The Gentleman's Agony

The chandeliers of the Grand Ballroom hung like frozen waterfalls of light, each crystal prism worth more than a Proxy's life. Silas Vane had counted them once, during a particularly tedious state dinner three years prior, and arrived at the number forty-seven. Forty-seven chandeliers, each requiring the labor of six Proxies to illuminate through the night—not to power the light itself, which was simple enough magic, but to absorb the cost of maintaining it. The headaches, the nosebleeds, the bone-deep exhaustion that came from sustaining luxury.

Two hundred and eighty-two Proxies in total, if his calculations were correct. One for each aristocrat in attendance, plus the extras needed to maintain the ballroom's various enchantments—the temperature regulation spells that kept the air perfectly comfortable, the acoustic enhancements that allowed conversations to be heard clearly without shouting, the subtle illusions that made everyone look slightly more attractive than they actually were. Magic was woven into every aspect of the Red Gala, and every thread of that magic was paid for in blood and pain by people wearing silver Collars.

Silas could see them if he looked carefully—the Proxies standing in the shadows behind their masters, their faces carefully blank, their bodies held in that particular stillness that came from trying not to draw attention. Some were young, barely out of their teens, still adjusting to the constant drain of magical costs. Others were older, their faces lined with premature aging, their eyes holding that distant look that Silas recognized in his own reflection. The look of someone who had learned to be somewhere else while their body suffered.

He stood now in his customary position, three steps behind and two steps to the left of Lord Casimir Vane, his master of fifteen years. The positioning was not accidental. It allowed him to survey the room while remaining unobtrusive, to intercept servants bearing champagne or canapés before they could interrupt his master's conversations, and to step forward precisely when needed to absorb whatever magical whim Lord Casimir might indulge.

Lord Casimir was holding court near the eastern wall, surrounded by a cluster of minor nobles who hung on his every word. He was discussing the latest developments in magical theory—a topic he knew almost nothing about, but that didn't stop him from pontificating with the confidence of someone who had never been contradicted. The nobles nodded and murmured agreement, because that was what one did when a wealthy and influential lord was speaking, regardless of whether he was making any sense.

Silas had learned long ago to tune out the actual content of these conversations and focus instead on the subtext. Lord Casimir wasn't really talking about magical theory—he was establishing dominance, reminding everyone of his wealth and status, making sure they knew he was someone important. The words themselves were meaningless; it was the performance that mattered.

And Silas was part of that performance. The well-dressed, perfectly trained Proxy standing attentively behind his master, ready to serve at a moment's notice. He was a status symbol, like Lord Casimir's expensive clothes or his jeweled rings. Proof that Lord Casimir could afford the best, that he had the resources to keep a Proxy alive for fifteen years when most died within seven.

It was, Silas reflected, a deeply depressing way to measure success.

"Silas," Lord Casimir said without turning, his voice carrying that particular tone of aristocratic expectation that required no volume to command attention. "The Rothschild vintage, if you please."

"Of course, my lord." Silas moved with the fluid grace of long practice, navigating the crowd of silk and jewels with the ease of a man who had spent two decades learning to be invisible while remaining indispensable. He caught the eye of a server, gestured with two fingers—their private signal for the Rothschild—and returned to his position before Lord Casimir had finished his sentence to the Duchess of Marlowe.

The server appeared within thirty seconds, bearing a crystal flute of wine so dark it looked like liquid rubies. Silas accepted it with a nod, held it for precisely three seconds to ensure it had reached optimal temperature, and presented it to Lord Casimir with the glass stem positioned for easy grasping.

Lord Casimir took it without acknowledgment. Silas had long ago stopped expecting thanks. Gratitude implied surprise at competence, and surprise implied the possibility of failure. Silas Vane did not fail.

It was a point of pride, actually. In fifteen years of service, he had never once made a mistake that Lord Casimir noticed. Never brought the wrong wine, never failed to anticipate a need, never allowed his master to be embarrassed or inconvenienced. It was a perfect record, maintained through obsessive attention to detail and an almost supernatural ability to predict what Lord Casimir would want before he wanted it.

Other Proxies envied him for it. They saw his longevity, his apparent favor with his master, and they assumed he had some secret, some trick that allowed him to survive where others failed. They didn't understand that his survival had nothing to do with favor or tricks. It was simply a matter of becoming so indispensable that Lord Casimir couldn't imagine replacing him.

