Rem woke up before the bell.
He always did. Habit. Nerves. survival instinct. Call it whatever.
The dorm the Academy had given him was clean in a way that annoyed him. Whitewashed stone. Folded sheets. No fingerprints on anything. There wasn't even dust in the high corners where dust is supposed to win.
He sat up in the dim blue of early light and listened.
No footsteps creeping past his door. No rats. No bottles breaking in an alley. No shouting. No muffled argument threatening to turn into a knife fight in the hallway.
Just the low, distant hum of the Academy's warding arrays sliding through the bones of the building.
So this is what rich people sleep under, he thought. Walls that tell danger to stay polite.
He rubbed a hand down his face and then over his sternum.
Still there.
That heat again.
Deep behind his ribs, low and heavy like banked coals under iron. Quiet, contained, aware. It didn't flare in daylight. It didn't try to jump his skin. It just pulsed. Like something was asleep and dreaming under there, and the dream was not peaceful.
He exhaled.
"Yeah. I feel you," he muttered to his own chest. "Stay down."
He swung his legs out of bed and dropped to the floor.
Push-ups first. Slow. Controlled. Until his shoulders burned and the veins in his forearms stood up like ink under skin. Then pull-ups on the support beam above his bed, weight folding and unfolding, muscles in his back firing like cables. Then balance drills.
The dagger leaned against the wall by the bedside.
Most people would call it a weapon. Rem felt like weapon was too light a word. Weapons were objects. This thing was a problem.
He picked it up with both hands.
It nearly yanked his entire body forward.
"Still disrespectful, I see," he told it.
He locked it into the brace at his lower back. The Academy had modified the harness so he could wear it horizontal, low across his hips. The dagger sat there like a black shard of night metal, heavy enough to bend the spine of anyone normal.
He moved with it.
Short steps. Pivot. Drop center of gravity. Turn from the hips, not from the shoulders. Keep the weapon under him instead of letting it swing him like a tail.
Livesey's voice sat in his head, dry and insulting.
Not your spine, idiot. Ground first. Build from the floor, not from your pride.
Rem breathed, flexed, adjusted.
Good. Better. Not perfect. He wasn't dumb enough to pretend.
He'd just finished a low turn when he heard voices in the hallway outside his door.
"That's him," someone whispered. "Look. He's up already, training."
"Don't stare," someone else hissed.
"I'm not staring. I'm evaluating."
"You're staring. If Lady Verran sees you gawking at her hound she's going to..."
Rem's jaw tightened.
Hound.
He didn't stomp out there and bounce their heads off the wall, which was incredible self-control from him. He'd been called a lot worse than hound. Street rat. Trashspawn. Body mule. F-rank baggage. Pick your favorite.
He wasn't angry about them talking about him.
He was angry because calling him Evelyn Verran's hound meant saying Evelyn Verran needed a hound. Needed protection. Needed someone to stand in front of her just so she wouldn't get crushed.
That was wrong.
He'd seen her face down a nightmare and refuse to blink.
He'd seen her hold a spirit circle steady while shaking, bloody, stubborn, refusing to die.
These kids in pressed jackets and good hair had the story backwards and they didn't even know it.
He slid the dagger back into place, rolled his shoulders until his joints popped, and pulled on the Academy jacket.
He didn't button it.
The collar sat too high. The cravat they'd issued him still sat, folded, on the desk. He looked at it. Then he ignored it in a way that should have counted as a crime here.
Boots. Trousers. Blade. Done.
He caught his reflection in the wall mirror. The Academy gave him a real mirror. Polished. No cracks.
He didn't look like a porter anymore.
He didn't look like them, either.
He looked like something they hadn't written a rule for yet.
He grinned at his own reflection. "Good."
The Academy was already awake when he hit the hall.
Students in dark jackets and tight collars walked in twos and threes, talking in the low, careful way nobles talk when they think their words will end up in a history book. The air smelled clean. Too clean. Like talc and ink and flowers meant to hide sweat.
Rem cut through a glass-roofed corridor on his way to the lecture wing, and that's where he noticed it.
Security.
Not prefects playing at discipline. Not smug seniors with batons. Real security.
Two men in lightplate stood at the far arch talking in a loose way that meant they were relaxed because they'd already decided how to kill you if you moved wrong. Their armor wasn't Academy-issue. Palace-grade, clean sigils woven into the pauldrons. Those short spears they carried hummed with bound runes.
They weren't guarding a door.
They were guarding air.
He slowed one beat. Not enough to show it. Enough to make the picture.
That wasn't for him.
That was for someone else.
He filed it and kept walking.
The final-year lecture hall was already full. He felt the little wave of attention break over him when he walked in. People always went quiet for a heartbeat now.
Then the current started.
