The system meant for princes had deigned to serve a maid.

Pip roared "fold" with all her might, casting one of the most essential Maid-Class Skills.

She'd just flung a sopping wet blanket into the air, with such force that it was already far away from her fallen form. The truth, though, was that one corner of it had never left her hand. And it wasn't just a huge blanket in terms of length and width...it was thick, a top-level comforter with an immense thread-count. All that girth, combined with saturating water, made a surprisingly heavy weapon.

Before Pip activated the Skill, the blanket was not only above Jacob, but a little behind him too. That was the clincher. That was what would take Fold from a simple labor-saving exercise to an instant deathblow.

Pip let go as the blanket folded Jacob into itself.

His head was the first to be taken in. Good, because heads could be smothered. Unbreathable fabric, drenched in hypothermic cold, clasped hard around his face, plugging up his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.

Sure, he'd ducked fast enough to spare his body past the shoulders, but that wouldn't matter. Using Fold, Pip had commanded the blanket to keep pressing itself together until one side met the other.

So, until his skull was pulp.

Jacob's mouth, stuck in an aching yawn, fought voicelessly against the blanket jamming itself in—until a switchblade, drawn from corner to corner of his jaw, tore through the fabric. Immediately, bits of it clung to his teeth and, in their confusion, began to press into those instead.

But the fabric had limits, and bone was turning out to be a thing it couldn't compete with. In fact, the material around Jacob's sturdy braincase was already limp and beginning to drop off. His eyes, though they'd been squeezed so badly they now made him dizzy, were officially free. With a fling of his arms, the folding trap fell completely to the ground.

He wasn't dead, but to tell the truth, he had feared his own death in the heat of the moment. That's perhaps the biggest advantage of surprise and novelty—which a maid with a system would have in spades. The systems of kings and queens were predictable, those of lower royals even moreso because they had no weapons. But the systems of maids were...not supposed to exist. Would be an anomaly. Had gone unrecorded in any history book.

Jacob wished he had more time to process this, because it didn't add up.

Pip wasn't lying on the ground anymore. She was proving herself to be not a complete dumbass by dashing forward with another one of her Skills: the summoned, steaming, red-hot Iron.

"Burn!" she cried as she looped around and plunged it into his back.

"Augh!" Jacob staggered forward. Pip took full advantage of the chance to force it in further, searing his shirt and the defenseless skin under it.

"A-aggh! Agh...oh."

The Iron stopped hurting extremely fast.

At first Pip willfully ignored this. She tried driving the Iron in as deep as it could go. Sadly, as a maid, her strength training regimen left a lot to be desired and this weapon wasn't going to do much for her without a fresh dose of water. With a defeated sigh, she tossed the Iron aside (forgetting that it would warp back into her system seconds later (which it did)).

Then she froze. She'd been defeated, and Jacob knew she knew that. Instead of pulling off a successful, cool murder, she'd just made the biggest mistake of her life. And within stabbing distance of her victim, too.

Instead of shanking her in the gut, however, Jacob grabbed her by the shoulders and snarled, "You have a system?"

"Y-yeah—"

"Why do you have a system?"

She grinned with the utmost nervousness.

Meanwhile, gears were turning in Jacob's head. If Pip had a system, that didn't necessarily mean she had a system unique to maids. Maybe what she announced as "Fold" and "Burn" were just a cover for—for strange permutations of a queen's weapons—a secret queen in disguise?

...No, this theory was getting too convoluted. But the alternative seemed to be that maids and butlers were running around with access to royal power and somehow nobody was talking about it. Across all the lore of all the nations that Jacob had ever known, no one but royalty had ever had a system except in rare myths.

And if she was royal somehow, he told himself, why would she be walking around with Skills for folding and ironing!?

Now he had his theory: Pip was the first person in history to have a Maid-Class Syste—

"Sorry," said Pip, her face rigid in a servile, god-I-hope-this-will-please-my-boss smile. "It must be pretty embarrassing having your own system turned against you, heh heh... Right?"

What'd she just say? He jumped on that. "Having your what?"

"Having your own system...y'know, it turned against you." Pip sensed her verbal slip-up and blushed accordingly. "I mean the system accorded to all princes, the one that peasants normally would not get under any circumstances."

Jacob sighed through his nose. No wonder they kept Pip locked up in the scullery maid backrooms—she had the polar opposite of social grace. He wasn't totally convinced it wasn't an act, either. But let's take her at her word, he said to himself.

"Stop. Go back. You're saying one thing but you're trying to say something else."

"I'm not a liar, sir," she said. The first serious thing she'd managed all day.

"Then give me the truth, now. You've just suggested that the system you just used to attack me is somehow my own. Tell more."

"I-it's a system...that they don't tell you about," she said. Another vowel began, but her words got caught in her throat and she stopped after only a sound.

She was shivering now. From shock? What would it mean for Pip to murder Jacob, anyway, he wondered? What would her motive be?

"Pip," Jacob said, his voice careful and cold, "I have my own system. You, evidently, have your own."

The pause after that felt ten times longer than it was.

"If that were true, sir," Pip said, "you w-wouldn't have cared to point out my discrepancy."

In other words: if the stuff about her having his system was really nonsense, why would Jacob bother asking about it? Why wouldn't he just ignore it the way he'd ignore half the silly things she said at the castle?

