Chapter 37: Fever

A faint, rare, terrifyingly sincere smile touched the corners of Cassian’s chiseled lips.

"Then I will grant him his peace. We will execute the raid tonight at midnight. We will crush Professor Graves and dismantle the smuggling line. And when the dust settles..."

Cassian’s eyes gleamed with interest.

"I will visit him personally. In the quiet of his study. Without broadsheets, witnesses, or the pomp of the noble houses. I will thank him properly for this gift. And I will ensure that this brilliant, frail, magnificent mind is shielded from every storm this empire can muster."

Silas groaned, sliding off the chaise lounge onto the floor, pulling a velvet throw pillow over his face. "Great. Fantastic. We’re all doomed. I’m going to have to spend the rest of the year stealing tea leaves for a Duke’s second son just to keep our leader emotionally stable."

"Silence, Silas," Cassian ordered, adjusting his drake-hide belt with military precision. "Prepare your stealth arrays. Garrick, finish your pig. Seraphina, alert the internal guard. Tonight... we honor our benefactor’s design."

***

At that exact second, four miles across the floating campus, the brilliant, magnificent, fifty-step shadow-mastermind of the Western Reaches was currently making a noise that sounded like an asthmatic bagpipe being stepped on by an elephant.

"HEEECK-SHOOOO!"

The sneeze was so violent that Lucien’s entire upper body snapped forward, his forehead violently colliding with the mahogany rim of his breakfast tray.

CLATTER!

A porcelain teacup hopped off its saucer, sloshing lukewarm elderberry infusion across three buttered toast soldiers, while a silver jar of apricot jam executed a graceful, parabolic arc and landed directly inside his left slipper.

"Urrrrgh..." Lucien groaned, his face remaining planted directly against the damp linen of the breakfast napkin. "My brain... my brain has turned into warm porridge. Who... who replaced my frontal lobe with wet cement?"

He lay there for two minutes, listening to the rhythmic throbbing behind his left eyeball.

Every single joint in his dashing, twenty-year-old aristocratic body felt as though it had been individually unscrewed, soaked in vinegar, and reassembled by an apprentice blacksmith using rusty rivets.

His throat was no longer parched; it had advanced into the territory of an active industrial sandblaster.

His skin alternated between burning with the thermal output of a volcanic fissure and shivering so violently that his teeth were producing a rapid-fire acoustic rhythm that sounded like a percussion solo.

Slowly, Lucien peeled his cheek off the breakfast tray.

He looked down at his hands.

They were pale, trembling, and distinctly clammy.

"How?" Lucien croaked, his voice dropping into a ruined, bass-heavy rasp that sounded like an ancient tomb door grinding over gravel. "How... in the name of the algorithmic gods... does an immortal transmigrator with twenty-seven Spirit... catch a common head cold?!"

DING!

The sound did not come with its usual crystalline majesty. It felt like someone striking a hollow brass kettle directly inside his ear canal.

[ STATUS OVERVIEW ]

Host: Lucien Alaric Everhart

Current Condition: [ACUTE VIRAL RHINOPHARYNGITIS / FEBRILE SHOCK]

Body Temperature: 39.4°C (103°F) — [MILD COOKING STATUS] ║

Strength: 10 → [3] (Equivalent: Beaten Cabbage)

Agility: 9 → [2] (Equivalent: Hibernating Slug)

Vitality: 10 → [4] (Immune System: Currently Screaming at Mitochondria)

Spirit: 27 (Spiritual Lattice: Fully Functional, but Deeply Irritated)

[ETIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS]

• Primary Cause: Host stood beside an open third-floor balcony window in a thin silk nightshirt for forty-seven consecutive minutes at 2:00 AM in a high-altitude mountain climate, waiting to verify if a scout was stealing an almond tart.

System Assessment: A fifty-step grand strategy is entirely meaningless if the strategist forgets to wear a woolen scarf in October.]

Lucien glared at the floating silver window with eyes that were watery, bloodshot, and burning with feverish resentment.

"Shut up," he rasped, snatching a fresh linen handkerchief from the silver caddy and blowing his nose with the force of an imperial war-grommet sounding the call to arms. "I was conducting counter-intelligence. I was confirming receipt of the transmission. How was I supposed to know the autumn draft on a floating continent possessed the thermal characteristics of an arctic wind tunnel?!"

The System did not answer.

It simply displayed a small, mocking icon of a steaming bowl of chicken soup with a tiny thermometer sticking out of it.

"I hate you," Lucien wheezed, falling backward against the mountain of pillows with an exhausted, shuddering gasp.

His glorious, calculated, five-year retirement plan was currently crumbling beneath the weight of three hundred milliliters of accumulated nasal mucus.

He had successfully manipulated the Hero Party.

He had launched Cassian Valemont like a guided missile toward the corrupt infrastructure of the Western Reaches, and secured his family’s western borders without firing a single shot.

And his reward was being completely paralyzed by a respiratory pathogen.

"This is fine," Lucien whispered to the ceiling, pulling the heavy velvet duvet up until only his eyes and his red, raw nose were exposed to the ambient air. "This is completely fine. I am an invalid anyway. Being bedridden with an actual fever merely reinforces my cover identity. If the instructors come to investigate, they will find a dying, fragile scholar coughing up his own soul. No one will ever suspect me of being a shadow mastermind."

A soft, hesitant knock sounded at his bedroom door.

Tap. Tap.

"Lucien?"

The door creaked open by two inches.

Rowan Ashford poked his messy, sandy-brown head through the gap, his golden-brown eyes wide with the nervous, twitching vigilance of a gazelle that had spotted a leopard three miles away.

He was wearing his green-and-bronze auxiliary uniform, but his tie was tucked into his pocket, and he was holding a steaming ceramic mug with two hands as though it were a live grenade.

"Lucien... are you awake? The head maid said you didn’t finish your pastries... and Edwin said your aura looked distinctly grey this morning..."

Lucien slowly rolled his head toward the door, letting out a weak, pathetic, whistling groan. "Rowan... enter... but do not breathe the air within three yards of my bed... unless you wish to join me in the tomb."