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Chapter Text

The smoke detector shrieked. It sounded like Elysia’s alarm clock—the one meant to wake her at seven—so she reached for her bedside table. No vibration. The clock hands pointed to six. The shrieking drilled through her skull as she swung her feet to the wooden floor with a thud.

“It’s fine! Everything’s fine!”

Burnt bread stench cut through her haze. Panic replaced annoyance. She burst through her door and followed Alisaie’s voice to the kitchen

Alisaie stood on their dining table, wielding a tea towel at the smoke detector, trying to smother it. A plastic chair lay sideways on the floor. At the counter, G’raha wrestled with the toaster, its innards glowing orange, smoke pouring from the slots.

“Perhaps,” G’raha said, yanking the plug from the wall, “we might consider replacing this relic?”

“Our home fund is empty.” Alisaie jabbed the tea towel in his direction. “Besides, it works perfectly well when certain people remember to adjust the settings after making midnight crumpets.”

G’raha’s ears drooped. “Those were important crumpets. I had marking to finish.”

“The burden of being a master’s student and teaching assistant.” Alisaie pressed a hand to her chest in mock sympathy. “We mere first-year undergrads wouldn’t understand such sophisticated struggles.”

Elysia stumbled to the living room window, too groggy to referee. Cold morning air rushed in as she pushed open the pane. The smoke thinned, revealing their cramped three-room flat—water stains mapping the ceiling like continents.

Six months the three Studium students had been sharing this space with its single bathroom—all of them trying to save on expenses, though Alisaie’s reasons were more about principle than necessity.

Elysia unpinned her scholarship requirements from the cork-board by the wall. The paper had softened at the creases from constant folding.

“Coffee?” G’raha already had the kettle going.

“Please.” She sat at the dining table, blinking until the text came into focus. Minimum 3.8 GPA. Full course load. No withdrawals. No extensions. One B+ and everything ended.

Alisaie dumped the charred bread in the bin with unnecessary force. “You’ve memorised those by now, surely.”

“Just checking.”

“You check every morning.” Alisaie pulled eggs from the fridge. “And every evening. And between lectures—“

“Leave her be.” G’raha set three steaming mugs on the counter. “We all have our rituals. Yours involves aggressive mixing bowl usage at two in the morning when stressed.”

“That’s different.”

“Is it?” His eyes lingered on Alisaie in a way that made her cheeks pink. She turned back to the eggs with sudden concentration.

Elysia folded the requirements and pressed them flat under her palm. The paper was her proof she belonged here. Without it—

“Oh, brilliant.” Alisaie slapped the society pages on the table. “’The Leveilleur twins grace the Studium with their continued excellence.’ They’ve even got a photo of Alphinaud at some Forum reception. Look at him pretending those ambassadors are fascinating.”

G’raha peered over her shoulder. “He looks constipated.”

“That’s his ‘I’m being profound’ face.” Alisaie cracked eggs into the pan like she was punishing them. “And naturally, they had to mention my ‘potential for greatness, following in the family tradition.’ As if I exist solely as an extension of the Leveilleur legacy.”

“You could always tell them to—“

“What? Stop being proud? Stop expecting excellence? Stop assuming I’ll slot neatly into their predetermined path?” She attacked the eggs with a spatula. “They mean well. That’s the worst part.”

Elysia watched her two friends—the only ones who’d accepted her to Sharlayan without judgement or criticism. They navigated the tiny kitchen with practised ease, G’raha reaching around Alisaie for plates while she shifted to give him room, then bumped him with her hip. He let out an ‘ow’ as he collided with the fridge door. Elysia smiled and sipped her coffee, her mind drifting…

Six months earlier. The Studium admission office.

Five professors in black academic robes sat behind a curved table like judges at tribunal. White ribbons bearing Sharlayan’s symbol—water flowing from Thaliak’s Ewer—draped their shoulders. Emet-Selch held centre, golden eyes dissecting her over steepled fingers. To his left, Lahabrea shuffled papers with barely concealed impatience. To his right, Venat leaned back, silver-white hair catching the light, watching with mild curiosity.

