By the time the morning sun broke over the Southern Woods, I had three dark circles under my eyes, four ounces of high-grade paralytic reagent sitting in a pickled mason jar, and a very smug marmalade cat sleeping on my best linen apron.
Extracting the sub-lingual venom sacs from a dead Spined Rift-Stalker at one in the morning was not how I had envisioned my grand noble retirement, especially using a pair of rusted herbology forceps by lantern light. Still, looking at the heavy crystal bottle resting on my workbench, I couldn't really complain.
[Alchemist’s Appraisal (Lv. 2) — Active]
[Item: Distilled Shadow-Palsy Extract (96% Purity)]
[Grade: Gold-Tier Reagent]
[Properties: A single drop diluted in sweet almond oil creates a topical anaesthetic potent enough for major field surgery. Undiluted, it will drop an adult armored Wyvern in twelve seconds.]
[Estimated Market Value: 65 Gold Crowns.]
Not bad for an ugly head left by the umbrella stand. Once I picked up a few crates of basic amber glass vials from the market today, I could dilute a single ounce of this extract into forty bottles of Numbing Field Liniment. The first-year combat cadets—who were currently beating each other black and blue with wooden practice broadswords during morning drills—would buy me out before Friday.
I stretched my back until my spine popped, washed the last of the alchemical soot from my hands in the cold water basin, and walked out into the front shop.
Pip was already hard at work. The tiny clay owl-homunculus had climbed atop the wooden counter with a rag nearly twice his size and was methodically buffing the scarred oak surface by sliding back and forth on his round belly. Every time he hit a stubborn water ring, he breathed a tiny puff of warm steam onto the wood and scrubbed harder.
“Morning, Pip,” I said, flipping the wooden placard on the front door from CLOSED to OPEN. “Don’t polish too hard near the edge, or the cat will slide right off onto the floor.”
The marmalade tomcat cracked one yellow eye open from the corner of the counter, gave a low hiss at the moving rag, and relocated to the top of the empty apothecary drawers.
I had barely finished arranging my two remaining vials of Moon-Drop Restorative on the velvet display stand when the brass bell above the front door jingled—not with a polite ring, but with a violent clang as someone kicked the oak door all the way open.
So much for a quiet morning.
Two boys in pristine white-and-crimson third-year combat uniforms swaggered into the shop, immediately tracked wet mud across my freshly swept floorboards, and stopped dead in the center of the room as another figure stepped in behind them.
Prince Julian Solaris.
He looked slightly less immaculate than he had twenty-four hours ago. There was a faint crease between his golden eyebrows, and his royal blue cape was pinned a millimeter crooked—a sure sign that his personal valet had been yelled at this morning.
Julian swept his gaze over the peeling plaster walls, the dusty beams, and the fat orange cat glaring down at him from the cabinet, before his piercing blue eyes locked onto me behind the counter.
At the sight of my rolled-up linen sleeves, canvas apron, and complete lack of noble jewellery, a look of profound, scandalized vindication washed over his handsome face.
“Good grief,” Julian breathed, shaking his head with theatrical pity. “When the Bursar informed the student council that you had leased the condemned shack on Bramble Lane, I thought it was a clerical joke. Look at this place, Evelyn. Mud on the doorstep, weeds drying from the rafters... Have you truly stooped to playing common merchant just to get my attention?”
I blinked slowly, resting my elbows on the freshly polished oak counter.
It was fascinating, really. In Crown of Thorns, Julian’s dialogue trees were written to sound noble and tragic when paired with swelling orchestral music. Without the background soundtrack, he just sounded like an eighteen-year-old boy who inhaled his own cologne too deeply.
“Good morning, Your Highness,” I said in my briskest customer-service tone. “Welcome to the Bramble Lane Apothecary. If you’re looking for attention, the Drama Club meets in the East Amphitheatre at four. If you’re looking for potions, my current inventory is on the velvet stand to your left.”
One of the third-year lackeys—Lord Henrik of House Sterling, if I remembered his dull face correctly from the Atrium yesterday—snorted loudly.
