Chapter 26 – Waiting Girl
Girls' dorms on one side.
Boys' dorms on the other.
Rules in between.
No crossing into the opposite wing after curfew.
No guests in rooms.
No wandering the halls without a reason.
Lyra knew them all by heart.
She followed the rules.
Mostly.
She walked the line very carefully.
Not because she was a good girl.
Because a good girl was easier to hide behind.
***
On paper, Lyra was normal.
Quiet. Shy. The cobbler's younger daughter from the lower streets, with long red hair braided down her back and clear blue eyes that always looked a little too awake. The kind of commoner the Academy liked to point at when they talked about "merit" and "opportunity."
Her acceptance letter had said: admitted by examination and talent.
Some nobles heard only: charity case.
Neat braids. Neater handwriting. The sort of diligence tutors liked to praise, and neighbors' children liked to tease.
"Mouse," they'd called her when she was small, tugging her hair, laughing when she flinched.
She'd smiled.
Of course she had.
It was what Mother wanted.
"Endure," Mother would say, hands red from work. "Don't make trouble. People like us can't win if someone important decides you're noisy. Be composed. Be polite. Let them forget you exist."
So Lyra endured.
She folded her hands in her lap and chewed on the inside of her cheek instead of talking back. She let fingers pull her braids and imagined, very calmly, snapping them off one by one.
She didn't.
She smiled instead.
The first day at the Academy cracked that smile.
Not from the inside.
From the outside.
***
The entrance hall had been a storm of voices and colours.
New uniforms. New banners. New faces.
Noble crests on lapels. Merchant sons with rings. A few commoners trying not to look like they'd walked in through the wrong door.
Lyra tried to make herself small in the middle of it all.
Easy enough. She'd been practicing small her whole life.
Bag strap in one hand. Schedule in the other. Red hair parted neatly and braided tight, shoes polished until you couldn't tell they'd once belonged to her older brother.
Then a hand buried itself in that hair.
"What's this?" a bright, sharp voice had said, fingers winding into her braid. "Who let the mouse in?"
Lyra had gone rigid.
Pain crawled across her scalp as her head was yanked back.
"P-please—" she'd whispered, before she could strangle the word.
"Oh?" the girl behind her leaned closer, breath warm against Lyra's ear. "The mouse squeaks."
Tamara von Hailbrecht.
Duke's daughter. Blue hair. Red eyes. Wind like a pet around her shoulders.
People didn't touch a duke's child.
They watched her hurt other people and looked away.
Some of the watching students laughed.
Not many.
Enough.
Lyra's hand clenched around the strap until her knuckles went white. The familiar script started to scroll across her mind:
Don't cry. Don't pull away. If you make a scene, it becomes your fault. If Father hears, he'll say customers don't like families that stir trouble. If Mother hears, she'll sigh and say, "Lyra, we can't afford noble attention, you mustn't stand out—"
The tug on her hair sharpened.
Something finally snarled under all those layers of obedience.
She wanted to grab that wrist. Twist. Dig her nails in until she felt bones shift. Drag this perfectly dressed girl to the floor and make her eat the dust she'd walked on all her life.
The urge was bright and clean and very, very simple.
She swallowed it.
And then a boy's voice cut through the noise.
"Let go."
Calm. Flat. No raise in volume. The sound of someone who had already decided what would happen and was now just informing the world.
The fingers in her hair loosened.
Lyra stumbled forward a step, catching herself.
She turned.
Blond hair. Blue eyes. Plain uniform. Wooden practice sword in hand.
He didn't wear a crest. No ring. No silk.
Just a face that wouldn't be memorable at all if not for the way his eyes met Tamara's like there wasn't an entire ladder of status between them.
Erynd didn't look like much at first.
Then he met Tamara's gaze.
"Who," Tamara had demanded, "do you think you're talking to?"
"Someone with her hand in another student's hair," Erynd had said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Let go."
No quiver.
No wary glance at her family crest.
No calculation about whether this was a smart fight to pick for someone with no House behind his name.
Just the clear line of: this is wrong.
He stepped once, angled his body so it sat between Lyra and Tamara, like a wall sliding into place.
The space around Lyra changed.
She felt it like a field settling.
When Tamara finally ripped her hand away with an annoyed sound and tossed her blue hair, Lyra's scalp still burned. Her throat still hurt. Her hands still shook.
But the inside of her had… shifted.
Something moved into the space where the hurt had cracked through.
