Lucas returned to his room with both notes and for once, in an uncharacteristic fit of paranoia, he swept the pce with his hands and a swing pillow to make sure there were no invisible spies. He’d seen those footprints on the roof, and he had a way of turning invisible himself, so he knew that they were real, but somehow he was still skeptical of their existence.

  Still, today, he was a believer, and he had a feeling today that he didn’t want anyone else reading over his shoulder. He got that way whenever Machiavelli was around, and the Prince combined with his least favorite party girl, well, that just put his teeth on edge.

  He broke the red wax seal on the Prince’s letter first and quickly skimmed it. It seemed to be a congratutory letter, more than anything, which made him rex a little.

  ‘My dear Lucas, after being updated by Heisenburgle, I am most pleased with your progress. Please allow me to extend my formal congratutions on a job well done,” the letter started, which was promising. “Our client, who will remain nameless, sampled the small amount that arrived with Hisenburgles st letter and is equally satisfied with your hard work, though she has opted to send her own congratutions in a separate letter, which should also already be in your possession.’

  Lucas looked back at the red envelope with the gold writing and wondered if that was what the Prince was buttering him up for with all the praise or if there was something else in this letter he should fear. Only one way to find out, he told himself as he kept reading.

  ‘Our good alchemist tells me that your contributions have been vital and freely given and that you desire to return to your own operations. , so I will allow after you have delivered to the crown 100 doses of Lwynthenl, and an agreement for 20 a month going forward,’

  That’s a lot of Blue, even for a dragon, Lucas thought, but it wasn’t exactly going to break the bank. It was essentially 500 golden dragons and an additional 100 gold dragons a month, which was a fortune by anyone's measure, but it wouldn’t even cost him half a dragon in ingredients or more than a few hours of time, so it hardly seemed like a big deal. That changed as he kept reading.

  ‘Additionally, I am prepared to offer you a royal pardon for all crimes to date, along with a monopoly on the production of your drugs as long as several conditions are met. The first is that you must keep violence to an appropriate minimum; any serious outbreaks of unrest traced back to your organization will nullify this. The second is that you must pay 1000 dragons in back taxes within the season. Once that is done, you and house Parin shall be forgiven in all things, and your tax burden shall be limited to twenty percent of all net proceeds going forward.’

  “Ughh,” Lucas groaned, doing the math in his head. “Kar’gandin is going to kill me.” Whatever savings they were going to get by booting Adin was practically wiped out by this agreement, but then, they’d already expected that. Legal immunity from the guards and the guilds would also help, but he couldn’t help but think that he liked the old arrangement better.

  Still, it was better than he’d hoped for. Getting shaken down for money was a lot better than being given some ridiculous new assignment. He was tempted to counter and argue that 100 golden dragons a month toward the keep-the-dragon-happy-fund was more than enough to do his part, but even though he was the only person who could reliably make the stuff, he still doubted that the cold-blooded Prince would see that as enough leverage to give Lucas much wiggle room.

  We’ll see if the dwarf has any ideas, Lucas sighed as he stared at the second letter.

  The Prince’s missive had been very formal, with fancy calligraphy and the seal of Lordanin. Skyra’s seemed more like a love letter. It was written with gold ink on red paper that matched every dress he’d ever seen her in, and very likely her scales, though he hoped never to see those.

  Her seal was a graven image of her own face pressed into golden wax, which made him ugh a little. If you’re basically immortal, I guess that makes sense as a symbol, he told himself, but it might be the most egotistical thing I’ve ever seen.

  With a smile on his face, he opened the letter, but his expression quickly dropped as he read it. ‘My dearest Mister Blue, I am told that after so much hard work, you have finally succeeded in the task that has been set before you, and somehow, in less than a year, you managed to succeed. You truly are an alchemical genius,’ the letter opened, and truthfully, the praise was nice, even if it was really just a junkie telling her dealer that she couldn’t get enough of the new batch. ‘In two weeks, I will be back in Lordanin for another dance. Join me there to make the evening less insufferable, and I will gdly reward you with another night of indescribable passion, just as we had st time. Truthfully, I might simply bring you back to my Chateau, or even my ir itself, for a week or two. Though it's immodest of me to say this, there is truly nothing like making love while lying on one’s horde. Perhaps this achievement is worthy of sharing that most intimate of experiences with you, despite your humble origins.’

  She signed the thing. ‘Do not keep me waiting, my genius. With your potions, we will only soar to ever greater heights together until we reach divinity itself.’

  When Lucas was finished reading, he could only shake his head. “I should have tried to let her down easy,” he told himself. “No matter what the Prince said about obeying her, I definitely shouldn’t have let her think we had a wild, sexy evening together.”

