By midday, the common room had turned into a war table.
Maps were spread across the scarred wooden surface, weighed down with mugs, bolts, and whatever else had been close at hand. Arcade’s half-repaired projector hummed weakly in the corner, throwing pale blue shapes over the walls. Outside the windows, Hiraeth kept moving—hammers striking, children shouting, someone arguing over roof tiles—but inside, the air felt tighter.
More brittle.
They agreed, after no small amount of debate, to split into two teams.
One would go to Godiad.
The other would search the Church.
It was the only sensible option. If the hidden data was right, both places mattered, and waiting too long risked losing the trail altogether.
Celeste stood at the head of the table, a bundle of notes in one hand and a charcoal stub in the other. She had clearly been up earlier than the rest of them, because the plan was already organised in that careful, overprepared way she had when she was trying not to get flustered.
Little arrows had been sketched on the map.
Supply lists were arranged.
Routes marked.
Contingencies noted in the margins in tiny, neat handwriting.
“If we split by skillset,” she said, tapping the map with the charcoal, “then the Church team can take someone better with people, in case they’ll talk, and someone who can spot hidden runes or traps. Godiad should probably have Arcade, because if there’s more hidden data or sealed tech—”
Silver, lounging in his chair with one leg crossed over the other, did not even bother to wait until she had finished.
“No,” he said.
The single word cut straight across her sentence.
Celeste blinked.
“…No?”
Silver rose with leisurely ease, as though rescuing the room from mediocrity were an inconvenience he had long expected. He leaned over the table, one gloved finger sliding over her map and nudging one of her marked routes aside.
“If you divide like that, you weaken both teams,” he said. “What you want is one visible group and one quiet one. The Church expects scrutiny. Godiad may not. So you send the louder personalities where they’ll be least suspicious, and the more discreet where they’ll do actual good.”
He spoke smoothly.
Confidently.
Already rearranging the assignments in his head as if the decision had been his from the start.
“Ray goes to the Church,” he continued. “She’s forceful enough to rattle answers loose. Mezzo too, if subtlety is already dead on arrival. Godiad gets Arcade, Pitch, and someone who can improvise if the place tries to eat them.”
Celeste opened her mouth, perhaps to point out that this was, in fact, very close to what she had already been saying, only with fewer theatrics.
Silver did not pause long enough to let her.
“And frankly,” he added, “if we are doing this properly, then—”
Ray leaned back in her chair and folded her arms.
“Incredible,” she said.
Silver glanced at her.
“I know.”
“No, I mean it’s incredible how you can hear a plan, ignore the plan, then say the same plan in a posher voice and act like you invented strategy.”
A smothered snort came from somewhere near Mezzo.
Arcade very quickly pretended to be fascinated by a screwdriver.
Silver smiled faintly.
“I was improving it.”
Ray’s grin was all teeth.
“Right. Well. Tiny reminder, your lordship—we’ll be following the Knight-Commander.”
She tipped her head toward Celeste with exaggerated politeness.
“Not a random subordinate.”
A pause.
“The Knight-Commander.”
The words hit the room with a bright, satisfying crack.
Silver’s expression did not quite falter, but something colder flickered behind it.
He straightened his cuffs as though that were response enough.
“How stirring. Do wave a banner when you say it next time.”
Celeste, predictably, tried to soften it.
“We can use parts of both ideas,” she said quickly. “It’s fine, truly, I just—”
But the moment had already soured.
Silver stepped back from the table with a shrug that was meant to look careless and landed closer to elegant dismissal.
“Do whatever you like,” he said. “I’m sure command is a thrilling burden.”
Celeste lifted her cup, took the smallest sip of tea—
then stopped.
Her nose wrinkled slightly.
“…That tastes strange.”
For a moment, no one seemed to hear her. Ray was still glaring at Silver. Arcade was still fiddling with the projector. Mezzo was watching Celeste with concern, but the room had already begun shifting toward mission chaos again.
Celeste looked down into the cup.
The tea looked normal.
