Chapter Sixteen
The training field smelled of chalk dust and steel. Morning light cut across the arena in sharp angles, catching on the mist that still clung to the edges of the practice grounds. Students moved in synchronized patterns, the rhythm of combat drills echoing across stone.
Cassara executed each form with mechanical precision. Strike. Block. Pivot. Advance. Her muscles remembered what her mind wanted to forget.
But forgetting proved impossible.
Three days had passed since the training room and her world had tilted on its axis and refused to right itself. She’d avoided the training hall, taken different routes to class, buried herself in drills and texts, anything to escape the ghost of his hands on her skin.
It hadn’t worked.
She could still feel the pressure of his mouth, the heat of his breath, the low sound he’d made when she’d touched him. It lingered like a bruise beneath her skin, invisible but throbbing whenever her guard dropped.
“You're leaving yourself exposed,” Gideon said. Before she could react, his hand tapped her ribs—light, controlled, but enough to prove his point.
Cassara jerked back, heat flooding her face.
She would have blocked that. Should have seen it coming.
The fact that she hadn't—that she had been lost in the memory of Auren’s fingers tangled in her hair—made fury coil hot in her chest. She was mad at herself for being so pathetically distracted.
At Auren for crawling under her skin and refusing to leave.
At Gideon for noticing, for always noticing.
"Sorry," she muttered, resetting her stance.
"Sorry doesn't mean much when you're dead." His tone was flat, matter-of-fact. "Out there, that mistake costs you. Take five to get your head in the right space."
She watched him walk away, the sarcasm from moments ago tasting bitter on her tongue. He wasn't needling her. He was genuinely concerned. And here she was, taking out her frustration on someone who didn't deserve it.
Across the field, Julian stood with his training group, his gaze occasionally drifting toward her. She could feel his attention like a weight, the careful calculation behind his eyes whenever Gideon stepped too close.
She wondered, with a sharp twist of irony, what Julian would think if he knew where her thoughts actually lingered. Not on Gideon. Not on him. But on an instructor who’d lied about why he wanted to train her and then kissed her like he’d been drowning for years and she was the first breath of air.
“Again,” Nareen called from the front of the field. “From the beginning. Accuracy over speed.”
Cassara took a deep breath and forced her focus back to the present.
She couldn’t afford distraction. Not with the Wildes expedition only two weeks away. Not with her father’s ultimatum hanging over her like a blade.
Gideon rejoined her without saying a word and they moved through the forms again, each strike more controlled than the last. Push it down. Lock it away. Focus.
By the end of the session, sweat clung to her skin despite the chill in the air. Her muscles burned pleasantly, the physical exertion finally quieting the chaos in her mind. For a moment, she almost felt like herself again.
Until she looked up and saw him.
Auren was at the far side of the training grounds, speaking with one of the third-year instructors.
His posture was rigid, controlled, nothing in his stance betraying what had happened between them.
Nothing in his expression revealing the man who had pressed her against a wall and kissed her until she couldn’t remember her own name.
Their eyes met across the field.
Just for a moment. A heartbeat, maybe less.
Then he turned away, continuing his conversation as if he hadn’t seen her at all.
This, she realized, was how it would be. Distance. Silence. Pretending.
As if the kiss had never happened at all.
The beast identification hall was unnaturally quiet, save for the soft scratch of fountain pens against parchment and the occasional rustle of turning pages. Sunlight filtered through tall, narrow windows, catching dust motes that danced in lazy spirals above the long wooden tables.
Cassara stared at the classification chart before her, trying to focus on the distinctions between alpha and beta ridge patterns on leviathan subspecies.
The differences were subtle, a matter of millimeters in scale spacing, variations in color that might mean the difference between a beast that could be redirected and one that would strike without hesitation.
She’d been at it for hours. The day had blurred into a haze of taxonomic hierarchies and anatomical sketches, threat assessments and behavioral notes. Her eyes burned from strain, and her hand was cramped from transcribing key identifiers.
Five days since the kiss, and still her concentration fractured at the smallest provocation.
Professor Marlowe paced between the tables, occasionally pausing to examine a student’s work before moving on.