"That's him."
"Look at his shoulders."
"Is he actually carrying that slab on his back?"
"No cravat. Gods. No shame."
"He won't last a week. Lucien is going to break him in front of everyone."
"Shh."
Rem ignored them.
He followed Evelyn Verran and dropped into the seat one row behind her and two chairs to the left. Close enough to watch her hands. Far enough not to get her in trouble.
She was perfect today.
Hair braided up into a dark crown. Uniform closed all the way to the throat. Gloves on. Posture like a blade.
Expression: cold, polite, unreadable.
Unless you knew her.
If you knew her, you read the tension in her shoulders. Too tight. Ready for something.
She did not look at him.
Of course she didn't.
The instructor came in carrying ledgers and slates. He had iron-gray hair at the temples and a limp that said healed, not weak. He dropped the ledgers and spoke without looking up.
"Seats up."
Everyone in the room stood in one smooth motion like a single animal reacting to a sound. Rem blinked, halfway through unfolding his arms, completely confused.
Then the far door opened.
And it hit him.
The pressure in the room spiked. Not mana. Social. A shift in temperature without temperature changing.
The boy in the doorway didn't look like a weapon.
He looked expensive.
Same Academy jacket. Perfect cravat. Face too clean, too symmetrical. Pretty like a coin.
No flashy crest. Just a pale metal pin clasping his throat. White-gold, simple shape, not loud.
The air behaved like that pin was a blade.
The instructor dipped his head. "Your Highness."
Right.
That.
The Emperor's son.
Rem leaned back in his chair. He did not move.
The boy's eyes scanned the room with practiced calm. He knew exactly how long to wait so other people could bow without making it a whole scene. He had that in his bones. He'd probably had it drilled into him since before he could write his own name.
Then his gaze hit Rem.
And stopped.
"You don't stand?" the boy said.
Not offended. Curious.
"I'll stand when class actually starts," Rem said. Easy. Honest. "Sit down. You're late. You're making everybody weird."
The silence that followed could have cracked glass.
Evelyn didn't move. She went statue-still in that way she did when she was panicking and refusing to show it. Her gloved hand went white on the edge of her desk.
Some noble at the far end actually whispered, "He's dead."
The prince watched Rem for one long second.
Then something very small and very real cracked through the perfect polite face.
A grin. Not the trained court smile. A grin. Quick. Sharp at the edges.
"Noted," he said.
He crossed the room and took his seat like nothing had happened. Like he hadn't just made the entire class forget how air works.
The whole room exhaled.
The instructor, who had gone pale, cleared his throat. "As I was saying, before His Highness arrived, today's lecture is not Rift theory. It's protocol. You are final-year combat track. Some of you are going to leave this Academy as escorts, attachés, command trainees. You will be responsible for keeping an asset alive."
He tapped a rune. Light drew a map across the board. Hallways. Doors. A wing Rem didn't fully recognize.
"That asset will have enemies," the instructor went on. "Those enemies may not look like monsters. They may look like you. They may already be in the room. They may already be in this building. Which is why you're going to learn how to handle a human assassination attempt in a controlled environment before you see it in the field."
The sound in the room changed.
Not louder.
Tighter.
Assassination, Rem thought. He'd heard the word his whole life. He'd just never heard it used like part of a daily lesson.
The instructor tapped the board again. "Scenario. High-value target present in your wing for training. Threat level: credible. Suspected hostile group: coordinated, disciplined, unusually well-funded. Location: this Academy's final-year halls. Objective: neutralize threat and preserve the target without public panic."
Rem leaned back in his chair and breathed out through his nose.
So the guards. The runes. The tension. Evelyn wound up like a tripwire.
Someone wanted the Emperor's son dead.
Here.
And everyone in this room was being told quietly that they were now weapons on that board.
The instructor paced. "Rule one. Lady Verran."
Evelyn didn't jump. She never jumped.
She lifted her chin a fraction and said, voice steady as a drawn line, "Secure His Highness first. Everything else is secondary fire."
Her words were law.
Rem felt his jaw tighten.
Not because she was wrong. She wasn't. He understood priority. You save what matters most first. You bleed for it if you have to. He'd done that.
He just hated the way she said it like it was already hers to spend.
Like her life was a coin and people in fancy jackets had the right to use it.
The heat behind his ribs pulsed once.
He breathed it down.
The prince didn't look at her. He didn't smile. He didn't nod. That would've made it look like favor. He kept his eyes on the board and said, calm, "Correct. I expect it."
Rem swallowed and hated how easily that slid off the prince's tongue. Like yes, of course, you die for me if you have to. It's normal.
He watched the prince sharper now.
The kid sat too straight. Too still. Not stiff. Trained. Both hands folded on the desk. That little pale pin at his throat throwing the room into orbit.
