Chapter 44
Chapter Forty Four
Hours passed and the words on the page began to blur.
Cassara rubbed her forehead, blinking hard, but the sentence still refused to make sense. Some obscure detail about beast-line hybrids and migratory patterns. Useless. Or maybe just unreadable when her mind wouldn’t stop pacing.
The magelight in the general common room flickered above their table, casting a tired yellow wash over open books, half-drunk mugs of tea, and Talia’s growing tower of flashcards.
Liri had given up entirely and was now dramatically draping herself across the bench, mumbling made-up beast names like “Fanged skyfish” and “Spine-tailed truffle weasel” between yawns.
Cassara set her pen down. “I left my field notes in the library,” she said, trying to keep it casual.
Talia barely glanced up. “You brought three notebooks and two Codex tabs, how many notes do you need?”
“I need those.”
She didn’t wait for a retort. Grabbing her coat from the hook, she swept it around her shoulders and stepped out into the hall before either of them could press her further.
Truth was, the notes weren’t essential, but the walls were closing in and her patience was hanging by a thread.
The storm had been pressing on her temples all day, and the last thing she needed was to keep pretending everything was fine.
Especially with Gideon’s name etched into her thoughts like a bruise she couldn’t rub out.
The corridors were dim, the academy quiet as most students were either buried in study dens or hiding from the storm.
She rounded a corner, heading for the stairwell down to the library, when movement in the rain-cast glass caught her eye.
There, outside.
A lone figure crossing the slick stones of the upper training yard. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Moving with that familiar restraint that always masked something more volatile beneath.
Auren.
He hadn’t seen her, of course he hadn’t. Hood down, hair soaked, shirt already clinging to his frame like he hadn’t cared to stay dry. He moved with quiet purpose, not toward the dormitories, not toward the mess hall or the labs, but the training hall.
The one where they first…
Cassara’s fingers curled around the door frame.
She knew she should turn back, get her notes and return to the common room. Instead, determination flared beneath her ribs. Not longing. Not hurt. Something sharper and far more defiant.
She eased the door open and stepped into the rain.
Cassara kept to the shadows along the upper walk and hesitated when she reached the edge of the path. The rain had already soaked through the thin parts of her coat causing her to shiver.
This was stupid. So stupid.
But the ache in her chest refused to subside. It wasn’t just about him. It was everything she hadn’t been allowed to say.
She moved again, faster this time.
When she finally reached the entrance to the training hall, the storm had picked up again. Thunder cracked across the floating isles above, their glow flickering like lanterns in the clouds. Her palm hovered over the door’s handle for just a moment before she willed herself onward.
She pushed the door open and stepped inside.
The warmth hit her first, thick and cloying after the chill the storm had left behind. It carried the metallic tang of expended mana, the salt of exertion, the particular scent that haunted every combat space in the academy.
It didn’t take her long to find him.
He stood half-turned away from the door, a towel in one hand, his bare torso still gleaming where sweat mixed with rainwater.
The light caught on the planes of muscle she’d traced with her fingers, water dripped from his hair, trailing down the valley of his spine as he reached for a training wrap on the nearby bench.
She knew this room, knew that stance, his body ready to move even in rest. Knew the particular set of his shoulders when he was trying very hard not to feel anything at all.
He turned the second her boot scraped against stone.
And froze.
The recognition came in stages across his face. First the automatic assessment, threat or student, then the widening of his eyes as he placed her. Disbelief followed, chased quickly by a brief glimmer of hope before he crushed it ruthlessly down.
The frown started slow, carving deeper with each heartbeat of silence. She watched it etch itself into his features like she was watching him rebuild every wall between them, brick by careful brick. The distance she’d been trying to breach for weeks solidified in the space of a breath.
“What are you doing here?” His voice wasn’t harsh, but it was low, each word careful, like he was afraid of what might spill out if he spoke too quickly.
“I was going to the library,” she said, but the lie fell flat before it even left her mouth. They both knew the library was nowhere near this part of the academy. She was soaked to the skin and had clearly been outside in the storm.
A beat passed. Then another. Thunder rolled overhead, muffled by stone but still powerful enough to feel in her bones.
He stepped forward, the towel still in his hand, and she caught the moment his instructor’s instincts overrode whatever distance he was trying to maintain. “You’re going to get sick.”
