The desk was too tall.
Or maybe I was too small.
Either way, the scrolls still stacked up the same—spilling out of drawers, left in inkwells, tucked behind maps and daggers and wax-sealed regrets.
Lincoln's desk.
His chair, too.
I sat in it anyway.
Ramon sat opposite me, one boot on the edge of the table, slouched like he didn't just watch me erase a man from existence. Like I wasn't pretending my ribs didn't scream every time I turned too far to the left.
"You should be resting," he said.
"I am."
He made a quiet sound of amusement, then picked up the next scroll.
"East grain levy. Storage rot again. They're asking for metal bins like the capital."
"Give them two," I said.
"Want to hear the rest of the request first?"
"No."
He moved to the next one. "This one's labeled urgent. Border outpost near Duskwater. Something about smugglers with cloaked mana signatures—"
"Send squads three and five. Tell them if they don't bring one back alive, I'll send them after what lives in the forest instead."
"That's cruel."
"That's motivation."
Ramon went quiet for a moment.
Then: "You know… you're weirdly good at this."
"At what?"
"This. Sorting resources. Knowing which squads to send. Who to threaten. Which nobles to ignore." A pause. "Like it's muscle memory."
I didn't answer.
He didn't push, just moved on.
The words were coming easier now. Cold. Clean. The kind of sharp you didn't have to shout to make people bleed.
Ramon kept reading.
I kept answering.
Until I didn't.
Something shifted in my coat pocket. A weight. A pull.
The gem.
I'd kept it there out of spite. Useless, heavy, slightly cracked. A gift from Lincoln that did nothing while Alcra nearly snapped my neck in the pit.
But now it was alive.
A faint warmth radiated from it. A whisper against my fingertips. Not speech. Not even mana. Just presence.
Like it was looking at me.
I held it in my palm, flat and still.
"You finally feel like working?" I muttered.
It pulsed once.
Then nothing.
I waited.
Still nothing.
Figures.
I set it on the table beside the reports and got back to work.
Ramon didn't ask. He just watched me, like he always did—quiet, patient, trying not to look like he cared too much.
Another scroll unrolled. "Complaint from a merchant lord about the arena. He says the match wasn't worth the gold. That your fight lacked 'pageantry.'"
"Let him refund himself in the pit. I'll even blindfold myself again."
"You were blindfolded."
"Exactly."
His chuckle was soft. He didn't press.
I didn't say anything else.
But the gem kept humming, just once every while.
Like it was learning my rhythm.
Or waiting for me to learn its.
Another scroll. Another complaint.
Ramon read, I judged. That was the rhythm. Simple. Brutal. Necessary.
We worked through three more before his voice shifted.
"King Hadrian's coming."
"How do you know?"
I didn't answer.
Then he felt it too.
A slow, deliberate pulse of mana, gold-threaded and heavy. It didn't try to hide itself, just moved like it belonged.
The door creaked open.
I didn't look up—wouldn't have mattered if I did—but the shape that entered was tall, calm, and cloaked in the familiar haze of leadership. There was a slight limp in his stride, a catch in the mana near his left hip—old injury.
"Mind if I intrude?" Hadrian asked.
"This isn't my office," I said.
A pause. Then the chair across from me shifted. Ramon stood to the side, quiet but present.
"I wanted to thank you," Hadrian said.
I didn't reply.
"Four days, and somehow the court's quieter than it's been in four years. The nobles are behaving. Troops are moving like clockwork. Even the city's breathing different."
"They're waiting for Lincoln."
"You're doing more than Lincoln."
His voice had no edge. No pressure.
"I hope you take your time before the Academy summons you," he continued. "You deserve the break."
"I don't need it."
"That's not the same as deserving one."
I pressed my thumb against the side of the gem. It was warm again. Just barely. Listening.
Hadrian's mana shifted faintly, like a hand reaching without touching.
"You've bought us time, Annabel. Time to recover. To reinforce. That's no small thing."
"It won't last."
"No. But it doesn't have to. Just long enough."
A pause.
"You said you're not Lincoln. You were right. He never would've taken the chair."
"I'm not him," I said again.
"No. You work harder."
He stood. The gold shimmer of him tilted as he turned toward the door.
"When the Academy calls, go. Learn everything you can. And come back sharper."
Another step.
"But rest first. Even a blade breaks if you never stop swinging."
His outline vanished past the door.
The silence felt larger now.
Ramon didn't sit again. Just leaned near the wall, arms crossed, watching me the way he always did—like he was still deciding if I was a weapon or a wound.
I didn't ask which one he thought I was today.
Then—
The gem pulsed again.
Harder.
Sharper.
Not warm anymore. Focused.
Like something was close.
The air thinned. The edge of mana in the room bent, subtly but completely. Not a teleport. Not a gate. A rupture.
I stood without thinking.
"Annabel?" Ramon said.
The door blew open.
No explosion. No wind. Just pressure—like the world took a breath and forgot to let it go.
And then he was there.
A silhouette. Tall. Still. Mana wrapped around him like armor worn too long. No heat. No malice. Just presence.
Lincoln.
The space around him hummed—not loud, not angry. Just full.
Something moved beside him.
I felt it before I saw it.
Mana, sharp and wrong and broken in ways I recognized from the pit. But no longer wild. No longer reaching.
Just… leashed.
A second figure stood behind him. Taller than me. A pulse like thorned wire.
Salem.
The gem on the desk burned ice-cold for a breath.
And then steadied.
Ramon didn't speak. Neither did I.
Lincoln took one step forward. Then another.
And set the room back on its axis.