Chapter 34 – Cat, Quiet, Steel
For a second after I said her name, the classroom just… held its breath.
Olivia smiled up at me like we were in some quiet garden instead of surrounded by forty students and one dying instructor.
"What am I doing here?" she echoed. "Visiting, of course."
Her guards in the hallway shifted their weight, not quite daring to look inside.
The instructor made another strangled noise.
"Y-Your Highness, this is– this is an examination period, and the Academy has strict—"
"It's not an examination," she said without looking at him. "You were talking about supply lines. Badly."
He shut up.
Her attention never left me.
"I wanted to see the boy who dares make the priests argue with each other," she said, voice light. "And the one Father sent out instead of me. That's important, you know."
My temple ticked.
So the Emperor hadn't stopped her after all.
"Olivia," I said under my breath. "You're causing a scene."
Across the room, Tamara's red eyes burned holes through my head. Lyra looked like someone had ripped pages out of a book in front of her.
Olivia finally seemed to notice the way everyone was staring.
"Oh," she said, as if the thought had just occurred to her. "Right. You're all in class."
She stepped back a half-step, hands falling away from my shoulders. For a heartbeat I thought she might actually leave like a reasonable person.
Then she went up on her toes and kissed me on the cheek.
Just a light brush. Warm. Very quick.
The room exploded.
Chairs scraped. Someone dropped a quill. Rion made a noise like a dying bird.
My brain stopped for half a second, then lurched back into motion.
"Olivia—"
She stepped back, expression very satisfied with herself.
"There," she said. "Now I've met you properly."
"That's not—" I started.
"I'll come again," she said over me, cheerfully ignoring every rule I could think of. "Study hard. Don't die before I get the chance to decide if I like you."
Then she turned, cloak flaring, and walked back up the aisle as if she hadn't just set half the social structure of the Academy on fire.
Her guards scrambled to fall into step.
The doors closed behind her.
Silence crashed down.
Slowly, the instructor turned toward me with an expression like someone who really wanted to give a lecture and knew better than to try.
"Class… dismissed," he croaked.
The moment he said it, the room exploded *again*—this time in whispers.
"Did she—"
"On the cheek!"
"The Empress's only daughter—"
"Who is he *really*?"
Rion stared at me.
"I would like you to know," he said solemnly, "that I am now afraid to stand near you in case I am executed by accident."
"Thanks," I said.
Over his shoulder, Tamara shoved her notes into her bag hard enough to crumple the paper. Lyra sat frozen, red hair hiding most of her face, knuckles white around her quill.
[ System ]
[ Affection Spike: Future Empress Olivia. ]
[ External variables destabilizing. ]
I ignored it.
One disaster at a time.
***
The gossip followed us all the way out of the building.
By the time we reached the courtyard, there were at least three different versions of what had happened. In one, Olivia had declared me her fiancé. In another, I'd swept her into a dramatic embrace and refused to bow.
Reality had been small, ridiculous, and exactly dangerous enough.
Rion peeled away with a nervous salute.
"I'm going," he said. "I need to go remind people I'm harmless, and also very far away from whatever you are."
"Good luck with that," I said.
He fled toward the dorms.
I checked the schedule in my hand.
Morning classes: done.
Afternoon: free.
At least that part was kind.
I should have gone straight to the library. There was still half of Lyra's book I hadn't touched, and the Resonance lecturer had handed out an assignment on "compound mana sums" that looked, to me, like first-life arithmetic with extra steps.
I didn't make it to the library door.
"Erynd."
Tamara's voice.
I turned.
She stood near one of the stone pillars, arms folded, blue hair catching the light. Her jaw was tight enough to crack.
A few passing students noticed the two of us and immediately chose to walk somewhere else.
"Tamara," I said. "Congratulations, you survived class without stabbing anyone."
She stalked up to me.
Then she hit me in the chest.
Not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to shove me a step back.
"What was that?" she demanded.
"Theory of Combat," I said. "Supply lines. Badly taught. You were there."
"Don't play dumb," she snapped. "You just stood there and let her—" She broke off, face flushing all the way to the tips of her ears. "Let her kiss you."
"I didn't exactly get a chance to file a complaint," I said.
"You could have dodged," she said.
"She's the Emperor's daughter," I said. "Dodging would probably start a war."
Tamara made an inarticulate noise, somewhere between a growl and a word.
Wind flickered around her shoulders, tugging at blue strands.
"She just walks in, and everyone bows, and she—" Tamara swallowed whatever she was about to say next. "And you let her."
"You're angry at the wrong person," I said mildly.
"Of course I am," she shot back. "I can't punch her."
Fair point.
"Also," she added, eyes narrowing, "everyone saw. Do you have any idea how much I'm going to have to listen to 'Did you see what the future empress did to your little dueling partner' for the next month?"
Ah.
