The Cursed Extra-Chapter 64: [2.12] The Gambler’s Proposition

"Everyone wants to bet on winners. The smart money bets on the desperate."

***

Thomlin Ashworth squirmed in his seat. The chair groaned under him as he shifted, his ink-stained fingers giving away exactly how he’d spent his life. Ledgers and letters. Not swords. His eyes bounced between the professor and the rest of us like he needed permission to breathe.

"Then why are you here, Professor?"

The question sat there. Heavy. Dangerous.

Isolde stopped walking. Her boots scraped against stone, loud in the sudden quiet. Something flickered in those amber eyes. A spark of whoever she’d been before the fall. Before whatever betrayal had landed her here with the rest of us garbage. Her shoulders shifted. Her jaw tightened. For half a second, the tired drunk routine vanished and something terrifying looked out at us instead.

"Because I have a gambling problem."

Nobody moved. The magical lamps on the walls hummed. I could hear Marcus breathing three seats over, still rattled from earlier. Somewhere far off, footsteps echoed in a corridor. Students from real houses, living real lives, completely unaware of what was happening in this forgotten basement.

"Not with cards or dice." She let the silence stretch until everyone started to squirm. Students traded confused looks. A few shifted like they expected a trap. She took another pull from her flask, the amber liquid catching lamplight before it disappeared. Her eyes went distant. "My vice costs considerably more than that. I gamble on people. Specifically on people everyone else has written off as hopeless."

Oh.

Oh, this is perfect.

I kept my face blank. Nervous. The pathetic third son who barely understood what was happening. Shoulders hunched. Eyes wide. Hands folded in my lap like a good little nobody.

Inside? My brain was on fire.

A queenmaker with a gambling problem. S-rank power wasted on teaching rejects. Someone who looked at the discarded and saw raw material instead of trash.

In the original novel, Isolde De Clare got maybe one paragraph. A background character. A cautionary tale about commoners who climbed high and fell hard. Leo walked past her once while she was drunk and supervising some training exercise. He felt sorry for her and moved on.

But this woman? This wasn’t a cautionary tale.

This was a sleeping dragon waiting for something worth waking up for.

This wasn’t a complication. This was opportunity. Wrapped in danger. Tied with a bow made of razor wire.

"The thing about gambling," Isolde started walking again. Each step hit the floor with purpose now. "The biggest payoffs come from the longest odds. Safe bets are boring. They’re for people who want to keep what they have instead of getting what they don’t. They’re for nobles who’ve never been hungry. Never had everything ripped away while the people responsible patted themselves on the back for their ’difficult decisions.’"

She swirled her flask. Watched the liquid catch the light. The gesture looked lazy. Her shoulders said otherwise.

"But a true long shot? The hundred-to-one chance that everyone dismissed as impossible?" Her smile went sharp. Hungry. "When that pays off, you remind the world why they used to fear your name."

Mira Blackthorn raised her hand. The girl moved like she expected to get hit for it. Her eyes were too old for her face.

"Professor? What exactly are you betting on?"

"You."

One word. It landed like a hammer.

Half the class sat up straighter without meaning to.

"All of you. This whole collection of misfits and disappointments. Square pegs that the academy couldn’t force into round holes no matter how hard they tried. They stuck you here because they couldn’t figure out what else to do with you. Sorting you into the ’proper’ houses would’ve taken effort they weren’t willing to spend on people they’d already written off."

The words should’ve stung. From the looks around the room, they did. Marcus’s jaw clenched. His fists tightened on his thighs. Thomlin seemed to shrink into himself, fingers picking at his sleeve. Even Fen’s ears went flat, her tail going still.

But there was something almost freeing about hearing it said out loud. No more polite lies about "alternative placement" and "specialized instruction." Just the raw truth, ugly and honest.

I can work with honest. Honest is predictable. It’s the liars you have to watch.

"But I see raw material." Isolde’s voice dropped lower. Harder. Like a commander talking to troops before a suicide mission. "Uncut gems buried in dirt. Weapons that haven’t been forged yet. Potential that everyone else is too blind or too stupid to see."

She stopped right in front of Fen.

The wolf-kin had a solid six inches on her. Golden eyes narrowed to slits. Lips pulled back just enough to show fang.

Isolde didn’t flinch. Didn’t even seem to notice.

"You think being unwanted makes you weak? Think having nowhere to go and no safety net is a disadvantage?" Her laugh was short and sharp. Half the room jumped. "Kid, you have no idea how wrong you are."

Fen’s ears twitched. Her tail stayed frozen.

"The ones with everything to lose play it safe. They protect what they have. They follow the rules because the rules were written to benefit them." Isolde turned, addressing the room again. "But you lot? You’ve got nothing. No reputation to protect. No family honor to uphold. No political alliances that limit your options."

She spread her arms wide.

"You’re free. And freedom is the most dangerous weapon there is."

She’s recruiting. Right here, right now. First day of class and she’s already sorting us into "useful" and "not useful."

The question is which category I want to land in.

Being useful meant opportunity. Resources. Access to an S-rank warrior who could teach me things the academy never would. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

Being useful also meant attention. Scrutiny. A Queenmaker watching my every move, looking for the potential hidden under my mask.

Can I afford that? Can I afford not to?

My survival strategy had been simple. Stay invisible. Stay pathetic. Be so useless that nobody bothered killing me. Let the protagonist and his harem handle the world-ending threats while I quietly built my resources in the shadows.

But that strategy assumed nobody would look twice at me.

Isolde De Clare’s whole thing was looking twice.