Orestis materialised in his room at the inn and immediately registered that he was not alone.

  Eirene was seated near the window, one leg crossed over the other, a book resting open in her hands. She looked up as he arrived—not startled, just attentive—and smiled before closing the book and setting it aside.

  He did not react outwardly. Instead, he checked the wards he had meticulously set throughout the room.

  They were intact. Undisturbed. The thresholds sat precisely where he had left them, the alarms dormant. No probing, no displacement, no amateur tampering. Nothing suggested the room had been entered in any way his precautions were designed to detect.

  The wards hadn’t failed. They were still active.

  So how, precisely, had she gotten in?

  Interesting.

  He was still tracing the logic between the runes—looking for inconsistencies that weren’t there—when she spoke.

  “Happy birthday.”

  The words cut across his focus more effectively than any alarm would have. He looked up, reorienting himself to the room, to her, and—reluctantly—to the present moment.

  The wards were stable. Whatever had happened, it wasn’t ongoing. There would be time enough to unravel it later. For now, he set it aside with the care one reserved for puzzles that promised to be particularly irritating.

  “Thank you,” he replied, after a brief pause.

  He hadn’t expected her to remember the date, or to come because of it. The realization was faintly disorienting, and he set it aside before it could become anything more.

  People don’t usually surprise me. I’m not sure I like it.

  As he looked at her more closely, he noted a handful of small differences that didn’t resolve into anything dramatic. Her posture was steadier than he remembered, less inclined to shift at rest. Her clothes were plain, chosen for durability rather than display, and bore the quiet marks of use without neglect. Even her movements seemed more economical, as though she had learned which effort was worth spending and which was not.

  Nothing about her manner suggested strain. If anything, the opposite was true. The signs he’d have expected after prolonged travel were absent—her breathing and balance unremarkable in the way only bodies accustomed to steady use ever were. That ease didn’t quite align with her muscle tone, which showed no signs of deliberate physical training.

  She’s in better condition than she should be. Without having trained for it. File that away.

  He was still turning that discrepancy over when she reached into her satchel and withdrew a slim volume bound in faded blue. The cover bore the marks of age and frequent handling, the spine softened by use.

  “I don’t think this one is in your family library,” she said, offering it to him. “You can have fun correcting it.”

  He accepted the book, fingers testing the weight out of habit. The title alone told him her assessment was accurate.

  “Magic theory,” he observed.

  “Yes,” Eirene agreed. “Bad magic theory.”

  He looked up at her, one eyebrow lifting. “Thank you. I will treasure it.”

  She knows me far too well. A book I’m allowed to argue with—that’s a better gift than she realizes.

  She smiled, satisfied.

  Orestis glanced down at the parcel still in his hand—the cake, carefully wrapped and faintly warm—and judged it a sufficient offering. “Would you like some cake? It’s from my mother.”

  Eirene considered the package, then shook her head once. “Later. I’ve already eaten.”

  He nodded, crossed the room, and set the parcel on the small table beneath the window.

  After a brief pause, he said, “If you don’t mind walking, we could go out for a bit.”

  Interest sharpened in her expression. “I would. I haven’t seen much of the city yet.”

  “Orthessa is better observed on foot. At least at first.”

  That earned him a faint smile.

  He tucked the book into his satchel, checked the room once more out of habit, and moved toward the door.

  Eirene rose, collected her own satchel, and followed without hesitation.

  ***

  “So that’s why you left,” she said. “You were avoiding conscription.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  They were already moving, the street carrying them forward. Orestis did not slow.

  “Among other things. Yes,” he replied.

  She nodded, more acknowledgement than surprise. “Someone warned you.”

  “Yes.”

  Eirene accepted that without comment. After a moment, she added, “I understand why you didn’t tell me.”

  Orestis said nothing. The admission settled between them without discomfort.

  They walked on, the noise of the city filling the gap. Eirene’s pace was slightly slower than the crowd’s—unhurried in a way that suggested attention rather than distraction. She watched the people around them, noting how movement tightened and loosened in response to unseen constraints.

  Her gaze followed patterns that emerged and dissolved in real time—glances exchanged, paths subtly altered, conversations stalling for a breath before continuing—as the city redistributed load and carried on.

  “You can’t keep pointing to your father’s business forever,” she said eventually. “It works now, but it won’t hold. The registrars in Kallistrate will notice and start following up.”

  “They already have,” Orestis replied. “That’s why I stopped relying on it.”

  She glanced at him. “And?”

  “I found something more durable,” he said. “Consulting. Limited scope, fixed assignments, and inconvenient to interrupt. The Consortium was amenable.”

  That earned him a longer look. “You already spoke to them.”

  “Yes.”

  “And they agreed.”

  “They did not object,” he corrected. “Which, in their case, amounts to the same thing.”

  Eirene considered that, then nodded slowly. “That would do it.”

  “It should. As far as I can tell, it’s been filed, justified, and deprioritized.”

  She exhaled softly, something like relief flickering across her expression before it vanished again. “That’s good to hear.”