And the cost of that indispensability was everything Silas had once been. His personality, his preferences, his sense of self—all of it had been filed away, locked in some dark corner of his mind where it couldn't interfere with his function. He was a tool, perfectly calibrated to serve Lord Casimir's needs, and tools didn't have feelings or desires or dreams.

Except late at night, when Lord Casimir was asleep and Silas was alone with his thoughts, he sometimes remembered what it felt like to be human. To want things, to care about things, to have opinions that mattered. Those memories were painful, so he tried not to indulge them. But they were there, persistent as ghosts, reminding him of everything he'd lost.

"Your Proxy is remarkably well-trained, Casimir," the Duchess observed, her eyes flicking to Silas with the same casual interest one might show a particularly fine horse. "How long have you had him?"

"Fifteen years this autumn," Lord Casimir replied, swirling his wine. "Inherited him from my father, actually. The old man had excellent taste in Proxies, if nothing else."

"Fifteen years?" The Duchess's eyebrows rose with genuine surprise. "My dear Casimir, that's extraordinary. Most Proxies don't last five years in active service. What's your secret?"

Lord Casimir smiled, the expression of a man who enjoyed being envied. "Moderation, my dear Duchess. I'm not one of these young fools who burns through Proxies like firewood, casting every frivolous spell that crosses their mind. Silas here is an investment, and I treat him accordingly."

Silas maintained his expression of polite neutrality, though he could have laughed at the irony. Moderation. Lord Casimir used magic with the restraint of a man at an all-you-can-eat buffet, but he was clever about it. He never pushed Silas to the point of visible collapse, never left marks that would raise questions at the monthly Proxy health inspections. He simply used him constantly, relentlessly, in a thousand small ways that never quite crossed the line into obvious abuse.

A warming spell for his morning bath. A cooling spell for his afternoon tea. Minor illusions to enhance his appearance, subtle charms to make his voice more persuasive, tiny manipulations of probability to ensure his dice fell favorably at the gaming tables. Each spell individually was trivial, barely worth mentioning. Collectively, they were a slow-motion crucifixion that had been ongoing for fifteen years.

Silas felt none of it anymore. That was his secret, the reason he had survived when ninety-seven percent of Proxies died within their first decade of service. Somewhere around year seven, his nervous system had simply given up trying to process the constant input of pain and had started routing it elsewhere. Into some dark corner of his psyche where it accumulated like interest on a debt that could never be repaid.

He was, in the technical medical sense, completely dissociated from his own body. He could watch his hand being held over a candle flame with the same detached interest he might show a mildly engaging stage play. The pain was there—he knew it intellectually, could describe it in precise detail if asked—but it didn't touch him. Not anymore.

"You must give me the name of your trainer," the Duchess was saying. "My current Proxy is adequate, but he lacks that certain... polish. Your man looks like he could serve tea during an earthquake without spilling a drop."

"Natural talent, I'm afraid," Lord Casimir said smoothly. "Some Proxies are simply born with the temperament for service. Silas, demonstrate for the Duchess, would you?"

It wasn't a request. Silas stepped forward, his movements precise and economical. "How may I serve, my lord?"

Lord Casimir gestured lazily with his wine glass. "The Duchess's champagne has gone flat. Refresh it."

Silas turned to the Duchess, who extended her glass with the bored expression of someone watching a trained animal perform a trick. He accepted the glass, held it for a moment, and felt the familiar sensation of Lord Casimir drawing on their bond.

The magic itself was simple—a minor transmutation to restore carbonation to the wine. The cost, however, was not. Silas felt his stomach lining begin to dissolve, felt the acid burn of his own digestive juices eating through tissue that suddenly lacked its protective mucus layer. It was the biological equivalent of the spell: to restore effervescence to the wine, something else had to lose its structural integrity.

He handed the glass back to the Duchess without a flicker of expression. "Your champagne, my lady."

She sipped it, smiled, and turned back to Lord Casimir. "Remarkable. And he didn't even flinch. How do you manage it?"

"Discipline," Lord Casimir said, as if he had anything to do with it. "Firm but fair discipline."

Silas returned to his position, his stomach quietly bleeding into itself. It would heal, of course. It always did. The human body was remarkably resilient, and the magical bond that connected him to Lord Casimir ensured that he couldn't die from the accumulated damage—not as long as his master lived and willed him to survive. He was trapped in a state of perpetual recovery, his body constantly repairing itself just enough to be damaged again.

