Lily woke in the grey hush that came just before dawn, when the world was neither night nor morning and even the old stones of the North Spire seemed half-asleep. For a few still moments, she lay beneath the blankets listening to the quiet rhythm of Samantha's breathing across the room.
The sound pressed relentlessly. Solitude always meant safety, even comfort, but Samantha's breathing, steady and real within the quiet, broke the illusion of being alone. She could not catalogue this new presence, could not pretend that it was familiar. The walls closed in, the air grew heavier. She had to move.
She slid from the bed without a sound. The floor was chilly under her feet. In the dimness she dressed in simple exercise clothes, practical and close fitting, made for movement rather than appearance. Her look flicked once, traitorously, towards Samantha's bed.
She still slept, one arm flung overhead, dark hair spilling across the pillow, her sharp confidence softened into an almost unreasonable beauty by sleep.
Lily looked away at once.
That had been a dangerous thought, she told herself firmly. Worse, if Samantha ever caught her staring, she would never let it rest. If Lily were careless enough to say such a thing aloud, she might never know peace again.
She quietly turned the door handle, eased it open, and stepped into the hallway, closing it just as silently behind her.
Outside, the air bit. Early spring clung to stone paths and wet grass, in the pale silver dew on the academy lawns. The grounds were deserted. Only a few distant lanterns glimmered along the lower walks, their light fading beneath the slow arrival of dawn.
Lily started at an easy pace and then lengthened into a run.
Her body remembered this as readily as breathing. For centuries, motion had kept her from thinking too long in sealed rooms full of dust and ghosts. Step, breath, step, breath - the rhythm steadied her. The cold air filled her lungs. Her silver hair, hastily tied back, brushed her shoulders with each stride.
She circled the quieter outer paths of the academy, past weathered stone walls tangled with ivy and beneath the budding oaks that gave Silverwood its name.
And then, as often happened when her body fell fully into rhythm, memory rose to meet her.
Another brisk spring morning. Another path. Ren beside her, laughing because Lily, even then, ran as if keeping an appointment with fate, not simply enjoying the dawn.
"You run like a person preparing to run indefinitely," Ren had told her once between breaths, smiling that bright, impossible smile. "Must everything with you be efficient?"
Lily had informed her, with perfect seriousness, that inefficient movement was wasteful.
Ren had laughed harder and sprinted ahead just to make Lily chase her.
The memory struck with its usual ache, but this time it did not hollow her out. It passed through her like cold light: painful, yes, but almost warm in its own way. Lily kept running. For a few heartbeats, she could almost feel that old laughter pacing her from half a step ahead.
By the time she returned to the North Spire, the eastern horizon had begun to brighten. Gold gathered slowly at the edges of the world.
She retraced her steps to the room, quietly opening the door and slipping back inside with the same caution she had used to leave.
Samantha was still asleep.
Lily paused near the door and lifted one hand. A small, practical spell unwound from her fingers, subtle as breath. It pulled the sweat and dust from her skin, the fabric of her clothes, and the damp strands of hair at her neck. The moisture beaded in the air like pearls, then vanished. A second thread of magic smoothed the creases from her clothes before she folded them and set them aside.
Clean again, Lily reached for her uniform.
Lily focused on changing clothes, telling herself not to think about undressing in the same room as Samantha. She was still asleep, after all. Lily dressed quickly, convinced of her own practicality.
That thought survived exactly until Samantha's voice, thick with sleep and faint amusement, broke the silence behind her.
"Good morning to you, too, you strange little creature."
Lily went still.
She turned her head. Samantha was propped up on one elbow, hair in glorious disarray, green eyes half-lidded with sleep and fixed very directly on Lily.
The blanket had slipped low on one shoulder. Morning light, pale and soft, caught on the warm line of her skin.
Lily immediately looked everywhere else.
"I believed you were asleep," she said.
"I was," Samantha replied. Her voice came out low and rough from sleep, which was not an improvement from Lily's perspective. "Then I woke to discover my roommate returning at sunrise and undressing in front of me with remarkable confidence." A small smile touched her mouth. "I had no idea you were such an exhibitionist, Lilith."
Lily turned back to her with offended dignity, one sleeve only half-drawn up her arm. "I was doing no such thing. I was changing clothes."
"In front of an audience."
"An unconscious audience," Lily said sharply. "Or so I had reason to assume."