  Milfy titty monster or not, the very st thing he wanted was to spend a week or two banging a junkie. Even if Danaria wasn’t in the picture, that would still be true, though he admitted to himself that if he was single, he might have just bitten the bullet and done it for business and whatever. Lord knew he’d done worse things. Still, with the idea that he was going to propose to someone in the near future, such a lesion was entirely out of the question.

  “But how in the fuck do I tell her that without getting my head ripped off?” he asked himself as he rubbed his eyes. Most of the time, statements like that were metaphorical, but in this case, they were absolutely literal. Getting murdered for telling her no was a real possibility if Heisenburgle and the Prince were to be believed.

  “It might even be the best-case scenario,” he said as he rubbed his head and tried to figure out how an egotistical dragon would react when scorned.

  Lucas tried to think of some clever pn to get out of this, but even after several minutes of beating his head against the wall, nothing came to him. He couldn’t even pull the same trick he did st time. At least, he was pretty sure he couldn’t. Lwynthenl might be more euphoric than his best batch of Blue had been, but he was pretty sure it was a lot gentler on the body, too. So, she might need a hundred doses of the new stuff.

  That at least gave him an idea. Maybe I could use some Empowered Alchemy to give her a hot shot, he thought to himself. If he juiced every one of the reagents and then juiced the final product, then it should be theoretically possible to brew something as powerful as it was toxic. He didn’t want to kill her, though. The kingdom and the city needed her continued goodwill. He just wished that didn’t involve his dick.

  Reluctantly, he finally rejoined Heisenburgle after half an hour of consideration and told him the bad news, but he didn’t see it that way at all. “What do you mean?” the gnome insisted. “You’re on the good side of three of the top five powers that be now. It's hard to be better positioned for your future endeavors than that.”

  Lucas smiled as he realized the gnome thought he was one of the most important people in the country. He was tempted to ask who the other two were but decided against it. Instead, he tried to expin how this sort of entanglement was the st thing he wanted, while Heisenburgle tried to expin to him that it was a good thing.

  It was a frustrating conversation that accomplished nothing, and eventually, he decided to make another batch or two of Lwynthenl. He owed the Prince three or so to get out of here, and after that, he’d have to keep paying him one batch a quarter or so. The sooner he accomplished that, the sooner he could get the hell out of here and get on with his life.

  When the sun rose, he went to breakfast with Heisenburgle with two batches under his belt. Before he went to bed that morning, he wrote a letter to the Prince, thanking him for his kind offer. He told him that he had some questions before he could fully agree to the proposed deal but that he agreed in principle and would start on the requested Lwynthenl reserve immediately.

  The letter to Skyra was an afterthought, but he was fairly certain if he did not respond to both of them, she would treat it as a snub. How could she see it any other way when she used her own face as a seal? He wondered.

  In that letter, he thanked the dragon for her praise and told her that he was looking forward to seeing her. He also mentioned that he was still working to perfect his recipe in an attempt to y the groundwork for future excuse-making, but that still felt weak to him, and he was sure he’d have to figure out a better lie than that if he didn’t want to spend a week getting high and banging her.

  After that, he considered writing one to Danaria to let her know he’d be coming home soon, but he didn’t want to pollute the thought of writing the woman he cared for with the woman he didn’t, so he decided against it. “I’ll surprise her,” he told himself. “She’ll like that.”

  When he woke the following evening, he finished cooking up the batches of Lwynthenl that he promised the Prince that he would, and he delivered both letters to Heisenburgle so he could review them. After that, He spent the rest of the day packing, and when he went to Heisenburgle’s office to tell him that he’d be ready for a carriage first thing in the morning, the gnome looked genuinely sorry to see him go.

  “Well, should you require consultation on any future projects, my door is always open to you, Lucas,” the gnome said sincerely before shaking his hand in a very exaggerated fashion.

  That surprised Lucas quite a bit. In fact, he would have bet money that the goodbye would have been entirely dismissive. However, he thought about that moment for the rest of the evening. Even after he passed the evening in a rexed manner, reading a few of the gnome’s books one st time until dawn arrived, and they could start after he’d loaded up the carriage with his effects, he kept coming back to Heisenburgle’s sad look. It wasn’t until they actually set off that Lucas finally understood. At least, he thought he did.

  The gnome’s here with no one but his obsessions to keep him company, he realized. Sounds fucking miserable. Lucas might not have anyone he could talk to about alchemy at home either, but he had tons of people he could talk to about drugs or healing potions, and even if the dwarf and the half-orc that had become his business partners weren’t exactly what he’d call friends most of the time, it beat the hell out of whatever this was.