…

  …

  …

  “Nngghh…my head…” The girl opened her only eye; the other was wrapped in bandages. “...What…happened…?” She tried to stand, but physical exhaustion and half-healed wounds dragged her back down onto the cot with a pained groan.

  Hurried footsteps echoed from the hallway. The pale curtain was drawn aside, letting in a maid with short, chocolate-brown hair. Worry clouded her young face at the sight of the white-haired girl in the infirmary.

  “Lady Miria!” cried Gloria, torn between relief and terror. “By Elerya and all the Gods…thank goodness you woke up!” She gripped the steel safety rail until her knuckles whitened, her sweaty palms making the metal shine. “I came as fast as I could when the professors called the palace!”

  Miria blinked in confusion.

  “What…infirmary? What happened–ugh!” A migraine forced her to clutch her head. She felt tingles stirring inside her consciousness, as if tiny fairies were busy reassembling her memories piece by piece.

  Of course…there was that accident with the giant puppet, Bonnie…it sent Feralynn and me flying, and the headmaster had to intervene…

  “Please, lie back.” Gloria pressed her shoulders down with maternal gentleness. “You must be terribly exhausted.”

  Miria obeyed, frowning as the memory returned of the arena fight against the animated training dummies. Her ice rapier piercing each one with surgical precision. Unlike her partner, whom she had been forced to cooperate with, begrudgingly, in the end.

  Feralynn…

  Her mind spoke the name like a sin, like ashes across her tongue. The humiliation of being saved by her. The mockery when she returned the favor. The locked gazes with blood boiling hot. She had never felt so alive in combat.

  All her other practices had been sterile, careful. Tutors with porcelain manners and professional coldness. Her lips betrayed her, curling faintly at the rush of adrenaline. So much…life, in a single session.

  Her thoughts of her partner were cut off by her maid’s clumsy panic. Gloria fumbled for a paper bag, breathing heavily into it, inflating and deflating it to keep her lungs from collapsing under her nerves.

  “Gods, gods, gods!” the maid repeated. “It’s not even a week since I started caring for you and you’re already in the infirmary on your second day of class! Gods, your father will kill me. He’ll cook me alive and eat me with ice cutlery.” She let her head hang. “I’m dead…they’ll fire me…I’ll never find work in the city! I’ll have to move away, change my name…!”

  Miria blinked, then smiled kindly. “Gloria. None of this is your fault.” A genuine giggle slipped out despite herself. “I was the one who insisted on the practice. What happened was an accident, and the headmaster helped us.”

  The young noble’s sweet, refined voice soothed her, though not completely.

  “But, but your father will come and see you in bed and–”

  The girl sighed, relief and sadness mingled. “My father will not come, so don’t trouble yourself.” Her eye sharpened, her voice with it. “Besides, this only proves who I am.”

  Gloria froze a moment. She exhaled absurdly loud, letting all the imagined scenarios of Lord Frostweaver as executioner of her employment float away.

  “Alright…I’ll take you at your word.”

  Miria nodded, satisfied to have calmed her. The truth was she only wanted her to shut her mouth. She did appreciate her presence, her persistence in serving despite her clumsiness. But the idea of having a personal maid didn’t sit well with her. She preferred solitude to focus better.

  “Gloria,” she began, in her practiced manners. “I’m a little thirsty. I’d appreciate it if you could fetch some drinks from the vending machine.”

  The young maid nodded repeatedly like a puppy. “Yes, right away!”

  She hurried out of the room. Miria closed her eye to rest. When she heard the footsteps pause and start back toward her, she raised her voice.

  “Second floor, down the left hallway!”

  The steps retreated again. She exhaled softly through her nose, relieved. Already her mind was drafting phrases, alternative wordings, to explain the situation to her father. Preparing for the inevitable comparison to Gerard—that he had never ended up in the infirmary on his second day of class, or something like that.

  She didn’t want to think of it. She let her head sink back into the soft pillow. The infirmary was quiet. In truth, the entire school was. She glanced at the wall clock: 16:32. Late afternoon; surely everyone was already home. Students from distant lands, settled in dormitories by the school’s castles.

  Strange that no nurse or doctor was present. She bit the inside of her cheek, uncertain what else to do.

  Then the curtain of a neighboring cot was flung open, revealing a girl in the same school uniform, staring at her with a mix of boredom and faint annoyance.

  “Morning, Frosty.”

  Feralynn, one eyebrow slightly arched. Her smirk was edged with sarcasm.