He had long ago stopped thinking of it as torture. Torture implied malice, implied that someone was deliberately trying to cause him pain. But Lord Casimir wasn't cruel, not really. He was simply... indifferent. Silas was a tool, and tools didn't have feelings that mattered.

The ballroom continued its glittering rotation around him. Aristocrats in their finest silks and velvets, jewels that could feed a family for a year hanging casually from earlobes and wrists. Proxies in their gray uniforms and silver collars, standing in the shadows behind their masters like well-dressed ghosts. The music of the orchestra—twelve musicians, each one free-born and well-paid, because art required passion and Proxies were considered incapable of genuine emotion.

Silas had opinions about that, but he kept them to himself. He had opinions about many things. The architecture of the ballroom, for instance, which was technically impressive but aesthetically overwrought. The quality of the wine, which was excellent but served at slightly the wrong temperature. The Duchess's dress, which was clearly designed by Madame Celestine but executed by a lesser seamstress who had botched the hem.

He kept all of these observations filed away in the vast catalog of his mind, along with the names and faces of every aristocrat in the room, their political allegiances, their financial situations, their scandals and secrets. Information was the only currency a Proxy could accumulate, and Silas had been collecting it for fifteen years.

"Silas." Lord Casimir's voice cut through his thoughts. "The Princess has arrived. Adjust my appearance, would you? I want to make an impression."

Silas felt the pull on their bond before Lord Casimir had finished speaking. The spell was more complex this time—a subtle enhancement of his master's features, smoothing away the signs of age and excess, adding a hint of luminosity to his skin, deepening the color of his eyes. It was vanity magic, the kind that made Proxies die young and aristocrats look eternally youthful.

The cost hit Silas like a hammer. His own skin began to age rapidly, cells dying and sloughing off, collagen breaking down, elasticity disappearing. He felt his face sag, felt wrinkles carve themselves into his forehead and around his eyes. His hair, already silver at thirty-seven, began to thin and brittle.

It would reverse itself within the hour—the bond wouldn't allow permanent damage while Lord Casimir lived—but for now, Silas looked like he had aged twenty years in twenty seconds.

He maintained his expression of polite attentiveness. "Will there be anything else, my lord?"

Lord Casimir was already moving toward the Princess, his enhanced appearance drawing admiring glances from the crowd. He didn't bother to answer. Silas followed at the prescribed distance, his temporarily ancient face hidden in the shadows between chandeliers.

Princess Elara Velle stood at the top of the grand staircase, and even Silas, who had long ago trained himself not to notice beauty, had to admit she was striking. Twenty-four years old, tall and slender, with the kind of bone structure that would photograph well from any angle. Her dress was a masterpiece of midnight blue silk that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it, and her crown—a delicate thing of white gold and sapphires—sat on her dark hair like it had grown there.

But it was her eyes that caught his attention. They were intelligent eyes, sharp and assessing, scanning the crowd with the focus of someone who understood that every social interaction was a chess game. She smiled and nodded at the appropriate moments, said the right things to the right people, but Silas could see the calculation behind every gesture.

She was, he realized, very much like him. Playing a role, wearing a mask, performing the dance of civilization while keeping her true thoughts carefully hidden. The difference was that she had chosen this performance, had been trained for it since birth, had accepted it as the price of her position. Silas had had his performance forced upon him, had learned it as a survival mechanism, had never had the luxury of choice.

But the end result was the same: two people who had become so good at pretending that they'd almost forgotten who they really were underneath the masks.

Her Proxy stood two steps behind her, a young man named Thomas who couldn't have been more than twenty-five. He had the look of someone who hadn't yet learned to dissociate, who still felt every spell in full, visceral detail. His hands trembled slightly, and there was a sheen of sweat on his forehead despite the carefully climate-controlled ballroom.

Silas gave him six months. A year at most.

He'd seen it before, too many times. Young Proxies who still had hope, who still believed they could endure, who hadn't yet realized that endurance wasn't enough. They would push themselves, trying to be strong, trying to prove they could handle it. And then one day, their bodies would simply give up. Heart failure, usually, or a stroke. Sometimes they just stopped breathing in the middle of a spell, their nervous systems finally overloaded beyond recovery.

