voice dropping so low it barely cleared the crackle of the hearth.
“Just Evelyn is fine. I surrendered my dormitory privileges today, which effectively makes me a civilian merchant on campus grounds,” I said, tying off the bandage in a neat flat knot and snipping the excess linen with my shears. “And I’m doing it because dead bodies on my porch are terrible for property value.”
“Evelyn,” she tested the name on her tongue, as if checking it for hidden blades. “This morning, you humiliated the Crown Prince in front of thirty nobles, extorted eight thousand gold from the royal treasury, and abandoned the elite wing. Tonight, you’re wearing commoner trousers in a condemned shack and brewing Silver-Tier elixirs that the Royal Alchemists' Guild claims require three weeks of prayer to distil.”
She leaned forward slightly, her slate-gray eyes dangerously sharp despite the exhaustion weighing down her eyelids.
“Who are you really?”
For a fraction of a second, my heart skipped a beat. I kept my expression completely placid, stepping back to wipe my hands on my canvas apron.
“Someone who realized very suddenly that chasing a boy who writes terrible poetry was going to get me killed,” I replied, letting a thread of genuine honesty bleed into my voice. “Let’s just say waking up this morning gave me a violently clear sense of perspective, Lady Valerius. I don’t want the Prince. I don’t want a seat at the High Court. And I certainly don't want to cross swords with you.”
I walked over to the hearth, poured hot water from the kettle into a chipped ceramic mug filled with dried chamomile blossoms, and pressed it into her good hand.
“What I want,” I continued, gesturing vaguely toward the rows of empty wooden drawers behind the counter, “is to fix the holes in my greenhouse roof, stock these shelves with overpriced potions, and sleep until nine every morning without a maid lacing me into a whalebone torture device.”
Seraphina looked down at the steaming mug of chamomile tea in her hands. The rising steam curled against her pale cheeks, softening the severe lines of her jaw. Slowly, tentatively, she took a sip, her shoulders dropping an inch as the heat settled into her chest.
From the archway leading into the back workshop, Pip poked his round clay head around the wooden doorframe, his amber core glowing warmly in the shadows as he let out a soft, curious chirp. Up on the high shelf, the fat marmalade cat finally hopped down, landing with a heavy thump on the counter and demanding my attention with an imperious meow.
The whole scene was so aggressively domestic that the last traces of Seraphina’s combat hostility seemed to short-circuit.
“You’re serious,” she murmured into her mug. “You actually opened a shop.”
“I have a stamped Class-Three license on the wall right over there to prove it,” I said, reaching behind the counter to pull out a fresh sheet of ledger parchment and a charcoal pencil. “Which brings us nicely to the business portion of our evening.”
Seraphina blinked, looking up over the rim of her tea. “Business?”
“Oh, you didn’t think this was charity, did you?” I offered her my brightest, most mercenary smile as I scribbled rapidly on the parchment. “One Silver-Tier Moon-Drop Restorative, normally valued at forty gold crowns. One application of anti-inflammatory nettle salve, five silver. Two yards of boiled linen bandage, two silver. One mug of chamomile tea, complimentary on the house for first-time customers.”
Seraphina froze, her hand tightening around the ceramic mug as the blood drained right back out of her face. “Forty... forty gold crowns? I don’t have forty gold. I only have eleven silver to my name until the monthly scholarship stipend clears.”
I tapped the charcoal pencil against my chin, pretending to deliberate, before pointing the tip straight at the gruesome monster head lying by the door.
“Tell you what,” I said smoothly. “The Wardens will only give you fifteen silver for that Rift-Stalker head. Leave the head with me so I can harvest the venom glands before they spoil, sign a standard IOU for the remaining balance, and help me carry heavy crates from the market twice a week until your midterms. Do that, and I’ll call the forty gold even.”
Seraphina looked from the monster head, to the ledger parchment, and back to my face. She looked completely bewildered—as if she had braced herself for a duel to the death and been handed a part-time retail job instead.
“You want me to... carry crates?” she asked slowly.
“Have you seen my arms, Lady Valerius? My previous lifestyle involved lifting teacups and holding grudges. A sack of alchemical coal weighs fifty pounds,” I slid the parchment across the counter toward her. “Besides, if you keep hunting Grade-3 monsters in the dark, you’re going to need a discount on antidotes anyway. Consider it a retainer.”
For a long moment, the only sound in the shop was the steady patter of the rain against the glass and the crackle of the fire.
Then, slowly, the corner of Seraphina’s mouth twitched. It wasn't quite a smile—more like the rusty hinge of a door that hadn't been opened in years finally giving way—but it completely transformed her severe, exhausted face.
She set her teacup down on the counter, stood up without a single wobble in her knees, and picked up the charcoal pencil.
“Twice a week,” Seraphina agreed, signing her name at the bottom of the ledger in neat, sharp script. “Tuesdays and Thursdays after sword practice. And just Seraphina is fine, if we’re doing business.”
“Pleasure doing business with you, Seraphina,” I said, blowing on the charcoal ink to dry it. “Now finish your tea and get back to the dorms before the night watch catches you out past curfew. And leave the ugly head by the umbrella stand.”