“Remember,” she said to the room at large, “in the Wildes, you won’t have time for second guesses.
You’ll have seconds, maybe less, to determine whether the creature before you is a potential bond or a potential death sentence. ”
Cassara rubbed her eyes, trying to banish the fog of fatigue. She needed to master this, to know these distinctions well enough to recognize them in a heartbeat, even under pressure. Even when afraid.
Even when distracted by thoughts of an instructor who hadn’t spoken to her since she’d left him standing in the training room, lips still wet from her kiss.
“Allencourt.”
She looked up. Professor Marlowe stood beside her table, one eyebrow raised expectantly.
“The distinguishing marker between venomous and non-venomous ridge serpents?”
Cassara straightened. “Secondary scale coloration along the throat. Venomous variants display a deeper ochre undertone, while non-venomous specimens maintain a consistent jade coloration throughout.”
“And the exception?”
“Highland variants during mating season,” Cassara replied without hesitation. “The males develop temporary ochre coloration regardless of venom status. In those cases, you look to the eye ridges for confirmation.”
The professor nodded once, satisfied, and moved on.
Cassara sighed. At least her academic retention hadn’t completely abandoned her.
She gathered her notes, preparing to move to the reference section for a text on aquatic variants, when voices from the corridor outside caught her attention.
“—student evaluations before the expedition. Standard procedure. I can bring yours when I bring mine.”
Nareen.
“That won’t be necessary. I can deliver the assessments myself.”
The voice was low and unmistakably his. Auren.
Their footsteps grew closer, echoing against stone.
Without thinking, Cassara abandoned her notes and slipped between the tall shelves of the adjacent archive room.
Her pulse thundered in her ears as she pressed herself against the cool stone wall, hidden from the main corridor but close enough to hear their conversation continue as they passed.
"Your evaluation of the first-years is particularly interesting," Nareen was saying. "Especially Allencourt."
Cassara went still. She shouldn't be listening. She knew she shouldn't. But her feet refused to move, and she found herself leaning, ears straining for his answer.
"She's capable," Auren replied, his tone revealing nothing. "More so than most."
“High praise, coming from you.”
A pause, long enough to make Cassara wonder if they’d moved beyond hearing range.
Then, quieter: “She works hard. That’s all.”
Their voices faded as they continued down the corridor, leaving Cassara alone in the shadows, her heart still racing, her skin flushed with heat that had nothing to do with exertion.
She’s capable. More so than most.
She closed her eyes, pressing her palms flat against the cool stone at her back.
This was ridiculous. Hiding in archives to avoid him. Analyzing his words like they might contain some hidden message. Feeling her pulse quicken at the mere sound of his voice.
She was acting like a lovesick child, not a Vallemont initiate with less than two weeks until the Wildes expedition. Not an Allencourt with everything to prove.
Pushing away from the wall, she felt a renewed sense of determination.
She would master these classifications. She would prepare for the Wildes.
She would stop thinking about him, stop letting three minutes define every waking moment.
The kiss, the intensity, all of it would fade into something manageable.
It had to.
The gardens were quieter than the common areas, especially in the early evening when most students retreated to the dining hall. Lanterns hung from curved iron posts, not yet lit despite the deepening shadows. The air smelled of fresh rain and damp earth.
Cassara hadn’t meant to accept Julian’s invitation for a walk. She’d been heading to the library when he’d appeared beside her, his smile casual but his eyes intent.
“Just half an hour,” he’d said. “Fresh air. No pressure.”
Six days since the kiss with Auren, and she was desperate for any distraction.
So here they were, walking the stone paths between carefully tended beds of herbs and flowers, their conversation meandering through safe topics, training progress, upcoming assignments, memories of simpler days at the estate.
Julian was careful not to mention their arrangement, the looming threat of return if she failed to excel.
For once, he seemed content just to be near her.
“Remember when we snuck into your father’s study to look at the old battle maps?” Julian asked, his shoulder occasionally brushing hers as they walked. “You were so determined to memorize every leviathan sighting from the last decade.”
Cassara smiled faintly. “I thought if I knew where they’d been, I could predict where they’d go next.”
“You plotted an entire migration pattern. At thirteen.”