She stiffened, every muscle locking as he moved. The gesture was so achingly familiar. How many times had he wrapped her in warmth and been the shelter she’d run to?
He moved like he meant to offer her the towel, arm already extending—
“Don’t,” she said quickly. She backed up a step, chin lifted, using defiance as armor. “You don’t get to do that.”
His hand lowered slowly, confusion flickering across his features before he locked it away.
“Do what?” he asked, and gods, there was actual bewilderment in his voice. As if he didn’t know. As if he couldn’t see.
“Act like you still care.” The words tumbled out. “Like you didn’t throw everything away and walk off like it didn’t matter. Like I didn’t matter.”
Auren exhaled, the kind of breath that spoke of exhaustion deeper than any physical training could cause. His shoulders dropped a fraction, and suddenly he looked older. Tired in a way that had nothing to do with the late hour or whatever drill he’d been running.
He moved to the bench and sank down onto its edge like his legs couldn’t quite hold him anymore. The towel lay forgotten beside him, and he let his head drop forward, elbows bracing on his knees.
“I didn’t walk away because it didn’t matter, Cassara.”
The quiet confession was more damning than any shout could have been.
“Then why?” Her voice cracked, sounding too loud in the quiet of the training room. “Why this? Why silence? Why pretend none of it happened?”
She watched his jaw clench and for the first time since she’d walked in, he looked away, not at the walls or the floor, but through them, past them, at something she couldn’t see.
“Because I’m leaving.”
Her world tilted, the warmth of the room suddenly felt suffocating, and she couldn’t quite draw a full breath.
“What?”
“When the year ends,” he said quietly. “I’m not coming back to Vallemont.”
Auren sat there on that bench, a figure carved from shadow and regret, elbows digging into his knees as if he could anchor himself to this moment. His gaze fixed somewhere beyond the training room walls, maybe on a future she couldn’t see, maybe on a past that haunted him.
“I’m being reassigned,” he said at last, voice barely above a whisper. “Not officially, or publicly. But… it’s happening.”
Cassara’s throat constricted, words fighting to escape. “Where?”
A shake of his head, small, final. “I can’t tell you.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
He finally looked at her then, and the answer was written in every line of his face. Not defiance, not the stubborn refusal to share she’d grown used to. Just resignation.
“I don’t want this,” he said, and for a moment his careful control cracked, showing the raw edge beneath. “But what I want doesn’t matter.”
She stared at him, stunned by how quiet his voice had become. How final. How thoroughly he’d accepted this fate he claimed not to want.
“But you belong here,” she whispered, the words scraping past the tightness in her throat. “With your students. With the academy. With us. With…”
With me.
“My place isn’t here, Cassara.”
It was here.
“I’ll wait.” The words spilled out before she could second-guess them, before pride or fear or logic could intervene. “I don’t care where you go. I don’t care how long it takes. I’ll wait.”
Auren closed his eyes like she’d struck him. His hands clenched where they rested on his knees, knuckles white.
When his eyes opened again, there was a pain she couldn’t fully comprehend. They were the eyes of a man that had seen too much, lost too much, learned too well the price of hope. Her words hadn’t comforted him, they’d wounded him in ways she didn’t understand.
“Don’t,” he said gently, and the tenderness in it was worse than anger would have been. “Don’t do that to yourself.”
“I’m not doing anything to myself,” she snapped. She moved towards him, closing the distance he’d tried to maintain. “I’m making a choice. For once, my choice. Not my father’s, not the academy’s, not anyone else’s. Mine.”
His smile was a slow, terrible thing. Soft at the edges and unbearably sad, like watching the last ember of a fire finally surrender to the cold.
“You’re brave,” he said, voice rough with a mixture of admiration and grief. “And you’re foolish. And I love that about you.”
Her breath caught, like her lungs had forgotten their purpose. The word hung between them, casual and devastating. Love. Present tense. Not loved. Not used to love. Love.
“But don’t wait for me, Cassara.”
He stood then, rising from the bench with that deadly grace that had first caught her attention.
He reached out, fingers extending toward her face in a gesture so familiar her skin ached for it.
But he stopped just short of touching, hand hovering in the space between them like all the words they couldn’t say.