Chapter 1170: Prince and Convenience

Marisse closed Lucavion’s record, returned the remaining profiles to their folder, and left the representative line untouched.

The name she had considered required more than a moment of private satisfaction before she committed it to Academy record.

She set the wager file beneath two placement reviews and left her office.

The faculty wing had grown more crowded during the afternoon. Assistants carried finalized rankings between offices, students waited beside doors with registration notices in hand, and two instructors argued quietly over which remedial course should inherit an already overfilled classroom.

Marisse moved through them without slowing. She still had correspondence awaiting her seal in the western offices.

The candidate remained less cooperative in her thoughts.

A lesser student could simply be summoned. Most freshmen would accept personal preparation from a Magister before she finished describing the opportunity. Instruction, visibility, resources, and the reputation earned through victory would provide more than enough incentive.

This student already possessed every one of them.

The family name carried its own prestige. Private teachers had established the foundation Marisse intended to sharpen, while wealth and institutional access placed ordinary Academy resources well within reach. Even defeating Lucavion would add less to that reputation than it would to almost anyone else’s.

’The student suits me. That does not mean I suit the student.’

The irritation followed her around the next corner.

Access was only the first complication. Once that name entered the wager file, the contest would acquire a political shape larger than its original terms. Faculty would interpret the choice. The family would judge Marisse’s involvement, while rival factions would decide whether the arrangement threatened or benefited them.

None of them possessed legal authority to prevent her selection.

That did not make their intentions irrelevant.

Marisse needed a reason the candidate would value, followed by a clear account of which powers might interfere once that reason succeeded. The greatest political force currently operating among the students could not simply be disregarded. No student possessed the authority to veto an Academy wager, but failing to learn whether that power intended to oppose, claim, or reinterpret her choice would be carelessness disguised as independence.

At the next junction, the surrounding assistants had already cleared one side of the corridor.

A young man waited beyond them in black and gold, accompanied by a single attendant.

He stood with the stillness of someone accustomed to being observed and who had long ago learned to make observation feel like permission. His coat bore little ornament beyond the restrained gold at its collar and cuffs, yet the colors carried authority more effectively than ceremonial display would have done.

Golden hair framed a composed face. His expression revealed neither impatience nor curiosity. Only his eyes moved, measuring the distance between them and whatever conclusion he had already drawn.

His attention settled upon Marisse before she reached the junction.

He had not come upon her by accident.

After all....He rarely went anywhere without a reason, and he never arranged to be encountered unless the encounter itself served one.

Marisse had neither summoned him nor announced the conclusion waiting inside her wager file. If he had come to this corridor now, he had already learned enough to decide the rest was worth hearing from her directly.

He dismissed his attendant with a slight movement of two fingers. The man withdrew far enough to grant privacy without leaving the corridor.

"Magister."

Marisse stopped before him. "Your Highness."

His gaze settled briefly on the documents beneath her arm. "The Academy appears determined to ensure none of you enjoy the end of the examinations."

"The students finished. The faculty merely inherited what they left behind."

Something faint touched his expression. "An unfortunate division of labor."

The exchange could have ended there, had either of them believed he had waited in this corridor to discuss faculty correspondence.

Lucien glanced once toward the folders she carried.

"I assume the finalized records reached you."

"They did."

"Then your wager has finally become measurable."

So he had come for Lucavion.

Marisse adjusted the placement documents beneath her arm. "They clarified the scale of the preparation required. I have not begun regretting the wager."

"No." Lucien’s eyes passed briefly over the folders she carried. "If you regretted it, you would have chosen someone already."

Marisse allowed the observation to stand. He had found the distinction quickly enough.

She had stopped searching, but the representative line remained blank. Those were different states, although very few people would have recognized the space between them.

"You have someone in mind," Lucien said.

"A possibility."

"And not simply the strongest available freshman."

"The duel will not occur tomorrow."

Something faint shifted behind his expression—not surprise, but confirmation.

They walked toward the quieter adjoining passage. Marisse gave him only the shape of her conclusion: present ability sufficient to survive the matchup, foundations capable of carrying advanced preparation, and enough discipline that several months of specialized instruction would not be wasted. The student also required access to methods and resources that would continue operating beyond whatever attention Marisse personally provided.

Lucien needed no explanation of why time mattered. Lucavion’s results already showed what happened when a visible deficiency gave him something concrete to correct.

A merely powerful student might remain merely powerful by the Exhibition.

Marisse required someone whose advantages would compound.

"An established inheritance," Lucien murmured. "Private instruction that already agrees with the student’s affinity. Resources beyond the Academy curriculum, and a family capable of accelerating development without waiting upon faculty approval."

"Yes."

"Someone sufficiently capable that your preparation becomes refinement rather than repair."

Marisse turned her head slightly. He was no longer gathering her criteria. He was matching them.

Only a small number of freshmen possessed every advantage together. Fewer still had enough unrealized growth for one term to matter, the temperament to endure preparation designed around a single opponent, and a name whose involvement would explain Marisse’s political caution.

Lucien walked three more steps before speaking.

"Thalor."

Marisse stopped.

Her silence lasted no longer than a breath, yet Lucien had already received his confirmation.

Thalor Draycott.

The heir to a family whose magical infrastructure rivaled institutions, and the most prominent young figure produced by the Magic Tower in his generation. Placing that name into the wager would transform a private academic dispute into something every major faction could interpret according to its interests.

Lucien regarded her with the same quiet composure. "You have chosen expensively."

"Politically," Marisse corrected.

"In this case, the distinction is narrow."

She resumed walking. "His suitability was never the difficult part. House Draycott cannot be tempted with ordinary resources, and the Magic Tower has little need for instruction carrying my name. He already possesses teachers, status, and opportunities that most students would enter the wager hoping to earn."

