Elise was no stranger to serving unpleasant men and women, but the past month had been distasteful even by her standards.

  She had considered breaking her contract immediately after the events of the Convoy—though only after seeing Count Barnaby Caldimore safely back to his manor, of course. His refusal to send her to aid with that disaster had strained her professionalism nearly to its limit. The man hadn’t even needed to risk himself, only give her permission to go and help. But the small danger of briefly not having a bodyguard had been enough to make him quake in his boots.

  When Elise had been a girl—and when she was early in her training as a White Glove—she’d genuinely believed that most nobility deserved their titles. Deserved to lead. Not only were they better educated and of stronger dispositions, she had thought, but they understood what power they held and strove to benefit those they ruled over. The image had no doubt been formed from the Lord of her hometown, and then Headmaster Winston and the nobility he kept as company.

  But she had learned better by now. From her experience, the average nobleman might know how to act in high society, but they were not fundamentally keener of mind, nor were they of stronger and purer spirit. In fact, those she served tended to be dumber, greedier, and meaner than an average commoner plucked from the street. And Elise didn’t have a particularly high opinion of the ‘average person’ either.

  Then again, it’s not like I can blame luck, she thought, calm eyes watching through the Convoy’s window as Meridian’s walls came into sight. When you only take the highest-paying contracts, you’ll get the worst of the worst.

  The Academy didn’t force assignments onto its graduated students. Rather, it acted as a middleman, allowing each Glove to accept contracts at their leisure—not dissimilar from an Adventurer’s Guild quest board. There weren’t many organizations with a better understanding of a given noble family’s reputation, and the family’s true dispositions, not the masks they wore for society. So with all Gloves having their pick of well-paying assignments, her sisters weren’t motivated to take contracts from clientele that were known to be unpleasant people. Thus, the prices for jobs posted by those individuals would keep rising until eventually Elise, alone among her sisters, would be forced to accept.

  Because she needed the coin.

  And I didn’t even get full payment, Elise thought, annoyed. The Caldimore family had had their assets seized. When her next pay period had arrived and the House’s steward had been unable to produce the owed coin, she had politely explained that she would no longer be rendering her services, and promptly gathered her belongings and left.

  She still hadn’t decided if she’d gotten lucky or unlucky. Because again, while it had been one of the least enjoyable contracts she’d ever taken, and she was thankful for getting to leave early, she had needed the coin. Remy needed the coin. And the Caldimore family, prior to their sudden kingdom-wide shame, had possessed quite a lot of it.

  Sighing, she shooed those thoughts away and finished watching the walls of Meridian crawl up. She replaced the malaise with more pleasant anticipation of reuniting with her sisters-in-arms at the Academy and seeing Remy again. She didn’t like being away for long periods, and not just because of the absolute warts of nobility she tended to serve.

  When the train rolled into the station, she waited for everyone else to disembark before she herself rose. She drew eyes as she walked through the streets of Meridian—a White Glove commanded attention almost anywhere they went. Their uniforms were not gaudy or distinct from the modern style; they stood out simply through how they moved and held themselves.

  She visited the bank first and withdrew her earnings from the Caldimore contract. Less than half of what it should be, she thought, nose wrinkling as she looked at the coins. She sighed and tucked them away, then strode for the Alchemist’s Guild. There, she watched all those earnings vanish, replaced with a thin vial of reddish-goldish liquid. She mentally sighed once more, then dropped the potion into her inventory.

  Errands done, she headed for the Academy.

  As she walked, her thoughts drifted to a theory she had formed, now pressingly relevant as she returned home. She was torn on the speculation simply for the absurdity—because logically speaking, it did seem plausible.

  The demonic woman she had met on the Convoy. The one who had performed feats she doubted the Headmaster or the Deputy Headmistress could replicate. The mage who had picked up half of the Convoy and laid it onto its tracks.

  Who was she? The evidence seemed overwhelming, when not a week after experiencing that ridiculous event, news of the Sorceress’s return had begun circulating. What other conclusion was she supposed to draw?

  Surely my imagination is running wild, she thought to herself as the gate of the Academy came into view.

  Or rather: the gate of Vivisari Vexaria’s personal estate.

