Chương 48: Eve

POV: Melody Constant - 4 Years Ago I didn't dread the morning, for once. Because today was the day the top Hero candidates were coming to Verdantis. Our whole class would get to learn from them, be inspired by them, and I'd heard a few of the candidates were around my age. Around mine. That's awesome!

I moved through my routine, a quick breakfast, the uniform, my hair pinned up simple, a fresh pair of socks because every day deserves a clean start, and the thought of seeing the candidates in the flesh stirred up all my old admiration for the Hero. The last Dark Lord had fallen about a year ago. It had been a brutal fight; the Hero before had lost an arm due to it, but he still won.

He had carried the weight of the entire world on his shoulders, stood against something monstrously strong, a human, somehow, with that kind of power, and come home alive, and the whole world had wept with relief. I've seen what a Dark Lord can do. Towns emptied in minutes. Killing done the way other people do chores.

My own family was caught in an evacuation once, three years back one of the Dark Lord's stronger minions had learned our route, and our carriage was moments from being torn apart when the Hero himself appeared and turned it away. Three years, and I still remember it whole: what it feels like to have a stranger, someone who owes you nothing, put himself between you and the thing that had come to kill you. That's a real Hero, and one of the candidates walking into the academy today would become the next one.

Maybe I could even guess which, try to work out who'd take up the mantle. That'd be a fun way to pass the session. The morning seemed to agree with my mood. Clear weather. No Aurelie on the road in. A decent middle-row seat, for once. Everything held together right up until the lunch break.

"Hey, Constant Disappointment." The voice was already at my elbow. I looked up and over, and there she was, Aurelie, flanked by her two shadows, same as every other day.

"You never brought me my spiced cider yesterday." Did she genuinely expect that I would have? I had played errand-girl for them a handful of times early on, and more than once I had come back with whatever they'd demanded only to find the classroom empty, the three of them long gone. Made a fool of, for sport. I sighed.

"There were times I did fetch things and you weren't even here. I assumed it was optional."

"Oh, of course." She giggled, and the goons dutifully giggled after her.

"I keep forgetting you need everything spelled out. I suppose that's the village in you, too long out in the sticks to have picked up basic social sense." She leaned in a fraction.

"So this time I'll make it explicit. Go and get me a smoked ham and butter roll from the hall. And this time there's no payment at all. Call it a lesson in doing as you're told." Of course. Right before the one session I actually wanted to attend. I stayed in my seat and said nothing, letting my jaw set and my eyes fix on hers, flat and level, refusing to give her the flinch she was fishing for.

"What's this? Are you refusing?" Aurelie's smile didn't waver.

"That's fine. I won't force you. So long as you're prepared for what comes after." Agh. Whatever. I couldn't afford to miss the session over this. Not this one. Faster to just go. I stood up, sharp.

"Fine. At least give me the coin for it." She produced a small purse and shook out a few coppers.

"Hand out." Tch. I put my palm out flat. She dropped the coins onto it one at a time, unhurried, making me hold the pose. I closed my fist around them and walked out, brisk, before she could stretch the moment any further. The hall was chaotic. The lunch rush had mostly passed, but what was left was the worst of it, the crush of everyone trying to grab something before the bell, a wall of shoulders and elbows around the serving counters.

I shoved in, got jostled, lost my place twice, got elbowed in the ribs by someone who didn't so much as glance back, and eventually came away with the wretched roll clutched to my chest. Then I ran the whole way back and pushed it into Aurelie's hands in the classroom.

"You're slow." She turned it over, unimpressed.

"Now I'll have to eat this in a hurry to make the session. Wait outside your unit tomorrow morning. You can carry my bag to make up for it." Liar. I knew perfectly well she'd already eaten. I had watched her, these past few days, bringing in those little honey-glazed pastries, the expensive ones, small enough to finish in a few neat bites, precisely so no one could accuse her of eating in class. She hadn't needed the roll at all.

