Chapter 78 – Waiting Maidens (Noelle)
Father became so… soft.
That's the word that keeps coming back to me.
Not weaker. Not smaller. Just… softer. Like someone took a sword that had only ever been used to cut and made it learn how to be a hand.
The first time he knocked on my door after the duel, I thought it was a trick.
He had never knocked before.
He used to just open the door and look. That look that weighed you, counted every place you didn't match what he thought "son" should mean.
This time: three small taps.
"May I come in?"
I almost didn't answer.
I was sitting on my bed in a dress I wasn't supposed to have, hands shaking because my own reflection looked more like me than it ever had and that was somehow terrifying.
Mother was beside me, fingers wrapped around mine so tight it almost hurt.
She squeezed once.
"Answer him," she whispered.
"…Yes," I said. My voice cracked on the word. "You can come in."
The door opened.
Ezra Verdan, Swordmaster, my father, stepped inside like he was entering a chapel. He closed the door behind him. He looked at me. At the dress. At Mother's hand on mine.
Old habits made me brace.
He crossed the room and sat down on the floor, not on the chair, not looming above us. Just… there, knees bent, elbows on his thighs, like a tired soldier who'd taken off his armour and didn't quite know what to do with his hands.
For a long time, no one said anything.
Then he reached out. Stopped halfway.
"May I?" he asked.
No one had ever asked before.
I nodded.
His hand cupped my cheek. Calloused, heavy, warm.
"Noel," he said first, because that was the only name he had for me. His jaw worked. "Noelle," he corrected himself, slowly, like the word had thorns. "Listen to me."
My throat closed.
He went on anyway.
"I have… done many things with this hand," he said. "I have held steel. I have killed. I have failed. I have broken things that did not deserve breaking."
His thumb brushed a tear off my skin before I knew I was crying.
"I will not break you," he said. "Not again. Not ever."
Mother's breath shuddered next to me.
He took a breath, like he was stepping into another duel.
"If you cannot have children," he said, and the words were so blunt they almost hurt, "I do not care."
I stared at him.
"As long as you have faith in any child that ends up in your care," he said, "as long as you are willing to fight for them the way your mother fought for you, I will support you with my soul."
He said it like an oath.
Not the kind in front of an altar. The kind you whisper over a battlefield because it's the only thing keeping you standing.
Something in my chest cracked and melted at the same time.
He pulled his hand back. Then, awkwardly, like he'd never done it before, he leaned in and pressed his forehead to mine.
"I am late," he said quietly. "But I am here."
I wanted to say everything.
I wanted to tell him about the nights I'd stared at the ceiling wishing I could cut my own shadow apart because it didn't match. About the way the word "son" felt like a noose. About the first time I tried on one of Mother's dresses and felt… right, and how his slap across her face had sounded like the world ending.
All that came out was one broken fragment.
"It hurts less," I whispered.
He closed his eyes.
"Good," he said.
After that, things changed.
Not everywhere. Not perfectly. But in ways that mattered.
My clothes shifted first.
Father brought me dresses. Clumsy choices at the start—too fancy, too heavy, colours that didn't suit me—but they were for me.
"I asked your mother," he grumbled when I stared. "I am not completely ignorant."
He let me into the girls' side of the estate without flinching. Let the maids fuss over my hair. Let me sit with Mother and my sisters, even when the servants' eyes went tight and confused.
At the Academy, he took it further.
He walked me to the administration offices himself. In full Verdan colours, sword at his hip, head held high.
"This is my child," he told them. "Her name is Noelle Verdan. Update your records."
The clerk stammered something about tradition and rolls and dorm assignments.
Father leaned over the desk, eyes hard.
"Do I need to repeat myself?" he asked.
They changed the records.
I moved to the girls' dorm.
The first morning I put on the female uniform, my hands shook so badly I could barely tie the ribbon.
It was ridiculous.
Same fabric. Same crest. Just cut differently.
But when I looked in the mirror now, the person looking back at me… matched. Not perfectly. Not yet. But closer.
Like the world had taken one step toward me instead of always demanding I step toward it.
I cried, alone, quietly, into the collar.
Happy tears feel very similar to miserable ones.
***
It wasn't all soft.
Nobility doesn't move as a whole. It oozes. It resists. It whispers.
The priests didn't call me a heretic to my face.
They prayed around me instead.
Extra loudly.
Little mutters about "Vastriel's design," about "unnatural confusion," about "children led astray by indulgent parents and dangerous influences."
They never said Erynd's name.
They didn't have to.
Students were worse.
"Demon child," one girl whispered once, too loud, in the corridor when she thought I was out of earshot. "Vastriel's mistake."
I heard.
She went pale when I turned and smiled at her.
"Would you like to pray with me?" I asked.
She fled.
After that they kept it quieter.
But I saw the looks.
Pity. Disgust. Curiosity.