  If the Sorceress had returned, would the Headmaster seek a new campus? She hoped not, selfish and silly as the idea was. The Sorceress wouldn’t want her residence kept as a schoolhouse for obvious reasons.

  But the Academy was Elise’s home too, and it would always be so. A sentiment she knew her sisters—both in training and graduated—would agree with. Most of them had been in bleak situations prior to enrolling, and in providing them their education, the Headmaster had opened doors to wealth, status, and security a collection of commoners never could have imagined. The Academy both represented and was their brighter future. It was more than a home to them, in many respects.

  Gazes turned as she walked through the swung-open iron gates, and she received nods from her colleagues and bows or curtsies from the students, which she returned with reserved acknowledgments of her own. Nothing seemed amiss with the campus at first glance, and Elise started to feel silly about the theory she’d formed yet never committed to believing.

  Inside the foyer, she bumped into Nicole.

  Not every working White Glove knew the students by name and face, but in between contracts, Elise acted as a supplementary combat instructor. Another way to earn coin, which she always needed more of. So she knew the upper-year students well.

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  The girl glanced at Elise as Elise walked by, then paused and slowly looked back. A Glove’s refined equivalent of a double-take, and Instructor Annabelle would’ve had the girl’s head for it.

  “Instructor Elise. You’ve returned.”

  Elise came to a gradual stop and faced her. Nicole was near enough graduation that she wouldn’t have responded with overt shock simply because Elise was back earlier than expected. Not even if she had instantly deduced that Elise must have broken her contract. Justifiably so, yes, but that would still be unorthodox for a Glove.

  She already had a reputation as the ‘sellsword of the White Gloves,’ she supposed, but she had refused to work for that slimeball a week longer than she was obligated to.

  “Indeed, I am,” she replied smoothly to the younger woman, folding her hands in her apron. “Have you fixed that issue in your guard, as we spoke about?”

  “I’ve been working diligently, Instructor,” Nicole responded, curtsying. “Your advice has raised my marks in combatives by three whole points.”

  “I’m pleased to hear that.”

  Circumspect hellos completed, Nicole glanced over her shoulder in a passably subtle manner, checking to see if anyone was in earshot. “Do you have a moment to speak, Instructor?”

  “Nothing urgent occupies my time,” Elise replied, though her mind started racing. Now she knew something was up. Elise had worked with many of the upper years, Nicole more than most, but the two of them didn’t hold any special bond. And yet the girl felt an urge to warn her about something?

  They stepped aside to talk.

  “Your return is rather coincidental,” the young woman began in a polite tone. Gloves were never anything but.

  “How so?”

  “Have you heard the news?”

  Her heart started beating faster. “I’ve heard rumors. Events of great import occurred while I was gone, that much is clear. But you’ll need to be more specific.”

  “The lady of the house is back.”

  Elise’s thoughts slammed to a halt. There was little way to misinterpret that. The Academy—the house—had only a single true lady to its name, and combined with the rumors and her theories, she instantly understood what Nicole had announced.

  The startling realization that the Sorceress had returned was monumental enough. Any person would’ve been shocked by that alone. The news was particularly relevant to Elise, though. It all but confirmed that the demonic archmage on the Convoy had been Vivisari Vexaria, which Elise struggled to come to terms with for a number of reasons.

  “I see,” she eventually said, even as her brain ran laps around the manor in an attempt to catch up. “That’s… incredible news. The Headmaster must have been ecstatic.”

  Nicole winced. A small expression, only noticeable because Elise herself was trained in identifying social subtleties, as all Gloves were. The reaction both confused and concerned her.

  “He was,” Nicole agreed. “Is, rather. But that’s actually why I thought I should speak with you, Instructor. And why I called your return coincidental.”

  Elise had no idea where the girl was going, so she raised her eyebrows in silent questioning.

  Nicole shifted uncomfortably, doubling Elise’s worries. “I wonder whether it’s appropriate to discuss,” she began. “I know a Glove should never gossip. I seek merely to warn an Instructor who’s helped me so much over the years. A fellow sister of the Academy.” She dipped into a curtsy. “Today—and even now—the Headmaster was giving a tour to Lady Vivisari. I believe he was introducing his family and presenting the grounds and schoolhouse, since the lady of the house has been occupied with certain matters. However, during one of the classes…” The girl hesitated, and Elise had to suppress the urge to demand she finish her statement. “…they began arguing about you, Instructor Elise.”