Mostly.
She swallowed once, uncertain, then set it aside.
“I should probably get things together,” she said, already reaching for the nearest stack of reports. “Reports, route notes, supply lists, emergency contact charms, spare pencils—oh, and the Church permits, if those are still permits and not just threatening letters with nicer stamps…”
Arcade glanced up.
“If you’re going past my room, could you toss the toolkit in there?”
Celeste nodded.
“Yes, of course.”
Ray started gathering the reports from the table.
“We’ll get the rest sorted here. Bracer also wants a word with you about possible new recruits for the Knights.”
Celeste paused beneath the growing pile of files.
“New recruits?”
“Anyone who ate the Zygurr candy,” Ray said. “If they’ve got cores waking up, we need to know what we’re dealing with.”
Celeste nodded again, though by now she could barely see over the reports stacked against her chest.
A single thumb poked out from behind the pile.
“Understood.”
Hughes gave her a look.
“Careful, lass.”
“I will be,” Celeste promised.
Then she got up, the stack of reports balanced awkwardly against her chest, Arcade’s metal toolkit hanging from one hand, and her sketchbook tucked under one arm as if she had not trusted herself to leave it behind.
Her hair had come slightly loose around her face, and she looked tired in the way she had lately—
like someone trying to hold together ten things at once while insisting she was fine.
The corridor was narrow.
Silver did not slow.
He could have shifted half a step to the side.
He did not.
His shoulder clipped hers, hard enough to matter.
The world tipped at once.
Papers flew from her arms in a pale burst. The toolkit struck the floor with a metallic crash, screws and spanners skittering across the stone. An mana bottle bounced free from between the reports, rolled in a frantic little circle, and cracked open against the wall like a wounded beetle, blue sparkles spilling fast across the floor and splashing up the hem of Celeste’s uniform.
“Oh—!”
She dropped to her knees immediately, breath catching, scrambling after everything at once.
“I’m sorry—I’m so sorry—”
Silver looked down at her.
His face was perfectly composed.
Bland, almost.
Which somehow made it worse.
“You really are clumsy,” he said mildly.
A wrench spun to a stop by his boot.
He stepped over it without helping.
“You should watch where you’re going.”
Celeste froze for half a second, kneeling there among scattered papers and spreading ink.
Her ears flattened slowly against her hair.
“I—I will,” she said.
Silver walked on.
Behind him, the silence lasted only a moment before footsteps snapped sharply against the stone.
“Oi.”
Ray’s voice.
Silver glanced over one shoulder, not stopping.
Ray had appeared at the end of the corridor, arms crossed, expression thunderous. She took in the mess on the floor, Celeste on her knees, the ink bleeding across the uniform, and her face darkened further.
“Don’t take it out on her.”
Silver turned properly then, brows lifting with exquisite innocence.
“I’m sorry?”
Ray stepped closer.
“You heard me.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t the faintest clue what you’re on about.”
The lie was smooth as silk.
Elegant.
Effortless.
Ray stared at him like she wanted to test how far she could throw him through a wall.
Celeste, still gathering papers with shaky hands, said quickly, “It was an accident.”
Silver gave a tiny, gracious incline of his head, as though vindicated.
“There we are.”
Ray made a sound deep in her throat that promised future murder, but before she could say more, Silver turned and continued down the corridor, leaving the mess—and Celeste’s quiet humiliation—behind him like something beneath notice.
Further along, voices drifted from the bend near the side stairwell.
Silver slowed.
Lumina stood by the wall with one arm lifted, her Arcbracer glowing softly blue against the dim corridor light. A neat little projection hovered over the metal band around her wrist, all shimmering lines and spell diagrams, and through the tiny speaker came the elegant, composed voice of Lady Vale Arcturus.
His cousin was not physically present, but she sounded as polished as ever—calm, patient, and faintly amused, as though teaching mana techniques to a child in the middle of a half-finished settlement was the most natural thing in the world.
