The heat came first.
Not warm. Hot. The specific kind that went under the skin and pulled at things from the inside, knitting and tightening and doing whatever healing magic did at a level Arthur couldn't see and didn't fully want to think about.
He snapped back into his own body like a door slamming shut.
Light. Tilted. The alley wall against his back and Roz standing on his chest with both front hooves pressed flat to his neck and his red eyes open wider than Arthur had ever seen them.
"Don't move." Roz's voice had lost its flat quality. Something underneath it that hadn't been there before. "The healing isn't finished."
Arthur didn't move.
He looked at the sky above the alley. Same morning light. Same angle. Like nothing had happened.
'THANK GOD.' Vexis dropped straight down, gold eyes wide, voice cracking at the top of it. 'I thought — you just — YOUR BODY WAS NOT MOVING—'
Arthur opened his mouth.
"What happened." His voice came out wrong. Rough and low, like something had been scraped across it.
"What happened." Roz pulled his hooves back and sat down on Arthur's chest. His ear twitched once. "You almost died is what happened. My healing isn't potent. I never intended to become a healing bellus. But you were bleeding out on the ground so I made do." He fixed Arthur with those red eyes. "You are extremely difficult to keep alive, brat."
Arthur lay there for a second and let that land.
Then he reached up and touched his neck.
Rough. Raised at the center. The wound was closed but the skin over it had that tight specific feeling of something that had sealed wrong and was going to stay that way.
That's going to scar.
"The hooded figure," Arthur said. "Did they get away?"
"Yes." Roz stepped off his chest onto the ground. "I managed a magic pierce to their left shoulder before they ran. Wind type acceleration. Fast."
Arthur sat up slowly. The alley tilted and then settled.
"Left shoulder," he said. "If the attacker is a student. That's traceable."
"Presumably."
'Why is any of this happening.' Vexis appeared at his right shoulder, voice dropping back toward its usual register but not all the way. Something still running underneath it. 'I am a Lestilaut. My father holds an ArchMagus seat. Who looks at this family and decides that is a reasonable target?'
Arthur looked at the blood on his uniform.
That's exactly why someone wants you dead.
'What.'
He didn't answer.
Vexis went quiet in the specific way that meant he'd heard it.
Arthur got to his feet using the wall.
His legs held. Barely.
He looked down at his uniform. The front of it was dark from the collar down. Already drying at the edges. The kind of stain that didn't come out.
I need to change before class.
He started walking.
His brain was trying to organize itself and doing a bad job of it. The analysis kept starting and stopping, hitting the image of the wall and the gloved hand and breaking apart every time.
Was Havier a false flag.
He turned it over.
Havier had two blades on his belt and three years of compressed fury and a timid persona he had built specifically to get close. That was real. That had been real. He hadn't imagined the way Havier moved or the way his face broke when Arthur said the right wrong thing.
Havier had genuinely intended to kill Vexis.
But so had someone else.
Someone faster. Someone with wind acceleration and a clean practiced grab and no words at all.
Two people. Same target. Same window.
He had redirected the first death flag and walked straight into the second one without knowing it existed.
He clenched his jaw.
Okay. Think about this later. Change first. Think later.
The estate was quiet when he came through the gate. Same maids. Same butlers. Same twenty voices saying the same thing in perfect unison and he walked through it the same as always.
He took the stairs to Vexis's room and pushed the door open.
He was halfway to the wardrobe when he caught himself in the mirror.
He stopped.
Vexis's face looked back. Blonde hair still pushed back from however he'd slept. Gold eyes. The uniform a mess.
And at the throat, just above the collar line, the scar starting to form. Pink and raised and specific. The kind of mark that didn't care whether you wanted it or not.
He stood there and looked at it for a second.
Then he opened the wardrobe and got changed.
He was pulling the collar straight when the door opened.
Not knocked. Opened.
Golden hair first. The kind of blonde that sat somewhere between Vexis's gold and something lighter, worn long and loose. Blue eyes, the clear deep kind, already moving across the room until they found him and stopped.
White academy uniform. Younger. The crest the same but smaller.
The sting came at the back of Arthur's skull before the memory fully arrived.
Welya Lestilaut.
Vexis's younger sister.
"Maid Ourel said you left before sunrise and came back like this." Her eyes went to the collar. To the line of the scar above it. Her voice was sharp in the specific way that meant she was scared and wasn't going to say so. "What happened to you."
Arthur's voice came out soft before he decided on it.
"Don't worry, Wel. I'm fine."
"You are standing in a room that smells like blood."
"Pig blood." Arthur cleared his throat. "I was cutting through the merchants' section near the butcher stalls. One of them had a bad morning. Splattered everywhere."
Welya looked at him.
Not at the excuse. At him. The way she was looking said she had already decided something about the excuse and was choosing what to do with that decision.
"You're sure," she said.
"I'm sure."
A beat.
Then she closed the door.
Not softly. Not loudly. Just closed.
Arthur stood in the quiet room and looked at the closed door.
She knew.
She'd looked at the scar line above the collar and she'd looked at his face and she'd accepted the pig blood story anyway. Not because she believed it.
Because she chose to.
He turned back to the mirror.
The scar sat there above the collar, pale and raised and permanent, and his reflection looked back at him with Vexis's face and said nothing useful.
I guess I can die twice.