The noise hit him before the door even opened.
Music. Loud, stringed, the kind that bounced off every wall and came back at you from three directions.
Arthur stepped inside and took it all in at once. Knights in half-removed armor hunched over tables. Women moving between them with drinks and easy smiles. Two men near the back arguing about something with the energy of people who'd been at it for a while.
The air was warm and thick.
His eye twitched.
Turn it down.
He stood there for a second and caught himself.
That was strange.
He used to like loud music. Back home, genuinely liked it. Metal, rock, the kind of stuff that shook the desk. He'd had playlists specifically for late nights at the computer. Noise never bothered him.
This bothered him.
He filed that away next to the mouth thing, and the body memory thing, and the fact that somewhere in the back of his chest he'd felt almost satisfied when he shut Ivan down in the carriage.
Am I becoming more Vexis? Or is Vexis becoming less of something I can separate from myself?
He didn't have an answer. He wasn't sure he wanted one yet.
Ivan had already disappeared into the crowd the second they walked in. Gone. Absorbed instantly like he'd been waiting his whole life for a place exactly like this.
Cael stayed behind him. Quiet, as always. Arthur had started to notice that Cael didn't drift. Didn't get distracted. He just followed, steady, like a shadow that had decided to stay.
Vexis's body knew where to go. Arthur let it lead.
Past the main floor, past the bar, through a half-open curtain at the back. A separate room. Smaller. Softer light. A red sofa in the middle and a red-haired man sitting on it like he owned the building, which he possibly did. A girl on either side of him. A bowl of grapes on the table.
Vak.
He looked up when Arthur walked in and his whole face opened up.
"Vex! You're here." He gestured broadly at nothing in particular. "Sit down, sit down. You want wine?"
"I'm fine."
Arthur sat across from him. Cael positioned himself near the curtain and said nothing.
Vak looked good. That was the thing about people like this. They always looked good. Well-fed, relaxed, comfortable in their own skin in the way that came from never having had a real problem. He popped another grape into his mouth and leaned back.
"You seem tense," Vak said. "Relax. We had a good week."
"I heard."
"Better than good actually." He picked up his wine glass and turned it slowly. "The operation is moving faster than I expected. New intake, supply's holding steady. Give it two more months and we're not just playing in the small end anymore."
Operation.
The word landed and Arthur waited. The sting came a second later, sharp at the back of his skull, and the memory opened up behind it like a door kicked in.
Underprivileged students. Academy kids from the lower rungs with no money and no connections and no one checking on them. Running errands. Carrying things. Doing the kind of work that couldn't be traced back to anyone with a real name. Vexis had been part of building it. Not the top of it. But not far from it either.
Arthur sat with that for a moment.
This guy whose body he was wearing had been running something genuinely ugly.
"Glad to hear it," Arthur said. The words came out flat. Measured. Not Vexis exactly. Just Arthur deciding to play it straight until he knew more.
Vak grinned. "That's what I like about you Vex. No fuss." He set the glass down and leaned forward slightly, elbows on his knees. "Oh. Before I forget. Our families are doing a banquet next week. You're coming obviously."
"Obviously."
"Good." The grin shifted. Something behind it now. "Maybe you can finally introduce me to your sister properly. She is…" he paused for effect and let the smile do the rest of the work.
Something moved in Arthur's chest that wasn't his.
His mouth opened.
"Touch my sister and I'll cut your hands off before I move on to the rest of you."
Vak blinked.
"I'm serious, Vak. Look at me." Arthur's voice was low and completely still. "Don't. You. Dare."
A beat of silence.
Then Vak raised both hands and laughed it off. "Alright, alright. Forget I said anything." He reached for his glass again. "Sensitive today."
Arthur leaned back and said nothing.
He wasn't sure how much of that had been Vexis and how much had been him. He wasn't sure it mattered. The feeling behind it was the same either way.
"Anyway." Vak's tone shifted. Back to business. "The next phase. I want to start moving toward Elven Tears."
Arthur kept his face still.
Elven Tears.
He knew what that was. Elf blood and fragmented rupture cores, combined in a process that took months and required materials that weren't legal anywhere in the country. The result was a substance that flooded the body with aetheric blood. Temporarily. Violently. Like forcing the Mageia Core to run at twice its capacity.
The novel had mentioned it exactly once. In passing. As a thing that existed, somewhere, without details.
This was the details.
"That's not a small step," Arthur said carefully.
"No," Vak agreed. "That's the point. Gaspron is just the entrance. Elven Tears is the door." He tapped the table twice. "Whoever controls the supply of that in this city controls who gets strong and who stays weak. You understand what that means?"
Arthur understood exactly what it meant.
He also understood that this had nothing to do with the plot of the novel as he knew it. No black market subplot in the early chapters. No Elven Tears operation. No Vak at all.
Which meant one of two things. Either the author had written all of this and never made it to the page before quitting. Or this was something that existed underneath the story, in the gaps Arthur had skimmed over, and he had simply never been paying attention to the right things.
Either way he was in it now.
"I'll need to think about the next steps," Arthur said.
Vak nodded like that was the expected answer. "Take your time. We've got room."
The curtain moved.
The butler stepped through, back straight, expression professionally apologetic. "Master Vexis. Your curfew is approaching. The Patriarch has requested you return to the estate."
The word Patriarch landed in Arthur's stomach like a stone dropped in still water.
He stood up.
"Take care Vex." Ivan's voice came from somewhere across the main floor, already half-absorbed into whatever conversation he'd found. "I'm staying."
Arthur pushed through the curtain without answering him.
Outside the private room the noise of the main floor hit again. He moved through it and out the front door and the cold air of the Ampshire district street met his face.
Cael was right behind him.
They walked toward the carriage in silence. The butler moved ahead to open the door. Arthur was about to step in when Cael spoke.
"Vex."
He stopped.
"Are you sure about this?"
Arthur turned slightly. Cael's expression was the same as it always was. Still. Giving nothing away. But he'd said it quietly, like the words were meant only to reach as far as Arthur's ears and no further.
This wasn't a casual question.
This was a man who had been standing in that room listening to Vak talk about supply lines and Elven Tears and the word empire, and had followed Arthur out instead of staying, and was now asking him quietly whether he was sure.
"Yes," Arthur said.
Cael held his eyes for a moment. Then nodded once.
"Take care."
Arthur got into the carriage. The door closed. He watched Cael through the window, standing still on the pavement as the carriage pulled away, getting smaller until the road curved and he disappeared.
Arthur rested both elbows on his knees and pressed his hands against his face.
Okay.
Okay.
Vexis Lestilaut was tangled up in a black market operation working toward one of the most dangerous illegal substances in the country. He had a sister someone was already looking at the wrong way. He had a Patriarch who expected him home by curfew like a dog on a leash.
He had a contact who was building something that wasn't in the novel, which meant Arthur had no idea where it went or how it ended.
And he had thirteen days left.
What did you get into, Vexis.
What the hell did you get into.