He turned.
Frowned slightly.
His hand lifted almost before he realised he was doing it. He carefully untangled a stray knot where Tamara's grip had twisted too tight into her red hair.
"Are you alright?" he'd asked.
Lyra stared at him.
At his hand.
At his face.
At the absolutely ordinary uniform on someone who'd just told a duke's daughter no.
"Yes," she whispered.
Her voice lied.
Her heart screamed.
You saw me. You stopped her. You stood between.
No one had ever done that.
The nobles in the street never saw her at all.
Customers only saw the shoes.
Neighbors saw the quiet girl who never shouted back.
No one looked at fingers in her hair and said, Let go.
No one until him.
Something anchored itself quietly and absolutely in that moment.
From then on, Lyra's world had an axis.
Not a god.
Not a banner.
Not a House.
Erynd.
***
She didn't change on the surface.
She stayed the "normal" girl.
Back-half seats in class, where the nobles forgot to look. Neat notes. Never the first to speak, never the last to leave. "Yes, professor," and "Thank you," and "Sorry."
The kind of student staff pointed to when they said, "See? Commoners can behave."
But everything underneath reoriented.
Her eyes found him first, no matter where she sat.
In lectures, she watched his expression when teachers drew something on the board, waiting for that blink, that tiny tightening at the corners of his blue eyes that meant he'd noticed a flaw or a missing piece.
In the dining hall, she knew without trying which table he'd pick—away from the loudest clusters of crests and colours, always with a clear view of the room.
In the training yard, she sat on the benches with other "not Sword campus" students and pretended to watch all of them.
In reality, she watched him.
He did not swing like the others.
They hacked.
He carved.
Small motions. Efficient lines. His blade didn't try to impress anyone. It simply went where it needed to, no more, no less.
She liked that.
It felt… honest.
The way a good pair of boots was honest: solid, reliable, built for walking, not showing off.
Of course, she never told him that.
She didn't tell him that seeing his steady back between her and Tamara had changed the way the world felt.
That for the first time, when someone stronger reached for her, a different image appeared in her mind: him, stepping in.
She just watched.
Waited.
And once, that waiting hurt enough to make her want to break something again.
***
It had been a normal afternoon.
Classes over.
Sun sinking.
The academy settling into that between-time hum.
Lyra had slipped toward the overflow training yard, the one most people forgot existed.
She knew Erynd used it.
She'd never asked.
She'd simply… discovered it. By accident. While definitely not following him at a distance. More than once.
A commoner girl shadowing an imperial pick around the grounds would have been a joke if anyone noticed.
So she made sure no one did.
She rounded the stone corner, ready to see him alone with his sword and thoughts.
Instead, she saw her.
Tamara.
Sweating. Breathing hard. Uniform jacket off, sleeves rolled. Blue hair damp at the temples. Both hands gripping a wooden sword.
Erynd stood beside her.
Closer than anyone had been allowed to stand near Lyra without her wanting to flinch.
"No," he said, nudging Tamara's boot with his own. "Lead foot first."
He touched her waist.
Just a light tap. Just a correction.
Tamara stiffened, the tips of her blue hair clinging to her neck, ears going pink.
Lyra stopped dead.
Her mind went blank for a heartbeat.
Then it filled, all at once, too much at once.
Why is she here.
Why is he helping her.
Why is he touching her.
Tamara swung.
The cut was better than it had any right to be. Wind clung to the wood, sharper than before.
He's improving her, Lyra thought numbly.
Her.
The duke's daughter who'd grabbed her hair and treated her like a toy in front of everyone on the very first day.
He's giving her time.
Her nails dug crescents into her palms.
She'd been the one saved.
She'd been the one with his back in front of her, the one he'd shielded, the one he'd asked, Are you alright?
And yet when it came time to correct stances and touch waists and adjust footing, Tamara had simply walked onto his training ground and taken that place.
Of course she had.
She had a crest.
Lyra had calluses.
She doesn't even care, Lyra thought. She doesn't care about his ideas. She just wants his attention.
She remembered Tamara in class, doodling on her mana theory notes, sighing about how boring it all was, red eyes wandering to the window instead of the board.
Lyra cared.
Lyra had sat up straighter when the lecturer drew that wave, because she'd seen the way Erynd's blue eyes had sharpened.
Tamara swung again.
Erynd corrected again.
Lyra's throat burned.
You're loud, she thought at Tamara, from behind the wall. You drag him into your orbit and complain about being bored the whole time. You don't deserve to have his voice that close.
