I don’t remember falling asleep.

  I remember lying there, staring at the ceiling while the dark slowly thinned, the wards in the walls humming softly like they always did. Morning crept in without asking permission, pale light slipping through the window and cutting the room into quiet shapes. My body was still. My mind refused to be.

  Every time I closed my eyes, it came back.

  The attack wasn’t loud in my memory. It wasn’t chaotic. It didn’t blur at the edges the way fear usually does. It replayed cleanly, sharply—too fast, too coordinated, too deliberate. There had been no wasted movement. No hesitation. Whoever had done it hadn’t been improvising.

  That was what frightened me most.

  I understood violence. Everyone did, whether they admitted it or not. I had seen my share of it. But this hadn’t felt desperate or reckless. It had felt practiced. Like a decision already made long before it reached us.

  By the time I gave up on sleep and dressed, the house was awake. The protective wards around the house were steady, reassuring in a way they hadn’t been the night before. I tried to let that comfort me as I made my way down the hall, but it didn’t reach very far.

  To my surprise, Cale was already at the breakfast table when I entered. I fought an internal war not to run over and check him for injuries. Nothing about the situation made sense—well, except that we should have known Leira and Lucien would retaliate.

  We were stupid for not seeing that one coming.

  But Cale had answered it in a way I hadn’t been prepared for. With a flash of fist, Aura, and Arcanum, he had shattered every expectation I had of how power was supposed to look—how it was supposed to be used.

  I took another step into the room.

  He looked up immediately and gave me a soft smile, his eyes warm and very bright.

  “You look like you slept well?”

  The question felt absurd, and I paused.

  That was… true.

  I’d expected to wake up tense and exhausted, replaying everything in sharp, jagged fragments. Instead, my mind had gone still last night in a way it rarely did. No spirals. No half-dreams. Just darkness—deep and uninterrupted.

  “I did,” I said slowly. Then I narrowed my eyes at him. “Too well.”

  His smile shifted—not guilty, exactly, but careful.

  I crossed my arms. “What did you do?”

  Cale considered me for a moment, like he was weighing how much honesty I could handle before breakfast.

  “I might have layered a minor Arcanum construct into the house wards,” he said evenly. “Nothing invasive. Just a soothing pattern I used in the Wastes. It helps the mind decelerate—gradually shuts down intrusive loops. Lets you sleep properly for a few hours.”

  I stared at him.

  “That’s… subtle,” I said. “And advanced.”

  He shrugged, like we were talking about seasoning soup. “It’s easier than forcing rest. You just remove the friction.”

  My surprise must have shown, because his eyes flicked up to mine.

  “When did you do that?” I asked.

  “The first night I got here.”

  I blinked. “The first night?”

  He nodded. “I figured my presence might make it harder for you and Gran to sleep. New variables tend to do that.”

  The words landed heavier than he seemed to intend.

  “You altered the house wards,” I said carefully, “without telling us.”

  “I didn’t change them,” he corrected. “I nested the pattern inside the existing architecture. Temporary. Self-dissolving. It’ll be gone in a few days.”

  I was still staring.

  “That kind of Arcanum work,” I said, choosing my words, “usually requires a fixed array, a focus anchor, and a calibration cycle. You can’t just—”

  “—install it?” he finished.

  “Yes.”

  “I can,” he said simply.

  Silence stretched between us, filled only by the soft hum of the wards in the walls. I listened to it differently now, aware that something inside that sound had been shaped by his hands.

  I should have been angry but Instead, I felt… safe. Which scared me more.

  “You didn’t think to ask?” I said.

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  “I didn’t think you’d sleep if I did,” he replied, not unkindly.

  That earned him a look—half incredulous, half helpless.

  “You’re terrifying,” I told him.

  He smiled again, small and real this time. “Only when I need to be.”

  I shook my head, but I couldn’t stop the smile that followed.

  “Next time,” I said, reaching for a piece of toast, “you tell me before you quietly rewrite reality in my favor.”

  “Deal,” he said.

  I finally moved fully into the room and sat down. Cale slid a plate toward me—eggs and toast, simple and warm. He watched my face for a moment longer than necessary, then seemed satisfied. I was quickly learning that this was how he did it—checking, cataloging, making sure everything was where it was supposed to be. Only then did he turn back to his own food.

  That was when I noticed his hands.

  I realized I was being hyper-aware, scanning for anything that might tell me what had happened after Cale left the night of the attack.

  His hands caught my eye.

  Without the glamour, Cale was… striking. The sort of handsome that didn’t need effort or ornamentation. But his hands didn’t match the rest of him. The scars stood out now that I was really looking—thin white lines crossing his knuckles, a deeper mark along the side of his palm, old burns and cuts that magic hadn’t erased.

  Too many to ignore. Too obvious to ask about directly.

  He shifted in his chair, eyes flicking—not to me, but to the doorway, then the window, then back again. He kept doing it, like he was mapping the room without thinking. Like he was already planning exits.

  I wanted to ask about his past—the one that was too obvious to ignore. He could fight so well, use at least two Expressions with major proficiency. It was unbelievable. Most of all, I wanted to ask what happened after the gangsters attacked us.

  Did he go after Lucien?

  I was about to ask. I wanted to ask.