There it was.
Jealousy sat plain on her face now, raw and unpolished, bright as her red eyes.
Somewhere behind us, a group of boys tried to pretend they weren't eavesdropping.
I exhaled.
"If it makes you feel better," I said, "I didn't enjoy being used as an imperial scandal tool."
"A little," she muttered.
The wind around her calmed a fraction.
She uncrossed her arms and thrust a folded sheet of paper at me instead.
"Here," she said. "Since you're already ruining my life, you might as well help with this."
I took it.
Mana Arithmetic – Complex Flows (Beginner).
The problem set was full of stacked fractions and little arrows representing flows entering and leaving crystals. Anyone from this era would call it a "complex" exercise.
To me, it looked like a slightly messy version of adding and subtracting vectors, the sort of thing first-life teachers would have given as warm-up.
"You're stuck," I said.
She bristled.
"I am not stuck," she said. "I am… reassessing my relationship with numbers."
"So you're stuck," I said.
She glared.
"Are you free this afternoon or not?" she demanded. "You keep looking at the board like you're bored when they write this stuff. You obviously know how to do it. I'm not asking you to do it for me, just… explain the annoying parts so it stops looking like a temple curse."
It wasn't a bad way to ask.
I glanced past her toward the library.
Studying this now would save me time later anyway. And keeping Tamara occupied with numbers instead of imaginary executions was probably good for the building's structural integrity.
"Fine," I said. "Library. Quiet corner. If you start throwing things, we're done."
She huffed, but she was already walking in the right direction.
***
Lyra heard about the kiss three different ways before the hour ended.
First, from the gasping second-years in the corridor.
Then from the staff in the dining hall who thought students weren't listening.
Then from the girl in her Conjury theory class who plopped down beside her and whispered, "Did you hear? The future empress *kissed* that blond boy from the village. On the cheek. In front of everyone."
Lyra's hand tightened around her spoon until it bent.
"Oh," she said, trying to sound like it was nothing more than gossip. "Really."
"Yes! I mean, I don't blame her, he's kind of—" The girl stopped, squinting. "Are you alright? Your face is… red."
"I'm fine," Lyra said.
She wasn't.
In her head, the scene replayed with too much colour—Olivia's purple hair, red eyes, imperial crest. Erynd's startled expression. The way he hadn't moved.
She knew, logically, that you didn't dodge the Emperor's only daughter in public unless you wanted to decorate a dungeon.
Logic did absolutely nothing to her chest.
Waiting girl, a voice in her said.
Wait in the back.
Wait on the edges.
Wait while duchesses pull his sleeve, and now even the future empress walks straight up and takes what she wants.
Her stomach knotted.
She imagined Olivia's kiss like a stamp being pressed onto his cheek.
Claimed, some petty, ugly part of her thought.
The same part that remembered blue hair and red eyes and fingers in her own braid.
If girls like that can just decide and *move,* she thought, what am I doing still hiding behind shelves?
By the time classes ended for the day, she'd already made up her mind.
She would not be the last to move again.
She might not be a duke's daughter. She might not have a crest or a crown. But she had legs, and a mouth, and a spine that had been forced straight by years of being told to bow.
She left her last classroom as soon as the instructor said "dismissed," almost knocking over a stack of parchments in her haste.
"Lyra?" someone called after her.
She didn't slow.
She knew where he'd go.
Where he always went when there was a problem set and free time.
The library.
***
Tamara slammed her workbook onto the library table.
"Here," she said. "Explain."
We'd found a quiet corner near the back—very deliberately not the exact shelf Lyra had stolen from. Tamara had dropped her bag with all the grace of a falling anvil and glared at the equations like they'd personally insulted her.
"You're treating the flows like they're just numbers," I said, scanning the first problem. "They're directions too. Think of it like wind."
Her expression shifted from offended to suspicious.
"Wind," she repeated.
"Flows in, flows out," I said. "If you blow harder from one side, the total moves that way. These arrows are just… book-keeping. Here."
I pulled the sheet toward me, flipped it over, and drew a crude square—crystal—then lines in and out.
"You're adding directions and strengths," I said, writing little + and – signs. "This isn't divine punishment. It's just not being taught well."
Tamara watched my hand.
"You make it sound simple," she muttered.
"It is simple," I said. "They're just trying very hard to make it look important so you'll respect it."
Her lips twitched despite herself.
She leaned in closer, blue hair brushing the table.
I walked her through the first problem step by step—grouping flows, cancelling pairs that opposed each other, simplifying.
Her brow furrowed. She chewed her lip. Then, slowly, her eyes sharpened.
"Oh," she said. "So this bit—" She jabbed at one cluster. "These two kill each other, and then you're just left with this."
"Exactly," I said.
She stared at the paper, then at me.
