NOA
Trust is a tactical asset. Spend it like ammunition—but only when the outcome is worth the recoil.
My footsteps echo too loudly in the empty hallway of the Blue Dahlia. Each step feels like a betrayal—of myself, of her, of everything I thought we were building. I make it out the front door before the fire in my chest breaks loose. A punch to the wall does nothing but scrape my knuckles.
You walked away from her.
My father would call that discipline. Tactical withdrawal. Maintain control. Reassess the asset. But this feels nothing like control. It feels like the exact fucking opposite.
I drag a hand through my hair, breath sharp as frost in my lungs. The night air doesn’t cool the heat crawling beneath my skin. I didn’t expect perfection. But lies? Secrets? That’s not what we were supposed to be built on.
She looked wrecked. And I made it worse.
Gavrail.
The name alone twists my stomach into a knot. Not because of what he is.
Because of what she gave him.
That’s the piece that splinters something in me. The idea that she carried all of this inside her—this rare power, this knowledge, this history—and never said a word.
Not when we were alone in the Cavern.
Not when she was curled into me on the couch.
Not when she was in my bed, shaking from the force of her own magick, and I was trying to help. My hands around her waist, my mouth at her ear. My fingers cupping her jaw as I turned her face up to mine.
Look at me. Breathe, Cel. I’ve got you.
And she did. She looked at me like I was the only real thing in this world. She trusted me enough to fall apart in my arms. But not enough to tell me why.
And maybe that’s what stings the most. Not that she had secrets.
But that she didn’t trust me with them.
But she trusted him.
I think about the way she was with me—warm, soft, mine in a way that made me believe I’d earned it. And now I can’t stop wondering—
Was any of it real?
Because I sure as hell didn’t walk into this halfway. And fuck if that doesn’t hurt.
Maybe I was just the version of safe she needed until something stronger came along.
Even just the idea of someone else touching her, of those lips whispering secrets into someone else’s ear, makes me almost turn back and demand everything from her right now. Her body. Her fucking soul.
I run through every conversation we’ve had, looking for a fracture I missed.
A moment where she might have almost told me the truth.
A moment I could’ve asked the right question and gotten the right answer. An answer that ended with her and me in bed right now. Taking out my anger while buried deep inside of her, instead of out here. Alone.
But I don’t turn around.
I stalk across the quad, barely aware of where I’m going until the steps of the Caldera rise beneath my feet. The night air greets me like a dare.
My father built his career on reading people.
A commander in the Iron Vanguard, the most decorated non-magick soldier of his generation.
He would have told me to walk away. But my mother?
My mother would tell me to listen to the fire.
To pay attention to where it burns brightest. And fuck if it doesn’t become a damn inferno the second I’m around Celeste.
The hairs on the back of my neck lift. Not paranoia—instinct.
I look up. Across the field, Headmaster Thorne is walking the path with Professor Stroud, mid-conversation. Thorne’s eyes meet mine. His chin dips once—quiet approval, a check-in without words. But there is a question there as he reads the tension in my frame.
I nod, giving him nothing, before heading down the steps. The two men keep walking.
With a flick of my hand, fire blooms across the oval.
I strip off my shirt and kick away my shoes before stepping into the circle of heat barefoot, sweat already rising along my spine. Then I move—precision strikes, high-impact bursts of flame, rolls, dodges. Anything to burn through the anger. Anything to drown out the sound of her voice:
“Noa, please. Let me explain.”
I heard the plea. Saw the pain in her eyes.
And still—I walked.
I don’t know if I regret it more because I’m angry… or because I’m terrified that pushing her away might have just been the biggest mistake of my life.
I throw another strike and the flame snaps too hot—white at the core. Heat bites up my forearm, fast enough that it shocks a hiss out of me. Fuck. I shake it out, furious with my own slip.
A quiet cough cuts through the heat from somewhere above me.
I turn, ready to snap at whoever’s watching—
But there’s no one there.