The ones who didn't say anything did their own kind of damage. They stepped to the side just a little bit too soon. Left a gap in group work. Forgot to invite me to gatherings. Never chose me as a partner unless an instructor forced them.
If it wasn't for Tamara and Lyra, I would have stayed in the empty spaces and rotted there.
***
My "sisters."
We're not blood.
Blood has done less for me than they have.
Tamara is loud where I am quiet, sharp where I am soft. She punches first and apologises never. She used to be all fire and fury going in all directions; now her anger has a path.
Erynd gave it to her.
He watched her run. Watched her stumble. Watched her swear. Then he put wind on her legs.
Literally.
"You're wasting your affinity," he'd told her. "You're built for speed. Stop pretending you're a wall."
He'd made her run drills until she collapsed. Taught her to weave wind through her steps so every stride became a leap. Fire through her blade so every cut became a threat.
"You're a spear," he'd told her. "Not a shield."
I still remember the first time I saw her after he left, sprinting across the training yard, hair snapping behind her like a banner, wind magic wrapped around her calves.
She moved like the ground was a suggestion.
I couldn't help it.
I clapped.
She grinned and almost tripped, then yelled at me for distracting her.
Lyra… Lyra is different.
She's water and knives and soft smiles with teeth behind them. She used to hide behind her own hair, behind polite words, behind the perfect role of the noble girl who doesn't make trouble.
Then Erynd told her to stop pretending to be Tamara and made her pick up a sword. Added a water whip. Told her to "slip where no one is looking."
Now she smiles less.
Except when we talk about him.
Then she smiles more, but it's… sharp.
We all love him.
We all know it.
No one says it out loud.
What would be the point?
The three of us are a braid tied to the same anchor. Pull one strand, you move all of us.
If he picked only one, it would hurt.
If he picked none… I don't want to think about that.
So I call them sisters.
It makes the ache less messy.
***
The demon attack came when we were fourteen.
The Academy still calls it an "incident."
It was a massacre that didn't finish.
We smelled it before we saw it: metal and rot and a wrongness in the air that made my skin crawl.
Lyra froze first.
Her eyes went wide, pupils pinprick-small, like some old memory had grabbed her throat.
"Don't you dare," Tamara hissed, grabbing her wrist. "Don't freeze."
They both looked at me.
I don't know why.
I'm not the strong one.
I'm not the fast one.
I'm the one who prays.
I swallowed.
"Vastriel," I whispered under my breath. "Please."
We rounded the corner.
There it was.
A thing that might once have been human. Or several humans. Or something that had just stolen their shapes to see how they fit.
Skin sliding. Limbs too long. No face, just a smooth, pulsing surface where features should have been, like flesh had forgotten how to remember itself.
It turned toward us.
No eyes.
But we felt it see us.
Fear should have hit.
It didn't.
Something else did.
Not courage. I'm not brave.
Faith.
Not in gods.
In him.
In the promise he'd made without saying the words: If something tries to eat you, I will get there in time.
He wasn't here.
But his training was.
"Run," Lyra snapped, shoving me behind her. "Get the instructors—"
"No," Tamara cut in. "You're faster. You run. I hold."
"I'm not leaving you—"
"We are not dying in a corridor," I said.
My voice surprised even me.
It came out flat.
Not shaking.
Flat.
They both stared.
"I'll bind it," I said. "You cut it. Then Tamara runs. If she dies because you both stayed, I'll kill you myself."
Silence.
Then Tamara laughed once, sharp.
"Fine," she said. "I'll come back, so you can try."
She sprinted off, wind already gathering at her heels.
Lyra stepped forward.
Her whip hissed into being, a line of water that caught the torchlight and bent it. Her sword followed, edge glinting.
I lifted my hands.
Light gathered.
Holy magic isn't just for priests.
The Church doesn't like to say that.
It likes to pretend the Goddess only listens to people in the right robes with the right titles.
But Vastriel hears children in corridors too.
I'd been praying for so long I didn't even need a proper chant anymore.
"Please," I whispered. "Please, please, please."
Light answered.
It surged up from somewhere deep, deeper than my mana core, deeper than the scar tissue all the mockery and whispers had left.
It wrapped the demon's limbs, seared into its flesh.
It screamed, sound and not-sound hitting my chest like a hammer.
I wanted to flinch.
Didn't.
Lyra moved.
She slid where nothing human should be able to slide. Her sword cut, water whip snapping around the demon's leg, pulling, tripping, exposing.
It lashed back.
I saw it too slow.
If its limb hit her, she'd break.
I shoved more light into the bindings.
It hurt.
Something tore inside.
The demon jerked, pinned just long enough.
Lyra's blade bit deep.
By the time the instructors arrived, covered in hastily-donned armour and half-finished spells, the thing was already bleeding wrong colours onto the floor.
They killed it.
We endured.
People called us heroines afterward.