“Miss Ishikawa.” Emet-Selch’s cultured voice filled the marble chamber. “Your examination scores are adequate. Your essays show competence. But the Studium requires more than competence. We shape future thought leaders, not merely functional graduates.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?” Lahabrea interjected. “Your background is notably lacking in classical foundation. No formal rhetoric training, no exposure to the great philosophical traditions—“

“Perhaps we might test her reasoning directly?” Venat suggested. “Rather than cataloguing what she hasn’t had access to?”

Emet-Selch’s jaw tightened. “Very well.” He slid a paper across the table. “A practical scenario. You manage a research archive. A fire breaks out. You can save either the last existing copy of an ancient philosophical treatise that shaped modern thought, or the working notes of a recently deceased researcher whose theories haven’t been published yet. Which do you choose?”

The committee waited—Mitron tapping his pen, Halmarut adjusting her glasses.

“I… I need more information,” Elysia said.

Lahabrea scoffed. “The parameters are clear.”

Elysia inhaled deeply, gathering courage. “Are there people in danger? How much time do I have? What’s the building layout?”

“Those details are irrelevant,” Emet-Selch said coldly. “The question concerns priority of knowledge preservation.”

“But that’s not how fires work.” The words tumbled out. “I’ve lived through two building fires in Kugane. You don’t get clean philosophical choices. You get smoke and seconds to decide and usually the ‘choice’ is whatever you can grab while getting people out.”

Mitron stopped tapping.

“The scenario assumes I’m alone in the building,” Elysia continued, pulse hammering. “It assumes I know exactly where both items are. It assumes the fire spreads predictably. It assumes I’d even think about manuscripts before checking if anyone needed help.” She met Emet-Selch’s gaze. “With respect, sir, the question tests whether I’ll engage with an artificial construct, not how I’d actually preserve knowledge in crisis.”

“Then how,” Venat leaned forward, “would you actually handle it?”

“Prevention. Fireproofing, multiple copies, digitisation. If you’re down to choosing between single copies during a fire, you’ve already failed.”

Lahabrea’s face darkened. “The scenario clearly states—“

“The scenario is flawed.” She forced her hands to stay by her sides. “Like asking someone from the desert to theorise about snowstorm navigation. I could give you the answer you want—save the ancient text, obviously. But that wouldn’t be honest.”

“And honesty matters more than giving correct answers?” Emet-Selch’s tone was unreadable.

“Isn’t identifying a flawed premise also a correct answer?”

The committee exchanged glances—Lahabrea dismissive, Mitron uncertain, Halmarut thoughtful. Venat had a peculiar light in her eyes.

“Interesting.” Emet-Selch made a note. “Let’s try another approach—“

“Actually,” Venat interrupted, “I’d like to hear more about those fires in Kugane.”

“Venat,” Emet-Selch warned.

“Humour me.” She smiled at Elysia. “What happened?”

Elysia’s hand found her elbow, scratching at nothing. “First one was in the workers’ housing block. Cooking oil accident. Everyone got out because Mrs. Tanaka on the third floor started banging pots the moment she smelled smoke. She saved more lives than any philosophical treatise ever has.”

Halmarut coughed—possibly hiding a laugh.

“Second one?”

“Factory where I worked nights. Electrical fire in the records room. The manager tried to save the account books.” She paused. “He died of smoke inhalation. The books burned anyway. The workers who ignored orders and evacuated immediately survived.”

“So when presented with our scenario...”

“I think about Mr. Yamamoto dead with his arms full of ledgers that didn’t matter to anyone three days later.”

Uncomfortable silence settled over the committee.

“Miss Ishikawa, you misunderstand the nature of theoretical exercises—“

“She understands perfectly.” Venat stood. “She’s telling us our exercises are divorced from reality. That we’re so embedded in our ivory tower we’ve forgotten what knowledge is actually for.”

“Venat—“

“When was the last time any of us faced a real crisis? Made a decision with actual stakes?” She turned to the others. “We craft these elegant scenarios that test acceptance of our assumptions, then wonder why our graduates struggle with practical application.”

“The standards exist for good reason,” Lahabrea protested.