The aristocrats called it "natural causes" and moved on to the next Proxy. The other Proxies knew better. They knew it was murder, slow and systematic, dressed up in legal language and social convention.

Silas had survived by learning not to push, not to try, not to hope. He had accepted his fate and found a way to exist within it. It wasn't living, not really, but it was survival. And survival was all he had.

He wondered if Thomas would figure that out in time. Probably not. Most Proxies didn't. They held onto their humanity too tightly, refused to let go of the things that made them people, and it killed them.

Silas had let go of everything. And it had kept him alive for fifteen years.

He wasn't sure if that was a victory or a tragedy.

"Your Highness." Lord Casimir bowed with practiced grace, his enhanced appearance making him look like a man ten years younger and infinitely more vital. "You honor us with your presence."

"Lord Casimir." Princess Elara extended her hand, and Lord Casimir kissed it with the precise amount of pressure and duration that protocol demanded. "I trust you're enjoying the evening?"

"Immensely, Your Highness. Though I confess the evening has only truly begun now that you've arrived."

It was a line so smooth it could have been used to lubricate machinery, but Princess Elara smiled as if she'd never heard it before. "You're too kind, my lord. I see you've brought your Proxy. Silas, isn't it?"

Silas stepped forward, surprised to be addressed directly. Aristocrats rarely acknowledged Proxies by name, and royalty almost never did. "Yes, Your Highness."

"I've heard remarkable things about you," she continued, her eyes studying him with that same sharp intelligence he'd noticed earlier. "They say you're the oldest active Proxy in the capital. Fifteen years of service, is that correct?"

"Yes, Your Highness."

"That's quite extraordinary. You must have exceptional resilience."

There was something in her tone that made Silas pause. It wasn't quite sympathy—aristocrats didn't do sympathy for Proxies—but it was something adjacent to it. Curiosity, perhaps. Or academic interest.

"I serve to the best of my ability, Your Highness," he said, falling back on the standard response.

"I'm sure you do." She turned back to Lord Casimir, but her eyes flicked to Silas once more before she moved on. "Enjoy the evening, my lord."

Lord Casimir preened as she walked away, clearly pleased with the interaction. "Did you see that, Silas? The Princess knows your name. That's quite an honor."

"Indeed, my lord." Silas's stomach had finally stopped bleeding. His face was beginning to return to its normal appearance, the accelerated aging reversing itself as his body frantically repaired the damage. By the time they returned to the manor tonight, he would look thirty-seven again instead of sixty.

The evening continued its predictable course. Lord Casimir worked the room, collecting political favors and social capital with the efficiency of a man who had been doing it his entire life. Silas followed, absorbed the costs of his master's magic, and maintained his expression of serene competence.

He was refilling Lord Casimir's wine glass for the third time when he noticed the servers.

It was a small thing, barely worth noting. But Silas had spent fifteen years learning to notice small things, because small things were often the only warning you got before something went catastrophically wrong.

The servers were moving differently. Their patterns were off, their timing slightly irregular. They were avoiding certain areas of the room, clustering near the exits, and their eyes kept flicking to the clock tower visible through the ballroom's tall windows.

Silas had memorized the serving patterns years ago, during one of his many exercises in observation and analysis. The servers at palace functions moved in carefully choreographed routes, designed to maximize efficiency while minimizing disruption. They entered from the kitchen doors on the west side, circulated clockwise through the room, and exited through the service corridors on the east side. The pattern was so consistent that Silas could predict, within seconds, when a server would pass any given point in the ballroom.

Tonight, the pattern was wrong. Servers were entering and exiting through the wrong doors, their routes were erratic, and they were spending too much time near the exits. It was subtle enough that most people wouldn't notice, but Silas had built his survival on noticing things that most people missed.

And there was something else. The servers' uniforms were slightly off. The fabric was the right color, the cut was correct, but the stitching was wrong. Palace uniforms were made by a specific tailor who used a distinctive cross-stitch pattern on the seams. These uniforms had straight stitches, the kind you'd see on mass-produced clothing from the Merchant Quarter.

Which meant these weren't palace servers. They were imposters.

Silas felt something he hadn't felt in years: a prickle of genuine unease. Not fear, exactly—he'd lost the capacity for real fear somewhere around year eight—but a heightened awareness that something was very wrong and about to get worse.

He leaned forward slightly, just enough to murmur in Lord Casimir's ear. "My lord, I believe we should consider departing early this evening."