  “You know, you snore too loud for a princess.”

  Miria blinked, stunned.

  "What...? Blackwood?"

  A faint blush crept across her pale cheeks. She rolled her eye, turned her head away, pretending the first aid posters on the wall were far more interesting than her classmate.

  “I didn’t think you were here,” she said, masking indifference.

  “Hey, don’t you remember that punch the fat bastard gave us?” Feralynn tried to sit up, groaned, and collapsed back onto her cot. “Damn it…we’re wrecked…”

  A brief, awkward silence followed. Miria bit harder at the inside of her cheek. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Feralynn stealing a sidelong glance, wearing the same uneasy expression she herself carried.

  “Hey…” At last Feralynn broke the ice. Her voice rasped, every word costing more saliva than usual. “...You weren’t that bad…”

  Miria’s cheeks warmed further. She turned at once.

  “Eh?”

  Fer coughed to clear her throat. “I mean—back there. In practice. You weren’t bad. I guess.”

  Miria’s lips pressed tight, her single visible eye wide in disbelief. An honest compliment—awkward, unpolished—had reached her for the first time. The way her partner struggled to speak made it clear this was truth, without any porcelain mask.

  She swallowed hard. “Thank you…” she whispered, not having time to dress her voice as she always did.

  Another awkward silence.

  “You too…” she added, vulnerable. Then drew a deep breath to summon her coldness again. “Though you nearly burned me alive.”

  “Eh?!” Feralynn, her cheeks pink as well, leaned toward her side. The emergency rails screeched under the sudden movement. “You almost blew my head off with one of your stupid arrows!”

  “That was because you got in the way of my targets!”

  “For the love of—! I told you I could handle it on my own!”

  “Suuure, just like when that sneaky dummy almost knocked you flat from behind and I had to save you?” She folded her arms. “You don’t think at all when you fight.”

  Fer leaned closer, their voices climbing in both tension and volume. “That’s my fighting style, and it was my practice. Not yours. Serves you right for butting in.”

  Miria leaned toward Fer, both of them using their cots like dueling towers of accusations and judgment. “The headmasters allowed me to participate too. Learn to be more adaptable.”

  “Says the one who couldn’t stop the shield squad’s advance…”

  “You’re such a…” Miria cut herself short. She sighed, defeated. Her body and mind were too drained to argue with someone as immature as her partner. “Tch…!”

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  She closed her eye, shutting her out completely. The earlier compliment curdled into a half-bitter memory. She jumped, startled, when something dropped onto her lap: a box of apple juice. She picked it up, bewildered.

  She looked back at Feralynn, who was sipping through the straw of her own juice box. Her expression was faintly annoyed—but that was Fer’s signature face.

  “What happened to your hand?” Miria asked, preparing her drink, not bothering to thank her for the juice.

  Feralynn raised her right hand, encased in a cast marked with faint yellow miracle runes, nearly invisible against the white material. “Eh, who knows. Must’ve been when I shot that bastard with my fire round.” She lowered her hand, inspecting it with utter disinterest, as if being injured was the most normal thing in the world.

  "Anyways, not like it's that important."

  “Nice ice arrow you fired at the end.”

  Another compliment. Miria stopped sipping. Before she could thank her again, Fer ruined it with unthinking acidity.

  “If you’d fired it like that at the start, we wouldn’t have ended up like this.”

  “...You’re unbearable, Blackwood” the noble snapped.

  “I know, Frosty.” Feralynn grinned with satisfied malice. She drank again. “Well, the upside is I’ve got the perfect excuse not to do homework now.” A small laugh escaped. “Guess Annya will have to do it for me…” she muttered under her breath.

  Miria frowned, shooting her a sidelong look of disappointment. It infuriated her that Fer actually had a friend who truly cared for her, only for her to talk so lightly about it. “You’re seriously going to use the only friend who really worries about you like an object?” Her eye sharpened. “Pathetic.”

  Feralynn only shrugged, the insult rolling off her like water over stone. “Hey, I can only write with my right hand. Not that you’d understand.” Another sip. “You’re probably so good at everything you could write cursive with your feet while being blindfolded.”

  “...”

  The remark was hard to parse. Envy, jealousy, resentment? She knew it was one of those—or all of them mixed—seeping through Fer’s nature, the same nature that had faced her head-on without hesitation since yesterday.

  “Is that why you’re like this with me? Because I’m good at many things?”