“Whose good? We’re supposed to be the finest academic institution in the world, yet we’d reject someone who identifies flawed premises because she doesn’t play along politely?”

“This is highly irregular—“ Mitron started.

“Everything worthwhile is.” Venat moved around the table. “I call for a vote. Full scholarship for Miss Ishikawa.”

“Absolutely not,” Emet-Selch said. “She hasn’t completed the assessment—“

“She’s completed it brilliantly. She identified the inherent bias, articulated why it’s flawed, and provided actual experiential knowledge. That’s more valuable than a hundred students who can recite classical texts but never question their application.”

“I second the motion,” Halmarut said quietly.

Everyone stared.

“The girl has a point. How many of our graduates can handle real crises? How many just reproduce our theories in slightly different configurations?”

“You cannot be serious,” Lahabrea spluttered.

“Vote,” Venat insisted. “All in favour?”

She raised her hand. Halmarut followed. After a long moment, Mitron’s hand crept up.

“Motion carries.” Venat smiled. “Welcome to the Studium, Miss Ishikawa.”

“This is a mistake,” Emet-Selch said, voice deadly quiet.

“No. Rejecting her would be the mistake.” Venat turned to Elysia. “Full scholarship, effective immediately. I’ll serve as your academic sponsor.”

“I... thank you, but—“

“No buts. The Studium needs perspectives like yours. Someone who’ll question our assumptions, challenge our blind spots.” She shot Emet-Selch a look. “Someone who recognises that preserving knowledge means nothing if we don’t understand its actual application.”

The argument erupted the moment Venat escorted her out. Voices carried through the heavy doors—

“—completely inappropriate—“

“—standards mean nothing if—“

“—practical experience isn’t equivalent to—“

“—hiding behind tradition while the world moves on—“

Elysia followed Venat through marble corridors in a daze as the older woman arranged everything with swift efficiency. Forms materialised, signatures appeared, housing options emerged from thin air.

“You’ll do wonderfully,” Venat had said at the end. “Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. Especially those who value the system more than what it’s meant to produce.”

“Elysia?”

She blinked. G’raha stood beside her with a plate of eggs and toast, golden-brown and properly buttered. He held it out to her.

“Thanks.” She set aside her empty mug.

Alisaie dropped into the opposite chair. “New semester starts today. Ready for another term of academic excellence and crushing anxiety?”

“Can’t wait.” Elysia managed a smile. “Though at twenty-one I should handle pressure better by now.”

“Please.” Alisaie waved her fork. “I’m older than you and barely keeping it together—“

“One month older doesn’t count.”

“—meanwhile this ancient one,” she gestured at G’raha, “has achieved enlightenment through the wisdom of being twenty-four.”

“Three whole years of additional maturity,” G’raha said drily, settling beside Alisaie. “Speaking of, did you hear about the new professor? Youngest in Studium history.”

“Let me guess.” Alisaie stabbed her eggs. “Some Forum heir, fast-tracked through connections?”

“Actually, no. Well, not through connections. Louisoix’s sole heir, but genuinely brilliant. Published his first paper at fifteen.”

“A Louisoix.” Respect crept into Alisaie’s tone. “Their ancestors built this city on wisdom alone. If he’s anything like his forefathers, we’re in for something special. Otherwise, he’s just another gatekeeper.”

“You might be surprised.”

“Doubtful. They’re all the same nowadays. Traditionalists in different robes.” She stood abruptly. “I need to get ready. First lecture’s at eight.”

After she disappeared into her room, G’raha sighed. “She’s wound tight.”

“Aren’t we all?”

“Fair point.” He gathered plates, then paused at the sink. “You know your scholarship’s safe, right? Your marks have been excellent.”

“One slip is all it takes.”

“You won’t slip.”

“You don’t know that.”

He turned, water running over dishes. “I do, actually. Your essay on Sharlayan’s hidden diversity was innovative. Professor Halmarut couldn’t stop talking about it in the staff meeting.”

Heat crept up Elysia’s neck. “It’s just because I think differently. Being an outsider.”

“Precisely. You approach ideas from angles others miss.”