Lord Casimir frowned, annoyed at the interruption. "Don't be ridiculous, Silas. The King hasn't even made his entrance yet. It would be unforgivably rude to leave before—"

The clock tower began to chime. Nine o'clock.

The servers dropped their trays.

And the world exploded into fire.

*

The first bomb went off near the orchestra, a blossom of flame and force that turned twelve musicians into a red mist in the space between one heartbeat and the next. The sound was enormous, a physical thing that hit Silas like a wall of compressed air and sent him staggering backward.

His ears rang. His vision blurred. But his body, trained by fifteen years of constant crisis management, moved on autopilot.

He grabbed Lord Casimir by the collar and pulled him down, covering his master's body with his own as the second bomb detonated near the champagne fountain. Crystal shrapnel filled the air like a swarm of angry wasps, and Silas felt dozens of tiny cuts open across his back and shoulders as he shielded Lord Casimir from the worst of it.

The pain was immediate and sharp, but Silas processed it with the same detached interest he might show a mildly engaging stage play. His back was bleeding, his shoulders were torn, but these were just facts, data points to be noted and filed away. The pain itself was somewhere else, happening to someone else, not quite real.

The third bomb. The fourth. The fifth. They were spaced around the ballroom in a careful pattern designed to maximize casualties and minimize escape routes. Whoever had planned this had studied the architecture, had known exactly where to place the explosives for maximum effect.

Silas's mind, even in the chaos, was analyzing the pattern. Five bombs, positioned at the cardinal points and center of the ballroom. The explosions were timed to create a cascade effect, each one driving survivors toward the next blast zone. It was elegant, in a horrifying sort of way. Efficient. Designed by someone who understood crowd dynamics and structural engineering.

The Red Hand, he thought. It had to be. They were the only separatist group with the resources and expertise to pull off something like this. He'd been tracking their activities for years, filing away information about their methods and capabilities, and this matched their profile perfectly.

The screaming started. Aristocrats who had never experienced real pain in their pampered lives suddenly found themselves bleeding, burning, dying. They ran in all directions, trampling each other in their panic, their carefully cultivated dignity evaporating in the face of genuine terror.

Silas watched a duchess he'd served wine to an hour ago get crushed under the stampede, her expensive dress torn and bloodied. He saw a young lord—couldn't have been more than twenty—stumble and fall, his leg bent at an impossible angle, screaming for help that wouldn't come. He saw Proxies trying to shield their masters, their bodies absorbing shrapnel and flame, dying so that aristocrats might live a few seconds longer.

It was chaos, pure and absolute. The kind of chaos that revealed what people really were underneath their civilized veneers. And what Silas saw was not encouraging.

The aristocrats were saving themselves, abandoning their companions, their friends, even their family members in their desperate rush to escape. The Proxies were dying, either from the explosions or from their masters' panicked attempts to use magic to save themselves. And the servants—the real servants, not the imposters who had planted the bombs—were caught in the middle, trampled and forgotten.

This, Silas thought with bitter clarity, was the kingdom in microcosm. The powerful saving themselves at any cost, the powerless dying to serve them, and everyone else caught in the crossfire.

Silas hauled Lord Casimir to his feet. "My lord, we need to move. Now."

But Lord Casimir wasn't listening. He was staring at his hand, at the blood running down his palm from a deep gash across his lifeline. "I'm bleeding," he said, his voice distant with shock. "Silas, I'm bleeding."

"Yes, my lord. We need to—"

"Fix it." Lord Casimir grabbed Silas's collar, his eyes wild. "Fix it now. Heal me."

"My lord, we don't have time—"

"I said heal me!" Lord Casimir's hand went to his Conduit Ring, the silver band that connected him to Silas's Collar, and Silas felt the bond activate with the force of a lightning strike.

The healing spell was crude, panicked, inefficient. Lord Casimir was too frightened to cast it properly, and the cost was astronomical. Silas felt his own hand begin to split open, felt the skin peel back and the muscle tear, felt bone crack and splinter as the magical equivalent exchange demanded payment.

His hand destroyed itself to heal Lord Casimir's paper cut.

Silas looked down at the ruin of his right hand—fingers bent at wrong angles, blood pouring from a dozen lacerations, bone visible through the torn flesh—and felt nothing. No pain, no fear, no anger. Just a distant, clinical observation that this was going to make the evacuation more difficult.