Samantha hummed as if considering the legal merit of that defence. "A dangerous assumption. Especially when the audience is me."
"Then stop making ridiculous comments," Lily said, more flustered now than she wanted to be. She reached for the fastening of her uniform with quick, precise motions. "And stop staring."
Samantha did not stop staring.
If anything, her gaze grew more deliberate.
Still half-wrapped in blankets, she propped her cheek against her hand and studied Lily with calm, open interest. Not crudely. Somehow, that made it worse.
Lily became keenly aware of everything: the cool air on her uncovered skin, the line of her shoulders, the lean muscle at her waist and arms, and the fact that Samantha was watching her with infuriating attentiveness.
Each passing second heightened her awareness of her body.
Her movements began to lose precision.
"Samantha," Lily said, without turning.
"Mm?"
"I told you to stop."
"You did."
Lily finally turned to fully face her, still clutching the front of her tunic, hands pausing mid-motion before she could finish fastening it. "Then why are you still looking at me like that?"
Samantha's expression remained maddeningly composed.
"Because," she said, as though the answer ought to have been obvious, "I was admiring."
For one stunned moment, Lily could only stare.
Heat rushed up her neck so quickly it felt almost violent.
"That is not better," she said.
"I know," Samantha said, sounding entirely unrepentant.
Then, with the leisurely lack of shame possessed only by the truly impossible, Samantha threw back the blanket and rose from bed.
Lily's breath caught on reflex.
Samantha stretched once, slow and unhurried, like a satisfied cat greeting the morning. Her sleeping shift hung loose on her tall frame. She was elegant, even in disarray. When she saw Lily's swift attempt to look at the wall, her smile turned wickedly amused.
"Now, now," Samantha said, reaching for her own clothes. "It would be terribly unfair if only one of us were scandalous before breakfast." She glanced over her shoulder, green eyes gleaming. "You may look as well, if you want. I am very generous that way."
"I do not want to," Lily said at once.
Samantha lifted a brow. "That was a very quick answer."
"Because it is a very simple matter."
Samantha's mouth curved. "And if I noticed you looking anyway, I would charitably pretend not to."
Lily glared at her. "You are intolerable. And perverted. Very noble indeed. Are you like that with everyone? Or do you just happen to enjoy doing that to me in particular?"
For once, Samantha did not answer immediately.
She had one stocking half-drawn up her leg and a ribbon caught loosely in her fingers, but she went still in the middle of the motion, green eyes settling on Lily with an attentiveness that felt far too awake for this hour.
Then the corner of her mouth lifted.
"You in particular," she said.
The frankness of it landed harder than any teasing could have.
Lily blinked. "That is not better."
"No," Samantha agreed, entirely calm. "But it is honest."
She finished pulling on the stocking with unhurried efficiency, then rose and reached for her uniform shirt. Even half-dressed and sleep-rumpled, she managed to look composed in a way Lily found deeply unreasonable.
"If it comforts you," Samantha went on, shaking out the dark fabric before slipping it on, "I am not generally this awful to everyone. That would be exhausting. Some people barely survive ordinary conversation as it is." Her gaze flicked back to Lily, bright with quiet amusement. "With you, however, the temptation is unusually strong."
Lily folded her arms. "How fortunate for me."
"Very," Samantha said.
Lily's expression sharpened further. The heat in her face had not fully faded, which only worsened the offence of being looked at as if she were interesting. "And why, precisely, is tormenting me such a source of delight?"
Samantha slipped the shirt over her shoulders and began fastening it, her fingers deft despite the lingering haze of sleep. "Because you react as though every improper remark is a personal attack on the structure of civilisation," she said. "Because you spend half your time trying to look austere and unreachable and then blush when someone tells you that you are pretty." Her mouth curved. "Because it is educational to discover where the composure breaks."
Lily stared at her in outrage. "I do not break."
"Lilith," Samantha said gently, "you were red to the ears less than a minute ago."
"That proves nothing."
"Of course. A mystery for the scholars." Samantha fastened another button and tilted her head. "Though if you want the less amusing answer, it is because you are not like everyone else. Most people either encourage me, fear me, or try much too hard to impress me. You do none of the three. You look at me as if I am a difficult problem set by an unkind examiner."
Lily opened her mouth, then closed it.
That was not entirely inaccurate.
