The training yard had gone quiet in the particular way it always did when Vane worked through drills alone before dawn, and Eric used the stillness to finally raise something he'd been turning over since the requisition cuts had first bitten into the garrison's reserves.

*I want to try something today,* he said, watching Vane stretch out the last of the morning's stiffness. *Not combat. Efficiency. If the Chancellery's going to keep starving us of resources, I'd rather make what we have go further than wait for the next crisis to force the issue.*

"Efficiency," Vane repeated, wary. "That's not usually a word I associate with anything involving crystal erupting out of my own arm."

*That's rather the point. Right now, every manifestation draws roughly the same amount from the bond regardless of what the situation actually calls for — you asked for a shield against three Rift-Spawn and got the same output you'd need against nine. That's wasteful. If I can teach you to consciously modulate the draw, we use less for routine threats and save the reserve for when it actually matters.*

"You want to teach me to ration my own magic."

*I want to teach you to allocate it intelligently, the same way a surgeon doesn't use a bone saw to make an incision that only needs a scalpel.* Eric let a thread of dry humor into it. *Think of it as the difference between spending everything you have on every purchase versus actually budgeting. Which, given our current relationship with the Chancellery's ledgers, feels like a skill worth cultivating.*

Vane huffed, unwilling to argue with the logic even as he clearly found the exercise faintly absurd. "Where do we start."

*Small. Deliberately small.* Eric guided him through it patiently, the way he'd once walked a resident through their first genuinely difficult suture — draw just enough crystal to the surface of his palm to form something no larger than a coin, hold it there, resist the instinct to let the bond simply flood the request the way it always had in combat. The first three attempts overshot wildly, crystal blooming up his forearm in familiar, unwieldy lattices before Eric could rein it back.

"This is harder than it looks," Vane said, breathing harder than the exercise should have warranted, sweat beading at his temple despite the cold morning air.

*You're used to asking for everything at once because combat never gave you time to ask for anything less. This isn't combat. Slow down. Feel for the smallest amount that would actually do the job, and stop there.*

The fourth attempt produced something smaller — a thin disc of crystal no larger than a coin, exactly as requested, and Vane stared at it with something like genuine wonder.

"That's new."

*That's control,* Eric said, warmth threading through the clinical satisfaction of watching a difficult technique finally land. *And control means we're not burning through the bond's full capacity every time a training dummy needs correcting. Given how thin the Chancellery's stretched us this season, that matters more than it used to.*

They worked through the exercise for the better part of an hour, Vane's control sharpening with each repetition — a disc, then a thin blade no longer than a finger, then a shield reduced to exactly the size needed to deflect a single strike rather than an entire volley — and by the end of it he could produce anything from a coin-sized disc to a modest shield with what Eric judged to be perhaps a third of the resonance cost the same actions would have required a month ago.

"I feel like I should be exhausted," Vane said, flexing his hand, genuinely startled by how little the morning's work had actually cost him. "Usually even a fraction of this leaves me winded."

*That's the entire point of the exercise. You've been operating a scalpel like a hatchet since the day I woke up in you. Learning precision doesn't just save resources — it means you have more left over for the moments that genuinely demand everything we've got.*

"Efficient," Vane said, testing the word like he was deciding whether to trust it. "Never thought I'd describe myself that way."

*Get used to it. I intend to make you insufferably competent about this by the time we're done.*

---

They kept at it for the better part of a week, an hour before dawn each morning when the drill yard was theirs alone, and Eric found himself unexpectedly delighted by the process — not merely the practical benefit of it, though that mattered plenty given how carefully the garrison now had to manage every resource, but the simple, unhurried pleasure of teaching Vane something new that had nothing to do with survival or crisis, only patient improvement for its own sake.

"You're different when you're teaching," Vane observed on the fifth morning, catching his breath after a particularly demanding sequence. "More like whoever you were before all this. The surgeon."

*I suppose I am.* Eric considered the observation honestly. *There's a specific pleasure in teaching a difficult skill and watching someone actually master it. I'd forgotten how much I missed that, until just now.*

"Did you teach, before? In your old life."

*Residents, mostly. Exhausted, terrified young doctors trying to learn to hold a scalpel steady while someone's life depended on their hands not shaking.* Eric let the memory surface without the old grief that usually accompanied it, something softened now by distance and by the life he'd built since. *I was better at it than I gave myself credit for, at the time. Too impatient with myself to notice I was actually good with other people's fear.*

"You're good with mine," Vane said, quiet, and Eric felt the small, unguarded truth of it settle warm between them. "Better than anyone's ever been, if I'm honest."

*High praise, from a man who once threatened to ignore every instruction I gave him.*

"I've reformed. Mostly." Vane's mouth curved, wry. "Marek says I'm insufferable about the efficiency thing now. Keeps asking if I'm going to start rationing his rum allotment next."