"My lord," he said calmly, "we really must go now."

Another explosion, this one closer. The chandelier directly above them swayed, crystal prisms chiming like wind chimes in a hurricane. Silas looked up, calculated trajectories and timing, and made a decision.

He grabbed Lord Casimir with his ruined hand—the fingers didn't work properly anymore, but he could still grip with his palm and wrist—and pulled him toward the nearest exit. They made it three steps before the chandelier fell.

Forty-seven chandeliers, Silas had counted. Each one weighing approximately three hundred pounds. This one fell like a guillotine, a glittering execution device that would have crushed Lord Casimir flat if Silas hadn't shoved him aside at the last second.

The chandelier hit Silas instead.

Three hundred pounds of crystal and iron landed on his left leg, and even his burned-out nervous system couldn't completely ignore that. He felt the bones shatter, felt his knee joint disintegrate, felt his femur snap like a dry twig. The pain was distant but undeniable, a red scream at the edge of his consciousness that he couldn't quite tune out.

He fell. Lord Casimir scrambled away, his face pale with terror, and Silas tried to follow but his leg wouldn't work. Couldn't work. It was just meat and broken bone now, useless as a severed limb.

"My lord," he called out, his voice still calm despite everything. "I require assistance."

But Lord Casimir was already running, joining the stampede of aristocrats fleeing toward the exits. He didn't look back. Why would he? Silas was just a Proxy, just a tool, and tools could be replaced.

Silas lay there, pinned under the chandelier, and watched the ballroom burn.

The fires were spreading now, fed by spilled alcohol and expensive fabrics. The smoke was getting thicker, making it hard to see, hard to breathe. Bodies lay scattered across the marble floor—aristocrats and Proxies alike, because bombs didn't discriminate based on social class.

He should have been afraid. Should have been panicking, screaming, begging for help. But fear required the ability to care about your own survival, and Silas had lost that somewhere around year nine.

He was going to die here. That was fine. He'd been dying slowly for fifteen years anyway. This was just a faster version of the same process.

He thought about his parents, dead these twelve years. Would they be disappointed that he'd given up so easily? Or would they understand that there was nothing left to fight for, no reason to struggle against the inevitable?

He thought about the other Proxies he'd known over the years. Marcus, who had lasted three years before his heart gave out. Elena, who had made it to five years before a stroke took her in the middle of a spell. Thomas Crane, who had died just six months ago, worked to death by an aristocrat who couldn't be bothered to moderate his magical usage.

They were all waiting for him, he imagined. On the other side, wherever that was. A place where Collars didn't exist, where pain was just a memory, where they could finally rest.

It sounded nice.

He closed his eyes and waited for the smoke to take him.

But then he heard it. A voice, cutting through the chaos, high and clear and desperate.

"Help! Someone help!"

Silas opened his eyes, annoyed at the interruption of his peaceful acceptance of death. He turned his head, searching for the source of the voice, and saw something that made him reconsider his decision to die.

Princess Elara, the heir to the throne, was trying to drag her Proxy to safety. And no one was helping her.

It shouldn't have mattered. She was just another aristocrat, just another person who had spent her life benefiting from the suffering of people like him. Her death would change nothing, mean nothing, matter to no one except the political calculators who would fight over the succession.

But she was trying to save Thomas. Not herself—she could have run, could have escaped easily on her own. But she was staying, risking her life, trying to save a Proxy who was probably already dead.

And that, Silas realized, changed everything.

Because if the Princess—the future Queen—could see Proxies as people worth saving, then maybe, just maybe, things could actually change. Maybe the system that had destroyed him could be reformed. Maybe other Proxies wouldn't have to suffer the way he had suffered.

It was a slim hope, barely more than a fantasy. But it was enough.

Enough to make him want to live. Enough to make him fight. Enough to make him care about what happened next.

For the first time in six years, Silas Vane decided that his life was worth saving.

"Help! Someone help!"

The voice cut through the chaos, high and clear and desperate. Silas opened his eyes and turned his head, searching for the source.

Princess Elara stood twenty feet away, her midnight blue dress torn and stained with blood. She was trying to drag someone—her Proxy, Thomas—toward the exit, but he was unconscious and she wasn't strong enough to move him alone.

"Please!" she screamed at the fleeing crowd. "Someone help me!"

