I couldn’t help but sigh as I took a sip of my tea, only wrinkling my nose slightly at the overly sweet drink. At this point, I have long since given up on correcting Riley on what an appropriate amount of sweetener is. 

Glancing over the rim of my cup I saw Reinhart, who apparently shared my sentiment, his brow creasing as he looked at his cup with a mix of confusion. 

“Is the tea not to your liking?” I couldn’t help but jab as I took another drink. 

He forced a strained smile as he tipped his glass to me. “It’s quite the… peculiar taste.” I could see him strained as he also took another, considerably smaller, drink as well. “I wouldn’t say I dislike it. It would certainly make quite the treat.” 

“Well,” I set my cup down with an audible click. “What can I say? It's so rare for anyone to come visit, Riley must have been excited.” To his credit he only looked slightly abashed by my jab, but he quickly regained his composure.

“Such things do go both ways, Emillia.” His cup joined mine on the table, both still nearly full as we locked eyes. “We all have things to do but you know where the main house is. You have always been welcome to come to dinner, that is if you were so inclined.”

Angela, completely unaware of the two sniping at each other, sipped her tea happily; the young girl was delighted by its sweet taste since the tea in the main house was always way too bitter.  

“Why don’t we just save ourselves a lot of time,” With gritted teeth I finally gave up, “Just tell me what you want?” He looked as if he was going to say something, but I cut him off, “Seriously, neither of us want,” waving a hand between the two of us for emphasis, “Whatever the hell this is. And I find it hard to believe the mighty Lord McGrave suddenly has so much free time on his hands to waste time with petty pleasantries.” He pressed his mouth into a fine line as he crossed his arms, his steel gray eyes taking me in as I sighed. “We are the only ones here, Reinhart, so it’s not like you need to save face. So, let’s get to the point, what do you want? Another party I absolutely must attend? Or are you guys trying to sell me off to another noble?”

With a shake of his head Reinhart seemed to deflate as he leaned back in his seat, his squared shoulders suddenly slumping. For the first time I could remember he didn’t appear as the valiant noble man, his posture breaking as he looked shockingly… normal. Just a man sitting there, no oppressive aura or impeccable posture, just another man with his long silver hair slipping down into his face as he slumped in his seat. “Just, where did I go wrong?” The words were clearly not meant to be spoken aloud, as they came out in such a quiet whisper I doubted Angela, who sat directly beside him, would hear them. 

But I did, I heard his silent plea and something about it… hurt. My chest tightening as I looked at the second man, I have called father look so… defeated. As he put his head in his hands, his elbows on his knees, I couldn’t help but feel that maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t the only one hurt by our predicament. 

Just as I was about to speak, Reinhart sat up, brushing his hair back to reveal his narrowed eyes, and I squashed those traitorous feelings of pity. “Fine.” He placed a hand on Angela’s head who was eagerly finishing up her drink, the young girl’s head snapping up almost like she had simply tuned out the entire conversation. “Can you show Emillia the bracelet?”

With a sharp nod of her head, Angela quickly grabbed one of the napkins and dabbed at her mouth like a proper lady before speaking. “Yes!” she happily replied, digging into a small bag on her hip. like most dresses the one she wore didn’t have pockets, but it wasn’t uncommon for women to carry small satchels for their necessities. 

With almost a flourish Angela pulled a glowing stone bracelet from her bag and placed it on the small table before us. I couldn’t contain my confusion as, with a raised eyebrow, I plucked the stone from my table. 

To say it was crude would be an understatement, someone had simply taken a mana stone and, very roughly, chipped it down into an approximation of a circle. The enchantment array carved onto it… well it definitely made light. It was, for lack of a better word, hideous. And I was about to say as much before I looked up to see my sister’s wide eyes locked on me. 

Looking back into the young woman’s wide childlike eyes I had a thought just in time to bite back the obvious criticism. 

“Did… did you make this?” I asked cautiously. But that would explain its crude appearance, objectively if I looked at it as a child’s project it was really not that bad. Maybe it was her first try?

After all she is… kind of my little sister. Even if there is no love between our family and me, I would be damned if I was going to be the one to crush a kid's dreams by bad mouthing her work.

Angela quickly shook her head. “No. I wanted one of those bracelets your maid always wears whenever I see her at the house.”