"Whatever," I said, and stepped past her to my seat. I felt her draw breath to fire off one more thing, and then the bell rang, and she thought better of it, and let it go. The session. Finally. They'd gathered us in the grand hall, packed with students craning to see, a low current of excited chatter running through the whole room. A professor I didn't recognize took the dais and introduced them one at a time. Each candidate stepped forward as their name was called, and the applause swelled and broke like waves.

Then she said a name.

"Evelisse Ardentia." The girl who stepped forward was the one I'd bumped into in the corridor. Oh. I stood up a little straighter without deciding to. It was her, same blue hair, though bound up more formally now, same light armor, standing on the dais with a composure I hadn't seen on her yesterday when she was lost and apologizing to a stranger. Of course! Why didn't I think of that yesterday? The Hero candidates probably came for a quick briefing session or something.

The candidates spoke in turn for a while after that. About discipline, about resolve, about what it meant to carry other people's lives on your shoulders. I hung on every word, and none of it landed quite as hard as the simple fact of having met one of them, and even having been apologized to by one of them. After her turn was done, I could have sworn that for just a moment, over the applause, she found me in the crowd and smiled. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

Then it was announced we'd have a short break before the next part: a more intimate session, students split into groups, each group assigned a candidate for a proper discussion and questions. My heart lifted at the thought. Maybe, if the assignments were kind— A tap on my shoulder. I hadn't seen her come over. Aurelie stood at my side, tilting her head toward the doors, that pleasant little expression fixed in place. Come with me. I very much wanted to refuse.

But refusing only ever cost me more later, more lessons, more errands, a longer campaign of it. Before I could get a word out, one of her sidekicks had my arm, tugging, and the other set a hand flat against my back and started steering me toward the exit. In a hall that packed, plenty of people saw. Not one of them did anything. They walked me out and around, to a quiet strip of grass behind the hall's east side, not far, just far enough that the noise of the crowd dropped to a murmur and there was no one to see.

Aurelie turned to face me, and the pleasant mask slipped a little.

"You've been forgetting your place lately." She folded her arms.

"I've been generous with you, Constant. More patient than anyone else would be. And in return I get attitude. Sighing at me. That look you do. Talking back."

"I wasn't aware breathing counted as talking back," I said." That." She pointed at my face.

"Exactly that." She let the arm drop.

"Here's what's going to happen. You're going to apologize, and then you're going to carry my things for the rest of the week, and you're going to be grateful I'm letting you make it up to me at all." Grateful. She wanted me to be honored to carry her bag. A month ago, maybe some frightened part of me would have swallowed it. But I thought about the dais, and a girl in light armor finding me in a crowd of hundreds, and something in me had gone stubborn and hot.

"No," I said.

"I don't think I will." The grass went quiet.

"... No?" Aurelie repeated it like she wasn't sure she'd heard right. For a second she just stared at me, genuinely thrown, and then her jaw tightened, and something behind her eyes turned cold and small.

"You know," she said quietly, "I keep making the mistake of treating you like you're capable of learning." She flicked two fingers at her shadows.

"Hold her." They didn't grab me. They stepped back, drew the slim training wands every first-year carried, and murmured something, and a pressure clamped down over my whole body at once, locking my arms to my sides, rooting my feet, sealing me upright like a doll stood on a shelf. A basic immobilization. I couldn't move. Aurelie stepped in close, unhurried, and slapped me across the face.

It wasn't hard, she didn't have the strength to make it hard, but I couldn't turn with it, couldn't brace, and it snapped my head to the side and left my cheek stinging and hot.

"That's for the attitude." Her voice had gone flat, all the false sweetness burned off it.

"You are a nobody, Constantly Annoying. A charity case they let in to fill a quota. No name, no talent, no future. Do you understand? You are nothing." My cheek throbbed. My eyes stung, and I hated that they did, but I lifted my head as far as the spell would let me and looked straight at her. I might be screwing things up here. I had wanted to say that I would rather be nothing than her lapdog, but then what if she played whatever cards she had and get me kicked out? Or would it be better for me to get kicked out?