  He glanced at her. “And you? How are you handling conscription?”

  “I didn’t let it settle,” she said. “My name is on the lists, but nothing’s been assigned yet.”

  Orestis nodded. That told him enough.

  After a moment, she said, “My parents wrote after I left. They said they were handling it.” She paused, then added, “As long as I don’t go back to Kallistrate.”

  Influence applied at a distance. It would hold—until it didn’t.

  “So you’re staying put,” he said.

  “For now.”

  “Orthessa?”

  “Orthessa,” she confirmed. “I want to continue with my magic studies.”

  He looked at her—or rather, he focused on the way her mana moved. Unconstrained, responsive, lacking the familiar points of strain he’d have expected at her stage.

  That’s… not normal. Not for someone at her level. Not without an external explanation.

  “That would be good for you,” he said. A slower pace would give her mana channels time to adjust.

  “Yes,” Eirene agreed. “It is.”

  They walked on, the city rearranging itself around their shared silence, and for the moment, the path ahead appeared clear.

  Not long after, they turned back toward the inn, the conversation drifting to safer, less precise topics.

  ***

  They were sitting beside the small table in his room, plates balanced between them, when Eirene spoke. “Orestis?”

  “Yes?”

  She had been quiet for a while, working her way through the cake with the distracted focus she usually reserved for difficult problems. Now she was watching him instead, head tilted, as if lining something up.

  “When you teleported in earlier,” she said, carefully casual, “that wasn’t mana you used.”

  Orestis did not answer at once. He set his fork down and wiped his fingers on the napkin, buying himself a moment to think.

  There was no point pretending she had misread it. If she had noticed that much, she had already identified the texture of the power. Divine; not ambient. Borrowed; not drawn from within.

  She wasn’t asking whether it had been divine power. She was asking whose.

  Because as far as she knew, it was impossible to use divine power without a god’s blessing.

  And, just as importantly, she was ruling out the obvious explanations. She knew him too well to imagine secret temple vows or sudden faith. He did not kneel. He did not pray. He did not outsource responsibility.

  That left only one possibility: he’d been chosen by one of the gods. It was the obvious conclusion—and the wrong one.

  He considered deflecting. He considered lying. Both options felt clumsy, and clumsiness with Eirene had a way of compounding.

  After a moment, he decided he trusted her.

  “I’m not borrowing power,” he said evenly. “I’m stealing it.”

  For a heartbeat, she simply stared. Then she laughed once, sharply, the sound cutting off almost as soon as it began.

  “No. That’s not— You can’t just—”

  “I can. And I do.”

  Her expression shifted from disbelief to calculation, the same way it always did when something offended her sense of how the world was supposed to work.

  “… How?” she asked.

  Orestis smiled faintly. This was one of the things he liked about her. She never closed off her mind to the possibility that the world might be misbehaving. And she didn’t even consider that he might lie to her.

  She trusted him. So he told her.

  Not every safeguard. Not every contingency. But enough. He explained the divine reservoirs, the assumptions baked into divine accounting, the way power was tracked in aggregate rather than at the point of use. He explained how gods noticed devotion and miracles, not absence, and how small, clean withdrawals slid beneath attention if you knew where to take them from.

  By the time he finished, she was staring at him with open incredulity. “Wait. That actually works? They’re really that careless?”

  “They are consistent,” Orestis said. “Which is worse.”

  Consistency is the most exploitable trait in any system. Gods included.

  For a moment, she just looked at him. Then she shook her head, a smile creeping in despite herself—equal parts horror and delight.

  He knew that look.

  “You can try it, if you want,” he added, as lightly as if he were offering another slice of cake.

  Her eyebrows rose. “You’re serious.”

  “Yes. This room is warded.” He indicated one of the rune-marked objects he’d scattered around the place.

  She glanced at it, then scanned the room, her gaze catching on several others now that she knew what to look for—each tuned to blur, divert, and swallow divine signatures before they could echo outward.

  “Avoid the reservoirs of the Dark Gods. If you take at all, limit yourself to the lesser holy deities,” he warned, just in case. Then, to demonstrate, he raised a finger and drew divine power into it, letting it condense into a small sphere at the tip before dispersing it.

  Apparently convinced, she closed her eyes and focused on the principles he’d outlined.

  Orestis felt it immediately as the power answered her. The resonance snapped into place with sickening clarity.

  Of all the gods. Of all the possible reservoirs she could have reached for.

  His blood ran cold as he recognised the resonance.

  Eleuthera.

  “Eirene!” He was moving before he finished the word. “Stop.”

  She recoiled instinctively, cutting the connection at once. “What? What did I—”

  He was already braced, every sense tuned outward, waiting. For a moment, there was nothing.

  Then the pressure arrived.

  Not force. Not sound. Awareness—the unmistakable sensation of attention. Vast, patient, and suddenly aligned.

  A god had noticed.

  Orestis closed his eyes, steadied his breath, and cursed himself for ever thinking this was a safe thing to share.

  Eleuthera was watching.

  Patreon, along with extra lore and author notes.