Chapter 143: Attrition
I leave Oliver and Rhayne at the academy gates.
"Rhayne. Get that arm looked at. Find a healer who’s not booked. Then find Veric."
She nods.
"Tell him I’m Rank D now. Tell him I made 18 Plates of Scales in two weeks. Tell him I need him in Rae’s office in ten minutes."
Veric will bite the money. He always bites the money.
"Ten minutes?"
"Ten. Not more, not less."
She looks at me without fully understanding. Nods anyway. She’s learned by now—when I give her an exact time, the time is part of the plan.
"Oliver. Stay with her. Anyone unusual gets close, you ping me in the comm."
"Got it, boss."
I hand the task to Rhayne instead of doing it myself. Going to Veric in person, or pinging him on the comms, would generate energy and argument I don’t have the budget for. Rhayne delivering the message strips out all the noise. Veric will read three things: rank, money, location. He’ll come.
I climb the administrative wing alone.
The corridors of the academy are how I remember them. Polished stone. Blue torches. Cadets moving with too much hurry to notice that the F-rank rat from the entrance exam came back wearing a Tide black plate at Rank D. Or maybe they notice and don’t believe their eyes.
I knock on Rae’s door.
"Come in."
His office is the same. Dark mahogany desk. Two chairs. No personal decorations anywhere. A man who doesn’t want you to know anything about him.
Rae sits behind the desk. He looks up. Examines me for two seconds. Reads the armor, the scuffs, the new height my shoulders sit at. He doesn’t react to any of it.
"Sands. You’re back."
"I’m back."
"And the WaterStrand?"
"Couldn’t get it."
Silence.
He slowly closes the document he was reading. Sets both hands on the desk. Fingers laced together.
"You couldn’t."
"No."
"I sent you on a simple mission. Recover an item. You come back without it."
"The mission wasn’t simple. You knew that when you sent me."
Something crosses his face. Quick. Not anger—calculation. He’s reassessing. The Horizon armor. The way I’m sitting in his chair without asking. The fact that I’m answering him in three-word sentences instead of explaining myself.
"You ranked up."
"Coral."
"In two weeks."
"Give or take."
His fingers tighten by a hair.
I catch it.
Reading those small tells is half of why I’m still alive.
"Without supervision," he says. "Without an authorized expedition. Without the academy’s clearance."
"Correct."
"And without the mission item I sent you for."
"Also correct."
I don’t give him the explanation he’s waiting for. I just let it sit.
"I failed the mission. Do whatever you want. Expel me. Report me. Hand my file to Freya and the noble houses. I’m not bothered."
The temperature in the room drops half a degree.
I’m not bluffing and he can hear it in the cadence. That’s the part that’s costing him right now—the indifference is real.
Rae leans forward. The anger is there, banked under the surface. He doesn’t let it climb past his eyes.
"Freya will have your file by tomorrow if I want her to."
"Sure."
I check the timer on my HUD. Nine minutes.
I stand up. Walk to the door. And before I open it, I stop.
"Honestly? It’s easier to ally with her than to keep losing to you."
The room freezes.
I know the weight of what I just said. It’s almost a declaration of war. If a student who walked out at Rank F and walked back at Rank D crosses to Freya’s side, Rae loses an asset and his academy rival gains one. The political damage is enormous—not because of my rank, but because of what my rank means. Rae had a prodigy in his hands and let him walk out the door.
How pompous. He’s so unyielding...
Risky play. But Rae plays one specific game, and the rule of that game is simple: you can lose books, lose duels, lose face. You don’t lose pieces.
"Wait."
I stop with my hand on the door handle. I don’t turn.
"What do you want, Sands?"
I turn to him.
"You’re an influential man, Rae. Intelligent. Connected. Probably the person with the deepest information access in this entire academy."
He waits.
"I need you to help me find any information on the whereabouts of Alden Sands."
The reaction is instant.
And for the first time since I met him in this life or the last, it isn’t controlled.
Rae freezes. Not the controlled, intentional freeze he uses when he wants you to wait.
The real one.
Muscular and involuntary freeze.
My father’s name landed somewhere he hadn’t reinforced.
It’s only a half-second. He puts the wall back up before most people would have noticed it ever came down.
But I noticed.
"Alden Sands," he repeats. The voice is different. Lower. A note of rasp that wasn’t there before.
"My father is missing. I have reason to believe he’s still alive."
Rae looks at me with eyes that are recalculating everything—who I am, why I matter, what I know that he doesn’t know I know.
I check the timer. Ten minutes.
Come on, Veric. Where are you?
A long silence sits between us. Rae just looking at me. He opens his mouth to answer—
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Twelve minutes.
A knock at the door. Hard. Three strikes at the same exact tempo, no pause for permission. Loud enough that ignoring it isn’t an option.
"You should probably get that," I say.
Rae looks at me for one more second and stands. Visibly undecided about whether to abandon the conversation. He walks to the door and opens it.
The Prince of Azurea steps through, ignoring Rae like he’s a doorman. Blond hair. Royal posture. Every part of him is comfortable in any room he ever walks into.
Veric goes straight at me. Throws an arm around my neck in a hold that’s half hug, half kidnapping. Hauls me out of the chair and starts dragging me toward the door.
"You need to come see my father. The King requests your presence immediately, Sands."