But then what about everything that mom had poured into me getting in here? I did not know what I should do, it might have been too late anyways. So, I just glared at her, showing her I was not afraid. I was not. I was afraid for my family, not for myself. Her face changed. I'd meant it to land, and it did, but I saw at once that I'd made a mistake, because whatever careful, superior amusement she wore most days, it fell away completely, and what was left underneath wasn't pretty. She wasn't playing anymore.

"Fine," she said softly. She reached into her sleeve and drew out her own wand, a thin, polished thing, prettier than her goons' plain ones, but still just a wand.

"You know, these aren't real staffs." She turned it in the light, almost thoughtful.

"You can't do much with them. Nothing serious." She looked at me over the tip of it.

"But for something small? Something to help a lesson stick? They'll do perfectly well." She chanted faintly, and a faint crackle woke at the wand's end.

"Let's see if we can correct your attitude," she murmured and raised it toward me. I shut my eyes and braced, and the only thing I could think, absurdly, was: please don't let me writhe on the ground when it hits. Please don't let me thrash and whimper while they stand there laughing. Because that would be worse than any pain the spell could give me.

"Hey." A familiar voice. My eyes snapped open, and there she was. The blue-haired Hero candidate. Distracted, Aurelie swung the wand toward her on instinct as she turned, and a small bolt of lightning spat from the tip, straight at the girl. It reached her. And she simply caught it, closed her hand around it midair, and it winked out of existence like it had never been cast at all. How? Was that some blessing, that lets minor spells slide off you? Then the pressure holding me let go all at once.

My body sagged forward, unbalanced, and I caught myself half a step before I fell. TheHero candidate took in the scene, me swaying, my hand rising to my stinging cheek, the wands still half-raised in the goons' hands, and stepped forward.

"Did you just try to cast an offensive spell on her?" Aurelie and her shadows edged back. I braced for the response I knew from her: mind your own business, delivered with that superior little smile she used on the teachers. It didn't come. She said nothing at all. Whatever reach the Vareux name had, apparently it stopped well short of a Hero candidate. Then all three of them simply turned and ran, off across the grass toward the far buildings. She didn't chase them.

She just watched them go, until they'd rounded a corner and vanished, and then she turned back to me.

"Are you all right?" My cheek still throbbed, and my legs, now that they were mine again, had a faint tremble in them.

"Y-yeah. I'm... okay." I swallowed.

"How did you find me?"

"I saw them dragging you out of the hall." Something flickered across her face, brief and unreadable.

"It's a…familiar sight. So I had a hunch and followed it. Looks like I was right." A familiar sight. Did she see this often? Or had she, was she a victim of something like this too, once? But that didn't make sense. Did the Church even have bullies?

"Anyway, if you're all right, then that's what matters." She said it simply, like it settled the whole thing.

"Yeah. Um." I got the words out.

"Thank you, Eve." I'd reached for her full name and only caught the front half of it. I hoped I hadn't butchered it. She tilted her head.

"... Eve?"

"Oh no, did I get it wrong? I'm sorry, I'm awful with names—" She let out a small laugh.

"It's Evelisse."

"Right. Evelisse." I hesitated, the words already halfway out before I'd decided to risk them.

"Can I, is it okay if I just call you Eve? It's easier. And I—" Just say it. You might not get another chance. You don't know if you'll ever be this close to her again.

"I really admire you. A lot. So I was hoping, maybe, we could... be friends?" Her eyes widened, and she went still for a beat, caught off guard. And I thought: there it is. Either I'd just come off as some desperate nobody latching onto a Hero candidate, which I was, or no one had ever put it to her quite so plainly before. Asked her, out loud, to be a friend. Then she smiled.

"Sure," she said. That single word did something to me I hadn't expected. It wasn't just relief, or the giddy thrill of being answered yes. It was that, for the first time since I'd arrived at Verdantis, the days ahead didn't look like something to merely survive. There was something in them now. Someone. Maybe I could face them after all, with the Hero candi–no. With my Hero by my side. That's right. Eve had saved me all those years ago…so this time, I should be the one to save her.