“No, no,” Vale was saying through the bracer, “gentler. Healing mana does not like to be bullied. If you force it, it tangles. Let it flow through the palm first, then guide it outward.”
Lumina frowned in concentration. A pale thread of light gathered between her fingers, flickered, collapsed, then returned in a steadier little glow.
“Like this?” she asked.
“Better,” Vale replied. “Much better. See? You do know how. You simply keep expecting yourself not to.”
Silver came to a stop.
“Why,” he asked, brows lifting, “is my cousin teaching you healing techniques over a private Arcbracer call?”
Lumina looked up at once.
Not guilty exactly.
But caught.
The bracer projection shifted slightly as Vale’s voice returned, warm and unruffled.
“Good afternoon, Silver.”
He folded his arms.
“Lady Vale.”
There was the faintest smile in her tone.
“How grim. Must we be formal before midday?”
Silver ignored that. His gaze stayed on Lumina.
It was not suspicion, exactly. He trusted Vale more than most people in his family, which was rather like saying he preferred one venomous spider to the others.
She was clever.
Controlled.
And rarely wasted her time.
Which was precisely why this struck him as odd.
Lumina was only a child.
No title.
No leverage.
No political value.
No obvious connection to House Arcturus at all.
And yet Vale was spending her personal time teaching her healing mana.
That, more than anything, made Silver curious.
Lumina shifted her weight.
“Lady Vale is nice,” she said simply. “She’s helping me with things I don’t understand.”
On the bracer, a tiny rune-circle rotated lazily in the air.
“She asked sensible questions,” Vale said. “That already places her above half the adults I speak to.”
Silver’s mouth twitched despite himself.
“A devastating indictment of the peerage.”
“I do try.”
Lumina glanced between them.
“She’s teaching me how to stop mana from hurting when I use too much.”
Silver’s expression changed.
Only slightly.
That, at least, was a practical reason.
Still, he tilted his head.
“It is a little strange, don’t you think? You and Lady Vale have never met properly. You have no family ties, no political link, no reason for her to take such an interest.”
Lumina looked down at her bracer, then back up.
“She said I didn’t need one.”
Silver exhaled softly through his nose.
Of course Vale had said that.
Trust his cousin to go collecting strays in the most aristocratically inconvenient way possible.
“You should still be careful,” he said, though his tone had lost some of its earlier edge. “Not everyone who takes an interest means well.”
“I do mean well,” Vale said dryly through the speaker.
“Yes, I know,” Silver replied. “You are infuriatingly sincere when it suits you.”
Lumina blinked.
“I like talking to her.”
Then, after a tiny pause, she added in her usual matter-of-fact way, “Celeste never has time.”
The words landed with more weight than she seemed to realise.
Silver’s gaze shifted to her fully.
“Never?”
Lumina hugged her arm a little.
“She’s always busy. Or helping someone else. Or doing important things.”
There was no venom in it.
No accusation.
Just the plain little sadness of a child who had noticed being left to the edges.
Silver’s expression cooled.
“How selfish,” he murmured.
Lumina, still looking at the glowing Arcbracer, gave a small nod.
“Yes.”
The corridor went quiet for half a beat.
From the speaker, Vale said nothing at first. But when she did speak again, her voice had gone a shade more careful.
“Silver,” she said, warning threaded neatly beneath the silk.
Before he could answer, Mezzo’s voice exploded over the old speaker system overhead, crackling through static loud enough to startle them all.
“Right, listen up, you gorgeous disasters, start getting ready to head out in ten—”
A burst of feedback shrieked through the hall.
Then Mezzo again, sharper now, with all the subtlety of a brick through stained glass:
“—and whoever put ink on Celeste’s uniform, you’re a twat.”
Silence.
Lumina looked up at the ceiling.
The Arcbracer gave a tiny chirp as Vale muted herself, whether out of tact or laughter Silver could not tell.
Silver stood very still for a moment.
Then, slowly, he smiled.
Small.
Sharp.
Entirely pleased with itself.
And without another word, he turned and walked on.