No one stopped. No one even slowed down. They ran past her like she was invisible, like she was just another obstacle to avoid on their way to safety.

Silas watched her struggle, watched her try and fail to lift Thomas's dead weight, watched her finally collapse beside him with tears streaming down her face. She was going to die there, he realized. The Princess of Velle, heir to the throne, was going to burn to death in her own palace because no one cared enough to help her.

It should have meant nothing to him. She was just another aristocrat, just another person who had spent her entire life benefiting from the suffering of Proxies like him. He should have closed his eyes and let her die.

But he didn't.

"Your Highness," he called out, his voice cutting through the screams and the roar of flames. "Leave him. Save yourself."

She turned toward him, her eyes wild. "I can't! I won't leave him!"

"He's already dead, Your Highness. Look at his chest. He's not breathing."

She looked down at Thomas, and Silas saw the moment she realized he was right. Saw the hope drain from her face, replaced by a grief so raw it was almost painful to witness.

"Then I'll die with him," she said quietly.

"That's very noble and very stupid," Silas replied. "Your Highness, with respect, your death serves no one. Thomas is beyond help, but you're not. Get out of here."

"I can't move him alone."

"Then don't move him. Just go."

"I won't leave him to burn!"

Silas sighed. Aristocrats. Even in the face of death, they clung to their ridiculous notions of honor and dignity.

He looked down at his trapped leg, at the chandelier pinning him in place, and made a calculation. The chandelier was heavy, but it was also delicately balanced. If he could shift his weight just right, create enough leverage...

He grabbed the chandelier's iron frame with his ruined right hand and pushed. His broken fingers screamed in protest—even his damaged nervous system couldn't completely ignore that—but he kept pushing. The chandelier shifted slightly, grinding against his shattered leg, and he pushed harder.

Something in his leg gave way with a wet tearing sound. Muscle separating from bone, tendons snapping like overstressed cables. He felt it distantly, like a news report from a foreign country.

The chandelier rolled off him. Silas tried to stand and immediately collapsed—his left leg was completely non-functional now, just a sack of broken parts attached to his hip. He settled for crawling instead, dragging himself across the blood-slicked marble toward Princess Elara.

It took him thirty seconds to cross twenty feet. Each movement was a negotiation between his will and his body's structural limitations. His right hand didn't work properly, so he had to use his forearms. His left leg was useless, so he had to drag it behind him like an anchor.

He reached Princess Elara just as another section of ceiling collapsed behind them, sending up a shower of sparks and burning debris.

"Your Highness," he said, his voice still impossibly calm. "We need to leave. Now."

She stared at him, at his ruined hand and shattered leg, at the blood soaking through his gray uniform. "You can't even walk."

"I can crawl. It's not dignified, but it's functional. Come on."

He started moving toward the nearest exit, and after a moment's hesitation, she followed. They made slow progress—Silas crawling, Princess Elara walking beside him, occasionally helping him over obstacles. The ballroom was a maze of fire and debris now, the elegant space transformed into something out of a nightmare.

They were halfway to the exit when Silas heard it: a high-pitched whine, like a tea kettle reaching boiling point. He knew that sound. Every Proxy knew that sound.

"Down!" he shouted, and tackled Princess Elara to the ground just as the magical bomb detonated.

This wasn't a conventional explosive. This was a mana bomb, a weapon that released raw, uncontrolled magical energy in a devastating blast. The wave of power washed over them like a tsunami, and Silas felt it trying to tear him apart at the molecular level.

But here was the thing about Silas Vane: he had spent fifteen years absorbing magical costs that should have killed him. His body had been broken and rebuilt so many times that it had developed a kind of scar tissue against magic itself. He was, in a very real sense, immune to magical damage—not because he didn't feel it, but because he had felt so much of it that his body no longer knew how to die from it.

The mana wave hit him and he absorbed it, channeled it, let it flow through him like water through a sieve. It hurt—gods, it hurt, even his burned-out nervous system couldn't ignore this—but it didn't kill him.

Princess Elara, however, was not so fortunate.

She screamed as the mana touched her, her body convulsing as the raw magic tried to unmake her. Her Conduit Ring flared white-hot, trying to redirect the energy to her Proxy, but Thomas was dead and the ring had nowhere to send the cost.

Silas made a decision that would change everything.

