I AM A MAGE BUT WITH MILF SYSTEM

“I want him readable,” Louisa replied, stepping even closer until the heat of her body brushed against Cathy’s uniform.

“Compromised is simply a pleasant side effect. I need to know what he’s truly planning and what he wants from this visit. A man with his guard down whispers things a man at a breakfast table never will.”

“And if he doesn’t respond to the approach.”

Louisa looked at her steadily. “He will.”

“You are certain?”

“I am certain,” Louisa said, her eyes darkening with satisfaction, “because I sat across from him for an entire breakfast and watched him manage himself so carefully around every woman in the room. A man who has to work that hard to control himself around women has not conquered his weaknesses. He has only learned to keep them at arm’s length. Your job is to close that distance before he even realizes it’s happening.”

Cathy was quiet for a moment.

“He is Arch Mage,” she said. Not as a complaint. As a variable being placed on the table.

“He is,” Louisa acknowledged. “Which is exactly why I’m sending you and not someone softer. You’ve walked into rooms with Grand Mages and walked out with exactly what you wanted. This isn’t a contest of power. It’s a contest of patience… and you are the most patient, most dangerous instrument I possess.”

A quiet flicker of pride moved across Cathy’s face — the kind that came from genuine respect for her own abilities.

“What do you want to know,” she said.

“Everything,” Louisa said. “What he says when he isn’t performing. What he thinks about his father. About Olivia and Vanessa.” She paused. “About me, if it comes up.”

Cathy’s mouth curved again — that small, controlled, almost hungry shape that wasn’t quite a smile.

“And if he asks who sent me?”

“He won’t ask,” Louisa said confidently. “He’ll know. He’s too intelligent not to. Which is why your approach cannot look like an approach. It must feel like something that simply… happened.”

She picked up the folded paper from the desk and held it out. Cathy took it, glanced at it once, and slipped it inside her pocket without another word.

“When?” Cathy asked.

“This evening,” Louisa replied. “He will have rested by then. The morning was intense for everyone. A tired man is far easier to crack than a guarded one.”

Cathy nodded.

She turned toward the door.

“Cathy,” Louisa called out softly.

She stopped.

“He is not what the reports claimed,” Louisa warned, her voice quiet but serious. “Do not assume you know exactly what you’re walking into.”

Cathy looked back over her shoulder.

“My lady,” she said respectfully, though beneath the words lay the unshakable certainty of a woman who had never yet failed to walk back out of any situation she entered.

Then she stepped through the door and it closed behind her.

Louisa stood alone in the room.

She looked at the mirror on the eastern wall — her own reflection looking back.

She thought about the breakfast table. About the flame above Julian’s palm burning steadily in the contained space. About the laugh she had gotten from him. She thought about the pale grey eyes of her husband saying I don’t like failures and the weight he had put behind it.

She turned from the mirror and looked at the backyard window.

The gardeners were gone. The grounds were empty in the afternoon light.

She had moved the piece into position.

Now she waited to see what the board produced.

**

Meanwhile, as all of this was unfolding in the castle, Julian was completely deep in sleep.

His body lay still on the bed, breathing evenly, entirely undisturbed by the afternoon activity. To anyone who might have opened the door and looked in, he was simply a young man sleeping after a taxing morning.

However, inside his mind, it was a different situation entirely.

He stood on a flat rock.

It was narrow — barely wide enough to stand on properly — and it rose from the surrounding water by no more than a foot.

In every direction, as far as he could see, there was only water. No horizon line that faded into land. No sky he recognized. Just water stretching outward in every direction.

The water around him was boiling.

Julian looked down at it and could feel the heat rising even from where he stood.

Where am I, he whispered.

The rock beneath him gave no answer. The water gave no answer.

Then the first silhouette appeared.

It rose from the water perhaps ten feet away.

At first, there was nothing clearly there—only the boiling surface of the water moving in constant motion. Then, slowly, a shape began to form out of it, as if the water itself was gathering together and deciding what it wanted to become.

Bit by bit, the form became clearer. It looked human in outline. A young male figure.

He stood at what might be called the edge of the water, even though there was no real shore. He was standing still, holding a posture that suggested he had been waiting for some time.

Julian looked at it.

The silhouette had no face. Just the shape of a face.

Why did you possess me.

The voice came from it, and at the same time it didn’t seem to come from it at all.

It filled the air around Julian, but it also felt like it was inside his mind, as if it was being spoken directly into his thoughts rather than through sound.

Julian said nothing.

Why did you take my body.

The voice was not angry. That was what made it feel worse than anger would have.

It simply asked. Patiently. As if it had all the time in the world and nothing else to do except wait for an answer.

Then the second one appeared.

Same outline. Same featureless face. Rising from the boiling water to the left of the first.

Mother.

Mother.

A third.

I want my mother.

A fourth, to the right.

Sister.

Then they came faster.

They rose from the boiling water in every direction—directly in front of him, behind him, to his left, and to his right.

Each figure had the same basic outline. Each one looked identical, with no clear features to tell them apart, as if they had all been made from the same pattern.