*Tell him rationing rum is a discipline problem, not a resonance problem, and entirely outside my professional jurisdiction.*

Vane relayed it with a laugh, genuine and unguarded, the particular sound Eric had come to treasure over the months as proof that whatever the Chancellery and the Institute threw at them, some part of this man had learned, slowly, how to be lighter than he'd once allowed himself.

---

Talwyn, watching one of the later sessions from the edge of the drill yard with unconcealed scholarly fascination, took careful notes on the whole process, muttering to himself about resonance efficiency ratios in a way that reminded Eric, not unpleasantly, of himself reviewing lab results in another life entirely.

"This is remarkable," Talwyn said, catching Vane afterward, ledger still in hand. "If the theory holds, you could sustain combat readiness on a fraction of the strain we've been assuming was unavoidable. I'd like to document the technique properly, Marshal, if you and your companion are amenable. Purely for our own garrison's benefit, you understand — nothing that leaves these tents."

*Tell him yes,* Eric said, *with the same caveat we gave Vire's cover story — nothing specific enough to be useful to anyone outside this garrison who might come asking.*

Vane relayed it, and Talwyn nodded, already scribbling further notes with the particular delight of a scholar handed a genuinely novel problem to chew on. "Between the efficiency gains and whatever's happening with Captain Adler's own bond, I confess this season has given me more to actually study than the previous three combined. Grim as some of it's been."

The efficiency gains mattered more than academic interest, in the weeks that followed — Marek noted, with grudging approval, that the garrison's strained resources stretched further when Vane's own combat readiness no longer demanded the same reserve of emergency supplies standing by after every skirmish. Even Dessa, drilling the recruits through their paces, remarked that the Marshal seemed less drained after each engagement than he had all season, color staying in his face longer, recovery time shortening by visible degrees.

"Whatever you two are doing at dawn," Marek said one evening, sharing the mess table with his usual two bowls, "keep doing it. I haven't seen you this steady since before the requisition cuts started."

*Tell him we're just getting started,* Eric said, pleased despite himself at the tangible proof of progress. *There's a great deal more precision to be had, if he can spare us the drill yard a while longer each morning.*

Vane relayed it, and Marek's only response was to slide the second bowl a little further across the table, an old habit that had never quite stopped feeling like affection dressed up as practicality.

---

The courier arrived on the eighth day of training, mid-morning, interrupting the garrison's ordinary business with the particular formal urgency that always meant Chancellery business rather than routine correspondence. Marek intercepted the letter first, and his expression, by the time he found Vane in the command tent, had gone carefully, deliberately neutral in a way that immediately set Eric on edge.

"This one's different," Marek said, handing it over without his usual commentary, his own expression unusually guarded. "Sealed with the Chancellor's personal signet, not the ordinary administrative stamp. And it's addressed to you personally, Marshal, not to the garrison command at large."

Vane broke the seal with visible unease, and Eric felt the words land through him even before Vane had finished reading them a second time, slower and more carefully than the first, as if rereading might somehow change what they said.

*What is it,* Eric asked, sharpening at the sudden, careful stillness in Vane's posture.

"The Chancellor," Vane said, voice flat with the particular control of a man absorbing bad news in front of witnesses, "wishes to discuss a marriage alliance. Between myself and Lady Seraphine Hollis, of House Hollis, in the interest of — and I'm quoting directly, word for word — 'securing the political stability and continued resourcing of the Abyssal Frontier command in light of recent developments.'"

The tent went very quiet, and Eric felt something cold and unfamiliar settle through the warm satisfaction of the morning's training, replaced entirely by a fear that had nothing to do with rifts or Rift-Spawn or Institute conspiracies, and everything to do with the sudden, precise, deliberate targeting of the one thing neither of them had ever thought to armor against.

*A marriage,* Eric repeated, and found, for the first time in longer than he could remember, that his own composure had genuinely nothing useful to offer either of them.

Marek, to his credit, did not immediately leave, though he clearly recognized the conversation had shifted into territory he wasn't sure he belonged in. "House Hollis," he said, carefully neutral. "Old money, strong ties to the western trade routes, and a seat close enough to the Chancellor's own table to matter politically. If they're offering an alliance, that's real resourcing, Marshal — grain, coal, scouts, everything the requisition cuts have taken from us and more besides. The Chancellor wouldn't propose it lightly, and House Hollis wouldn't agree to it without expecting something substantial in return."

"I'm aware of the political value, Marek." Vane's voice had gone tight, controlled, the particular flatness Eric recognized from Vire's visit — the mask a commander wore when the personal cost of a decision couldn't be allowed to show in front of his own officers. "I need a moment before I respond to it."

Marek studied him a moment longer, something knowing and sympathetic in his expression, before he nodded and withdrew without another word, letting the tent flap fall shut behind him with unusual gentleness for a man built like a siege engine.

The silence that followed was different from any they'd shared before — not comfortable, not even the familiar tension of an old wound resurfacing, but something rawer, more frightened, the specific quiet of two people staring at a threat neither had thought to prepare for.