He grabbed Princess Elara's hand—his ruined right hand closing around her delicate fingers—and pulled. Not physically, but magically. He reached through the connection between them, through the brief moment of contact, and did something that should have been impossible.

He took the cost himself.

The mana that was killing her flowed into him instead, adding to the already overwhelming amount of magical energy coursing through his system. It was too much, far too much, more power than any single Proxy should be able to contain.

His Collar flared silver-white, so bright it was painful to look at. The metal began to heat up, burning into his skin, and Silas smelled his own flesh cooking.

And then something broke.

Not his body—his body was already broken beyond repair. Not his mind—his mind had fractured years ago and learned to function in pieces. No, what broke was the fundamental magical law that governed the relationship between Proxies and their masters.

The bond between him and Lord Casimir snapped like an overstressed cable. Silas felt it go, felt the connection that had defined his existence for fifteen years simply cease to exist. He was free.

But in the same instant, a new bond formed. Stronger, deeper, more fundamental than anything that should have been possible. It wasn't the standard master-Proxy connection, carefully controlled and one-directional. This was something else entirely, something raw and primal and absolutely terrifying.

He was bonded to Princess Elara. Not as her Proxy, but as something else. Something the magical theorists had never accounted for, because it should have been impossible.

They were equals in the bond. Partners. Two halves of a whole that could not exist separately.

Silas felt her pain as his own. Felt her fear, her grief, her desperate will to survive. And she felt him—felt the vast, empty space where his pain should have been, felt the dissociation that had kept him alive for fifteen years, felt the terrible strength that came from having nothing left to lose.

It was overwhelming, this sudden flood of sensation. For fifteen years, Silas had felt nothing but his own carefully managed emptiness. Now, suddenly, he was experiencing someone else's emotions as if they were his own. Her fear was his fear. Her grief was his grief. Her determination was his determination.

And it was too much. Too intense, too immediate, too real. He wanted to pull back, to retreat into the comfortable numbness that had protected him for so long. But he couldn't. The bond wouldn't let him. It held them together, forced them to share everything, made it impossible to hide.

For the first time in six years, Silas felt something that wasn't carefully controlled and managed. He felt raw, unfiltered emotion, and it was terrifying.

But it was also, in a strange way, exhilarating. Because feeling Elara's emotions meant he was feeling something. Anything. After years of numbness, even fear and grief were better than nothing.

The mana bomb's energy dissipated, channeled harmlessly through their new bond. Princess Elara gasped, her eyes wide with shock and confusion.

"What did you do?" she whispered.

Silas looked down at their joined hands. His Collar was still glowing, but it was a different color now—not the standard silver of a Proxy bond, but a deep, iridescent blue that matched Princess Elara's dress. The metal was warm against his skin, pulsing with a rhythm that matched both their heartbeats.

"I have no idea," he admitted. "But I think we should discuss it somewhere that isn't actively on fire."

Through the bond, he felt her agreement mixed with confusion and a growing sense of wonder. She was feeling what he felt—or rather, what he didn't feel. The absence where his pain should have been, the vast empty space that he'd created to survive.

And she was horrified by it. He could feel her horror, her dawning understanding of what fifteen years as a Proxy had done to him. She was realizing, in real-time, that the system she'd taken for granted her entire life was built on the systematic destruction of human beings.

It was not a comfortable realization. But it was a necessary one.

And Silas, despite everything, was glad she was having it. Because maybe, just maybe, it would make a difference.

He tried to stand again, and this time his leg cooperated—sort of. The bones were still broken, but something in the new bond was holding them together, using Princess Elara's vitality to temporarily stabilize his injuries. He could walk, after a fashion, though each step sent jolts of pain through his system that even he couldn't completely ignore.

Princess Elara stood beside him, and Silas realized she was leaning on him as much as he was leaning on her. They were supporting each other, literally and magically, in a way that should have been impossible.

They limped toward the exit together, two broken people held together by a bond that neither of them understood.

Behind them, the Grand Ballroom continued to burn. The chandeliers fell one by one, crystal prisms shattering against marble floors. The orchestra's instruments burned, their strings snapping with sounds like screams. The bodies of aristocrats and Proxies alike lay scattered across the floor, united in death in a way they never had been in life.

Silas and Princess Elara emerged into the cool night air, and Silas took his first breath as a free man in fifteen years.

It tasted like smoke and blood and ashes.

But it tasted like freedom.

*

End of Chapter 1