Marisse glanced toward Lucien. "Identifying the proper candidate and giving him a reason to accept are separate problems."

His expression did not change, but something in his silence suggested that he considered the second problem considerably smaller than she did.

"He will not refuse."

Lucien delivered the answer without emphasis.

Marisse studied him. Certainty from the Crown Prince rarely rested upon optimism, but Thalor Draycott was neither his retainer nor a student who could be moved through ordinary royal encouragement.

"House Draycott governs its own affairs, Your Highness," she said. "Thalor more so than most."

"I am aware."

"Then you possess remarkable confidence in a decision that is not yours to make, Your Highness."

Lucien accepted the correction without losing any of that confidence. "I did not say he would agree because I asked."

They resumed walking into the adjoining passage. The traffic of the administrative wing faded behind them, leaving only the muted passage of shoes across stone and the occasional movement of faculty through the distant intersections.

Lucien did not describe Thalor as obedient. He described him as predictable in the narrower sense reserved for intelligent people with recognizable interests. Thalor would negotiate. He would conceal eagerness beneath scrutiny, insist upon the independence of his decision, and resist any arrangement that allowed another person to claim authority over his involvement. If Lucien’s opinion entered the discussion too openly, Thalor might object merely to prevent that opinion from becoming influence.

None of those responses meant he lacked interest.

"They are reasons for him to bargain," Lucien said. "Not reasons for him to refuse the match."

Marisse shifted the documents against her arm. "You believe Lucavion is sufficient incentive."

"Lucavion has already made himself difficult to ignore."

That much required no argument. Lucavion’s record contained enough contradictions to attract any serious observer. Thalor valued magical structures, hidden mechanisms, and anomalies that refused immediate classification. A Martial Arts student producing unexplained flame behavior while disrupting noble arrangements would have reached his attention eventually.

Lucavion had also demonstrated an inconvenient habit of entering structures controlled by other people and leaving them less stable than he found them.

Priscilla made the matter personal.

Lucien did not need to say her name at first. His meaning entered the conversation through the faint loss of warmth in his voice, and for a moment, the reasoning carried the shape of his own contempt.

Once that inferior half-blood had shaken hands with Lucavion, Thalor’s side had been determined.

Inherently, that side was not Lucien’s side. Thalor would never permit the matter to become that convenient.

The side was simply his own.

Priscilla had rejected the place once arranged for her beside Thalor, and the Draycott heir had never fully accepted that rejection as something she possessed the authority to make final. Lucavion had interfered when Thalor later pressed her. Worse, Priscilla had chosen to stand publicly beside Lucavion afterward, while Lucavion continued choosing her side with equally little concern for the people offended by it.

That did not reduce Thalor’s interest to wounded jealousy. Lucavion would have attracted him regardless. The unexplained knowledge, abnormal magic, and repeated disruption were precisely the sort of problem Thalor preferred to examine for himself.

Priscilla had merely placed pride inside the curiosity.

"Even without your wager," Lucien said, "he would have found a reason to test Lucavion before the year ended."

Marisse considered the shape of that prediction. "Then, can I presume the wager does not create the confrontation?"

"You may. The wager merely improves the arrangement."

The answer revealed enough of Lucien’s own calculation.

Left alone, Thalor might choose any moment, method, or degree of pressure that suited him. Marisse’s arrangement offered a fixed date, controlled rules, months of preparation, and an audience large enough to turn the result into useful information. Lucien could observe both students without openly arranging the collision or placing himself within it.

His support was not generosity. Lucien simply preferred conflict once it had been made orderly enough to study.

Marisse found no reason to object. Their interests did not need to be identical to overlap.

"Then I asked the wrong question," she said.

Lucien glanced toward her.

"Thalor may want to fight Lucavion. That does not mean he wants to enter the Exhibition as my representative."

A restrained pause followed.

"Interest is inexpensive," Lucien said. "Representation is not."

That distinction returned the difficulty to its proper place. By accepting, Thalor would submit to Marisse’s schedule, participate in preparation designed by her, and allow his name to appear beneath hers in a public wager. Whatever private satisfaction he expected from confronting Lucavion, he would not surrender those terms without extracting value.

Marisse began removing the obvious offers before they reached full consideration.

Money would accomplish nothing. House Draycott could purchase artifacts beyond what she might reasonably place into a student wager, while the Magic Tower already supplied instruction, research access, and specialized facilities. Political visibility had no appeal to someone born beneath that much attention. Even Marisse’s personal guidance, though valuable, would become only one more instructor added to an already exceptional education.

She needed something his name could not purchase and his existing affiliations did not automatically provide.

The western offices waited beyond the next turn. Marisse slowed before reaching it.

The Academy had accumulated bodies of knowledge that it never transferred to the Magic Tower. Some remained restricted because they touched old imperial work. Others survived because failure had made them unsuitable for ordinary instruction: discontinued large-scale formations, battlefield arrays whose independent nodes had destabilized, and research produced before modern standards had settled which approaches deserved preservation.

Most freshmen would gain nothing from those records except confusion.

Thalor might regard the confusion as an invitation.

Marisse did not own the collection, but her standing could support a petition for supervised access. House Draycott’s wealth could not purchase that authorization, and the Tower’s influence did not erase the Academy’s control over its own sealed research.

Lucien’s attention remained upon her for a moment longer. Whatever change he found in her expression satisfied him, because he did not ask what she had found.

Marisse adjusted the documents beneath her arm and continued toward the western offices.

The representative line in the wager file remained blank.

For now, it was no longer waiting for a name.

It was waiting for a price.