“Potions?” Henrik sneered, stepping up to the counter and tapping a gloved finger against the glass of my Moon-Drop Restorative. “Everyone in the Rose Spire knows you failed Introductory Herbology twice last spring, Lady Vance. What is this, ditch water mixed with crushed fireflies? Trying to scam first-year commoners now that your royal allowance is gone?”
Careful, I told myself. In the game, Henrik was a mid-tier Earth Mage who served as Julian’s shield-bearer during the Academy Tournament. More importantly, his father owned the largest glassware foundry in the capital. Fighting him was bad for business; humiliating him into a purchase was much better.
“That,” I said smoothly, sliding the velvet stand two inches out of reach of his muddy glove, “is a Silver-Tier Meridian Flush at ninety-two percent purity. And I only failed Introductory Herbology because Professor Vane deducts thirty points if you don’t recite the five-minute prayer to the Goddess of Harvest before lighting the burner. Turns out, water boils at a hundred degrees whether you pray to it or not.”
Julian stepped forward, waving a hand to silence Henrik. He leaned across the counter, lowering his voice into what he clearly believed was a gentle, magnanimous baritone.
“Enough, Evelyn. You have made your point,” Julian said softly. “Yes, I was harsh with you in the Atrium yesterday. And yes, you were clever enough to exploit an archaic loophole in the betrothal contract to embarrass my steward. Father has already lectured me for two hours by crystal-comms regarding the eight thousand crowns.”
Ah. There it was.
King Aldric hadn't been thrilled about writing a severance check to a bankrupt viscount’s daughter. Julian hadn't come down to Bramble Lane to gloat; he’d been sent by his father to get the money back.
“I am willing to overlook this little... tantrum,” Julian continued, offering me a practiced, dazzling smile that usually added +15 to persuasion checks on female NPCs. “Return the severance funds to the royal treasury, vacate this filthy hovel by sundown, and write a formal letter of apology to Lady Seraphina. Do that, and I will petition the Headmaster to reinstate your room in the Rose Spire and restore our engagement on a probationary basis. You don’t belong in the dirt, Evelyn.”
From the doorway behind theworkshop curtain, Pip let out a low, rattling hiss that sounded suspiciously like a boiling kettle about to blow its lid.
I looked at Julian’s outstretched white-gloved hand. Then I looked up into his bright blue eyes.
“Let me make sure I understand the math here,” I said pleasantly. “You want me to give you back eight thousand gold crowns in cash, give up a three-year rent-controlled commercial lease, move back into a dormitory where the girls spend four hours a day arguing over teacup patterns, and go back to being your probationary fiancée?”
“I am offering you your dignity back,” Julian said, his smile tightening at the edges.
“Your Highness, my dignity is currently earning four percent quarterly interest in a Merchant Guild vault,” I replied. “And as for this 'filthy hovel,' my overhead is zero, my commute is down a flight of stairs, and nobody here writes me poetry rhyming dove with love.”
Julian’s jaw flexed, a muscle ticking beneath his cheek. “You are testing my patience, Evelyn. Do you really think you can survive a single month out here without the Vance or Solaris name protecting you? Who is going to buy uncertified potions from a disgraced noblewoman with no guild backing?”
“I’m not selling uncertified potions,” I said, gesturing toward the framed parchment hanging beside the herb cabinet. “Master Barnaby stamped my Class-Three license yesterday. And as for who’s going to buy them—Lord Henrik, why don't you tell the Prince why you’ve been resting sixty percent of your body weight on your left leg since you walked through my door?”
Henrik blinked, his sneer faltering. “What?”
“Your right knee,” I pointed my chin toward his polished leather riding boot. “You’re favouring your left side, and there’s faint ochre dust around the welt of your right boot heel—which comes from the heavy clay floor of the Third-Year Duelling Pit. Combined with the way your fingers are slightly stiff around your sword hilt, I’m guessing you spent yesterday evening over-channelling Earth Mana through your lower meridians trying to impress the combat instructors, and now you have acute Silt-Lock in your knee joint.”