Samantha noticed at once. "There," she said softly, almost triumphant. "That face. Exactly that."
Lily turned away in immediate annoyance and reached for the last fastening of her own uniform, only to realise she had pulled it slightly crooked in her agitation. She corrected it with more force than necessary.
"You are insufferably pleased with yourself," she muttered.
Behind her came the rustle of cloth as Samantha settled her own collar. "Only when I am right."
"That must be a frequent inconvenience."
Samantha laughed under her breath.
The sound, annoyingly, had lost the sharper edge it carried last night. It was lower now, roughened by sleep and made warmer by the quiet room and the pale wash of morning beyond the windows. It should not have affected Lily as much as it did.
"Lily," Samantha said after a moment, and there was something different in her voice now. Not mockery. Not quite. "Do you want the full answer?"
Lily hesitated before turning back. Samantha was standing by her bed, shirt fastened, hair still loose in dark waves around her shoulders, watching her with an expression that was less playful than before.
"I suspect I will regret it," Lily said.
"Probably." Samantha leaned one hand on the bedpost. "I enjoy doing it to you in particular because you are very easy to read when you forget to hide. Because when you are annoyed, you stop looking sad for a little while. And because I like seeing you alive enough to glare at me."
The room went still.
Lily had been prepared for arrogance, for flirtation, for some bright, shameless answer designed only to provoke her further.
She had not been prepared for that.
For one treacherous instant, something in her chest loosened.
It was worse than the teasing. Teasing, she could fence with. Teasing, she could answer. But kindness, offered without apology and aimed straight at the part of her she had spent centuries burying, left her with nothing in her hands.
"This is... stupid," Lily said.
The words came out quieter than she intended, as if some part of her were still trying to protect the moment by wounding it first.
She exhaled through her nose and shook her head once.
"It is so very stupid," she repeated. "I do not know whether you are too kind in your own twisted way or simply foolish." Her mouth tightened, though not entirely into displeasure. "You should not say things like that as if they are simple."
For the first time, Samantha did not answer.
Lily took two steps toward her instead.
It left almost no space between them. Samantha was still taller by enough to make Lily tilt her chin up, and under other circumstances, Lily would have found that alone irritating. Now it only made the whole exchange feel more unreasonable.
"You do not get to say something like that and look pleased with yourself for it," Lily said.
Then, because the truth had to be balanced properly and because she could feel herself yielding ground she had no business yielding, her eyes narrowed again.
"And you really are unbearable. I could hate you for that."
Something open and startled flickered across Samantha's face.
It was gone quickly, but Lily saw it.
Then Samantha's mouth curved, slower this time and far less sharp than usual.
"I can live with unbearable," she said. "It sounds preferable to being hated."
"Do not be dramatic," Lily muttered.
"You were the one threatening hatred."
"I said I could." Lily folded her arms, though the gesture had lost much of its force at this distance. "Not that I did."
Samantha's green eyes settled on her with that same dangerous attentiveness as before, but there was warmth in them now, quiet and unmistakable.
"No," Samantha said softly. "You do not."
Lily immediately regretted coming closer.
Not because Samantha was mocking her. That would have been easier. But because she was not mocking her, and because being looked at like this felt less like a duel and more like standing too near a fire one had no intention of stepping away from.
It made her think of impossible things. Of being seen and not pitied. Of being wanted for reasons that had nothing to do with blood, duty, prophecy, or the dead. It made her think, with sudden sick clarity, of how little Samantha actually knew.
Of how much damage a lie could do once it was allowed to become tender.
"Do not say things in that tone," Lily said.
"What tone?"
"That one." Lily gestured vaguely, annoyed by the inadequacy of language. "As if you are trying to be sensible. It does not suit you."
Samantha let out a low laugh. "Cruel." Then she tipped her head a fraction. "I was not trying to be sensible. I was trying to be honest. There is a difference."
"I had noticed."
"And yet you did not tell me to take it back."
Lily's cheeks threatened warmth again. "Do not make too much of it."
"I intend to make exactly enough of it to become insufferable later."
"You see? Unbearable."
"And yet here you are. Still standing in front of me."
The words were light. They should have remained light.
Instead, they struck somewhere already cracked.
'Still standing in front of me.'
As if Lily could do that. As if staying were simple. As if she were something safe to linger with in the morning light.
