Chapter 2

Eighty gold pieces a month. Plus a twenty percent dividend on every high-tier potion sold.

I slammed the heavy leather pouch onto my new workbench. The gold coins clinked—a heavy, beautiful sound. It took me exactly three days to secure the High Alchemist position at the Central Guild. My master-level healing drafts practically sold themselves. Lilith was currently sitting in the Guild’s private back room, warming her hands by a roaring, rune-fed fire, eating fresh roasted meat. We were safe. We were fed.

On my third afternoon, I stepped out of the Guild to buy fresh blood-weed from the market square. The freezing wind bit my cheeks.

Loud, shrill screaming cut through the market noise.

I stopped behind a merchant’s cart. A few yards away, Arthur stood in his gleaming silver Knight Commander armor. Elena clung tightly to his arm. Her son, Damian, lay flat on the freezing cobblestones, kicking his boots and shrieking.

Damian pointed a chubby, gloved finger at a vendor’s cart. He wanted a glowing Levitation Crystal. An expensive, imported toy. Arthur frowned, his hand hovering over his coin pouch, clearly hesitating at the exorbitant price.

Elena pulled a paper bag from her fur-lined cloak. She pulled out a pink, frosted sugar cookie.

"Look, Damian," she cooed. "Sweet cakes. Don't cry."

Damian slapped her hand. The cookie flew through the air and landed squarely in a puddle of freezing mud. He screamed louder.

I watched Arthur. The great, honorable Knight Commander of the Realm let out a heavy sigh. He knelt in the dirt, staining his white cape. He picked up the mud-caked, ruined cookie, brushed off a few loose pebbles, and shoved it back into the paper bag.

A wave of pure disgust rolled through my stomach. I turned on my heel and walked straight back to my laboratory.

An hour later, the heavy oak door of my lab swung open.

Arthur marched in, his armor clanking loudly against the stone floors. Elena trailed softly behind him, wiping her perfectly dry eyes with a lace handkerchief.

Arthur marched right up to my workbench. He placed a crumpled, grease-stained paper bag next to my boiling cauldron.

"For Lilith," Arthur said, his voice dripping with forced, holy concern. "We worried about you, Aria. The Winterlands are unforgiving."

I stared at the bag. I smelled the street dirt mixing with the cheap sugar.

"I’m brewing a volatile Grade-Four restorative, Arthur," I said. I didn't look up from my mortar and pestle. I crushed a dried root with violent force. "Leave before you break my concentration and blow this entire floor to ash."

Elena stepped out from behind his broad shoulders. She sniffled.

"Aria, please," she whispered, her voice trembling. "It’s so hard. Being a widow. Damian has no father. We have nothing. I need a way to support my poor boy."

Arthur crossed his arms. His jaw set into that familiar, self-righteous line. "The Knights' Order has a strict mandate. Widows of fallen soldiers receive priority placement for city employment. Elena needs an alchemy position. She will take yours."

My hand stopped. The pestle froze in the stone bowl.

He wanted my job. The lifeline I just secured for my daughter. He wanted to rip it out of my hands and hand it to his parasite.

"The Guild needs scribes," I said, my voice dangerously tight. "They need inventory clerks. I will speak to the Guildmaster. He can find her a desk in the archives."

Elena dropped the lace handkerchief. Her tearful expression vanished instantly. The corners of her mouth curled up into a sharp, vicious smirk.

"But I like this position, Aria," she said. Her voice lost all its breathy weakness. It rang out thin and greedy. "It pays so well. And it looks so prestigious."

Ice flooded my veins. The phantom cold of the Winterlands clawed at my throat. The memory of Lilith’s blue, frozen lips flashed behind my eyes. She didn't want to work. She wanted my survival. She wanted to strip me to the bone.

Arthur stepped closer, looming over my table. He tapped his iron gauntlet against the wood.

"You are my wife, Aria," he commanded. "You represent my honor. The public looks to us. Have some decency. Make the sacrifice. If you refuse, I will have the Knights' Order legally terminate your employment today."

I grabbed a glass vial. I slammed it down onto the table. The glass shattered, slicing my palm. I didn't care.

"Sacrifice?" I spat the word out like poison. I stepped right into Arthur’s face. "I gave her my ancestral home. I gave her my bed. I gave her my husband. What else is there, Arthur? You want to drain my blood into a cup for her to drink?"

Arthur’s face flushed dark red. He reached into his cloak and pulled out an official parchment, stamped with the golden seal of the Knights' Order. A requisition mandate.

I looked at the heavy wax seal. I could blast him through the wall right now. My magic boiled right beneath my skin. But I stopped.

The Contract Law of this continent ruled everything. If I attacked a Knight Commander executing an official Guild mandate, I became a criminal. I would lose my legal standing. I would lose the protection of the law.

I needed to destroy them completely. Not with a fireball, but with an ironclad, inescapable trap.

I wiped the spilled potion from my bleeding hand. I looked at Arthur’s furious, pathetic face. Then I looked at Elena’s triumphant smirk.

"Fine," I said. My voice dropped to a dead, lethal calm. I stepped away from the workbench. "Take the desk. Take the cauldrons."

Arthur let out a heavy breath, his chest puffing out with pride. He thought he won. He thought he tamed his hysterical wife in the name of the Greater Good.

He had no idea I was about to burn his entire world to the ground.