Chapter Fourteen #2
“Even Instructor Eravian mentioned it in tactics,” Liri added. “Asked if anyone had seen ‘the Allencourt girl who challenged the Rift.’”
“People need to find better things to talk about,” she muttered, crossing to her bunk alcove.
Liri shrugged. “When Darius Eravian himself tells a story about how you staggered out of the Rift, refused help, and then collapsed dramatically into Nareen’s arms—”
“That’s not what happened,” Cassara cut in.
“—people tend to remember,” Liri finished. “Besides, you have to admit, doing things the unnecessary hard way is your specialty.”
Talia looked up from her desk, her pen pausing mid-stroke.
“If they’re guessing, let them guess,” she said, voice low and measured. “Gossip is only dangerous when it holds truth.”
Cassara paused, caught by the unexpected insight.
Talia held her gaze for a beat longer than usual. “Some secrets should stay buried.”
The cryptic nature of her words made Cassara wonder which secrets Talia meant, her injury, her recklessness in running the Rift, or something else entirely.
She ducked into her alcove without answering, drawing the curtain closed, and sat on the edge of her bed. Cassara waited until the voices fell back into whatever quiet conversation they’d been having before she arrived and then reached beneath her pillow for the journal and left.
The sky had dimmed to that particular shade of violet that came just before true night, when the last of the light clung to the clouds and the stars hadn’t yet made their entrance. Cassara sat with her back to the stone wall of the Overlook, legs curled beneath her, journal in her lap.
She hadn’t meant to end up here. Her feet had simply wandered after the common room, carrying her toward quiet, toward open air.
The aches from her session with Auren still lingered in her limbs, but the deeper bruises were finally fading.
Tomorrow she had her post-recovery assessment.
If all went well, she’d be cleared to return to team drills with the other first-years.
It should’ve been relieving, knowing that tomorrow would be her last session with Auren. No more early mornings in the cold, no more silent drills or sharp corrections, and, most importantly, no more of him, standing too close and saying too little, his presence as steadying as it was infuriating.
So why did it feel… hollow?
She shook the thoughts from her head. It wasn’t worth dwelling on. He was just an instructor. A frustrating, maddeningly unreadable one. That was all.
Even as she thought it, her fingers gripped the edge of the journal a little tighter.
She flipped through the time worn pages, scanning the contents, not sure what she was hoping to find. Most entries were technical, battle tactics, beast behavior, shorthand notes about mission reports she couldn’t decipher. Her mother’s script was sharp and elegant.
Near the middle, she found something different.
The ink was messier here. Smudged in places, as if written in haste, or with trembling hands.
Some days I wake up and the weight of what I’m supposed to be settles in before my feet even touch the floor. Everyone says I’m meant for greatness. I don’t know what that means, not really. Maybe they think I’ll become some kind of symbol, like that’s enough to make a person unbreakable.
But I’m tired. And I hate admitting that.
There are mornings where I don’t feel brave. I just feel… small. Not because I can’t do it, but because I’m afraid I won’t do it well enough.
Still. One step. One hour. One breath at a time. That’s all I can promise.
And like my mother used to say: “Even the fire rests between sparks.”
Cassara’s eyes lingered on the words, her thumb brushing the margin where ink had bled slightly, either from a spill or a tear long dried, but the words held firm.
Even the fire rests between sparks.
She’d heard that before. Not often, but enough. Whispered on mornings when her mother had returned home from the front, bone-weary and silent. Tucked between lessons about posture and poise, like an afterthought too gentle to be remembered on command.
It had sounded strange to her then, she hadn’t understood it.
But now?
Now it settled differently in her chest, like a weight she’d been carrying without knowing it. A kind of permission she never realized she’d been granted.
Cassara swallowed hard, her fingers curling at the edge of the page.
Her mother had once woken unsure, uncertain, scared she wouldn’t live up to what was expected of her, and still, she’d persevered. One step, one hour, one breath at a time.
Closing the journal carefully, she stared at the worn cover for a long moment before setting it aside, her heart beating a little slower than before.
She wasn’t sure she could afford doubt. But just for tonight, she let the quiet truth of it sit beside her.
Even the fire rests between sparks.
And maybe… maybe that was okay.