For one ugly instant, she wanted to tell Samantha everything at once: that Lilith was a fiction, that centuries of rot still clung to her bones, that anyone foolish enough to come too close was only choosing a softer method of being hurt.
Instead, she did what she had always done when something reached too near the centre of her.
She fled.
As if to prove Samantha wrong, Lily turned on her heel and, without a word, started walking to the door, grabbing her bag on the way. She left, closing it with just enough force to send a message.
The sound echoed through the little room.
For a moment, Samantha remained exactly where she was, one hand still braced against the wardrobe, staring at the closed door as if she had been presented with a problem she had not expected to solve before breakfast.
Then she let out a slow breath through her nose.
"Well," she murmured to the empty room. "That was probably deserved."
Below the North Spire, the lower cloister was nearly deserted at this hour.
The morning had brightened, but only barely. Pale gold lay thinly across the flagstones, and the old arches still held pockets of chill shade where the night's cold had not yet retreated. A narrow garden ran along one side of the cloister walk, damp with dew, its herbs and early spring flowers stirring faintly in the sea-wind.
Lily stopped beneath one of the stone arches and set her bag down on the bench beside her with more precision than gentleness.
She was not running away.
She refused to call it that.
She simply required distance.
Distance from Samantha's eyes. From Samantha's voice. From the altogether intolerable habit Samantha had developed of saying things plainly and then standing there as though Lily was expected to survive them with dignity intact.
Lily folded her arms and stared out into the herb garden as if it had personally offended her.
Her heart was still behaving foolishly.
That, more than anything, annoyed her.
She had endured centuries. She had buried an age. She had walked out of sealed darkness and into a world no longer hers. It was ridiculous that one tall, insufferably self-assured girl with green eyes and no respect for proper conversational boundaries should have been able to reduce her to this state before the first lecture.
And yet.
"Alive enough to glare at me," Lily muttered under her breath, scowling at a rosemary bush. "What a deeply stupid thing to say."
The worst part was that it had not sounded stupid when Samantha said it.
No. Worse than that, it had sounded sincere.
Lily closed her eyes briefly.
That was the part she did not know what to do with.
She could fend off arrogance. She could answer teasing. She could survive flirtation well enough, even if it left her flustered and cross. But kindness delivered in Samantha's voice, with that infuriating steadiness beneath it, was much harder to parry.
Because kindness implied the future. Kindness implied time. Kindness implied that Samantha might continue to look at her as though Lily were worth learning, worth waiting out, worth the trouble of staying.
Lily had no right to let anyone build this kind of confidence on false ground.
Footsteps sounded against the cloister stones.
Lily opened her eyes at once, but did not turn.
She could tell by the magic around her before the steps even fully registered. Samantha's presence had a particular feel to it: bright, controlled and slightly arrogant in the way that all strong magic tended to become when its owner wore confidence like a second skin. A moment later, the light scent also reached her, jasmine threaded with something cool and airy that always made Lily think, unhelpfully, of mountain wind.
She kept her gaze on the garden.
She considered her options with all the gravity of a military campaign. She could speak, which seemed unwise for several reasons, most of them located inconveniently in her chest. She could ignore Samantha entirely, which would have been dignified in principle but difficult in practice, since Samantha had an unfortunate talent for turning silence into a conversation by herself. Or she could simply leave and pretend she had noticed nothing at all.
That third option had much to recommend it.
The sun was just cresting higher above the academy roofs, pale gold brightening into something warmer over the cloister stones.
"Time to get some food," Lily said to herself.
She rose in one smooth motion, picked up her bag, and started walking without once looking back.
It was a perfectly ordinary pace.
It only appeared rather fast if one was determined to be unreasonable about it.
Behind her, there was a brief silence.
Then Samantha said, "That was almost convincing."
Lily closed her eyes for half a second and kept walking.
Footsteps fell into rhythm behind her, unhurried and infuriatingly easy. Samantha did not try to catch up enough to crowd her, but neither did she allow the distance to become large enough to count as escape. It was a measured pursuit, which somehow made it worse.
Lily stopped so abruptly that Samantha's next step nearly carried her one pace too far.
She turned.
The movement was sharp enough to send the loose ends of her silver hair swinging over one shoulder. Her eyes, when they met Samantha's, were bright with agitation and something dangerously close to panic beneath it.