Henrik’s eyes went wide. Automatically, his hand twitched toward his right thigh. “How did you—I mean, it’s just a minor bruise from sparring!”
“It’s mana calcification,” I corrected briskly. “If you go to the Temple infirmary, the priests will charge you twenty-five gold crowns to hit your kneecap with a purification hammer, and you’ll still limp for a week. Or, you can drink one third of this vial right now, clear the silt out of your channels in thirty seconds, and stop leaning against my doorframe like a wet sack of oats.”
Julian frowned, turning to look at his friend. “Henrik? Is that true? We have the vanguard showcase before the fencing master at noon. You told me you were at peak readiness.”
Henrik flushed a deep, splotchy red under his collar. “It’s nothing, Your Highness! Just a stiff joint from the rain—”
“Twenty gold crowns for the whole bottle,” I interrupted smoothly, tapping the crystal vial on the velvet stand. “Normally forty, but I’ll call it a grand-opening promotional discount since you brought the Crown Prince into my shop for free publicity. If your knee isn't completely pain-free before I finish counting to ten, you don’t pay a single copper.”
Henrik stared at the swirling silver liquid, trapped between his terrified loyalty to Julian’s timetable and his refusal to admit I was right.
“Drink it, Henrik,” Julian snapped, his royal pride suddenly shifting tracks. If Evelyn’s potion failed right here in front of them, he could report her to the Bursar for alchemical fraud and have her lease revoked before lunch. “Go on. Let us see what eight thousand crowns of Vance delusion actually tastes like.”
Looking thoroughly miserable, Henrik stepped up to the counter, snatched the crystal vial, pulled the cork with his teeth, and downed a third of the luminescent liquid in one gulp.
He braced himself, clearly expecting to gag on swamp water.
Instead, his eyebrows shot up toward his hairline. “It... it tastes like peppermint.”
One. Two. Three.
A faint silver glow rippled down Henrik’s torso, settling briefly around his right kneecap as the hydro-ether hit the calcified earth mana clogging his veins. Henrik sucked in a sharp breath, his spine snapping straight as the chronic ache in his joint vanished entirely.
Tentatively, he shifted his weight onto his right leg. Then he bent his knee. Then he did a full, deep squat right there in the middle of my dusty shop, his leather boots creaking in the dead silence.
“By the Goddess,” Henrik breathed, staring down at his boot in pure, unadulterated shock. “The stiffness is completely gone. My mana channels feel cleaner than they did after the summer solstice cleansing!”
Julian stared at him, horrified. “Henrik, what are you doing? Stand up!”
“Your Highness, you don't understand, the heavy-stance backlash usually takes four days to clear!” Henrik stood up, looking at the remaining two-thirds of the vial in his hand as if he were holding liquid diamonds. He reached frantically into his belt pouch with his other hand. “Twenty gold, you said? I’ll take the other bottle on the stand too!”
“That second bottle is regular price,” I said pleasantly, sliding the second vial of Moon-Drop Restorative across the oak counter. “Forty gold crowns. So sixty total for the pair.”
“Henrik, put your purse away this instant!” Julian barked, his face turning the exact same shade of beetroot it had achieved in the Atrium yesterday. “We did not walk down to the slums to fund her stubbornness!”
Before Henrik could decide whether he feared the Crown Prince more than he loved functional kneecaps, a shadow fell across the open doorway behind them.
“You’re blocking the entrance.”
The voice was quiet, flat, and cold enough to drop the ambient temperature of the room by five degrees.
Julian and his two lackeys spun around.
Standing on the front porch in the crisp morning sunlight was Seraphina Valerius.
She was wearing a clean spare tunic today, her silver hair pulled back into its usual neat ponytail, though the collar of her white linen bandage was just visible above her neckline. Balanced effortlessly on her right shoulder—the uninjured one—was a massive, fifty-pound wooden crate stamped with the seal of the Lower Quarter Glassworks, packed to the brim with straw and empty amber potion bottles.
She didn't even look short of breath.