Ugly thoughts flickered up, dark and quick.
Trip and fall, she imagined. In front of everyone.
Let your blue hair get caught in a training dummy. Let the sword slip and cut off a handful of those perfect strands.
Let something small and humiliating happen to you, just once, so you know what it feels like.
Her fingers flexed.
She did nothing.
She sat in her hiding place.
Like always.
Waited.
Like always.
Waited until Tamara left the field, laughing at something he'd said, sword over her shoulder like they shared some secret.
Waited until Erynd was alone again.
Then she slipped away without even saying hello.
Waiting girl.
Even her jealousy waited.
***
A few days later, the resonance lecture happened.
Lyra hated the lecturer's voice.
She loved Erynd's face when the man drew the curve.
He'd gone still in that specific way he did when his mind left the room. Not bored still. Focused still. The world narrowed down to chalk and possibility.
He's interested, she thought.
About this.
Not about parties.
Not about who sat where.
About… mana patterns. Fields. How things really work.
She watched his eyes during the rest of the lecture.
They didn't glaze once.
Something small and sharp inside her loosened a notch.
Fine.
Tamara could have his time in the dirt, swinging blades.
Lyra would get this.
His ideas. His thinking.
She wrote the lecture title neatly.
Then, underneath, a very small note.
Find books: mana + metal.
Her heartbeat sped up.
The library was something she could do.
Nobles could buy swords and favors.
Commoners like her learned where the good books were.
***
The library near closing time was the opposite of the entrance hall.
Silent.
Cool.
Controlled.
Lyra slipped between shelves like a ghost, fingers brushing spines, eyes scanning labels.
"Foundations of Enchantment."
"Basic Mana Theory for Commoners."
"Rote Patterns for Temple Novices."
Too simple. Too shallow.
He already knows this. He needs something they stopped teaching because nobody understood it properly.
She reached the older section in the back.
The air there was thicker, dustier. The lamps dimmer. The silence deeper.
"Students are not encouraged to browse this area unsupervised," the head librarian had told her once.
Encouraged was not forbidden.
Her fingers paused on a thin, cracked spine.
"On the Behaviour of Mana in Proximity to Metallic Conduits."
She slid it out.
Old leather. Rough edges. The pages inside were cramped with diagrams: rods with lines curving around them, rings with arrows pointing in circles, notes about "induced flows" and "field patterns."
She didn't understand all of it.
That didn't matter.
He would.
She could already see it: his blue eyes tightening in focus the way they had in class, thumb absently tapping the margin as his brain spun.
Her heartbeat thudded in her ears.
This one.
This is for him.
"Library's closing soon," the librarian's voice drifted down the aisle. "Finish your reading, please."
Lyra's body moved without her permission.
The book pressed flat against her front, under her uniform jacket, held tight by crossed arms.
Another, harmless textbook went into her hands in its place.
She stepped into view.
The librarian glanced up, saw her.
"Borrowing that one?" he asked.
She held out the decoy.
He nodded, made a note, waved her toward the exit.
Her heart pounded so hard she wondered if he could see it through her ribs.
She walked, calmly, through the doors.
Only when they shut behind her did she sag against the stone wall, breathing out.
The hidden book was cool against her stomach.
Her cheeks burned.
Commoners didn't steal from the Academy.
Commoners didn't risk the only path out of the lower streets for a boy's possible interest.
Good girls didn't enjoy this feeling in their chest, like she'd tugged at the edge of the world and gotten away with it.
She walked toward the dorms anyway, one arm clamped tight over her jacket.
***
She couldn't give it to him that night.
Girls' wing. Boys' wing. Locked doors. Ward spells.
She knew the rules.
She didn't want to be thrown out of the Academy for trying to cross a boundary just because her fingers itched to tug his sleeve and say, "Look what I found."
So she lay in bed with the book under her pillow, staring at the dark.
Everyone else slept.
She wasn't sure if she did.
Waiting girl.
Wait until morning.
Wait until the right moment.
Wait while Tamara had another training session, somewhere in the back of her mind.
Wait and hold tighter to the thought: I found something for him, not for anyone else.
***
She finally caught him the next day.
Not in some dramatic, private corner, but in the most boring place in the Academy: a corridor outside a lecture hall, between classes, where students flowed like a river.
Perfect.
Noise to hide in.
She pressed her back to the wall near the door and pretended to read.