Not soft.
Not comfortable.
Caged.
The only time his posture relaxed was when he'd looked at Rem.
Huh.
The lecture kept going. Aura layering. Veil displacement. How to read false uniforms in crisis. Rem held onto maybe half of it and stored the rest as shapes and motion so he could make sense of it later.
By the time the bell hit dismissal, his skull felt like chalk dust.
He was pushing himself up when the air in the aisle shifted.
"You," someone said.
Rem looked up.
The prince stood in front of his desk.
Every other student in the room went silent like a spell had dropped.
Rem blinked. "Me?"
"You didn't stand," the prince said. Calm. Curious.
Rem shrugged. "You were late. Sit next time. They all panic when you breathe."
The instructor looked like he might faint. Evelyn looked like she was physically holding her soul in her body by force.
The prince's mouth tilted. There it was again. That real grin like he'd just found water in a desert.
"Good," he said.
Then he turned and walked out with two lightplate wardens drifting after him like bored shadows.
The class stayed silent until he was gone.
Then noise crashed back in all at once.
Evelyn was on Rem before the first whisper could even form.
She didn't look at him. She angled her body like she just happened to be passing his desk. Her voice slid out low and sharp.
"Do you even understand what you just did," she whispered.
Rem glanced at her. "Talked to him."
"You told the Imperial Heir to sit down because he was making class weird," she whispered, sounding like she wanted to shake him and also curl up under a table and scream. "Rem. Listen to me. There are dukes who haven't told him 'no' since he was five years old. Priests wash their mouths with blessed water before they talk to him. Generals practice their words for three days before they give him a report. You told him to sit like you were telling Harry to move his elbow so you could reach soup."
Rem shrugged. "He didn't seem mad."
"It's not about him seeming mad," she hissed. "It's about you being alive tomorrow without seven different noble families trying to poison you in quiet revenge. It's about the fact that the second he smiled at you, every snake in a crest pin decided you just became interesting."
Rem scratched his jaw. "Huh."
She shut her eyes for half a heartbeat. Then she opened them and started walking.
"Come on," she muttered. "Lunch. Then we talk about how you're not going to die in two days."
The final-year courtyard was disgustingly pretty.
White stone benches. Mana-fed fountain singing over itself. Food on polished trays. Not a bruise on the fruit. Meat already sliced. Bread so soft it offended him.
He took a tray, because free food is free food, and planted himself against a column on the edge where he could see and nobody could get behind him.
He'd just taken a bite when a shadow fell across the table.
"Mind if I talk down to you for a second?" a pleasant voice said.
Rem looked up. Pale hair. Clean smile. Two boys in perfect jackets flanking him like accessory pieces.
"You're Rem Avern," the boy said.
"Yeah," Rem said.
"I'm Lucien d'Arclight," he said, and the way the courtyard around them quieted half a notch told Rem that the name mattered here.
Rem chewed. Swallowed. "Congratulations."
Lucien's smile twitched, then smoothed.
"I wanted to welcome you," he said. "It's rare we get a late intake in final year. Almost unheard of. It's very generous of House Verran to spend so much political capital to bring you in. Risky, even. To drag someone in with no formal Academy training and just drop you into our cycle."
"Thank you for caring about me so much," Rem said around a mouthful of bread.
Lucien's eyes sharpened for half a second.
"I just want things to stay fair," Lucien said softly. "We all spent years refining control, discipline, presence. We didn't get here on muscle and noise. I'd hate for someone to arrive at the end, skip all that, and think he's our equal without proving it."
Rem stared at him. "Say what you want to say."
Lucien smiled. It didn't hit his eyes. "In two days, after last bell, we do the standard evaluation duel. Old tradition. I'm sure Lady Verran told you. You and me in the final-year arena, entire year watching, instructors present. We all get to see what level you actually are. You accept, of course."
Rem leaned into the stone column with his back and let his tray rest on his thighs.
"And if I say no," he asked.
Lucien tilted his head, all polite poison. "Then the story becomes that House Verran dragged in gutter strength to look relevant and that gutter strength is too scared to show in public. That you were a favor, not a fighter. That they needed you because they're slipping."
Rem smiled slowly. "I don't like that story."
"I'm glad," Lucien said.
"In two days. After last bell," Rem said.
Lucien's smile cut wide. "Good. I'll enjoy showing everyone what a real Academy duelist looks like. And you'll get to learn your place without misunderstanding."
"Yeah," Rem said. "We'll see who learns what."
Lucien's eyes flickered, just for a breath. He turned that into a polite laugh like it hadn't happened.
"Enjoy your meal," he said.
He drifted off, two shadows at his back.
Evelyn slid into his space like a thrown knife.