I bristled with pride as she said that; I knew Riley always says she likes the bracelets I make for her, but to hear she actually wears them outside gave me a warm fuzzy feeling as Angela continued. 

“Whenever I see her, she has bunches of them on, and glowing hair clips too! They are so pretty, and my 10th birthday is coming up, so I wanted to get some to wear with my dress…” She suddenly looked down at the crude stone in my hand, “But I never saw anyone else with them on. So, I asked mom and dad and well…” She paused, a pensive expression taking over as she looked back at Reinhart, who gave her a small nod. “Dad said you probably made them. Johnathen said he would get me some and,” with a blush she gestured to the bracelet, “yesterday he gave me this.”

“Thank god, for a minute there I thought you made this.” Cleared from the possibility of insulting a child I let out a chuckle, I tossed the bracelet down onto the table between my two puzzled guests. Both of them gave me a quizzical look as I shook my head. “That,” I pointed at the offensive object, “is complete garbage.”

Reinhart cleared his throat, “Yes. Well, not many enchanters bother making jewelry, Emillia. Not only that it’s a rather busy profession, most don’t have the time to try and create things they can’t sell. The fact he was able to commission one to even try…”

“He actually paid someone for that!” I couldn’t help but laugh, “Oh, oh my god. I… I can’t…” 

As someone who, understandably, buys a lot of mana stones I have a good idea how much they are worth now; and if my laughter that now border-lined mad cackling hadn’t made it clear to the two, any amount was too much. It took me a minute to finally wheeze out a question, “How much did he spend on that?” I whipped a tear from my eyes.

I was positive I misheard Reinhart’s reply as my laughing fit ended abruptly.  “You can’t be serious.” I snapped, grabbing the bracelet sure I had missed something.

As I traced the array with a finger, he casually repeated a number that made my stomach drop.

Now, I hardly had room to judge someone on what they spent money on given the sheer amount of mana stones I had laying around my house; but when one spends Riley’s entire months’ salary on what could only loosely be called an attempt, something inside me broke.

I was hardly a prideful man in my last life. Sure, I wouldn’t let anyone take advantage of me, but I was never one of those “take pride in your work” people. But I was just a lowly factory worker in my last life, maybe if I had been a craftsman, I would have a different view but as it stands everyone has to work. Pride in your creation has no place in its pricing; sentimentality, after all, doesn’t have a cost.

That being said, I am also a strong believer in a fair price. Labor, materials, and time everything had a price that would not only cover these things but have just a bit extra for the creator; these are simple facts given, as I said, we all had to work to live. 

But, looking over the rough approximation of an enchanted bracelet, only two possibilities came to mind. Either the “creator”, I use that word as loosely as humanly possible, was really proud of their shit. Or, the much more likely scenario, they were a con man. 

“For this?” I hissed as I dropped the bracelet again, giving up on finding the secret that would make it cost so much. I couldn’t help but sneer at the bracelet as if it had offended me, now knowing its cost I couldn’t help but feel… disgusted by it. 

“Is it really that bad?” Angela asked, reaching for the bracelet.

I scoffed, “Bad, isn’t the word. It’s just… sad. Whoever sold that to our dear brother obviously saw him coming from a mile away, and he walked right into it. At that price it's safe to say they robbed him for everything he was worth.” I rubbed my temple, confused about why I was so angry. 

If Johnathen wanted to just throw money away that’s his business. I could certainly not care less about him, or our parents for that matter. They want to just toss gold out the window, let them. But… “the enchantment array works, barely, but that’s about the only thing it has going for it. The mana stone isn’t even low grade; damn things probably a reject stone the mines couldn’t sell. Not to even mention the hack job they did carving the damn thing; it's a glorified paper weight and that’s me being generous.” At this point I was nearly yelling as I slapped the table with my palm, the sound causing the young girl to jump. “And that array! Yea it works, makes light ooo. But seriously, it’s a damn mess. They just tried slapping a full-sized lighting array on it! Its crude, and they fucked even that up. Damn thing probably bleeds out mana, do you want to know why?”

Neither answered as I ground my teeth. “Because it didn’t fit! Yea, they just shaved a part of the array off, the part that regulates mana consumption is just gone! It seriously just dumps all the mana out as a light, the only reason it’s not blinding all of us is the fact they used a crappy mana stone. If you put that array on any of these stones,” I gestured at the dozen stones in my table. “It would be the last thing you, and anyone around you, saw.”