"Are you going to follow me around now?" Lily demanded. "Is that what this is? A game? You prod me until I blush, you say something kind enough to make me stupid, and then you come after me to see what happens next?"
Samantha had stopped a few paces away.
For once, she did not look amused.
The easy confidence was still there in the set of her shoulders, but it had gone very still, as though she had recognised too late that she had finally pressed against a bruise instead of a scar.
"If I pushed too far," Samantha said carefully, "then I am sorry."
Lily almost laughed.
The apology did not soothe anything. It made the whole thing worse because it was real and level and offered without vanity. It sounded dangerously like someone trying to stay.
"Are you?" Lily asked.
"Yes," Samantha said. "I am."
"And yet you followed me."
"Because you stormed off."
"That was a hint."
"It was a slammed door before breakfast. I am still learning your language."
Under any other circumstances, that might have been almost funny. Here, it only felt unbearable.
"This is not a game to me," Samantha said.
Lily knew she should stop. She did not.
The pressure in her chest had nowhere else to go.
"Why do you care so much?" she said, and now the words came faster, harsher, pulled loose by all the emotion she had been trying to outrun. "You do not know me. You know the version of me that blushes when you corner me and say the wrong thing when you look too closely. That is all. You do not know what you are attaching yourself to, Samantha."
"Then tell me what I am missing."
That, more than the apology, snapped something.
"Why?" Lily demanded. "So you can sort it into a neat little story and feel clever for understanding it?"
"No," Samantha said at once. "So I stop hurting you by accident."
Lily stared at her.
Samantha held her gaze. "That is generally how understanding works."
Lily pressed on anyway, because cruelty was easier than fear and because she had already started bleeding.
"You keep looking at me as if I am something worth understanding," she said. "Why? Because I entertain you? Because I am strange? Because you are bored, and I am the nearest puzzle?"
"No," Samantha said. "Because you are unhappy, and because you flinch whenever anyone gets too near it."
"You hear yourself, I hope."
"Perfectly."
"That is an absurd thing to say to someone."
"Then stop doing it so visibly."
Lily went still.
Samantha took one step closer, not enough to crowd, enough to refuse retreat.
"Lily..."
"No." The word cracked out of her. "Do not do that. Do not say my name like that and pretend this is a concern."
"I am not pretending."
"I am not some wounded little creature for you to poke at until it becomes affectionate. I am not your project. I am not your charity. And I do not need you deciding I am alive enough for anything."
The last sentence rang against the cloister stones.
Students farther down the walk glanced over and then away again.
Lily saw that too late.
Shame only sharpened her.
"So stop," she said, lower now, more vicious for being quieter. "Stop pretending this is about me. Maybe you simply enjoy being needed. Maybe you enjoy being the person who says the right beautiful thing and gets to feel noble for it. But whatever this is, leave me out of it. I was just a random person in your room yesterday. I can be one again. Just leave me alone."
"That is nonsense," Samantha said.
Lily blinked.
Samantha's voice did not rise, but it hardened. "Not the part where you want distance. That part is clear. The rest." She lifted a hand, precise and cutting. "You accuse me of treating you like a puzzle, then get angry when I ask what is wrong. You accuse me of not knowing you, then refuse to let me know anything. You tell me to be honest and then punish me for it. What exactly would satisfy you here?"
"Nothing," Lily snapped.
"Yes, I had begun to suspect that."
"Then perhaps you should have stopped."
"Perhaps," Samantha said. "But I am here now, and you are angry enough that I would prefer to know whether you mean any of this or whether you are simply trying to wound me before I can ask the wrong question."
"Do not flatter yourself."
Something sharp moved through Samantha's face. "This is not flattery. This is me trying, despite your best efforts, to speak to the problem in front of me." She drew a breath. "You told me you lost someone. I heard you. I know that whatever this is may have something to do with that, and I may have stepped on something broken without realising it. But do not stand there and tell me I am inventing your anger when it is shaking in your hands."
Lily felt the blood drain from her face.
"How dare you?"
"How dare I ask whether this is really about me?" Samantha's mouth tightened. "I am asking because none of your accusations fit. You may dislike me. You may want me gone. Fine. But do not hand me a cheap explanation and expect me to kneel before it."
"You know nothing about it," Lily said.
