POV Amanda:

  Classes were over.

  James and Eliz walked beside me as we headed to the cafeteria, their voices blending into the general noise of the hallway. Eliz was talking about Professor Venn with that energy of hers — cataloguing everything new before it could catch her off guard. James nodded at the right moments, with that habit of his of listening before he spoke.

  I walked between them and said nothing.

  Nobody seemed to notice. I kept my smile on while I listened to them both.

  The first day at Hirus had been exactly what I had promised myself it would be: manageable. Dense classes, but followable. Classmates who weren't yet friends or enemies, just names floating in the air waiting to become something. An arcane system I already knew in theory and would now have to prove in practice.

  Manageable.

  That's what I told myself as my fingers found the collar of my uniform and adjusted it for the third time in ten minutes.

  Eliz glanced at me sideways.

  She didn't say anything. That was the good thing about Eliz.

  James, on the other hand, didn't have that instinct.

  "Are you okay?" he asked, with that direct tone he used when he'd already decided to ask and no answer was going to change that.

  "Yes," I said.

  A pause.

  "Amanda."

  "I'm fine, James."

  He didn't push it.

  The hallway opened toward the main staircase, and the current of students nudged us gently to the right. Somewhere in that collective movement, something caught my attention without me quite knowing why.

  A boy. Dark brown hair, uniform neat, walking alongside a girl in an oversized uniform. He had a white cat on his shoulder — the kind that belongs to invokers — though I'd never seen one that moved quite like that, with that almost otherworldly poise.

  I recognized him.

  He was the same one from the auditorium. The one who'd been late.

  The one who had explained the Arcane Veil better than any prep school student I'd ever met, with the calm voice of someone reciting something they've known so long they don't remember learning it.

  I lost sight of him when the staircase separated us.

  Eliz picked up her analysis of Professor Venn again. James added something about the week's schedule. The cafeteria appeared at the end of the next hallway, carrying that smell of bread and something spiced that, under any other circumstances, would have felt welcoming.

  I stopped for a second before going in.

  Just a second. Long enough for James and Eliz to take two steps without me.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  This morning, in the main hallway, when Fior's fingers were on my neck — the first thing I thought wasn't about defending myself. It wasn't about James. It wasn't about Eliz, frozen behind me.

  The first thing I thought was: don't show anything.

  Four years at Lynnwood learning exactly that. It doesn't matter what you feel. It doesn't matter what happens. Don't give anyone the satisfaction of knowing they got to you.

  And it had worked. Hirus was exactly like Lynnwood in that way, just bigger. The same rules, the same games, the same different names for the same machinery.

  I knew that.

  I'd known it before I ever walked through those gates this morning.

  Manageable. Life is manageable.

  "Amanda?" Eliz's voice came from inside. She'd leaned out from the cafeteria entrance, with an expression caught somewhere between curiosity and something softer she couldn't quite name. "You coming?"

  I looked at her.

  Four years of knowing her, and she was still the only person who could look at me like that — with that mix of patience and presence, asking for nothing in return.

  I let out a slow breath.

  "Yeah," I said. "I'm coming."

  I walked in.

  The noise closed around us immediately: overlapping conversations, the scrape of chairs, cutlery, laughter from somewhere in the back. James was already scouting a table, waving us over with one hand raised.

  I sat down.

  Adjusted my uniform one last time.

  ??◇?

  The cafeteria was bigger than I'd imagined.

  Not in size — in sound. Hundreds of simultaneous conversations bouncing off stone ceilings, the clatter of trays and silverware, the constant movement of students hunting for seats or carrying food. At Lynnwood the cafeteria had unwritten rules about who sat where. Here there would be too, I just didn't know them yet.

  James had chosen well. A table near the window, off to the side, with a view of the whole room without being in the middle of anything. I never knew whether he did things like that on purpose or by instinct. With James, I could never tell the difference.

  I sat across from Eliz. James took the middle.