“Lady Seraphina!” Julian’s entire posture transformed in a millisecond. He puffed out his chest, stepping hastily between Seraphina and my counter as if shielding her from a feral dragon. “What are you doing in this rough part of the district? Do not worry—I was just ensuring that Lady Vance understands she is never to harass you again!”
Seraphina didn't even look at him.
She stepped straight past Julian’s billowing white cape, brushing his shoulder aside so casually he nearly stumbled into the herb rack, walked behind my counter through the swinging half-door, and set the fifty-pound crate down gently on the floorboards with a soft crunch of packing straw.
“Put the heavy crates in the back workshop?” she asked me, resting a hand on her hip as she glanced toward the curtain.
“Right beside the copper alembic, please,” I said warmly, sliding a fresh mug of hot chamomile tea across the counter toward her. “Take five minutes and drink that while it’s hot. How’s the shoulder?”
“Doesn't ache at all,” Seraphina replied, picking up the ceramic mug with her left hand and rolling her shoulder smoothly to prove it. She took a slow sip of the tea, leaned her hip comfortably against my side of the counter, and finally turned her cool, slate-gray eyes toward the three frozen boys standing in the middle of my shop.
“Well?” Seraphina asked, looking pointedly at the two crystal vials clutched in Henrik’s hand. “Are you paying for those, or are you just tracking mud onto the floor I have to sweep on Thursday?”
Julian’s mouth opened. Then closed. Then opened again. He looked from Seraphina—drinking tea behind my counter like she owned half the building—to me, and back to Seraphina’s bandaged neck.
His brain, built entirely around courtly romance tropes and chivalric duels, was visibly short-circuiting.
“Lady Seraphina,” Julian whispered, his voice cracking slightly on the last syllable. “Why... why are you carrying crates for her? Did she threaten your scholarship?! Tell me at once and I will have the Royal Guard—”
“She’s paying me two silver an hour and giving me half-off on antidotes,” Seraphina interrupted flatly. She took another sip of her chamomile tea over the rim of the chipped mug. “And unlike the student council, her checks actually clear before noon. Now, sixty gold crowns, Lord Henrik. Or put the bottles down and leave.”
Henrik didn't hesitate for another second. Terrified equally by Seraphina’s deadpan glare and the prospect of losing his new miracle potion, he dumped three heavy royal twenty-gold coins onto the oak counter with a loud clatter, grabbed the second vial, and bolted out the front door like the shop was on fire.
His friend scrambled out half a second behind him, leaving Prince Julian standing completely alone in the doorway.
For five seconds, Julian stared at the two of us behind the counter.
I smiled brightly and dropped Henrik’s sixty gold coins into my brass cash box with a cheerful cha-ching. Beside me, Seraphina didn't move an inch, her free hand resting casually on the pommel of her iron longsword while the marmalade cat hopped down from the cabinet to rub its cheek against her elbow.
“You have both lost your minds,” Julian choked out, spinning on his heel so hard his cape smacked against the doorframe. “Completely lost your minds!”
We watched in comfortable silence as the future Emperor of Asteria marched furiously up the muddy cobblestones of Bramble Lane, nearly slipping in a puddle near the willow tree before vanishing around the corner.
Once the sound of his indignant footsteps faded, I let out a quiet laugh and leaned against the counter next to Seraphina.
“It’s Wednesday,” I pointed out, glancing up at her profile. “Our contract said Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
Seraphina looked down into her teacup, the faintest trace of pink coloring the tips of her ears beneath her silver hair.
“The glassworks merchant was offering a ten-percent discount on bulk amber vials if someone hauled the crate before nine,” she muttered, staring fiercely at a floating chamomile petal. “I happened to be walking past the market after morning drills. It made financial sense.”
“Right. Purely financial,” I agreed gravely, hiding my grin behind my sleeve as Pip toddled out from the back room to offer her boot a tiny, respectful polish with his rag. “Well, since you’re already clocked in, Employee of the Month—grab a stool. I need someone to hold the funnel while I bottle sixty gold crowns’ worth of Wyvern-dropping anaesthetic.”