"Probably not enough," Samantha said. "But more than you are pretending I do. Enough to see that you are not angry only because I teased you. Enough to see that you are afraid of something, and that you would rather make me into a villain than say what it is."
Lily's breath faltered.
"Do not", she said.
"Then tell me where to stop. Properly. Not with this absurdity about me wanting admiration for basic decency. Not with lies, you throw because they cut cleanly. Tell me the truth!"
Silence followed.
The pain that crossed Samantha's face was small, disciplined, and unmistakable.
It was not theatrical.
For one sick, blinding instant, it was not Samantha she saw at all but Ren in the rain on the last night they had argued, mouth bloodless with restraint, lashes wet, saying, 'If you mean to leave, Lily, then at least have the courage to say it plainly.' Then another memory struck over it, crueller still: Ren reaching for her with the same careful face after a fight, voice gone gentle with hurt, asking Lily to stop wielding silence like a blade. The same contained injury. The same refusal to beg to be understood. The same terrible stillness where warmth had been a breath before.
Lily's anger guttered at once, leaving only the heat of nausea behind.
She had wanted distance. Space. Something to push against that was not the alarming, living warmth of Samantha's attention.
She had not meant to say all of that.
Or rather, she had. That was what made it unforgivable.
Because every line had been aimed where she thought it would do the most damage. She had taken Samantha's sincerity, turned it inside out, and used it as a weapon. She had done it with precision born of an old practice.
Samantha drew in a slow breath.
"You think very little of me," she said.
The words were quiet.
Lily wished, absurdly, that Samantha had shouted instead.
"That is not what I..."
Lily heard her own voice begin to fray.
But Samantha had already looked away for the briefest instant, jaw tight, composure drawn over hurt as a blade slid back into its sheath.
"No," Samantha said, and now her voice was level in a way Lily had not heard from her before, stripped clean of warmth, flirtation, and play. "Do not apologise unless you mean to explain why you said it."
"You are not her," Lily said.
The words came out so suddenly that for a heartbeat, even she seemed not to understand she had spoken them.
Samantha went still.
Lily swallowed once, hard. Her eyes burned. "You are not her," she said again, almost through her teeth, almost through tears. "You will never be. So do not stand there, looking at me as if you understand anything. You do not. You cannot."
Lily bit the inside of her lip so hard she tasted blood.
There. That was closer to the truth than anything else she had said, and uglier for it.
Explain what? Had that Samantha come too close to the rotten centre of her too quickly? That, for one impossible, sickening moment, Lily had not seen Samantha clearly at all, only the outline of an old wound opening in the wrong person? That the idea of being known felt less like hope than a threat? That Lily had spent too many years learning how to drive people away before they could discover what remained underneath?
If she stayed another second, she might say something true.
She was not ready for that either.
So she turned on her heel and ran.
Not with the steady, efficient pace of her dawn exercises. Not with control. She ran like a girl escaping the consequences of her own mouth.
The refectory was already awake by the time she reached it.
Warm air spilt through the open doors, carrying the smells of fresh bread, porridge, butter, tea, and too many young mages gathered in one place before the sun had fully climbed. The long hall hummed with morning noise: benches scraping over stone, voices layered in sleepy clusters, the clink of cups and cutlery. A few students glanced up as Lily entered, perhaps recognising her from yesterday's examinations, but whatever curiosity they felt was not enough to stop her.
She went straight to the serving tables.
If the kitchen attendants found anything odd in the sight of a pale, silver-haired girl arriving slightly breathless and looking as though she would rather fight a demon than make conversation, they were professional enough not to show it.
Within moments, Lily had acquired a tray bearing tea, a heel of brown bread, soft cheese, and a bowl of something steaming and oat-based that she did not properly register.
She carried it to the far end of the hall and took a seat at a narrow table near one of the tall windows.
Only then did she realise her hands were shaking.
Lily set the cup down before she spilt it.
Outside the glass, the academy grounds were brightening by degrees. Early sun caught on the wet lawns and the roofs of the lower buildings, turning dew briefly to gold. Students crossed the courtyard in little groups, cloaks half-fastened, books tucked under their arms, ordinary in the way Lily had always found both enviable and faintly miraculous.
Inside, the warmth of the refectory pressed gently against the cold still clinging to her skin.
It did nothing for the knot in her chest.
She stared into her tea.
You do not know me.
I am not your project.
Leave me out of it.
