Chapter 52:

  Closing Perspectives (2 of 5)

  Emelia hadn’t allowed herself to feel hopeful in months. Yet only a few hours after meeting Sam, she felt it anyway.

  She couldn’t quite understand why. Maybe it was the ease of his kindness, or the sincerity behind his offer. Maybe it was simply the warmth of being treated like a person again after so long. Whatever the reason, she allowed herself to believe, if only for a moment, that everything might be alright.

  In the late hours of the evening, the guards pulled her from her cell, and escorted her inside the manor. When she had first been brought in, Emelia had expected to be marched into a courtroom to stand judgment before the Duke and his retainers.

  Instead, she was taken onto a rune lift and carried downward into the manor’s depths, emerging not in a hall of justice, but within the Duke’s very own private study.

  More surprising still, upon being ushered into the room, the Duke sat quietly beside his fireplace and raised a glass to her as she was led to the chair across from him by the large man she had attempted to rob just a few nights before.

  Sitting on the table between them, her father’s work lay unveiled, removed from the leather case in which it had been concealed. Upon seeing it so close within her reach after believing it lost forever, emotion surged without warning, and she could not stop the tears that spilled from her one remaining eye.

  “You may,” the Duke said simply.

  Without waiting for any further prompt, Emelia took two quick steps to the table, scooped up her father’s work, and held it tight against her chest as if it might be stolen again if she loosened her grip for even a moment.

  “Why?” she asked meekly. “You of all people should know the value of such a thing. Why are you giving it back to me?”

  The Duke took a long drag from his pipe, then followed it with a slow drink from a glass filled with amber liquid.

  “Because my dear friend’s nephew asked it of me,” he said with a tired sigh, “and despite my better judgment…” He exhaled smoke through his nose. “I’m choosing to trust his instincts over my own.”

  Emelia hadn’t understood who the Duke was referring to but based on the limited amount of information she had to work with she silently voiced her guess out loud.

  “Sam?”

  The Duke nodded in confirmation, and then finally sat down his empty glass before placing his focus on her with a more critical gaze.

  “Samuel is, to me, as good as family. I will always treat him as such, and with that comes certain privileges not extended to others. You, however, are only here by his word and my own curiosity. So I will question you privately and give you a chance to explain yourself before I make any decisions concerning your future. Is that acceptable to you, Miss Embers?”

  At the sound of her family name, Emelia sat up straight in her chair and held the Duke’s piercing gaze.

  She hadn’t expected him to know that name. More than that, the fact that he did know it, and yet hadn’t immediately ordered her sent back to her family, was even more shocking.

  “How… do you know my name?” Emelia asked timidly.

  The Duke smirked despite himself, clearly pleased with the effect his words had on her.

  “Do not mistake me for some noble who has never strayed beyond the comfort of his estate, Miss Embers. Though I find my post dull, it is no less valuable than the lessons I earned in my younger years of adventuring. Because of such paths, I am quite familiar with the craft of your family… and the risks of harboring you within my walls.”

  Before Emelia could ask another question, the Duke cut her off and began to ask many of his own.

  One question became two, then three, until Emelia lost track of when she had last been allowed to breathe without answering something. The Duke’s voice never rose, and despite the lack of hostility in his words, the pressure of his attention only grew heavier with every passing moment.

  Minutes quickly turned into hours, and then, as if finally satisfied and having come to his own conclusion on the matter, the Duke brought the conversation to an end.

  He sighed deeply, and as if she had been waiting for that exact breath, the strawberry blonde woman at his side stepped forward and poured him another drink.

  “If you are to remain a guest within my city, then you will do so under certain conditions,” the Duke said with finality. “First, you will train alongside Samuel in the valley over the next season or so, until you are strong enough to keep your own path safe without relying on me or anyone else. If what you carry is truly as precious as you claim, then it is your responsibility to become strong enough to protect it.”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The Duke took another drink from his glass, inspected its contents critically, then took yet another sip.

  “Secondly, you will make yourself useful to me. If you are to remain within the boundaries of my protection, then you will earn your place here. Your family’s pedigree is not unknown to me, Miss Feist. Nor is your expertise.”

  The Duke’s gaze hardened.

  “You will put it to work. You will assist my craftsmen, reinforce my estate, and improve what already stands. And should I find your abilities worthy, you will extend those improvements beyond these walls as well. My city does not survive on goodwill alone. It survives on preparation.”

  Upon hearing the Duke’s words, Emelia rose to her feet and bowed respectfully to the man before her. He had been more than generous, and she knew he was taking a considerable risk by harboring her within his city.

  “Thank you,” Emelia said earnestly. “I will do my best while within your care.”

  “Very well,” the Duke said as he rose from his chair. “You may remain in one of the manor’s rooms on the upper floor for the time being. If you choose to stay elsewhere, you need only inform me or my guards of your location.”

