It was only after the sixth sanctioned oral acknowledgement of the bond that I began to suspect Anabeth might be a… type. Specifically: the kind who gained something measurable every time our mouths touched. A kiss-feeder, if I were to name it.

  Unfortunately, she had spent all her newfound energy on sleeping.

  I, on the other hand, didn’t get much sleep. Sleeping with the armor on felt uncomfortable; sleeping with only the helm on was plain bizarre; sleeping with nothing on was out of the question. So I just observed her in her sleep.

  She slept without defenses.

  A single blanket lay draped over her, thin enough that I could trace the slope of her hip and the gentle rise and fall of her ribs beneath it. Her mouth was parted, and her eyes weren’t even fully closed, unguarded, trusting in a way that felt almost reckless.

  I’d seen criminals sleep before. They slept like men expecting hands at their throats before morning.

  Anabeth did not. She had kicked one foot free of the blanket at some point, utterly unconcerned with modesty or ambush.

  She hadn’t known much of me. Was it really that important that I knew of her? Probably, so I could keep my head on my neck, if nothing else.

  This meant, if she wasn’t a criminal, then she was trouble of a different breed entirely. Maybe she’d grown up cushioned by walls too thick to imagine consequences; a spoiled daughter of a local lord, perhaps. Or worse—one of the prominent houses, the kind whose children learned rebellion as a fashion, not a necessity. The kind who ran not because they were hunted, but because the world had never told them no with any conviction. If that were the case, then this wandering, this secrecy, this reckless trust—none of it was survival. It was indulgence. And if her family ever decided she’d had enough of it, they would look for someone to blame. Someone who looked armored and very much like an instigator.

  But this... This boon from bonding with her…

  I’d been pathetic for far too long, and the consequences lay too far out of sight. I should keep this bond.

  I had many things to look at, and Affinity Dashboard was a good start.

  Fire, air, water… those I understood. You could scarcely walk a league without tripping over someone who could tempt a spark, stir a breeze, or foul a well. Even mediocre academies produced a surplus of them.

  Earth, though.

  In all my years, I could count the earth-aligned mages I’d encountered on one hand, and half of those had been old men whose talents were written off as eccentric habits rather than spellwork. I didn’t even know that was a basic element.

  Stone was expected. I’d probably witnessed enough Stone spells from Anabeth to unlock the option to learn them.

  Then my eyes slid lower.

  That was already more than doctrine allowed for, but that made a total of 34 affinities.

  However… There was still an entry below.

  There were supposed to be thirty-four affinities total. Anabeth had told me that.

  It was one of those comforting numbers scholars liked: complete, symmetrical, closed.

  I counted again.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Thirty-six.

  Either Ceralis was wrong, or Anabeth was.

  I focused on an entry.

  Fine. That wasn’t a hard bar to clear.

  Next would be the Bounty Market… I should have reviewed the details.

  The apparition lingered at the edge of my vision, patient in the way only Ceralis ever was. I wanted to open it. Saints, I did. To see what kind of work existed beyond rumor and hearsay, and what Ceralis would offer me on top of the usual rewards.

  But my eyes kept drooping.

  The text blurred, snapped back into focus, then blurred again.

  My neck ached where the armor met flesh, a dull insistence I’d learned to ignore. But fatigue was a different adversary.

  Can’t sleep now, I told myself. Still too much to see. Too much to—

  Darkness came anyway.

  The smell woke me first, warm fat and salt, accompanied by the crackle of something cooked properly. Bread, too, fresh and yeasted, the kind that took time and patience I distinctly did not remember anyone having last night.

  I opened my eyes.

  Sunlight slanted through the window at an angle that made my stomach drop. The sun was too high and too bright. The day wasn’t young anymore.

  Beside the bed sat a small spread laid out with deliberate care: sausages browned to a glisten, bacon crisped just short of burnt, thick slices of bread torn rather than cut. It looked very much prepared. The bacon looked tasty. Which was troubling, because bacon was not a casual food in this part of the world. Bacon implied intent. Salted pork was common enough, but actual bacon meant pigs raised on grain instead of scraps, smokewood instead of peat, and enough spare coin to indulge in all three.

