"Can I learn magic?"
They were sitting by the pond in the Japanese garden — or rather, they were sitting in the Copper Hearth's common room, but Yuki's mind was on the garden. Lira's question pulled him back.
"What?"
"Magic." She set her cup down. "You said mana responds to intent. To imagination. I have mana now — I can feel it since you gave me the stone. It's small, but it's there. Can you teach me to use it?"
He'd been wondering the same thing. The necklace was a crutch — powerful, but external. If someone took it from her or it broke, she was back to baseline. If she could cast on her own, even basic spells, she'd be safer. And safer meant he could sleep at night.
"I don't see why not. Most people in this world have some mana, even if it's small. The issue is usually training and visualisation. You've seen me cast enough times — you know what it looks like."
"So that's a yes?"
"That's a yes. We'll start with something simple. Wind or fire."
She grinned. "Fire."
"Of course you'd pick fire."
A knock at the common room door. Varlen, road-dusty and business-faced, came straight to their table.
"We leave for the capital in three days. I've secured contracts for the return trip — enough cargo to justify the route." He looked at Yuki. "The road west is longer than the road we came in on. Two weeks through settled territory. Less monsters, more politics."
"The capital?"
"Veldara. Confederation seat. Where the parliament meets, the academies train, and the money flows." Varlen paused. "You'd find more answers there than in Millhaven's library."
He left without elaborating. Varlen didn't elaborate. He delivered information and moved on.
Lira was watching Yuki. Fidgeting with her cup. Not quite meeting his eyes.
"So," she said. Carefully. "Are you... will you be coming with us?"
The nervousness in her voice was obvious. She was bracing for him to say no — to thank her for the tour, wish her well, and disappear the way people with his kind of power probably always did.
"Of course," he said. "If it's not a bother."
Her face lit up. Not a small smile — a full, unguarded, radiant expression that hit him somewhere behind the ribs harder than any spell he'd ever cast.
God, how can anyone be this beautiful. In my old world, she would probably be a celebrity with those perfect looks.
"It's not a bother," she said. Too quickly. Then caught herself and dialled it back. "I mean — good. That's good. My father will be glad for the security."
She is seriously too cute!!
"Right. The security."
She threw a bread crust at him.
That afternoon, Yuki stood in his room and thought about the homestead.
The barrier was still holding — he could feel it through the spatial anchor, a faint pulse of mana confirming the circuit was intact. But it had been weeks. The groves needed checking. The canals might need clearing. The house might need maintenance.
And there was something else. Something he'd been turning over in his head since the library. Since the battle. Since the kiss on his cheek and the daggers in the streets and the look on Lira's face when he'd healed a man's arm back together.
She'd asked him twice: Who are you?
He'd dodged both times. She'd let him. But the question was still there, hanging between them, and every day he didn't answer it the weight grew heavier.
She trusts me. She's earned the truth. Or at least some of it.
He went downstairs. Lira was in the common room, restringing her bow.
"I need to stop by my home," he said. "Check on the place. Want to come?"
She looked up. "What do you mean? Your home? East of the Ashspine?"
"Yeah."
"That's a three-day flight. You said so yourself."
"It's faster if I don't fly."
She studied him. He could see her processing — the questions stacking up, the decision to trust him anyway.
"Then how do we get there?"
He held out his hand. "Do you trust me?"
She set the bow down. Took his hand. Her fingers were calloused and warm.
"Yes."
He tore a hole in space.
The world split.
One moment they were standing in the Copper Hearth. The next, they were somewhere else entirely. No transition. No sensation of movement. Just a seam in the air that opened and closed, and suddenly the floorboards were gone and they were standing on a wooden arch bridge overlooking still, dark water.
Lira staggered. Gripped his arm. Stared.
The Japanese garden spread out before them. The pond, stone-lined, mirror-still, reflecting a sky that was bluer and deeper than Millhaven's. The cobblestone path radiating from the water's edge. The bamboo swaying along the eastern bank.
And at the centre of the inlet, the almost-cherry-blossom. In full bloom. Pink petals drifting down to the water's surface, carried by a breeze that smelled like honey and citrus.
"Where..." Lira's voice was barely a whisper. "Where are we? How—"
"Teleportation," Yuki said. "Spatial magic. I can connect two points in space and step between them. We're about a three-day flight east of Millhaven. East of the Ashspine."
She was still holding his arm. Her grip tightened.
"This is your home?"
"This is the garden. Come on. I'll show you the rest."
He walked her through it.
The homestead stretched out from the garden in every direction — green, alive, vast. Nothing like the dead zone it had been. The canals caught the afternoon light. The groves rose in distinct zones of colour and shape.
He showed her the house first. Stone walls, arched roof, the workshop still smelling faintly of metal and mana. The cold storage with its frost enchantment. The bath annex. She touched the walls, ran her hand along the stone, looked at the ceiling arches.
"You built this?"
"From scratch. Pulled the stone from underground."
"With magic."
"Yup, with magic."
They walked the grounds. He took her through the eastern citrus grove — the orange-like trees heavy with fruit, the lemon-types sharp and bright, the grapefruit anchoring the far edge. She picked one of the oranges, bit into it, and her eyes went wide.
"Yuki. Do you know what this is?"
"An orange thing?"
"This is a sunbloom citrus. They grow in the deep forests east of the Ashspine and almost never make it to market." She looked at the grove — dozens of trees, branches sagging with fruit. "These have restorative properties. Eating one replenishes your mana and accelerates natural healing. Alchemists in the capital pay ten gold apiece for them."
He looked at the grove. "I have about two hundred trees."
"I can see that." Her voice had gone slightly strangled. Same tone as the dragon scale appraisal.
It got worse. The nut groves in the north — she identified the chestnut-like trees as ironheart nuts, prized for their dense nutrient content and physical enhancement properties. The berry bushes in the south included something she called starberries — small, dark fruits that boosted mana sensitivity and sold for absurd prices in western markets.
"You've been sitting on a fortune," she said, standing in the middle of the southern grove, surrounded by hardwoods and berry bushes. "This isn't a homestead. This is a national treasury disguised as a farm. This produce is so rare because it only grows in mana-dense forest, guarded by powerful monsters."
"That's true, there were a lot of monsters laying claims to these in the forest. I just transplanted things I thought looked nice."
She stared at him. Then started laughing — helpless, genuine, the kind of laughter that came from deep in the chest.
"You planted a fortune because it looked nice."
"Well also for food. The berries are good too."
She laughed harder.