“Because I don’t know the proper angles.”

“No. Because you’re not limited by them.” G’raha dried his hands. “That’s a strength.”

Easy for him to say. He’d made it through as a scholarship student, secured his position as a teaching assistant, found his place. She was still fighting for hers.

Alisaie emerged from her room, braid perfect, armour of academic excellence in place. “Right. Another day of pretending the Leveilleur name means nothing while everyone watches to see if I’ll live up to it.”

“Alisaie—“ G’raha started.

“Don’t. Just... Don’t.” She grabbed her bag. “I’ll see you both at lunch.”

The door closed harder than necessary.

G’raha stared after her. “I wish she could see how—”

“How much she means to you?”

His face went red as his hair. “I…uh.” He grabbed his satchel and cleared his throat. “Office hours before first lecture. You?”

“Advanced Theories with Lahabrea.”

“Ouch. Good luck.”

“I’ll need it.”

In her room, Elysia surveyed the controlled chaos of her desk—textbooks stacked like fortifications, notes arranged with military precision. One photo sat propped against the lamp: Mrs. Takahashi at the centre, arms around a cluster of children outside the old orphanage. The woman who’d pulled her from floodwater and rubbed warmth back into her frozen hands. The nuns flanked either side, faces creased with the patience that came from maintaining a makeshift library in a converted storage room, where water-stained encyclopaedias had been her first teachers.

The flat had gone quiet. G’raha’s footsteps faded down the stairs. Last night’s stress-baking ingredients still scattered across the kitchen counter—Alisaie’s midnight ritual. The saggy couch held three person-shaped indents from last month’s group revision session, when they’d pretended confidence while terror lurked beneath.

This was home now. Borrowed, tentative, conditional—but home. Six months of building something fragile in this cramped flat. Each of them running: Alisaie from her family’s expectations, G’raha from a loneliness he wouldn’t name, and her from an absence that still woke her some nights. The void where family should be, where money and proper education should have accumulated, where belonging came without question. That emptiness that threatened to reclaim her if she stumbled even once.

She locked the door and descended three flights into morning cold. The Studium rose ahead, all marble and tradition, waiting to test her again.

The scholarship requirements pressed against her pocket like a talisman. Another semester to survive. More unfair premises to challenge, more problems to solve her way. Every mark a battle.

She pulled her coat tighter—the lotus perfume a small rebellion against this place that wanted to reshape her—and walked towards another day of proving she belonged in a world designed to exclude her.

Chapter Text

Elysia hadn’t meant to arrive late for Professor Louisoix’s class. As she entered the History building, students already lined up at the auditorium door—odd, since history wasn’t exactly thrilling for most. A girl perhaps slightly younger than her got bumped in the hallway, receiving no apologies.

The girl wore exotic attire, perhaps from her homeland, an explosion of bright reds and gold. People behind looked her up and down, mouths thin or downturned. She struggled to hold her tower of books, eyes wide.

Elysia’s heart sank. She knew that look—another foreigner navigating Sharlayan’s cold welcome. She walked to where the crowd had gathered, her boots echoing against the ornate walls leading to the auditorium’s closed doors. Young men snickered by the hallway, pointing at the girl’s colourful shoes.

The girl’s bag caught on a sharp edge of the wall panelling. She wobbled, books sliding. Elysia caught and steadied her just as the doors opened and students rushed in, whispering about Professor Louisoix’s first class already attracting a large following.

A crumpled piece of paper fell from the girl’s bag. Elysia read the timetable written there. “Aetherology’s in the other building,” she said, switching to Thavnairian. “This hallway doesn’t connect there. You’ll need to go down, cross the square.”

The girl’s shoulders dropped with relief. She showered Elysia with rapid thanks, her smile bright.

The last students filed inside. Annoyed by Sharlayan’s elites and their casual cruelty, Elysia decided to walk the girl to her building. Ancient History class be damned.

The marble doors groaned as Elysia slipped through, twenty minutes late. Hundreds of heads turned. The Auditorium fell silent, every gaze pinning her to the wall. Her earlier annoyance fled, replaced by the urge to evaporate.

