Chapter 48 #2
His battered face was disfigured with dark bruises and swollen lumps, but somehow it made him look more rakish than damaged. His usual fool’s grin had been replaced by an angry glower. For once, he actually looked dangerous.
But it was Talisa who held my attention. She was leaning forward, her hands moving as she spoke, her face alive with an intensity that transformed her plain features into something that commanded the attention of everyone at the table. Her fellow commoners were leaning in to hang on her every word.
A mousy red-headed girl who looked like she’d been crying reached across the table for Talisa’s hand. Talisa smiled—a quick but warm thing that lit up her eyes—and leaned in to listen to the redhead.
Lukhan would have labeled it the desperate huddling of the powerless, clinging to each other for comfort. He and the rest of our acquaintances would have sneered and found a hundred ways to diminish what I was looking at, to reduce it to something small and pitiable.
Before my magic awakened, I had spent enough hours watching other boys at provincial military academies form friendships denied me because Father’s military postings changed so frequently.
As soon as I got to know anyone, we were packing up the household to move to a legionary fortress in another province.
So, I recognized what I was seeing.
It wasn’t pathetic. It was the opposite.
These students had been strangers five months ago, but now they trusted each other. They cared about each other. In the space of a single semester, they had built something that my fellow aristocrats, for all our privilege and polish and perfectly tailored clothes, had never managed.
I was looking at a country I could never visit.
Lukhan and I had only ever had each other. That was the truth of it. He was the first person who’d ever looked at me and seen someone worth keeping. Out of everyone at this academy, he had chosen me.
In return, I’d clung to him with my whole heart, the way drowning men latch onto a floating plank without stopping to check whether it was rotten underneath.
Now my plank was disintegrating. And I was drowning.
I forced my feet to move and joined the line at the food service counter at the back of the hall.
The savory smell of duck fricassee and dumplings filled my nose, rich and comforting and entirely at odds with the hollowness at my core. The line moved slowly, with frequent pauses as older students cut to the head of the queue.
Aristocratic students were always served first as a matter of unspoken custom.
Now, I watched a first-year commoner girl grimace while three aristocratic third-years pushed in front of her without a word or glance. She didn’t protest. She just shifted her weight to her other foot and stared at the floor while they got their food.
Then Talisa came up behind me.
I turned to see her standing there, a tray in her hands, looking up warily at me, as she expected me to lunge like a chained dog and bite her.
We stood in silence for three full breaths. The line inched forward.
“Miss Bernswick, I’m truly sorry about the theft of your prizes,” I said finally. My voice came out rougher than I had expected.
She glanced up at me. Her hazel eyes were guarded. “I guess everyone’s heard about it by now.” She sounded resigned.
“You won the Trials, fair and square.” I studied the steam rising from the tureens ahead of us, the white-aproned servers ladling dumplings into bowls and topping them with generous scoops of fricassee. I looked back at her and added, “And I owe you a debt for saving my life.”
Her dark brows flew up in shock, and her eyes widened. They were her best feature, dark-lashed and expressive. “You don’t owe me anything, Mr. Corvellan.”
“Please call me Damien,” I said, surprising myself. “And yes, I do. You saved our lives during that match. Lukhan and the others can rewrite history all they want. But I was there. I felt that banner getting ready to explode.”
She was quiet for a moment. The line moved forward a couple of paces. We shuffled along with it.
“Thank you for saying that,” she said. Her voice sounded less guarded now. “Most of your friends think Elio and I cheated somehow.”
“They’re not my friends, and most of them are idiots,” I retorted.
That earned me a startled laugh, quickly smothered. The sound of it did something complicated to my chest.
I leaned toward her, pitching my voice low enough so we wouldn’t be overheard.
“Cresta and Bernardo, and… others,” I said. “They’re out to get you and Mr. Ferraro. Don’t walk anywhere alone. Not to class, not to the library, not even to the bathrooms. Take someone with you. Always.”
She searched my face with an intensity that made my skin prickle.
“What ‘others,’ exactly?” she asked.
I couldn’t tell her about Lukhan’s determination to continue his vendetta. Not directly. The loyalty I still felt toward him, rotted as it was, wouldn’t allow it.
But there were other threats.
“I’m sure you can guess, but in case you haven’t heard… the Custodes Sanguinis.” Their name felt dangerous just saying it aloud. “They’ve been watching you for months now. They’re the older students wearing the silver thorn rings.”
“Yes, I’ve seen them.” She nodded, her expression thoughtful. “Thank you for the warning, Damien.”
Simple. Direct. No theatrical gratitude, no performative surprise. Just honest acknowledgment.
Then it was my turn at the counter. A server ladled food into a bowl without meeting my eyes, his movements brisk and impersonal. I took my tray and stepped away from the line without looking back at her.
I carried my tray to an empty spot at one of the aristocratic tables. No one spoke to me as I dipped my spoon into my bowl.
The conversations flowing around me were about summer plans, about which noble houses were planning to host hunting parties, and the latest gossip filtering from the imperial court.
With the dukes of Frankia and Norhas both imprisoned for treason, there were currently two vacant seats on the Imperial Council, and fierce competition to fill them.
Normal topics. Safe topics. Topics that had nothing to do with upstart commoners or stolen badges or the shattering of a friendship I had thought unbreakable.
I ate mechanically. Normally, I loved fricassee and dumplings, but today it tasted like nothing.
Back at her table, Talisa was laughing at something Elio said, her pretty eyes alight with amusement, one hand pressed to her mouth. A braided gold ribbon with dried leaves on her collar caught my eye and held it.
I’ll protect her. However I can. It was the only way to satisfy the debt I owed her.
It wasn’t much. But it was the first honest thing I’d done in months.