"They can't actually force it," Vane said finally, though the words came out less certain than he clearly intended them to sound. "Marriage requires consent, even from a Marshal. Even from the Chancellery's favorite unusual asset, whatever they've decided I am this season."

*Can they make refusing cost the garrison everything the requisition cuts have already threatened, and more besides?* Eric kept his voice as steady as he could manage, though something raw and frightened moved underneath it that he made no effort to fully hide, not from Vane, not anymore. *Because that's the actual threat here, isn't it. Not force. Leverage. Refuse, and watch the grain allotment shrink further, the scout companies thin out more, the garrison slowly starved into whatever shape the Chancellery decides an inconvenient Marshal deserves.*

Vane didn't answer that, which was its own answer, and Eric felt the particular, familiar dread of watching a man he loved calculate exactly how much of himself he might have to spend to protect people who depended on him.

"I won't do it," Vane said finally, low and fierce, meeting Eric's presence at the collarbone as if he could look him in the eye through sheer force of will. "Whatever it costs. I told you already — this part isn't negotiable with anyone. Not the Chancellery, not House Hollis, not some Lady I've never even met being used as a bargaining chip the exact same way I am."

*I know you mean that.* Eric let his own fear surface now, unguarded, refusing to pretend a clinical calm he didn't actually feel. *But I also know you, Vane. I know the shape you take when something threatens people who depend on you, and I'm terrified that shape looks like sacrificing this — sacrificing us — because some part of you has already decided we're the expendable variable if it comes down to a choice between me and the garrison's survival.*

Vane's jaw worked, and the silence that followed told Eric everything he needed to know about how close to the truth that fear actually landed.

"I don't know how to promise you it won't come to that," Vane admitted finally, rough, dropping onto the edge of the cot like the weight of the letter itself had physically bent something in him. "Not honestly. If refusing means watching soldiers starve through next winter because I chose my own heart over their supply lines, I don't know that I have the right to make that choice, no matter how much it costs either of us."

*Then let's make certain it never comes to that binary in the first place.* Eric kept his voice deliberately level now, refusing to let either of them spiral further into a crisis that hadn't actually arrived yet. *We have time before you're required to answer. Use it. Find out everything we can about House Hollis, about Lady Hollis herself, about whether this proposal is even as rigid as the letter makes it sound. The Chancellery deals in leverage, not absolutes — there may be another angle neither of us has considered yet.*

"Such as?"

*I don't know yet. That's rather the entire point of gathering information calmly before either of us panics into a decision we can't take back.* Eric let a thread of dry humor soften the moment, deliberately, an old habit that had served him well in a hundred grim hospital corridors. *You taught me patience with the resonance training this week. Let me return the favor. We don't hand the Chancellery a decision until we understand the actual shape of the board we're playing on.*

Vane huffed something that wasn't quite a laugh, tired and grateful in equal measure. "When did you get so good at talking me down off the ledge, exactly."

*Four months of dedicated practice. I intend to bill you for my professional services eventually.*

"Add it to my tab." Vane's hand found his chest, familiar now as breathing, some of the raw fear finally settling into something more manageable — not resolved, not yet, but no longer the only thing either of them could see. "Talwyn might know something about House Hollis. He seems to know something about everything eventually."

*Then that's where we start tomorrow.* Eric let warmth settle back into the exhausted quiet between them. *Tonight, just breathe. Whatever the Chancellery wants from us, they don't get to take tonight as well.*

Vane lay back, slow and careful, and for a long while neither of them said anything further, the letter from the Chancellor sitting folded and unanswered on the map table, a problem deferred rather than solved, but deferred, at least, together.

"I keep thinking about what you said this week," Vane murmured eventually, into the dark, "about efficiency. About not spending everything at once on a threat that hasn't fully revealed its shape yet." A tired, wry huff. "Maybe that applies here too. Maybe I don't have to decide tonight how far I'm willing to go to protect this garrison. Maybe I just have to survive tonight, and let tomorrow's version of me handle tomorrow's version of the problem."

*That's remarkably sound reasoning, for a man who usually tries to solve every crisis in a single reckless gesture.*

"I had a good teacher this week." Vane's hand tightened, briefly, over his own heart. "Thank you. For not letting me spiral alone tonight."

*Always,* Eric said, simple and complete, and let the quiet finally settle around them both, unhurried, the letter's threat held at arm's length just long enough for either of them to breathe.

Somewhere beyond the tent walls, the garrison slept on, unaware that the season's next threat had arrived not as a rift or a raid but as a folded piece of parchment bearing a Chancellor's signet, and that the man they trusted to keep them safe was lying awake beside the strange, impossible presence in his own chest, trying to work out how to protect everyone he was responsible for without sacrificing the one thing he had finally, after eight hard years, allowed himself to want purely for its own sake.