I slumped back in my chair, unsure as to why I was suddenly so angry. It’s not like I made the damn thing. No, of course not, I would never let such a damn hack job out of my workshop; I certainly would never sell something so crappy! I would be ashamed to show that hunk of junk to anyone, even as a test enchantment. They could have at least sanded the damn thing down!

Even if I had made it, I wouldn’t have even charged half of what he paid… then again, I would probably hike the price way up for Johnathen, yea hit him with that good old “family” tax.

As I silently fumed about the poor craftsmanship, Angela looked to Reinhart with a very concerned look as she asked, “Did… did someone really rob brother?” 

For his part the man clearly knew what I meant as he placed a caring hand on his youngest daughter’s head. “Not necessarily. It's nothing you need to worry about, I have already taken care of it all.” He turned his gaze to me, and I found my anger flaring again as the caring expression he had given Angela faded. “But that still leaves us with a problem.”

My outburst was… probably a little childish. And it definitely could have waited until the literal child wasn’t there. I probably could have chosen my words a little better, but she’s like nine, isn’t she? whatever, I only swore a little, it will probably be fine. “What?” I couldn’t help the bite in my tone as I crossed my arms. 

Surely, he didn’t think I could fix that thing. Not that I would touch it with a ten-foot pole. Wouldn’t even grind it into testing powder given how cheap a stone they used.

 Much to my surprise Reinhart didn’t reply, he simply nudged Angela forward as she looked down at the bracelet in her hands. The girl's shy blush caused all the anger to wash out of me as she fidgeted, “Well… I was wondering if… if maybe you could make one for me?”

I… I think my brain shut off for a moment. “wha?” The intelligible reply was met with a cautious glance from the wide silvery eyes of a child. I was sure she just asked me to make her a bracelet…

“Well… you know my birthday is soon. and… and my ball is in a few months… you’re the only person I know that can make them…” She rambled for what felt like a whole minute, her expression slowly morphing from just a tentative shyness to nearly tears as I blinked several times. 

She was clearly struggling with this, but I just couldn’t… understand. “Why me? I’m sure you could find better enchanters out there than me, hell if you explained it just about anyone should be able to make one as long as you have a bracelet and mana stone.” 

“Emillia,” Reinhart, thankfully, cut Angela off before she could reply; the young girl was really on the verge of tears as she focused completely on the table between us. “As I said, enchanters are… rare. And most wouldn’t even bother with a commission like this. Not only that but…” He sighed, his eyes lingering on the table between us. His gaze clearly traced the array carved into it, the faintly glowing blue lines reflecting in his eyes as he seemed to think about what to say. “You are the one who made the bracelets Angela wants, wouldn’t it be best to just ask you to make them?”

I grunted; he wasn’t wrong. and even if we didn’t get along, they knew me, in some small part they even had an idea of my capabilities. Enchantments weren’t exactly cheap, plus clearly it was quite easy to rip people off if that “bracelet” was any indication. If you didn’t want to get saddled with some cheap knock off, it would be best to just go to the original after all… 

With a deep sigh I replied, “Fine, let’s say I’ll do it. What’s in it for me? Or are you just expecting me to do it for free?” 

“What would you want?”

“…” I opened my mouth only to close it again. I hadn’t expected him to just agree like that.

What did I want? Money? Sure, but how much? The cost of a single mana stone was laughable compared to what they apparently spent on that joke, but I couldn’t in any good consciousness ask for that much. Besides, with my monthly allowance I wasn’t exactly hurting for gold. 

I could use some new spell arrays, but was that really enough? Or was it too much? It’s not like I will even need to spend a lot of time on this… or any time really, I probably had a few half-done bracelets sitting in my workshop right now. Hell, I probably had a few done ones laying around…

I let out a humming noise as I tapped my finger against the arm of my chair before asking for the only thing I could think of, “I need beast cores.” They were pretty expensive, not to mention hard to come by normally. But given what they spent on the knockoff I feel it was a fair price. 

Reinhart chewed his lip for a moment before asking, “How many?”

Again, I was stunned for a moment, I said cores but in reality one was more than enough since I was just going to use it for my spear… then again if he was going to ask… “Let’s say… 2?”