  Elise responded with a blank expression.

  The Headmaster had… argued with his sworn lady?

  And in a public enough manner that students, or other Gloves, had overheard?

  There were so many aspects of that announcement to unpack that Elise reeled. A Glove’s responsibility was to defend their lord or lady in all matters—not just from harm, but in social and reputational ones too. And the Headmaster was the ultimate Glove. Their founder, their ideal. Why would he argue with his mistress, and the Sorceress no less, in a public setting?

  Then there was the second half of why she was struck speechless: the disagreement had been about her? How? Her thoughts jumped to the only interaction she’d had with the Sorceress—the Convoy. A theory formed, because a Glove was slow in no regard, neither blade nor wit.

  In what manner could she have been brought up, and sparked a disagreement between the Headmaster and his lady?

  “The events on the Convoy,” Elise said, certain.

  But Nicole furrowed her brow. “The Convoy, Instructor?”

  Elise felt suddenly doubtful. “Adherence to duty. The Sorceress wouldn’t approve of how I chose to defend the Count, rather than help the Convoy at large. But the Headmaster would have argued that a servant’s loyalty to and defense of her master is superseded by nothing.”

  It made perfect sense. Why would the Headmaster argue that point publicly? Because it was a virtue he wanted his students to live by. He was setting an example.

  But Nicole only gave the same blank expression Elise herself had been showing a moment earlier.

  Elise’s confusion returned. “No? Then what was it?”

  “It was about Remy, Instructor. In a manner of speaking.”

  The response again startled Elise, because how could Remy have anything to do with anything?

  But just as Nicole opened her mouth to elaborate, the girl’s head jerked in the direction of the stairway.

  Elise had been so flabbergasted by current events that she only belatedly recognized the approaching footsteps herself. Later than a student had, if a talented upper year. A genuine mark of shame.

  She had no time to be embarrassed, though, because appearing at the top of the stairwell were none other than Headmaster Winston and a short demonic woman in black robes.

  Lady Vivisari Vexaria.

  Nicole paled, curtsied to the two of them and then Elise, and scurried away in what was obviously a retreat.

  Elise wondered whether she should do the same.

  Perhaps foolishly, she stood her ground. Two attentions fell onto her, and she registered mild surprise on the Headmaster’s expression. He hadn’t been expecting her back, then, and no doubt recognized in an instant—as many of Elise’s peers surely had—that she must have broken the contract with Count Caldimore to do so.

  He didn’t seem upset, though Elise could hardly take that as definitive proof of anything. All White Gloves could mask their emotions well.

  Vivisari seemed, as she had when Elise had first met her and throughout that train ride, nothing short of bored to the point of suffering. Nearly disdainful of her surroundings.

  Elise remembered taking offense at the utter disregard she had found in that apathetic gaze. A Glove of the Second Class was a defender who could fight a Titled assailant to a standstill. Unless she’s one of the strongest women in all the mortal lands, she had thought, even if she hadn’t let it show on her face, then dismissing me is sheer foolishness.

  Then she’d felt the world tremble and the air nearly peel itself apart—a spell that had apparently killed a Titled monster in a single blast—and she’d realized that arrogance hadn’t been involved in that appraisal whatsoever. Elise had been dismissed as inconsequential because she was inconsequential.

  The Headmaster glanced at his lady, and she returned the look. They seemed to communicate something silently, in that way any longtime servant and lord should be able to. Despite everything happening, a spike of envy went through Elise when she saw the display. A Glove’s purpose was to find a lord or lady worth serving, one to attend to for the rest of their life, but her circumstances kept her from that.

  “Thank you for the lunch, and the tour, Winston. I enjoyed it greatly. You have a lovely family and academy.”

  He bowed. “It was entirely my privilege, Lady Vivisari.”

  Elise didn’t need to know the Headmaster as a close friend to recognize the genuineness of those words, no matter how skilled Gloves were at hiding their true thoughts. The Headmaster had gushed about his mistress in every speech Elise had ever heard from the man.

  Nodding at the Headmaster, the woman concluded the tour that had apparently been happening until that moment—and began to descend the stairs, her red eyes locking onto Elise.