  The question froze Feralynn without the need of a catalyst glove. She stopped sucking at the last drops of juice. Her lips trembled slightly, fighting to keep them sealed.

  “No…It’s just…” She looked away, her guard fully down. “Shut up…”

  Once again, the infirmary’s silence was unbearable. What should’ve been a few minutes of small talk on medical cots stretched into hours they longed to escape.

  “Your dad won’t come, will he?” Fer asked, her voice pained. “...Do you get along that badly with him?”

  The tone was genuine. No mockery, no bravado. The noble noticed how the red-eyed girl’s gaze dropped.

  “It’s…complicated.”

  “I get it, don’t worry…”

  The answer did more than draw her attention. They both bore scars on their bodies that they kept hidden, but with that single word Miria saw a Feralynn stripped bare, vulnerable. Wrestling with troubles increasingly similar to her own. A quiet seed of mutual empathy took root.

  “This is yours.” Fer pulled out a blue hairband from beneath her blanket. “Was on the ground when I woke up, so I picked it up.” She turned it over in her hands.

  Miria gasped in horror and surprise at the sight of her precious hairband in such a destructive girl’s hands. “Give it back!” she barked, unable to rein in her voice. Fer, startled for a moment, quickly returned it.

  Feralynn watched as Miria dusted it off with obsessive care, plucking away every speck of lint, before placing it back where it belonged—in her silver hair. She exhaled sharply in relief, as if she had reclaimed a lost limb.

  “Honestly, I don’t get why some girls wear those things,” Fer remarked, eyeing her as if she were an alien for treasuring a mere blue headband. “Annya wears one too. She never takes it off.”

  “They’re the bands given to Elerya’s Doves.” She smiled, recalling sweeter moments of the past. “It was my mother’s when she went to church. She gave it to me on my fifth birthday.”

  Now it was Feralynn who glimpsed a genuine vulnerability in her partner. “You must love her lots, huh?.” A faint smile crossed her lips as she looked at her sideways.

  Miria nodded quietly. Very slowly. “I did.” The past tense made the context painfully clear. "Sure I did..."

  “...”

  She realized she had stepped onto delicate ground. Thin ice—specifically, that of her soul.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No need. But…thank you.”

  “Why?” Fer asked.

  “Hm? Why what?”

  “Why did you come to practice when Chappi called me?”

  “...”

  The truth was, she couldn’t even explain it to herself. Her knuckles clenched hard against the blanket, her throat thick with a proud lie ready to be spoken. But it was useless—no words came. No logic formed.

  “Because…I wanted to talk to you.” She forced it out after a long struggle. “I wanted to talk, but you’re always with your friend and I…”

  “...” Fer said nothing, her mouth nearly hanging open.

  “I just didn’t think. I acted on impulse.” She laughed nervously. “I only wanted to talk and…and I don’t know. I figured that way I’d get your attention faster.”

  Feralynn’s heart thudded. Her throat tightened—and for the first time, not from something bad. She blinked rapidly, ready to ask more, but—

  BAM!

  The infirmary door slammed open, making both of them jump. Miria yanked the blanket over half her face, hiding her fierce blush. Feralynn, on the other hand, aimed her uncasted hand like a gun, heat crackling as she readied a fire round.

  “Fer! Are you okay?! Your hand! Oh no, don’t tell me you punched a wall, again!”

  Annya, out of uniform, still wore her bakery apron, dusted with flour and sugar at the edges. She leapt like a salmon into the water toward her friend’s cot. Fer’s ears rang with her shrill, sweet voice, firing off a thousand worried questions a second.

  “Yes, yes, yes!” Fer growled, exhausted. “I’m fine, just stop yelling so much!”

  Annya turned to Miria. The noble girl’s eyes went wide at being caught hiding her reddened face like a child. She hastily recomposed herself with her usual formality, though her lips trembled faintly.

  “Oak,” she greeted stiffly. “A pleasure to see you again.”

  “Um…” Annya blinked, puzzled, glancing from Miria to Fer. Back to Miria. Then Fer again. She sensed something invisible and awkward between them. “Lady Miria? Why are you with Fer?” She looked at her friend. “I thought they only called you for the practice.”

  “Oh, well—”

  “The rich girl got jealous and butted in.” Fer cut her off, arms crossed, gaze averted. “Smiley summoned some damn giant and we beat it.”

  Annya’s warm blue eyes lit up. “A giant?!” She clapped her hands together by her face, beaming. “That means you worked together for the first time!”

