The door to my room was ajar.

  That, in itself, was already a problem.

  The second problem announced itself the moment I stepped inside and heard a thud (the fist on wood kind of thud) followed by a triumphant gravelly chirp.

  My room was upside down.

  The bed had been shoved halfway across the floor and flipped onto its side. My desk y splintered, one leg snapped clean off like a broken bone. Books were everywhere, opened and torn, embedded spine-first into the wall at an angle that suggested deliberate force.

  And in the center of it all, stood Durand. It was hammering its stubby fists into my mattress as though it was punching its arch nemesis out of existence.

  “No,” I said.

  The golem paused, turned, and chirped at me, then punched the mattress once more.

  “No,” I said again, louder this time. “What—what have you done?”

  Or at least I thought I’d said that. I had no mental capacity to hear what Ceralis had morphed my line into.

  The golem waddled toward me, dragging a chunk of stone it had apparently pulled out of my wall.

  Behind it gaped a very real, very illegal-looking hole, with hammered and powdered cracks to suggest it was aesthetically bsted away by a professional mage. It was rge enough that I could see the inner masonry.

  I wouldn’t be able to fix this. I didn’t have the money for this. I didn’t even have the money to think about fixing this.

  The golem chirped again and took another swing at the bed.

  I dragged a hand down my face and tried to breathe.

  I couldn’t deal with this. Not without becoming part of the wreckage. I gnced toward the doorway, expecting Anabeth to appear there any second, ready to unsummon this disaster and tell me this was normal and that I was overreacting. She had to be close. I had taken my time. I’d double-checked rewards, stalled, agonized over boons. She should have beaten me back here by a wide margin.

  So where was she?

  I turned just in time to see her step back through the doorway.

  Anabeth had changed. As in... clothing. Her traveling robe was gone, repced by another robe that was cut in deliberate lines that followed her frame instead of obscuring it. The sash sat higher at the waist, cinched tight enough to be intentional, and the neckline was fastened just low enough to feel like a choice rather than an oversight.

  It was all perfectly proper, enough so I would seem the improper one if I wanted to protest this.

  She also smelled of flowers, like crushed petals left too long in the sun, sweet at first and then almost heavy.

  Durand chirped and punched the mattress again.

  She didn’t comment on the destruction. Instead, she stepped closer, enough so her scent brushed against my senses like fingertips of floral sweetness wrapped around my helm. “You look like someone who has reached the limits of productive problem-solving,” she said mildly as she pced a finger on my chestpte. “Which is fascinating, because you’re usually so disciplined about rationing your catastrophes.”

  I stayed silent.

  “This town,” her voice took on that measured, lecturer’s cadence she used when expining dangerous theory, “has an absolutely exquisite nocturne ecology. I’ve just witnessed night-blooming lumenlilies along the canal open only after sustained rainfall. Very few people bother to observe them properly.” Her eyes returned to mine. “Which seems... wasteful.”

  I still stayed silent.

  She cooed, “I was thinking... that after everything you’ve endured today, you might benefit from a brief field excursion. Purely observational, of course. Knights are famously susceptible to morale degradation if confined indoors too long.”

  I said, very carefully. “Lady Anabeth. We are not leaving until our room is returned to a condition that won’t get us expelled.”

  I meant it as a boundary. A practical one. A plea, really.

  Ceralis did not agree.

  [Intimidation Aura—Automatic Activation]“I WILL NOT DEPART THIS LOCATION UNTIL THE STRUCTURE IS RESTORED TO ACCEPTABLE INTEGRITY. ENVIRONMENTAL DESTABILIZATION WILL BE MET WITH ESCALATION. RESPONSIBLE PARTIES ARE ADVISED TO COMPLY.”

  [Seduction Successful]

  [Romantic Interest: 105%] → [Proximity Drive: 89%]

  Warning: Romantic Interest exceeding stable thresholds will automatically reallocate surplus affective load into secondary response channels (eg. Proximity Drive, Obsession Gauge) until baseline equilibrium (100%) is restored.

  Note: Prolonged exposure may result in elevated behavioral compliance, impaired judgment, or unsolicited proximity-seeking behaviors.

  What? How? Whichever word in that entire dialogue could be inferred as seduction?

  “Ah,” she murmured, stepping closer as I took an involuntary step back. “Charming, Sir Knight. I see you don’t mind remaining indoors under peculiar circumstances after all.”

  I took another step back.

  She closed the distance anyway.

  Her hands rose, slow and unhurried, gliding up the front of my armor as her fingers brushed the edge of my gorget. The contact was light, enough to be deniable. Yet I found the room drawing closer and the walls leaning in by degrees too small to see but impossible to ignore. Each breath came shorter than the st.

  I backed up another step.

  She followed.

  My heel struck a splintered pnk. I gnced down, desperate for the room to intervene on my behalf, to crack, to colpse, to do something suitably uninviting. Instead, Anabeth stepped forward, heel crunching down on shattered wood without hesitation, and casually punted the worst of it aside with her foot.

  “I find that confined spaces encourage... focus. Don’t you think, Sir Knight?” She whispered.

  Durand chose that moment to object.

  The golem chirped and charged, stubby limbs pumping with righteous fury as it barreled toward us.