Her heart counted footsteps.
One flow of students out.
Another flow in.
Then—
There.
Blond hair. Blue eyes. Shoulder bag. Wooden practice sword at his hip because of course he carried it everywhere.
Her fingers tightened on the book.
She pushed off the wall.
Walk.
Don't run.
Don't look like you're hunting him.
"Erynd," she said, a little too quickly.
He turned.
"Lyra," he said, surprised. "Hey. Did you need—"
She thrust the book out at him.
"I borrowed this," she blurted. "From the library. It's about mana and metal and… I thought… you might like it."
He blinked.
Looked down at the cover.
Reading the title took him half a breath.
Processing it took another half.
Then his eyes sharpened.
Like in the lecture.
Like when he'd stood between her and Tamara and the whole world had narrowed to that single wrong grip in her hair.
"This is…" he said softly. His fingers brushed the old leather. "Lyra, this is… exactly what I needed."
Warmth flooded her chest.
Exactly.
She liked that word.
She wanted to bottle it.
"I remembered how you looked in class," she said, the words coming faster now that the hardest part — walking up — was done. "With the wave. So I went to look. It was in the older section, back right shelf, second row from the bottom, the librarian said students aren't encouraged to—"
She bit her tongue before she could confess to every rule she'd bent.
He looked up, really looked at her.
"Thank you," he said.
Two simple words.
They landed in her like a knife she wanted to keep.
Behind his shoulder, the corridor surged. Students shoved past. Someone called Tamara's name down the hall; Lyra heard the familiar bright, sharp laugh answer.
It didn't matter.
Right now, in this little bubble in the flow of people, it was her and him and the book she'd stolen from the past for his future.
"Just… don't die doing something stupid with it," she said, because if she tried to say how much she'd wanted this exact reaction, she'd choke.
He almost smiled.
"I'll try," he said. "If I invent explosions, I'll stand far away."
"That is not reassuring," she muttered.
He shifted the book to his other hand, adjusted his bag, glanced at the emptying lecture hall.
"I should go before the professor locks me out," he said. "But really— this helps. A lot."
He left.
She watched his back for a heartbeat too long, then turned away herself, hoping no one could see the way her face didn't quite know whether to smile or burn.
Inside her head, two threads twisted together.
Tamara on the training field.
Erynd's hand on her waist, correcting form.
Wind aura clinging to a wood blade.
And now—
Erynd's fingers on the old leather.
His blue eyes sharpening over something she had brought.
She doesn't even care about this part, Lyra thought, unfair and entirely sure. She'd throw this book aside after a page. But he won't. And I'm the one who put it in his hands.
The jealousy didn't disappear.
It sharpened.
But it had somewhere else to go.
Fine.
Tamara could keep dragging him into sweat and dirt and visible effort.
Lyra would keep slipping him the things that made his eyes light up and his world expand.
She would be the one who knew what to look for in old shelves when he ran into a wall.
She would be the one who saw what he liked and brought more.
Waiting girl.
Waiting in corridors.
Waiting in aisles.
Waiting just outside his right line of sight so she could step in at exactly the right moment with exactly the right thing.
They can have him loud, she thought quietly, walking back toward the library with empty hands and a heart that felt too full.
I'll take him when he's quiet.
When he's thinking.
When his voice drops because he's forgetting I'm even there and just talking to himself.
She flexed her fingers, remembering the feel of the book leaving her grip.
If anyone tries to take that from me—
Not his body.
Not his sword.
Not his strength.
His mind.
His focus.
His thanks.
She would not smile and endure.
She would not shrug and say it was nothing.
She would not stand behind walls forever while other girls reached out and grabbed.
He saved me first, she thought, with a calm, possessive certainty that sat heavy and sweet in her chest.
So I'll be the one who waits for him.
The one who watches.
The one who brings him exactly what he needs.
No matter who else walks beside him.
No matter who else thinks they're entitled to his time.
She slipped back into the library as the lamps were being lit, the head librarian nodding at her in that absent way he did with good students.
She smiled.
Like a good girl.
Underneath, the waiting girl settled in, folding her jealousy into careful stacks.
There would be other chances.
Other books.
Other moments in corridors and classrooms and training fields.
Let them think she was harmless.
Let them underestimate the quiet one from the cobbler's street.
She had patience.
She had eyes.
She had a very good memory for who hurt her and who stood between.
And now, she had his interest tilting toward something she had given.
That would be enough.
For now.