She picked her way through the narrow gaps between people sitting on the walkways, each footstep echoing through the chamber. The speaker—a figure in white on the platform—had stopped mid-sentence, waiting.

Elysia scanned the front rows for Alisaie’s silver braid. There—an empty seat beside her. Professor Louisoix’s voice resumed, filling the hall as Elysia descended, the standing audience tracking her every step.

“Told you I’d hold it,” Alisaie whispered as Elysia slid in.

“You’re mental, sitting front row for a lecture.”

“Best view to scrutinise a Sharlayan elite.”

Elysia’s attention shifted to the platform, and her breath caught. The man commanding the space was younger than expected—mid-twenties—yet moved as if he’d never questioned his right to this stage. Silver hair fell to his shoulders, artfully dishevelled, catching the eastern sunlight until everything else blurred at the edges. Gods, he was beautiful. Unfairly so. His voice reached every corner without strain, each word deliberate, measured.

Her pulse quickened in a way that had nothing to do with nerves; she leaned forward, pulled by something unnamed.

“—the assumption that historical record exists as singular truth.” His coat shifted like water as he moved. “Every civilisation shapes narrative to serve present needs. What the Garlean Empire calls ‘liberation’ appears quite differently in Doman accounts.”

His hands carved thought from air with elegant precision. Elysia tracked each gesture—how his shoulders squared at crucial points, the calculated pauses that let concepts settle before building the next layer. The notebook in her lap stayed closed, forgotten.

“Consider the Autumn Solstice Accord of 1472. Western records emphasise the treaty terms. Eastern accounts preserve the three-day feast that preceded negotiations. Which tells us more about how the peace was achieved?”

A few hands rose. He acknowledged them with a slight nod but continued.

“The question isn’t rhetorical, but neither do I seek the obvious answer. I’m interested in how we determine source reliability when cultural lens shapes not just interpretation but the very decision of what merits recording.”

A camera shutter clicked. Giggles and hushed conversation rose from the girls behind her, but Elysia’s attention remained fixed on the man G’raha had spoken highly of.

“Eastern civilisations often privilege oral tradition,” he said. “Songs, stories, genealogies passed through generations. Western scholarship dismisses these as unreliable, corrupted by retelling.” The chalk paused. “Yet when foreign diplomats documented Hingashi’s opening to the West, their accounts matched oral histories more than official records. Why was that so?”

“Because scribes recorded history for their masters, not for truth,” Elysia muttered in Hingan, unintentionally aloud.

The chalk stopped. In the auditorium’s hush, its final scrape echoed. He turned, sapphire eyes finding her instantly, and when he spoke, his Hingan was flawless, but refined—the upper-class accent she’d only heard from wealthy merchants in Kugane’s finest districts.

“An interesting assertion. You suggest informal sources hold greater truth than state documentation?”

Two hundred students turned to stare. Elysia’s mouth went dry, heart hammering against her ribs.

“I’m suggesting…” Her voice cracked. “Official records serve political purpose. Truth is often inconvenient to that purpose.”

“Yet oral tradition serves social purpose. Stories reshape themselves to meet audience expectation. Which corruption is more damaging to historical accuracy?”

He stood perfectly still, waiting. The morning sun behind him turned his hair to white fire. The intensity of his gaze made her stomach flutter in a way that had nothing to do with academic pressure.

“Both are corrupted,” she managed, “but we need both. Like… binocular vision. Each eye sees differently, but together they create depth.”

A heartbeat of silence. Then another.

“An adequate metaphor.” He turned back to the board, switching to common tongue. “Though depth perception requires the observer to reconcile conflicting images. Most historians lack the linguistic and cultural fluency to achieve such synthesis.”

The dismissal stung more than it should have. Elysia sank into her seat as he continued the lecture, but his words blurred to background noise. She was too aware of him—the precision of his movements, the way he commanded space without seeming to notice he was doing it.

“Stop vibrating,” Alisaie hissed.

“I’m not—“

“You’re practically levitating. What’s wrong with you?”

Everything. Nothing. The way he’d looked at her, like he could see through her bones. The way he’d switched languages to meet her where she’d accidentally revealed herself to be.

