Feby leaned in until her shoulder nearly touched his. Her voice came out thinner than she wanted it to.

"Do I sign this?"

Alex didn't look at the paper. He looked at her, and something in the steadiness of it made her breath catch-like he'd already read the whole document and half her life besides.

"Which one gets you there faster?" he asked quietly. "Reaching magician level three, or landing a manager's position at the Regent Group?"

She almost laughed. Level three. As if the words alone didn't sting.

She'd spent years pressing her palm to testing stones that stayed dark, years watching other students light them up like sunrise while hers gave back nothing but her own reflection.

Talent wasn't something you could bribe, borrow, or earn. You either had it or you spent your whole life pretending the ache of not having it didn't exist.

"The manager position," she said. "Of course."

Alex tilted his head closer, and his whisper dropped so low it was almost just breath. "Then here's a thought. Can we bribe the Regent Group manager to take you on — even for a month? We pay them. That's all we'd need. One month inside."

Feby raised her eyes to him slowly.

Bribe them. Just like that.

Simple, cold, obvious - the kind of idea that should have occurred to her and hadn't, because she'd been too busy drowning to think about swimming.

This man was smart. Smarter than a stranger with no name and no past had any right to be, and the question of who he actually was pressed against the back of her thoughts like a bruise she kept forgetting not to touch.

She exhaled. "Fine. I'll sign it."

She reached out and took the paper from Marta's hand. The page felt heavier than paper should.

Alex reached for it. "Let me read it for you first."

But Rael's hand snapped out and tore the document away before Alex's fingers could close on it.

"This is not for anyone outside the family," Rael said, holding it against his chest like something precious. "Don't touch it."

Something hot and immediate rose in Alex's chest — the urge to put the back of his hand across that smug face and watch it change shape.

His fingers curled once at his side. Then he let it go, because it wasn't the right move. Not here. Not yet.

Instead he turned to Feby, and he didn't whisper this time. He spoke clearly, evenly, loud enough for every person in that room to hear each word land.

"Read it carefully before you sign," he said. "They are not honest people."

The silence afterward had teeth.

Marta's face went red. Rael's went redder. Even the cousins by the door flushed and looked away, and not one of them — not one — opened their mouth to deny it.

Feby heard the silence. She heard it, and some small animal part of her understood exactly what it meant. But they were family.

That word had been stitched into her since before she could walk, and habits stitched that deep don't tear in a single afternoon. She picked up the pen. Her hand didn't shake, which surprised her.

She signed.

Then Marta smiled, folded the paper away, and said, "You have thirty days. Only thirty."

The floor seemed to shift under Feby's feet.

Thirty days. No one had said anything about a time limit. Not once, not in any conversation, not in any of the terms they'd laid out at this table. How does a deadline simply appear after the ink is already dry? Her mouth opened. Nothing useful came out of it.

Rael was laughing. Actually laughing, warm and easy, like they were sharing a joke instead of a knife.

"Next time," he said, "read the small print."

And Feby stood there with her own signature drying on their paper and understood, fully and finally, the shape of what had just happened.

She'd been lied to. By her own blood, in her own presence, with a stranger standing beside her who had warned her out loud and been proven right in under a minute.

She didn't cry. She wanted that on the record, somewhere, for someone. She didn't cry.

Thirty days. That was what the document said, and Marta Rydell made sure to say it twice more before they left the house — slowly, clearly — so no one could later claim they hadn't understood the terms.

Feby didn't sleep well that first night. She lay staring at the ceiling and counting, and the numbers kept coming up short no matter how she arranged them.

The next morning, Alex noticed, the way he noticed most things - the shadows under her eyes at breakfast, the way she stirred her tea long after the sugar had dissolved.

He said nothing about it directly. Some kindnesses work better silent.

Without warning, a small bird darted through the open window, dropped a polished tile onto the table with a soft clack, and vanished as quickly as it had appeared. \

Alex jolted in surprise, but Febyella merely chuckled.

"A bird post," she said, as if it were

the most normal thing in the world. She picked up the small packet opened it and held the tile out

him. "This is your identity tile. Your name is already printed inside."

She set her own tile down beside his. A glowing number immediately materialized—

$20—and smoothly transferred from her tile to his.

"You'll need that money," she added quietly.

Alex looked at the tile a moment longer before sliding it into his pocket. "I'm borrowing it," he said. "I'll pay you back tonight. I'm heading out.”

"Where are you going?" Febyella asked, tilting her head.

"I'm a man. I need to find real work," he answered. "I heard they're hiring to load crates at the tram depot on Ashford Row. Daily pay for manual labor.”

"It's very hard work," she said softly.

"That kind of job suits me. I'll handle it. Even if it's hard." Alex gave a small nod and walked out the door.

None of it was true.

The real truth sat lightly against his finger: the spatial ring. Within its silent, folded dimension rested the accumulated wealth of a king — sovereign of three countries.

Rookwood Row smelled like rust and old rain. The pawnshop sat wedged between a shuttered butcher and a laundry, its windows so caked with grime that the merchandise behind them was just shapes in fog.

No name above the door. No prices in the window. Perfect.

A bell coughed rather than rang when Alex stepped inside.

The broker was a small man with quick eyes, the kind that measured a customer's shoes before his face. He didn't stand. He just watched Alex cross the floor, and Alex could feel himself being priced with every step.

Alex set the necklace on the counter.

The broker's fingers went still. Just for a breath - half a breath - before the performance began. He picked it up, turned it under the lamp, and sighed like the metal had personally disappointed him.

"Hm." The broker squinted through a

Pet

loupe. "Plating's tired. Clasp's foreign. Hard to move a piece like this." He set the necklace down with the tenderness of a man handling garbage Honestly friend call it fake. Three hundred. And that's me being generous."

Alex said nothing. He looked at the necklace. Then at the man. Then, slowly, at the lamp between them — a fine brass thing, old, well-kept, the only honest object in the

room.

"Fake," Alex said. "Funny. I watched you know exactly what it's worth. Your hands stopped moving before your mouth started."

The broker smiled the smile of a man who had won this game a thousand times,

and leaned back in his chair like the conversation was already over.

"Friend, in this neighborhood, a thing is worth what I say it's worth. That's a fake-worse, it's stolen, lifted off some showcase by a man to new in this city to know how it works." His voice dropped, warm and reasonable, the way a knife slides in warm and reasonable.

"So here's how it goes. I buy it at my price, and you thank me for the favor. Because

if you don't let me buy it..." He spread his hands, almost apologetic. "You'll never

step out of this shop at all."