  Instead—

  “You don’t have to pretend with me,” I said. “You can tell me about your past if you want to.”

  That got a reaction.

  He smiled—just a little—the familiar expression he used when he wanted people to feel comfortable without giving them anything they could lean on too hard.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I will. Someday.” He glanced toward the window, then back at me. “But for now, I’m happy just being here. With you and Gran.”

  I let that sit between us.

  It wasn’t a refusal. It wasn’t avoidance, either. It felt like a boundary he’d set carefully, the way you mark safe ground before moving forward.

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  Then, softer, before I could stop myself, I added, “Then tell me one true thing.”

  He blinked, surprised.

  “One,” I said. “Just one.”

  He looked down at his hands again—the scars, the old burns—and for a moment I thought I’d asked too much.

  Then he said, quietly, “I didn’t survive because I was the strongest.”

  I waited.

  “I survived because I learned when not to fight.”

  He looked up at me after that, eyes steady, unreadable in that way I was starting to recognize.

  “And because I knew what I was protecting.”

  Something in my chest loosened at that.

  I nodded. “Is that why you’re so good at fighting—and why you clearly have more than one core?”

  He looked at me in surprise.

  Not shock—Cale was too controlled for that—but something closer to calculation. His chewing slowed. One hand paused mid-movement, fingers tightening slightly around the utensil before he set it down with deliberate care.

  “That’s… an interesting conclusion,” he said at last.

  “It’s impossible not to notice,” I said, before he could deflect. “Your style is clearly an Aura–Arcanum mix, but it looks older—not one of the sanctioned styles from Vera. It’s just a guess, though. But the foundational conclusion is that you didn’t switch Expressions. You layered them. You used Aura to reinforce your body and movement, while Arcanum Elementia shaped your reaction time, overall speed, striking power, and penetration. Your integration of Expressions is like nothing I’ve ever heard of, let alone seen.”

  His eyes sharpened.

  I shook my head. “The point I’m making is that you can’t do any of that with just one core.”

  He watched me closely now. “You sound very certain for someone who claims she isn’t an expert.”

  “I’m not,” I said, giving him a small smile. “Rade wouldn’t stop talking about it. Honestly, I don’t even understand all the differences—only that what you did wasn’t the same as what Lucien or Sarien did.”

  Silence settled between us, thick enough that I could hear the wards humming in the walls.

  “I watched you fight her,” I continued. “Which really wasn’t a fight at all—more like a machine dismantling a tool. Rade said that Sarien girl is supposed to be really good.”

  He considered this. “She was good,” he said. “Especially for her age and experience.”

  “She’s a powerful gang leader,” I said softly.

  Cale shrugged. “It doesn’t matter who she is or how good she thinks she is. No one gets away with threatening or attacking you.”

  I took a breath. “And you beat her.”

  He leaned back slowly, running a hand through his hair. “That doesn’t mean I’m—”

  “It means you didn’t learn magic the way most people do,” I said, more gently now. “You learned it the way people do when they don’t have teachers. Or margins for error.”

  That landed harder than I expected.

  “The Wastes don’t let you specialize,” he said after a moment. “You adapt. Or you die.”

  “That explains why,” I said. “Not how. Or how you got that good so young.”

  For a long moment, he didn’t answer. Then a faint, humorless smile crossed his face.

  “You don’t get good out there because you want to,” he said quietly. “You get good because failing once is enough.”

  I looked at his hands again—at the scars magic hadn’t erased—and felt something cold settle in my chest.

  Cale hadn’t developed his magic despite the Wastes.

  He’d developed it because of them.

  I considered his words, then asked the question that had been bothering me since I woke up.

  “Cale… what happens when Sarien comes back with more gang members? Or when Minister Veylin decides to take matters into his own hands—not with street-level thugs, but with someone worse?”

  I wasn’t as articulate as I wanted to be, but he understood what I meant.

  Cale’s eyes found mine.

  The stormglass violet in them seemed darker today, a deeper purple, threaded with slow-moving light. I watched the color shift, watched mana swirl just beneath the surface, and realized—dimly—that his eye color wasn’t just unusual.

  It was a manifestation. I was barely listening when he answered.

  “You don’t have to worry about either of those things,” he said calmly.

  “Sarien,” he continued, “despite being a gang leader, is there by circumstance—not choice. She wanted to protect you when the others wanted to hurt you. She’s someone trying to make something decent out of a bad situation.”

  I blinked. “She is?”

  “She is,” he said. “We won’t have to worry about her.”

  Then his expression changed.

  Not dramatically. Just… darker.

  “The Veylins,” he said, “are a different matter.”

  My stomach tightened.

  “They’re not going to be attacking anyone,” he went on. “As a matter of fact, don’t be surprised if you notice they’re gone.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Gone?”

  He smiled faintly. “Yes. Gone.”

  “Like… left?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “Like left.”

  Then, as if the conversation hadn’t just upended my sense of reality, he glanced at the clock.

  “Hurry up. We need to get ready for school.”

  The sudden dismissal threw me off balance.

  “Oh—okay,” I said, a little stupidly.

  I stuffed a few pieces of toast into my mouth and hurried back to my room.

  For some reason, the words my brother had said stayed with me.

  They comforted me.

  That maybe—starting today—things might finally be different.