She'd found it out.

She knew he was systemless because the very question he'd asked made him seem insecure. The prince had given himself away in his rush to get her truth.

Jacob knew Pip was right, but there was much more than pride at stake in his decision to keep putting up appearances.

"I do have a system," he said.

"No you don't."

"Yes I do. If you say that in the castle, they'll have you thrown out. Hell, I could have you murdered now, if I wasn't trying to avoid the controversy."

Pip chuckled.

Man... Somewhere inside, she had nerves of steel. Jacob's mind was scribbling away at possible ways he could quietly off her—she had to be aware of that, right?—but here she was in her own mercurial world. Jacob realized that it had occurred to Pip that she might get caught, and that the idea pleased her. Like she would've just become a celebrity for it.

For real, though: she couldn't possibly have your system.

But the truth was: yes she could.

He flashed back to the night of Uncle Theo's death, the new hire standing at his bedside, helping him undergo his last rites, and the moment young Jacob ran back into the room—only to find the servants all gone and the uncle dead.

Always a silly girl, not much younger than he was, always willing to shoulder other's burdens—to hear their secrets—more than happy to be labeled eccentric, if it would mean deflecting suspicio—

Gripping harder, digging fingernails into her arms like claws, Jacob surrendered to a concentrated moment of rage. "Why!?" he yelled. "Tell me what you want and I'll just give it to you. Money. Vengeance. My spot in the kingdom."

She shook her head. She'd reached a state of uncanny relaxation. Perhaps she felt that she was caught in a checkmate, due for the gallows and now beyond saving. People do strange things at death's door.

Pointing gently upward, closing her eyes with a smile, Pip said, "No. Freedom."

...Hmph.

Jacob was tired of presuming anything about this woman. Next thing you know, the statement that "systems are passed through royal bloodlines and activated by familial elders" would turn out to be a total lie. Next thing you know, his reality would be flat-out undone.

So he did the most shameless, baldfaced thing he could. He just said, "Give it back."

"No."

The switchblade flew to her throat. He could swing it out in a single swift movement, the reflex trained so thoroughly that, system or no system, most eyes could barely follow it. Down, side, up—throat. The other hand had moved to Pip's wrist, pinned it against her torso. Jacob was less afraid of controversy than he was of losing his goddamned life, and if it was "freedom" Pip wanted, then freedom she'd get.

When she wailed, the sound echoed against walls soundproofed for ultimate comfort. He forced her to the ground, tried to keep all of her limbs in his sight at all times, tried to plan a moment of death that she couldn't thwart by warping an Iron directly into his face.

He was interrupted.

Ding...dong...

Beside the front door, a crystal-powered light glowed yellow.

A voice followed, muffled by the transmission from out in the hallway to inside the suite. Or was it pure radio, transmitting from another room entirely? Jacob wasn't sure.

"Honored Prince Jacob," a servant's voice said, "your presence is requested in Sir Huxley's quarters."

"Urgent?" Jacob barked without turning around. He and Pip hadn't moved an inch.

The servant didn't respond.

Oh. Yeah. Soundproof, meaning he was expected to get up and answer.

Jacob considered his response. He also considered the view, his current field of vision, this portrait of a maid's near-death he was being forced to take in. Pip's eyes had wandered to the door...

And then wandered away again, to something on the floor.

He could see it now, barely, from the lower rim of his steady left eye. A shiny thing. A needle? No, definitely not, because it was round.

A coin? Not his. Pip's pockets? Oh, fuck her. If that wasn't for bribing officials on her way back from murdering Prince Jacob, it probably had to be for the gift shop. Maids weren't supposed to be carrying gold...

Jacob didn't move to answer the door.

"If you would like assistance, serving staff would be happy to guide you to the right place. Simply buzz in from the console by the front door. If you find this new technology daunting, refer to the front desk and serving staff will be happy to assist you. Thank you."

The light clicked off, not that the prince could see it.

Pip's hand snapped out of his grip, her palm hitting the gold.

Augh! Fine. Jacob took this as his cue to give up on killing her. After all, there was still a chance, however slight, of getting his system back from her. He withdrew, keeping his eyes on her. They both got up. Pip had the gall to duck her head and curtsy.

Once the gold went in her dress pocket (not with a jingle, but with a soft thump), she said, "I have to apologize for all that. Yes. I do admit it—I desperately wanted to kill you. But it's not like I dislike you or anything. And I'm a maid, so I should really just suck it up and, y'know...do the things a maid should do for her employer. Or what a knight should do for her lord, is more like it in this case."

He was about to tell her, You're insufferable, but she had to have known that.

"Then let's call it a truce," he said. The switchblade was put away. "Keep being my maid. Be my ally. Don't murder me."

"...But you didn't say 'and I won't murder you.'"

"Exactly. Stop lying, too—if you lie too much, I'll know." He hoped a ditz like her would get twisted up in her lies a lot quicker than the average.

"Okay. And I will support you in your lies, sir."

"Yes," he said, letting her sarcasm slide right past him. "What you're going to do now, before we go to this office, is tell me all about your system. If your description is too out-of-sync with what I think I know, I will take it out on you."

"Understood. W-wait, you're taking me along?"

He nodded. Frankly, a systemless prince could use a guard. Not least because the hand with the needle, the glancing blow at his life from earlier, wasn't even Pip's.