The next morning I awoke to a knock on my door. Groggily, I said, “Come in,” after sitting up on my bed. I was only wearing boxers, so I covered myself with the sheets. Blackwing stirred from her nest, hopping up to her perch.

Lily came into my room, carrying a tray with breakfast, including a warm cup of coffee.

“Oh, you didn’t have to bring this yourself,” I told her.

“I wanted to,” Lily said with a smile, “I’m still looking for ways to stay busy, so I volunteered.”

“Ah, ok, well, thank you,” I replied with a smile of my own.

“You’re welcome,” Lily said as she deposited the tray at the foot of my bed. It was a large bed, so there was plenty of room. Bed-space that Lily took advantage of to sit down and pull out a large bundle of purple and gold cloth from under her arm. “This came from the shop I used to work at,” she informed me.

It was the fancy robe that Primrose had commissioned. I examined it as best I could while sitting very still. “It’s a bit gaudy, no?” I asked. “Ah well, it will have to do.”

“Well, I have also been fixing a couple more black robes with that illusion enchant,” Lily told me eagerly, “I was going to show them to you later, but if you want I’ll go fetch one for you. Shouldn’t take long for you to enchant it if the runic thread is already in place, right?”

“You’ve been making more runic enchants?” I asked, surprised.

“Not enchanted, I just copied the design from the first one. Blackwing made sure I had it right. I’ve just been trying really hard to keep busy and help as much as I can,” she told me earnestly.

“Thank you Lily, I appreciate it. But you don’t have to push yourself that hard...”

“I want to!” She insisted, “I could also help you with your bath, bring a bucket of hot water for you as soon as you’re done eating.” She blushed as she said that.

“Ah, I’m good thank you,” I replied, probably blushing myself.

Lily looked disappointed, “What am I doing wrong?” She asked me, her cute eyes starting to become damp.

“Nothing! You’re doing great.” I told her, “It’s just that well, I’m not a saint. I find it very distracting to have a pretty girl like you washing me…” I admitted.

“Why not just… follow your urges? I am willing… not to keep my job, I know that’s not required, but because I like you.” She admitted, her face beet red.

“Lily, you’re my apprentice now, it would be wrong…” I said softly. “The bond of trust between apprentice and master is sacred. It’s taboo to sleep with your apprentice, it simply isn’t done,” I explained.

Blackwing snorted in amused disagreement, no doubt thinking of some less scrupulous wizards she’d known over the years, but I ignored her.

“Well, maybe I should…” Lily said in an uncertain tone.

I put a finger on her lip, stopping her words. “Don’t quit learning about magic just because of this,” I told her seriously, “You have a bright future ahead of you. You might not have a large mana core, but enchanting clothes could be your affinity.”

At her blank look I explained, “Mana cores react to whatever you first start using magic to acomplish. I used to use my magic to help me get the chores done, like an extra hand. That’s why I’m so good at my telekinesis spell. It’s the first spell I learned, and for a while, it was the only spell I used. I’m actually good at any spell that involves moving something, because of my force affinity.”

“In the same way,” I continued, “If you focus on learning how to enchant clothes, it won’t matter if your mana core is small, you could get an affinity for it, and become the best clothes enchanter in the world. The world’s first and best mage-seamstress. You could become rich, selling magic clothes. All that you’d need is about a year’s worth of training. If you still want to be with me, after your apprenticeship is done, well, we can talk about it then. Because at that point, I’ll be dating a successful businesswoman and trained mage, not my own apprentice, right?”

Lily’s eyes had grown huge, “You really think that’s possible?” she asked in a whisper.

“Why not? Keep working hard, study the books I give you, the lessons Blackwing and I give, and it should be possible.” I told her encouragingly. I’d also have to figure out how to properly layer enchantments on clothes, so I could teach her how to do it, but that was a minor detail.

