Page 27 of Bonded To The Arena Master

She intends to rebuild it inside my walls.

“You propose opening your market shop in House Obsidius,” I say.

“No. I propose opening a better one.”

“To serve humans.”

“To serve anyone who needs treatment and can provide fair payment. Your guards breathe the same charged air as everyone else. Your servants cut their hands, develop fevers, and swallow the wrong plants. Even demons become ill.”

“Rarely.”

“That makes you arrogant, not immune.”

My claws press into the desk’s edge.

Beatrix notices and continues anyway.

“A working apothecary gives the court another explanation for my presence. The Council did not merely burden you with a rebellious human. House Obsidius acquired a resource other houses already use. Every customer who enters owes your household safe conduct. Every successful treatment strengthens your reputation. Every trade creates information.”

“Information.”

“Servants talk. Merchants talk more. Sick people reveal what healthy people conceal.”

She says it without embarrassment. Beatrix has built more than an apothecary beneath the spires. She has built a place where rank briefly yields to need, and need loosens guarded tongues.

Confining her would protect her body while discarding the weapon her mind has made of survival.

I move around the desk.

“Where would you establish this apothecary?”

Beatrix’s arms loosen. She has recognized that the argument has become a negotiation.

“The southern solarium.”

“You have not seen it.”

“I saw the exterior windows from the approach. The room spans two levels and receives more storm-filtered light than the eastern garden.”

“It has been abandoned for years.”

“Then no current household purpose will be displaced.”

“The support frames are corroded. Half the planters are dead.”

“Metal can be repaired. Dead plants can be removed.”

“The southern wall borders a service passage connected to the lightning-works.”

“Then materials can reach it without crossing the formal levels.”

Every objection becomes another point in her favor.

I study the woman standing before me. Ten years ago, she challenged commands because she hated being controlled. Now she constructs each argument as carefully as one of her remedies, measuring what I value and offering a result difficult to refuse.

She has not become easier.

She has become more dangerous.