  Yes, Durand! Snap her out of it! Charge forward like the valiant soldier you are!

  Anabeth didn’t even look at it. She took in a hot breath and exhaled something barely audible, a sylble that felt finished.

  Durand disintegrated. The little construct colpsed into a quiet spill of dust and inert stone that scattered across the floor like it had never been anything else.

  “There,” she said gently. “One less problem. Now, there is only one problem left.” Her fingers danced along my gorget until they reached the edge of my breastpte, lingering there for a moment far too long before sliding down my sternum, tracing the curve of my armor. “It’s... intriguing that someone of your stature would entertain the notion of allowing a companion to accompany you. One might assume a knight of your caliber would prefer solitude, perhaps even the luxury of unencumbered decisiveness. Yet here we are. Do you see something... advantageous in the partnership? Or are you merely curious?”

  Right... she still saw me as this sort of God-like entity.

  I stared at her. She had risen onto the balls of her feet without my noticing, just enough to let her fingers skim my gorget with ease, as though my armor were another apparatus she had already learned how to operate. There was no denying it: she was objectively beautiful. Not merely striking, but remarkable in a way that made the eye linger even when the mind tried to retreat. Even accounting for my own biases, even accounting for circumstance. If I were being honest, she was probably more beautiful than Cire had been.

  But I had known Anabeth for three days. Three very long, very intense days, yes, but intensity was not intimacy. She hadn’t seen me without the armor. She hadn’t seen the parts of me that stalled, that fixated, that retreated into analysis because emotion arrived too loud and too fast. I hadn’t seen hers either. And I had already crossed a line.

  I had presented myself as someone I wasn’t. Ceralis’ voice; the aura, I had let all of that stand in for truth.

  A knight could do many things wrong in a lifetime. That was expected.

  But one of the worst was this: to let someone invest in a myth you had no right to sustain. I couldn’t accept her interest, her nearness, her carefully phrased invitation, knowing it was built atop omissions and Ceralis-generated bravado and a voice that wasn’t mine. At least Cire had accepted me for the failure I was.

  Two of Anabeth’s fingers brushed the lower edge of my helm, at the articuted seam beneath the chin, where the metal curved just enough to suggest vulnerability without offering it. She didn’t lift. The touch was too light for that, and I would’ve tried to stop her if she had.

  “Oh, I’m curious too...” she purred. “I do wonder what I’d find underneath that helm. Whether I’d find the face of a stone sentinel, an iron mask polished to blinding perfection, or the hollow visage of some ancient lich whose flesh had been stripped to bare bone. Why is it that you feel the need to hide?”

  The gssy blue of her usual stare melted into something fluid and luminous, like early-morning dew. They were dreamy, so dreamy to the point it contracted the space between us, as though every inch of armor and every breath had been magnified for her inspection.

  It was an invitation disguised as a test.

  “Shall I get to know you more, Sir Henry?” she whispered.

  For a terrible, fragile second, I thought she had already decided what I was. That she had looked past the flesh she’d literally seen a bell ago and chosen instead to dream.

  My hand twitched.

  Just once, I was tempted to end it. To lift the helm and let gravity do the rest. I wondered, absurdly, if her lips would taste the way she smelled, or if that sweetness belonged only to the version of her I was imagining.

  If I lifted it, everything would resolve. Either she would see me and make a run for it, and the dream would shatter itself mercifully. Or she would stay. Then we could see where we would go from there.

  My fingers hovered at the tch. One motion, one breath, and the doubt would finally be over.

  Wood creaked.

  The remains of the tavern room’s desk, already compromised, chose that exact moment to remember gravity existed.

  The whole thing sagged. The pannier that had been wedged beneath it slid free, spilling the stones I’d kept inside.

  My hand shot out, grabbing a loose chunk of masonry as it dropped. The impact jarred up my arm, solid and real and grounding in a way nothing else in the room had been. The desk colpsed the rest of the way, but I had a task.

  [TASK RECEIVED: Chivalric Etiquette I]

  Objective: Escort your ally on a dignified social outing (acceptable venues: tea salon, garden promenade, or formal dinner,

  including sanctioned canal walks during lumenlily bloom hours)

  Bonus Objective: Refrain from discussing combat, theology, or digestive fluids

  Boon: +125 EXP

  Penalty: -10 EXP if armor is visibly soiled

  Oh. Right. I’d kept this rock because it’d offered me a boon.

  That was why I hadn’t taken the helm off. I needed to rebuild the Order. I needed the boons.

  Breaking the illusion abruptly would do me harm, and it may do her harm. Letting it persist a little longer, cautiously, honestly within its constraints... that, I could justify. As long as I didn’t exploit it further.

  I lowered the stone, set it aside, and finally met her eyes again. ‘If you wish to observe the lumenlilies... I will escort you. As requested. Strictly observational.’ I wanted to say.

  [Intimidation Aura—Passive Bleed]“The lumenlilies request is accepted. The outing will proceed under knightly supervision. Safety, propriety, and continued proximity are assured.”

  I hated Ceralis so much right now. I couldn’t even initiate a normal conversation.

  She smiled, bright and eager, but the corners of her eyes betrayed a quiet disappointment, like she had imagined a different sort of invitation. “Oh,” she said, warmth blooming in every sylble. “I would very much like it.”