Leave me alone.
Lily closed her eyes for a moment.
The words sounded uglier in memory than they had in the cloister. More deliberate. Less defensible.
It had been a vicious thing to say, and worse because she could not fully call it false. Samantha did not know her. Not really. Samantha knew a frightened fabrication in a charcoal uniform, a few pieces of truth wrapped in lies, a girl named Lilith who did not exist except as a shield. The real Lily was buried under centuries, under ash, under Ren, under the kind of grief that changed a person's architecture and left little space for easy affection.
But Samantha had not deserved that.
Samantha had offered kindness and received contempt sharpened to a blade.
Lily lifted the cup again and made herself drink. The tea was too hot. She barely noticed.
Around her, conversation rose and fell.
Two students at the next table were whispering over a schedule scroll. Farther down the hall, someone laughed too loudly at some private joke. A first-year boy in a wrinkled uniform was trying to carry three plates at once, but was failing with visible determination. It was all extremely normal. A morning like any other.
Lily had wanted normal so fiercely that it ought to have felt like triumph to sit here alone among it.
Instead, she kept listening for footsteps that did not come.
Several minutes passed.
No jasmine. No mountain-wind perfume. No confident stride cutting through the room. No tall, impossible girl arriving with some composed cruelty or colder silence.
Lily broke off a piece of bread and discovered she had no appetite for it.
She set it down again.
Perhaps Samantha had done the sensible thing and taken her at her word.
Perhaps she was still in the cloister, or back in the room, or elsewhere entirely, having decided that one volatile liar was not worth being spoken to like that over morning light and dew-damp stones.
The thought should have relieved Lily.
Instead, something inside her sank, slow and unpleasant.
She stared at the untouched porridge.
This was absurd.
She had asked to be left alone.
If Samantha obeyed, that was not abandonment. It was a restraint.
And yet Lily felt, very faintly and very irrationally, as though she had stepped off a ledge expecting the ground to be closer.
Her fingers tightened around the spoon.
She was not ready for this. That remained true. She was not ready for Samantha's attention, or Samantha's honesty, or the treacherous flutter low in her chest when Samantha looked at her as though she were worth the trouble. She was certainly not ready for how quickly every exchange with her had begun to matter.
That was precisely the problem.
Lily lowered the spoon again.
She had survived too long by narrowing her world: archive walls, dust, routine, silence, memory. Feelings could be managed there because almost nothing new was allowed near enough to disturb them. Samantha had arrived like a thrown-open window, all bright air and irreverence and dangerous warmth, and Lily, fool that she was, had already begun to turn toward it before remembering what light could cost.
So yes. Part of her had meant it.
Stop.
Leave me out of it.
Not because Samantha was false, perhaps, but because if she were not false, Lily did not know how to survive her.
The realisation sat heavily in her chest.
She exhaled, long and unsteady.
When she finally dared glance toward the entrance again, it remained full only of strangers.
Lily looked away.
She lifted another spoonful of porridge and forced herself to eat it, expression composed with sheer stubbornness. If Samantha did not come, then she would endure that. If Samantha did come, then Lily would endure that too.
Either way, the first lecture was approaching, breakfast was getting cold, and she had already made enough of a spectacle of herself for one morning.
Still, when the hall doors opened again, and a wash of cooler air slipped across the stone, her traitorous heart stumbled before her reason could catch up.
It was only a group of second-years, noisy, half-awake, and wholly uninterested in her.
Lily looked back down at her breakfast.
The disappointment was small.
It was also intolerably real.
Eventually, even stubbornness ceased to be a meal.
Lily looked down at the state of her tray and decided it would be generous to call what she had just done breakfast. The tea was half gone. The bread had been mutilated more than eaten. The porridge had cooled into a resigned, unappealing mass that reflected the morning light.
She had managed, in the span of a single morning, to hurt the only person who had looked at her grief and not recoiled.
Lily sat very still by the tall refectory window while the academy moved on around her in all its harmless, ordinary noise. Cups knocked softly against saucers. Benches scraped. Doors opened and closed. Somewhere, a student laughed over something trivial and alive. The world remained perfectly willing to continue.
Inside her, however, something had gone thin and strained.
If Samantha kept her distance now, Lily thought, then she had earned it.
That was the most sensible conclusion available.
It also felt suspiciously like loss.
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