"What is wrong with you," she whispered.
Rem didn't look at her. He tore another bite of bread with his teeth. "Probably a lot. You're gonna have to be more specific."
"You can't just say yes to Lucien," she hissed between perfect clenched teeth. Her face was neutral for anyone watching them. Her voice was furious down low. "He's not challenging you because he wants a fun spar. He's challenging you because he wants you humiliated in front of witnesses. He's going to bait you into overcommitting, make you miss, and then act like he's being merciful. He wants to drag you across the floor and then turn and bow to His Highness like you're proof Verran is weak."
Rem swallowed. "He's gross."
"Yes, he's gross," she snapped. "And he's good. He doesn't just hit. He does theater. He'll make you look slow and stupid on purpose and then say something gentle about 'raw strength' so everyone thinks he's being generous. You are not slow. You are not stupid. But if you walk in there swinging like you swung at Leila, he's going to make you look like a heavy idiot with no control. And then he'll smile and the prince will see it."
Rem blinked. "The prince is coming?"
"Lucien told him. He said 'Your Highness, you should come. It will be educational,'" Evelyn said, disgust burning under her calm. "And His Highness said 'I'll watch.' So now it's public. Now it's political. Now it's not just pride. It's House Verran's name on display under imperial eyes. On you."
Rem let that sit.
"Oh," he said finally. "He is gross."
"Are you listening to me?" she hissed.
"Yeah," he said. "I'm listening. I heard 'if you lose, Lucien uses me to spit on your House in front of the prince and the whole year.' I don't like that. So I won't lose."
Evelyn actually made a sound. Half choking, half laughing, completely furious.
"You can't just say 'I won't lose,'" she whispered. "Lucien fights with aura control and footwork. He doesn't meet you head on. He wants to make you chase. He'll make you swing. He'll step aside and let you eat the floor. He wants you to look slow, Rem. He doesn't even have to hurt you physically to win. He just has to make you look like a joke in front of everyone."
Rem looked across the courtyard.
Lucien had already settled himself under the glass lattice where the light made his pale hair glow. He was laughing with some girl. It looked beautiful and hollow.
At another table, under partial shade, the prince sat with fruit on a plate and two guards in lightplate pretending to be part of the scenery. The prince wasn't laughing. He wasn't talking. He was watching.
Not Lucien.
Rem.
Rem turned back to Evelyn.
"So teach me," he said.
She blinked like he had just lightly slapped her with reality.
"...Teach you," she repeated.
"Yeah," Rem said. "You see all that fancy footwork trash. You see where he's gonna try to pull my balance. You can read where he's gonna want me to swing. You can tell me where not to give him what he wants. I can't fight polite. That's fine. I don't want polite. I just don't want to trip on air in front of the entire Empire."
Her throat worked.
"That's not how the Academy does this," she muttered, almost to herself. "By policy I'm not allowed to coach someone personally before an internal evaluation match. It's a conflict of interest. It gives House Verran leverage. They could use that to drag my father's name through the Council and say we're manipulating outcomes with off-record training. It's illegal if we're caught."
"Okay," Rem said.
Her eyes snapped to his. "Okay?"
"You'll come anyway," he said.
Her mouth actually opened and closed once. Color hit her ears. She looked away fast like sunlight was suddenly too bright.
"Obviously I'll come," she muttered.
He smiled. Real. Crooked. Warm.
Her face flushed deeper.
"Tonight," she said quickly, locking herself back into noble control so hard it was almost funny. "After lights. Training Hall C. The old one, not the main arena. I have a key. You are going to walk there like you got lost. You are not going to smirk. You are not going to act like you're sneaking off to do something illegal with a duke's daughter. If someone asks where you're going, you say 'bathhouse.' Understood."
"Yes, Liaison," he said in a perfect fake polite voice.
"Don't call me that like that," she muttered.
"Yes, Lady Verran," he said with a little head tilt.
Her jaw clenched. "I hate you."
"You like me," he said.
"Die," she said sweetly, smile perfect for anyone watching.
He laughed, low.
Across the courtyard, Lucien's eyes flicked their way.
Across the courtyard, the prince leaned his chin on his hand and watched Rem like Rem was something he hadn't seen before and didn't quite know how to name.
High above them, the Academy hummed. Runes in the glass. Guards at the edges of courtyards where guards weren't supposed to be. Something moving under the skin of the school like a splinter working deeper.
Rem leaned back against the warm stone, tray empty.
Two days until the duel.
Midnight training tonight.
An assassin group already in the building, if the instructors weren't lying.
And a prince who had just smiled at him in front of witnesses.
He wiped his hands, rolled his neck, and let his head rest back against the column.
"Alright," he said under his breath.
"Let's work."