"You're telling me," she said, "that the reason I've been getting these wrong is because I thought the numbers were special and they're just… numbers."
"Yes," I said.
She buried her face in her hands for a moment.
"I hate this place," she groaned. "I spent an hour last night thinking I was stupid."
"You're not stupid," I said. "You're just surrounded by bad explanations."
She peeked at me through her fingers.
"Say that again when I fail the next test," she said.
We worked through another problem.
By the third, she'd started moving the quill before I did, muttering under her breath about "wind in, wind out, stupid pretending-to-be-complicated nonsense."
She was still grumbling when footsteps approached the end of the aisle.
We both looked up.
Lyra stood there, breathing a little too fast, red hair a little messier than usual, blue eyes flicking from me to Tamara and back.
Of course.
Tamara went very still.
"Oh," she said. "The mouse learns where the library is now."
Lyra's jaw tightened.
"I'm here for the same assignment," she said, voice steady. "Professor said there'd be someone who understood it hanging around in the back. I guess he meant you."
She looked at me when she said *you*, but her words pricked at Tamara.
Tamara straightened, hand still on her quill.
"Well, you can wait your turn," she said. "He's helping me right now."
Lyra took a step closer.
The old Lyra would have backed away. Apologised. Found another table.
This one didn't.
"I've already been waiting," she said. "Since the first day. It didn't exactly work out."
Tamara's eyes narrowed.
"Oh?" she said. "Is this about the hair thing *again*? I thought we were over that. I lost the duel, remember?"
"It's not about that," Lyra said.
"That's a first," Tamara muttered.
Lyra's fingers curled around the strap of her satchel.
"Today," she said carefully, "the future empress walked into our classroom and kissed him on the cheek."
Tamara's expression darkened.
"Believe me, I noticed," she said.
"And you were already here," Lyra went on, nodding at the spread-out papers. "Getting his help. Talking to him. Standing next to him like it's natural."
"Because it is," Tamara snapped. "We train together. We fight together. Of course I came here."
Lyra's blue eyes flashed.
"Then I'll come too," she said. "I'm tired of being the girl who waits until everyone else has taken whatever they want and then goes home with nothing."
Tamara laughed once, sharp.
"And what, you think marching in here and making a speech is going to change anything?" she said. "You're a cobbler's girl, Lyra. The Imperial Guard isn't going to start saluting you because you finally decided to stand up straight."
"Maybe not," Lyra shot back. "But he listened to me when I brought him a book."
Tamara's cheeks coloured.
"The mana-metal thing," she said.
"You noticed," Lyra said.
"Everyone noticed," Tamara said. "He hasn't shut up about it in his head since he opened it."
That was… unfairly accurate.
"Both of you," I said, because this was getting out of hand.
They ignored me.
Lyra took another step, until she stood at the other side of the table, opposite Tamara.
"You have your training," she said. "Fine. You can keep swinging swords at him. I won't try to take that."
"How generous," Tamara said dryly.
"But I won't wait quietly anymore while you, and now even the future empress, just… reach for him and expect the rest of us to pretend we don't see," Lyra finished.
Wind stirred around Tamara's shoulders again.
"Do you think you're the only one who saw that?" she demanded. "You think I liked watching Her Highness just walk up and—"
She bit the sentence in half.
Lyra's smile was small and sharp.
"No," she said. "I think you hated it. That's why you hit him outside."
Tamara's head snapped toward me.
"You told her?" she demanded.
"I didn't say anything," I said. "You hit me in the middle of a courtyard. Half the yard saw."
Tamara winced.
Lyra's gaze softened by a hair.
For a heartbeat, the two of them weren't noble and commoner, duke's daughter and cobbler's girl. They were just two girls who had watched a purple-haired imperial problem kiss the same boy and felt something sharp twist inside.
Then the moment passed.
Tamara leaned forward, hands flat on the table.
"So what," she said. "You're going to fight me for a seat now? Wave your assignment like a flag?"
Lyra's lips parted.
"I—"
"Enough," I said.
Aura rolled off me, low and controlled.
The air around the table tightened. Loose papers stilled. A nearby lamp flickered.
Both of them froze and looked at me.
"Sit," I said. "Both of you."
Tamara opened her mouth.
"If you're planning to argue about whose turn it is," I said, "I can go somewhere else and you can both fail the assignment together."
Silence.
Then, grudgingly, Tamara dropped back into her chair.
Lyra sat opposite her, perching carefully, as if the stool might vanish out from under her.
"Good," I said.
I pulled Tamara's sheet closer, then gestured to Lyra.
"Do you have the same problem set?" I asked.
She hesitated, then slid her copy onto the table. The numbers were almost the same, just in a different order.
"I do," she said quietly. "I was going to work through it alone if… if you were busy."
"You're both here," I said. "So we'll do it together."
Tamara snorted.
"Group work," she muttered. "My favourite."