No one saw me throw up in the chapel later, shaking so hard I could barely stand.
"Why weren't you scared?" Tamara asked that night in the dorm, lying on her back, staring at the ceiling.
I was on the bed below hers. Lyra was between us, making small circles with her finger on the underside of Tamara's mattress.
"I was," I said.
"Didn't look like it," Lyra murmured.
"I…" I hesitated. "I believed he wouldn't let us die."
"He wasn't even here," Tamara said.
"I know," I whispered. "But I still believed it."
Silence.
Then Lyra started laughing.
Not nice, soft laughter.
The kind that sounded like it might snap into sobs if you pushed it.
"We're all insane," she said.
"Yes," I agreed.
And I prayed again that night. Not just to Vastriel.
To him.
Wherever he was.
Come back.
***
The priests got louder after that.
They called me "blessed" in public now. The girl who held a demon. The Verdan child embraced by both Goddess and scandal.
They still looked at my uniforms like they personally offended the heavens.
One older priest pulled me aside once after service.
"Noelle," he said, smile fixed, eyes tight. "You must understand, Vastriel has a design for all of us. The body she gives you is not a mistake to be corrected—"
"She gave me a father who hit my mother for trying to let me breathe," I said. "Was that part of her design?"
He flinched.
"Sometimes," he said carefully, "mortals misinterpret—"
"And she gave me a friend who walked into a monster's mouth to pull me out," I added. "Was that a misinterpretation too?"
He had no answer for that.
I left before he could find one.
***
I pray more now.
Some nights it feels like stalking the Goddess.
I kneel. I bow my head. I fold my hands.
"Vastriel," I whisper. "You know where he is."
Sometimes I feel nothing.
Sometimes I feel… something.
A warmth behind my ribs. The sense of a hand on my head, light and distant, like Mother's touch filtered through a thousand miles of sky.
Once, when I was at my worst—shaking, exhausted, after another day of smiles pinched too tight and whispers too loud—I thought I heard it.
A voice, not in words, just in meaning.
He's coming.
Maybe I imagined it.
Maybe I wanted it so badly my mind made it up.
I don't care.
I hold onto it.
The way I held onto his hand that day in the arena, fingers digging into his sleeve as I pressed the letter into his palm because I was too cowardly to say the words with my mouth.
He took it.
He didn't throw it away.
He stepped into a monster's reach for me.
He faced my father for me.
He stepped into a duel with a Swordmaster for me.
He left the Academy, the city, the path everyone expected of him.
Not for me.
For himself.
But I am on that path too now, whether he likes it or not.
So I pray.
I train.
I wear dresses Father buys and uniforms the Academy grudgingly lets me have.
I endure the whispers and the looks and the way my own past name still sometimes slips out of people's mouths like a bad habit.
I sit with Tamara and Lyra and we talk about him without saying his name too often, because if we say it too much it hurts.
I remember his hand on my head the day he agreed to accept my feelings in that stupid, awkward, half-coded noble way.
"The first outstretched hand," I'd told him once. "I'll take that one."
It was childish.
Dramatic.
He'd looked at me like I'd set fire to the floor.
"Don't grab just because someone reaches," he'd said. "Decide."
The thing is…
I did.
A long time ago.
There are hands reaching for me now. Suitors my father pretends not to see. Curious girls who tug my sleeve and ask quiet questions in the dorm. Priests who want to fit me into some neat little miracle story for their sermons.
I smile.
I say no.
Politely.
Firmly.
The only hand I ever wanted was his.
If he comes back with blood on it and regrets in his eyes, I'll still take it.
If he comes back broken, I'll hold it together.
If he doesn't come back at all…
No.
No, I won't finish that sentence.
Vastriel, you're listening.
You dragged him into your games. You watched him die and die and still get back up. You watched him bless my life by accident just by existing in it.
You owe me.
So when I kneel and whisper please, know that I mean it.
Not as a child begging for sweets.
As a girl who clawed her way into her own name and refuses to let the world—or the Goddess—take this one thing from her.
Bring him back to me.
Let me see him walk through the Academy gates again, older, scarred, annoyed, pretending he doesn't understand why we're all staring.
Let me say it properly this time.
No sleeves.
No letters.
No excuses.
"Erynd," I'll say. "My name is Noelle. I chose it. I chose you too."
And if he takes my hand then…
Good.
If he doesn't…
I will still have chosen right.
Because even if the world spits on me, even if the priests call me wrong, even if every student at this Academy whispers "heretic" behind my back, there is one thing they cannot take.
The fact that for one brief, impossible stretch of time, a boy with too much weight on his shoulders and a sword that should not fit in his hands looked at me—not as a mistake, not as a burden, but as someone worth saving.
I will be faithful to that.
To him.
To myself.
To the name I carved out of his shadow and Vastriel's silence.
I miss him.
So much it hurts to breathe sometimes.
I miss him.
I love him.
I will wait.