  The reminder struck both girls like a soft slap, forcing them to avert their eyes.

  “Tch…”

  “...Eh…yes, I guess…”

  Just then Gloria stumbled in, each one with a different kind of bag.

  “Lady Miria...haah...I—I brought the drinks!” she gasped, bracing herself on her knees. “...T-This…huff…this school is…haaah…enormous…I got lost…” She managed a smile. “I didn’t know what to get, so I brought one of everything.” The bag bulged with cans, bottles and juice boxes.

  “Oh! I brought cookies.” Annya grinned, pulling out a cute bag, the sweet smell of chocolate chips and vanilla filling the room.

  Gloria dared to taste one and moaned in delight at the soft, warm dough.

  Feralynn and Miria exchanged a glance. A clumsy, shaky laugh curled onto both their lips. Miria seemed to telepathically tell her: "So you’ve got a maid too, huh…"

  “Your mom’s here,” Annya said to Fer. “I think she’s talking with the headmasters.”

  Fer bit the inside of her cheek. “Shit…”

  Annya only shrugged in resignation. “Maybe it’s not a bad thing.” She handed Gloria another cookie, who was helping Miria sit up on her cot to share the treats. “My mom’s in the car. When we’re done, we could go to a café. What do you think?”

  “Whatever, as long as she’s not there.” Fer flicked a glance at Miria, who shot venom back with her eye.

  Romina entered the room next, greeting Annya and Gloria politely.

  “Well, lookie here! Our two fighters are completely wrecked,” she said with a wink. “Good thing Frankie isn’t here to heal them. That guy’s a zombie, literally.” She pulled on a single catalyst glove. “Alright, Nurse Romina to the rescue…”

  Her glove shone with golden light, religious runes etched into a small ring of radiance she controlled in her palm. She approached Miria with her hand outstretched. The white-haired girl was bathed in the soft golden glow. Miria felt her life force returning, the bruises aching less, her body mending. She smiled; to her, it felt like her mother’s embrace. Better than sinking into the warm bath each morning. She closed her eye to savor the wash of light.

  Romina moved to Feralynn, the same spell in hand. Fer just rolled her eyes and shut them, waiting for the healing so she could go home already.

  BAM!!!

  “UGH–NGH…!”

  She felt the palm slam into her abdomen like a cannonball, knocking the air from her lungs. She opened her eyes to see Romina, stern and angry.

  “This is the last time you remove your gloves in combat,” she warned. “Just look at your hand! You nearly shattered it in pieces with that little pistol spell of yours!”

  "Ugghh...Professor..."

  "I swear it miss, the next time I am hitting you harder."

  Annya laughed nervously. “Um…Professor Romina, I think you’re hurting her.”

  The professor sighed. She pressed her palm into Fer’s abdomen again, then a golden light of the healing miracle finally spread, filling her with mana and strength, though her eyes watered from the blow.

  Feralynn sat up, rubbing her sore stomach. She glared at Romina, but the professor only shook her head. She ruffled Fer’s black hair in a rough kind of caress. “Mind your claws, lioness. Or you’ll end up living in this infirmary,” she said, now with more tenderness.

  Miria and Fer both rose to their feet, each helped up. Romina watched them from the doorway.

  “No more practice for either of you for a week,” she declared firmly. “You’ll sit on the bench and take notes.”

  Feralynn groaned in defeated protest. Miria folded her arms and turned away in anger.

  “Off you go, both of you. Home. You need rest.” She looked at Fer. “Especially you. No fire rounds.” She left the infirmary, the others gathering their bags and belongings to leave.

  Feralynn was about to follow Annya, who had already stepped out. She stopped dead at the doorway and turned slightly to glance back at Miria. The two froze, waiting for the other to move, to react.

  “Bye…”

  A rough farewell, with a crooked half-smile tugging at the corner of Fer’s lips. She lifted her hand, heavy as concrete in that precise moment.

  Miria copied the gesture, silent, watching her go with only the faintest nod. She remained quiet, replaying how they had been forced to cooperate through the whole practice. She lowered her gaze, unsure what to think or feel. Gloria stepped closer and held out her coat.

  “If I may, Lady Miria,” the maid began softly. “I believe the two of you could one day become good friends.”

  The possibility made her smile unconsciously. She blinked, startled by what her lips had dared form without permission. She erased it in an instant.

  “Not even in dreams.” She decided firmly, scrubbing away the trace of that smile again and again as it tried to return.

  …

  …

  …

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