“Besides, if I’m being honest, I don’t feel safe enough to start a relationship right now.” I admitted, “The king is in a coma, people probably want me dead. Lily, I can’t afford distractions right now. And I’m scared that someone might decide to hurt you to get to me. If anyone finds out we’re a couple, that could happen. Let me at least teach you enough so you can defend yourself first, before we take that risk. Hopefully things will calm down in a year's time.” And if I am really lucky, I’ll be at a new job by then, I thought to myself.

Lily nodded somberly, sighed, then said, “well, do you at least want me to help you put on a bathrobe?”

“Lily, there’s a reason I’ve not moved from here. You’ve sort of caught me in a delicate state… you see there’s a certain natural body function that occurs when a man wakes up in the morning and…” I explained, blushing slightly.

Lily blushed again, even more deeply. “Oh! Oh, ah… ok. I’ll let you get dressed on your own. Thank-you-so-much Jason, for-everything-you’ve-done-for-me,” the words came out in a rush. “I’ll see you later!”

Lily fled the room, her ears red.

Blackwing started making a series of repeated soft cawing sounds.

“You’re laughing at me?” I asked incredulously.

“What? No, Never.” Blackwing lied. “Clearing my throat.”

After my breakfast and bath, I’d decided that using a simple enchanted robe might be a better choice, but this time I made a few modifications. My new robe was just black. Not dyed black, but complete absence of light black. I changed the enchant to just continuously absorb light. I was even able to store that light in a crystal, which would give me the ability to, at will, emit a single extremely bright flash of light when fully charged. Depending on how long I spent in the sun, the crystal would charge fairly quickly. Downside to this new enchantment was that I wouldn’t be able to use my robe for invisibility again, but visually, my new pitch black robes would better suit the somber mood of the palace. I was also rather intimidating, I thought to myself as I looked in the mirror.

I also took some time to impress some of my mana and will upon my new staff, binding it myself so no one else could use it. It actually resembled my old staff, a purple stone upon a bone-white shaft, probably because the shaman was meant to be my twisted mirror image. The stone on top of the staff was actually made of dungeon glass, I realized after careful examination. The stone was enchanted to serve as a reservoir for mana, an extra battery I could use. The limit to such reservoirs was the toughness of the stone’s material, how much would a mana stone made of nearly unbreakable dungeon glass be able to hold?

Cautiously I stored about a quarter of my mana into the staff’s stone, and judged I could probably store five times as much in total before filling it completely. As close as I could tell, there was about a 20% transmission loss for any mana I stored. Shockingly that meant that when fully charged, the staff would hold about as much mana as my mana core. That was by far the largest mana stone capacity I’ve ever heard of. I resolved to store most of my mana into it every night, until it was full, as after seven hours of sleep, my mana core would fully replenish.

Having this didn’t make me twice as strong, as I would still have to transfer the mana back into my own core before casting. But fully charged, it would give me a way to rapidly recover all my mana once; a potentially life saving advantage.

Pleased, I left my room and found Primrose waiting impatiently for me downstairs.

“I paused to get some enchanting done,” I explained, showing off my new void-black robes.

Primrose examined them for a bit before relaxing a bit, “Ominous, but fitting. No one will accuse you of wearing something frivolous with that on. You should get going, Lance is already waiting in the carriage.”

“You’re not coming?”

Primrose shook her head, “It’s considered rude to have more than one person tagging along with you, a sign you don’t trust whomever you are visiting. Lance is better suited to accompany you. Blackwing doesn’t count towards that limit, fortunately.” She added with a nod to the bird sitting on my shoulder. Primrose glanced at Blackwing before doing a small double take.

Blackwing was playing with the enchant on my robe, I realized. I could feel her twisting the enchantment to include her own feathers, turning them the same void black as my robe. She looked quite terrifying, when one noticed her at all, as she was a bit difficult to spot when still. She resembled a bird shaped spike on one shoulder of my robe, or a living shadow when she moved. Both Primrose and I chose not to comment on the new look.