  "Professor Venn is good," said Eliz, opening her notebook on the table with the natural ease of someone who doesn't draw a hard line between eating and studying. "Too fast for my taste, but good."

  "I got all the notes," James said, with a hint of pride.

  "So did I." Eliz looked at him. "Want to compare later?"

  "Sure."

  I still hadn't opened my tray.

  I was watching the room without really looking at anything. It was a habit I'd built at Lynnwood — keeping my eyes active while my expression stayed pleasant. Useful in situations where you didn't want people to know you were paying attention. Useful in cafeterias where you wanted to know who sat with whom before someone else made that decision for you.

  Fior and her group had claimed a long table toward the center, surrounded by the kind of empty space that forms on its own — nobody decides it, it just happens. Jess was flipping through something. Kayle was talking. Fior ate without looking at anyone in particular.

  Her eyes passed over me exactly once.

  They didn't stop.

  I turned back to my tray.

  "Amanda?"

  James. Watching me with that worried expression he always tried to disguise as casual concern and never quite pulled off.

  "I'm watching the room," I said.

  "You've been not eating for three minutes."

  "I'm assessing the room."

  Eliz let out something that might have been a laugh if she'd let it go all the way. She caught it just in time, converting it into a neutral sound that didn't commit to anything.

  James didn't let it go.

  "This morning," he said, lowering his voice slightly even though nobody around us was paying attention. "You shouldn't have been alone in that hallway."

  "I wasn't alone. Eliz was there."

  "I know." A pause. "But I was late."

  I looked at him.

  James had that kind of honesty that doesn't calculate before it speaks. He said things because he thought them, without measuring first whether it was worth saying. Something about that struck me as oddly endearing.

  "You came," I said.

  "Late."

  "On time," I corrected. "There's a difference."

  He opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked at his food.

  "Okay," he said finally.

  Eliz took a sip from her glass without saying anything.

  We ate in silence for a moment that wasn't uncomfortable.

  I'd missed that silence. More than I'd admitted to myself over the break.

  "The boy with the cat," said Eliz suddenly.

  I looked up.

  "Which one?" asked James.

  "The one who was late to the auditorium." Eliz rested her chin on her hand. "The one who explained the Veil in Aldric's class."

  "Oh." James frowned slightly. "Yeah. I saw him earlier in the hallway."

  Something in his tone made me look at him.

  "You know him?" I asked.

  "Not exactly." A short pause. "I had a run-in with his familiar. The cat."

  Eliz blinked. "A run-in?"

  "The cat blocked my path." James said it with the expression of someone still undecided between finding it funny or genuinely baffling. "It was standing on two legs in the middle of the hallway. I apologized."

  The silence that followed lasted exactly two seconds.

  "You apologized to the cat?" said Eliz.

  "It seemed like the right thing to do at the time."

  This time Eliz didn't hold back the laugh. It came out clean and genuine — the kind that makes people at nearby tables turn and look without knowing why.

  I laughed too. Something in my chest loosened just a little.

  "And the owner?" I asked.

  "He told me someone was looking for me in the hallway behind us." James shrugged. "I think he was directing me somewhere."

  "And you went?"

  "I went." A pause. "There was nobody there."

  Eliz was still smiling.

  The boy with the cat had sent James back toward the hallway where we were. Not in the wrong direction — the right one. Just a few minutes behind schedule.

  It could be a coincidence.

  It was probably a coincidence.

  I took a slow sip from my glass, looking out the window.

  Outside, the academy gardens were catching the last light of the afternoon — that hour when everything turns gold for a few minutes before fading out. Tomorrow there was a practical evaluation. I'd known since Professor Venn mentioned the calendar at the end of class, in that tone people use when they're announcing something routine that isn't routine for everyone.

  I was ready.

  I picked up my tray. James and Eliz kept talking, their conversation drifting naturally toward next week's schedule, elective courses, rumors about which teachers were the toughest.

  All things considered, this life wasn't so bad.