Dawn hadn’t yet broken when Cassara woke, the dormitory still silent around her.
She dressed in the dark, movements careful and practiced, aware of every breath, every stretch.
Her ribs no longer protested when she twisted or bent, the bruising had faded to a watercolor smudge of yellows and faint greens against her skin.
Today was the day.
The thought shouldn’t have left such a hollow space beneath her ribs. This was what she’d wanted from the beginning, to be cleared, to rejoin her cohort, to stop being singled out for remedial work. To stop being his project.
And yet.
She slipped from the dormitory without waking anyone, Julian’s charm tucked into her pocket where she’d kept it since yesterday. She told herself it was sentiment, not attachment, that made her carry it, but her fingers closed around it as she approached the training room door.
The room beyond was darker than usual, the pre-dawn gloom deepened by storm clouds that seemed to press against the high windows. The air felt charged, electric with the promise of rain.
She pushed the door open without knocking.
Auren stood in the center of the mat, back to her, moving through a sequence she’d never seen before, his body a controlled arc of power as he shifted from stance to stance. He wore only a sleeveless training shirt and loose pants, feet bare against the mat. No pretense of formality today.
He finished the sequence without acknowledging her, though she knew he’d heard her enter. Only when the final form was complete did he turn, eyes finding hers across the dim space.
“You’re early,” he said.
His voice seemed different. Quieter. The edge of authority softened in a way that felt considerably more vulnerable.
“Couldn’t sleep,” she admitted, setting her things down at the edge of the mat. She hadn’t meant to confess even that much, but the words slipped out before she could catch them.
Auren watched her for a beat too long, then nodded toward the center of the room.
“No drills today,” he said.
Cassara paused in the middle of rolling up her sleeves. “Then what?”
“Combat. Real movement.” He stepped onto the mat, stance relaxed but alert. “Your ribs are nearly healed. Time to test them.”
She stared at him, trying to read past the carefully neutral expression. After yesterday’s raw confession, she’d expected…what? Distance? Coldness? Not this strange, quiet focus.
“You’ll go to your evaluation after we’re through,” he continued.
Cassara stepped forward, taking her place opposite him on the mat. “Anxious to be rid of me?”
The question came out sharper than she’d intended.
Auren’s expression didn’t change, but his eyes tracked her movement with that same intensity that made her skin warm despite the room’s chill.
“I’m not the one who tried to walk out yesterday,” he reminded her.
She felt heat rise to her face. “That was different.”
“Was it?”
Cassara didn’t answer.
Instead, she settled into a ready stance, chin lifted in silent challenge.
Auren mirrored her, his posture deceptively casual. “Three touches,” he said. “First to land them wins.”
“What do I win?” The question slipped out unbidden, carrying a hint of the dangerous tension between them yesterday.
His mouth curved slightly, not quite a smile, but less guarded than his usual expression.
“Bragging rights,” he said. “And maybe a straight answer to one question.”
Cassara’s pulse quickened. One question. One honest answer from the man who revealed nothing unless cornered.
“And if you win?” she asked.
“Then I get the same.”
They circled each other slowly, neither making the first move.
The storm clouds outside deepened, casting the room in shadow broken only by the faint glow of mage-lights along the wall.
Their reflections ghosted across the window glass, two figures in a dance too tense to be called practice, too controlled to be called combat.
Cassara struck first.
She feinted right and then came in low from the left. He blocked with infuriating ease, deflecting her arm with a precise motion that used her own momentum against her.
“Telegraphing,” he said. Not criticism but an observation.
She didn’t reply, just reset and circled again. This time when she moved, it was with a swift combination that forced him to actually defend rather than simply evade.
From there they fell into rhythm, a language of movement neither had to translate. Strike. Parry. Advance. Retreat. The space between them electric with unspoken awareness.
His hand caught her wrist once, not to restrain, but to redirect. The contact lasted only a heartbeat, but it sent a spark through her that had nothing to do with combat.
“One,” he said, tapping her shoulder with his free hand before she could counter.
She broke away, breathing harder than she should have been. “Lucky shot.”
“No such thing.”
They reset. Circled again. This time, she was more careful, more patient. She’d watched him long enough to know his patterns, the way he favored his right side, the slight tell before he shifted his weight.