  Emelia paused, weighing her options. One thought in particular surfaced, and though it felt a little presumptuous… Sam had offered, though not to the extent with which she was now considering.

  “I would be grateful to remain here for a few days while I settle,” she said. “But, I’d also like to visit Sam.”

  She hesitated, choosing her words carefully.

  “He told me that if I ever needed a friend, I could seek him out. Plus, I imagine the valley is far more secluded than the city. If he has space, it may be… safer for everyone involved.”

  “Are you intending to stay with him?” the Duke asked, raising an eyebrow.

  Before Emelia had a chance to respond, she noticed an oddly jealous look cross the female guard’s face as she stood beside the Duke, and a barely contained laugh from one of the guards who stood at the doorway. The outburst was followed by an audible oomph as the larger guard elbowed him in the side.

  The Duke pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed once again.

  “Darren, please take this young woman to a spare room upstairs, and see that her accommodations are adequately prepared. We will establish a more formal schedule tomorrow, but for now, I believe I will retire for the evening.”

  “Yes, your Grace,” the large man said, opening the door and escorting Emelia from the study. She kept both arms wrapped around the leather parcel, clutching it tightly to her chest as she followed Darren through the quiet corridors and up to the manor’s upper floors.

  After making the proper arrangements and ensuring the servants would provide for her needs, Darren finally left Emelia alone in her room.

  For a moment, she simply stood there taking everything in.

  The luxury felt almost absurd considering her experiences over the first half of the season. A clean bed. A bathroom. Soft carpets beneath her boots. Real walls surrounding her, free of iron bars. Only a few nights earlier she had been confined to the Duke’s holding cells just outside the manor grounds. For weeks before that, she had moved from place to place, staying in the lowest quality of inns, on the streets when necessary, and even as a stowaway aboard ships that carried her across the sea to Saltbrine, all to evade her pursuers. It had been enough… until it wasn’t.

  As her eyes traced the room, Emelia found herself cataloging the rune work embedded throughout the various luxuries provided to her. Compared to her father’s script, it was crude. Functional, yes, but inelegant. The lines lacked refinement, the symmetry was sloppy, and the author of the script had used far more runes than necessary to achieve a decidedly subpar result. It worked, but only just.

  That, she had always believed, was the failing of most craftsmen. They sacrificed form for function, content to achieve results without regard for beauty or intention. In her family’s archives, such work had once been described with cutting bluntness: like a man who lay with his wife without care for her pleasure. Effective enough to produce an heir, perhaps… but utterly devoid of passion or respect.

  Emelia forced her mind away from such criticism for the time being and turned her attention to bathing for the first time in what felt like forever. She soaked in the warm water and scrubbed away the grime of the past several months. To her quiet horror, the water’s color darkened steadily as she washed, and served as a stark reminder of just how pitiful she must have looked to others.

  There were so many small tragedies she had learned to set aside during her time on the run, but of them all, it was the lack of opportunity to advance her craft that stung the most.

  That realization almost made her laugh.

  Her once beautiful face had been permanently marred by fire, yet it was the lack of time progressing her craft that hurt more than anything.

  Emelia exhaled slowly and let the frustration pass. The Duke had made his expectations clear, and she intended to take him at his word. She would become capable of taking care of herself, and she would do so as quickly as she was able.

  When she finally scrubbed herself back to acceptable decency, Emelia wrapped herself in the thick robe a servant had left behind for her, and crossed the room to the desk where she had placed her father’s work. The leather parcel had been wrapped tightly, and as she carefully peeled back its layers, she let out a quiet sigh of relief.

  The contents within were more or less unmolested.

  Before her lay a small notebook that had once belonged to her father, its burned edges preserved at the cost of her own beauty. Beside it rested the metallic instrument she had watched him craft over countless nights, during those prodigious moments of insight granted by the family’s Legacy.

  It was compact and carefully balanced, shaped for a single steady hand, its form dictated entirely by purpose. A short grip anchored the device, while the rest extended forward into a rigid, hollow length of metal. Along its side sat a rotating chamber of three identical openings, each perfectly measured and precisely aligned.

  Threaded through its frame were lines of runework so fine they seemed almost incidental, etched shallow and exact in a spiral down the hollow length to guide power with deliberate efficiency. There was no excess, no wasted motion in either metal or magic. This was craftsmanship as it was meant to exist, where care, beauty, and power were bound together in a single work of art.

  Emelia did not need to compare line for line to know how far her own skill still fell from her father’s. His work carried decades of practice and hard earned understanding, shaped by discipline and experience as much as by the Legacy itself.

  She drew a steady breath and set the parcel aside as she considered her future. No matter what came next, she would not shame his memory, nor would she ever allow his work to fall into the hands of lesser men ever again.