"Be quiet and watch," I said.
I drew another crude crystal and flow diagram between them.
"Both of you made the same mistake," I said. "You're treating each line as if it's separate. It's not. They all meet here. Think of this point as… a street corner. Flows from different directions, people coming and going. If more people come in from one side than leave on the other, that side dominates."
Lyra leaned in, red hair slipping over her shoulder.
"So this is just… keeping track of which way things go," she said slowly.
"Exactly," I said. "You're not summoning gods. You're doing book-keeping. You add the flows that go the same way, subtract the ones that oppose, and whatever's left is the total."
Tamara watched the quill move.
"So when I had plus three and minus five, I thought it was some weird rule," she said. "But it's just… five against three."
"Which leaves two going the stronger way," I said. "Negative if the bigger one pointed out, positive if it pointed in. The signs are just arrows pretending to be symbols."
Lyra's brows knitted as she followed the little arrows.
"And when you rearranged these terms in class," she said, "that's all you were doing. Putting all the 'in' on one side and all the 'out' on the other."
"Yes," I said.
They stared at the page.
Then, almost at the same time, both of them reached for their own sheets.
"Give me that," Tamara said.
"I see it," Lyra murmured.
They worked in parallel, muttering under their breath. Once or twice their hands bumped, reaching for the same inkwell. They glared, but they didn't pull away.
At the end of the first problem, both sets of numbers matched my answer.
Tamara sagged back.
"You have got to be kidding me," she said. "I lost sleep over this."
Lyra let out a breath that was almost a laugh.
"It's stupid," she said. "It's actually stupid."
"Welcome to most of what passes for advanced theory," I said dryly.
Tamara glanced up at Lyra.
"So," she said. "You're not completely useless."
Lyra's mouth twitched.
"You're not either," she said. "For a noble."
It wasn't a truce.
But it wasn't a declaration of war either.
We went through two more problems.
By the end, Tamara was tapping her quill against her teeth, finishing lines before I prompted her. Lyra had started drawing her own little diagrams in the margins, neat and precise, like she was building a separate explanation just for herself.
Once, their eyes met over the table.
Something complicated passed between them—resentment, grudging respect, the shared irritation of discovering they'd both been fooled by the same stupid notation.
Maybe, someday, they'd even laugh about it.
Hopefully not while throwing me off a building.
When their answers came out right three times in a row, I sat back.
"Good enough," I said. "Finish the rest on your own tonight. If you both get the same wrong answer, that means you've invented a new branch of mathematics and I'm leaving the country."
Lyra actually smiled at that.
Tamara rolled her eyes, but she didn't look as tightly wound.
The worst of the storm had passed.
For now.
***
We left the library as the afternoon shadows lengthened.
Outside, the air was cooler. Students crossed the courtyard in little knots, talking, laughing, staring just a bit too long when they recognised us and then pretending they hadn't.
Tamara walked on my right, arms folded but no longer radiating murder. Lyra kept pace on my left, hands clasped in front of her satchel strap, red hair catching the light.
It felt… strangely balanced.
Like standing in the eye of something that hadn't quite decided what it was yet.
We were halfway to the dorms when a voice shouted my name.
"Erynd! Erynd Milton?"
A boy in a smith's apron sprinted across the stones toward us, breathless, hair stuck to his forehead with sweat. He carried a long, wrapped bundle clutched to his chest.
Every guard in sight stiffened.
The boy slid to a halt in front of me and bent double, panting.
"You—" he wheezed. "You Erynd Milton?"
"Yes," I said slowly.
He thrust the bundle out at me.
"Delivery," he said. "From, uh… Master G."
My fingers tightened automatically.
Master G.
Grum had a sense of humour, apparently.
Tamara stared at the package.
Lyra's eyes widened.
The wrapping was plain oiled cloth, tied with thick twine. Long. Heavy. The kind of shape that only really meant one thing in a place like this.
"I was told," the boy added nervously, "to tell you that if you drop it, it's your fault, not theirs."
That sounded exactly like something a dwarf would say.
"Noted," I said.
I took the bundle.
Metal hummed faintly under the cloth, a familiar, hungry vibration that my bones recognised before my mind did.
Tamara leaned in.
"…what is that?" she asked.
Lyra watched my face instead of the package.
I swallowed.
"Homework," I said.
Neither of them believed me.
I looked from the bundle to the girls at my sides and back again.
Math problems, jealous nobles, a future empress, and now a dwarven weapon from underneath the city.
I'd wanted more pieces to work with.
The world was very generously throwing them at my head.
"Come on," I said, shifting the weight of the package onto my shoulder. "If I open this in the middle of the courtyard, someone's going to write a song about it."
Tamara snorted.
Lyra's smile was small but real.
They fell into step beside me, one on each side, as we walked toward whatever came next.