  I pushed myself upright and saw Anabeth sitting by the side of the bed, both legs tugged neatly to one side. She was holding a corn cob with both hands, gnawing at it with cheerful focus, one cheek puffed out as she chewed. Then she rested a hand idly against her face, elbow braced on the bed as she watched me with eyes that were far more affectionate than their usual eerie.

  “Good afternoon, Sir Knight,” she said. “It seems you might have overexerted yourself.”

  I stared at her.

  She asked, “Do you like corn? I’ve brought another cob. It’s sitting in the pannier alongside all the slime juice I’ve harvested for you. You ought to drink three vials of slime every day to ensure proper metabolism.”

  I continued to stare at her.

  She noticed my silence and smiled around the corn, unfazed. “You should eat. It’ll get cold if you don’t, and I went to some trouble. “And you still have to visit the Grand Library today, yes? You mentioned it last night.” I didn’t remember mentioning that. She continued anyway, “Also! Also!” She nearly bounced on the side of the bed. “I found another Gelid dungeon near the marshland! I followed the dungeon map we’d acquired from Master Derevin, and it’s really there. It’s not far, just past the old willow grove, and—oh!—this would be a perfect chance to test your armor’s new resistance. If you care about such things, of course.”

  She probably wanted me there to farm her more Slime Cores, but I could appreciate the fact she’d gone ahead and done the scouting for me. And now, looking at her as she balanced the corn cob in one hand and gestured animatedly with the other, I couldn’t help but appreciate how adorable and thoughtful she really was.

  Anabeth had a keen eye for the little details. The same way she had fetched me the dungeon map without me even asking for it, anticipating exactly what I would need. She cared about things I didn’t even care about—or didn’t realize I cared about.

  And somehow… that made me think I was falling for the fact that she cares.

  I reached for one of the sausages.

  It was still hot enough that the heat bled through the gauntlet. I bit into it, and it was delicious and properly seasoned. The fat had rendered just enough that it didn’t fight back. The bread and the bacon were equally tasty.

  Truly she knew how to pamper a man. I could get used to this arrangement.

  Still, I had to ask, Are you truly going to abandon whatever life you had for something as vague as Ferrum Animus?

  But Ceralis, fully revitalized, was no longer content with simple phrasing.

  I said, “Declare yourself. Do you truly seek to renounce the flesh-bound past for the way of the Ferrum Animus? Speak now, oathless witch, or I shall have your head upon a pike, adorned with the very metal you so fervently revere.”

  “Oathless?” she echoed. “That’s rather unkind, considering I’ve just declared myself quite thoroughly.” The mischief returned at once. “You do underestimate my capacity for commitment to things I thoroughly desire.”

  She let the silence stretch, long enough that the warmth of breakfast cooled and the room felt suddenly too still. Her eyes never left mine.

  Then she laughed. “Okay—not that devoted. My school year resumes next month. But we’ll still keep in touch, won’t we, my sweet knight?”

  Only if you tell me your secrets.

  “Wretched witch. You will only receive your spoil after you tell me your secrets,” I commanded.

  “Oh, “I’ll tell you some of them.” She tapped two fingers against the edge of my visor. “But you’ve only lifted this halfway, Sir Knight. And it would be most improper for a lady to bare her secrets when her counterpart remains so… armored.”

  It was a fair arrangement. The answer should be simple. Then of course.

  I said, “Pray you do not vanish without leave, for those who earn my regard do not do so lightly.”

  She simply smiled so hard the corners of her eyes crinkled, then leaned in and planted a kiss on the side of my helm.

  Anabeth only confirmed what I’d suspected. She only ever revealed a sliver of herself. Her family had been academics for generations, buried in books and archives, and she had grown tired of the suffocating predictability of it all. That was why she sought adventure, why she wandered through dungeons and collected things most people would consider absurd. A common enough backstory.

  I asked her last name. She refused, offering the same excuse she had when I had not yet shared mine: it would be improper to bare such things before one knew the other’s identity. True enough, and absurdly funny, considering she had tried to offer me things much more bare than this just the night before.

  The cold bled from the dungeon mouth, the reeds nearest the entrance were glazed over, their tips rimed white despite the season, and the mud beneath my boots had hardened into brittle, cracking plates. Each step closer drew a faint mist from my breath, though the sun was still high behind us.

  And then it slithered into view.

  I raised my sword.

  This creature had given me plenty of trouble before. Now was the time to see if my improvements had made any difference.