“Before we conclude,” he said, pulling Elysia back to the present, “a reminder that the Annual Forum Dinner occurs in four months. Attendance is mandatory for all students and faculty. The Studium presents its year’s research highlights to Forum members and donors who make your education possible. Formal dress required.”

A collective groan rose from the students.

“Consider it part of your education,” he continued, gathering his materials with economical grace. “Academia isn’t merely research and theory. It requires navigating institutional politics, securing funding, building networks. Those who ignore this reality rarely survive it.”

His glance caught the front row—caught her—for just a heartbeat.

“Dismissed.”

The auditorium erupted in motion. Elysia remained frozen as students pushed past.

“Brilliant,” someone behind them was saying. “As expected of Louisoix.“

“Did you see him shut down that girl in front?”

“Did you see his eyes when he looked at her? Gods, I’d die if he looked at me like that.”

“What language was that, anyway? Hingan?”

Alisaie grabbed Elysia’s arm, pulling her up. “Come on, before the stampede.”

They joined the crush toward the doors. A cluster of girls lingered near the podium, pretending to discuss notes while stealing glances at Themis Louisoix. He kept his eyes on the papers in his hand, crossing the platform and exiting quietly through the side door.

Outside the History building, G’raha waited by the steps, balancing two coffee cups in his hands.

“Thought you might need caffeine after Louisoix.” He offered one to Alisaie, who took it without acknowledging the gesture. “How was it?”

“Elysia argued with him in Hingan,” Alisaie announced.

G’raha’s eyebrows rose. “You argued with Themis Louisoix? On day one?”

“I didn’t argue. I just... commented on something. Under my breath. In Hingan.”

“Which he apparently speaks fluently.” Alisaie drank deeply. “Then demolished her counterpoint while two hundred students watched.”

“He didn’t demolish—“

“He called your metaphor ‘adequate.’ That’s academic speak for ‘nice try, infant.’”

G’raha studied Elysia with concern. “You’re flushed. Are you feeling alright?”

“I’m fine.” Elysia sipped her coffee, heat prickling her cheeks.

Alisaie observed her quietly before exchanging a glance with G’raha. “Gods, you fancy him, don’t you?”

Elysia choked on her coffee and started coughing. Alisaie rubbed her back whilst G’raha weighed her words.

“No wonder you were stiff as a board back there.” Alisaie started walking.

G’raha, sensing Elysia’s discomfort—her eyes still watering from the coughing fit—steered the conversation elsewhere. “So, do you have anything to wear for the Forum dinner?”

Disgust twisted Alisaie’s features. She gave no sign of noticing his clumsy redirection. “Four months of preparation. Father’s delivering the keynote, which means I can’t dodge it this year.”

“You’ve been skipping it?” G’raha asked.

“Two years running. Claimed illness once, emergency project deadline the second time. But if Father’s speaking...” She grimaced. “Mother will actually notice if I’m absent.”

They crossed the square toward their next lectures, G’raha positioning himself between Alisaie and the jostling crowd with practised ease. The walkway curved toward research wings where glass extensions jutted from ancient stonework like modern thoughts grafted onto classical philosophy. Well-dressed students swept past, their conversation dying as they recognised Alisaie, resuming in whispers once they’d passed.

“It might not be terrible,” G’raha offered.

“It’s four hours of watching Sharlayan’s elite congratulate themselves while students fade into background unless they’re from Forum families—it’s exactly terrible.”

“At least there’s food?”

“Tiny portions of things that look like food but taste like disappointment.” She kicked a stone toward a floating water feature. “And everyone asking if I’m Louisoix or Ameliance’s daughter, like I couldn’t possibly exist as myself.”

G’raha’s hand twitched toward her shoulder, then dropped. “You could stick with us. Safety in numbers.”

“Because that won’t draw more attention. The Leveilleur daughter slumming with scholarship students.”

“We’re not—“ Elysia started, finding her voice again.

“You know what I mean.” Alisaie’s frustration wasn’t really directed at them. The weight of watchful eyes from the square below seemed to press against her shoulders. “Everything I do reflects on them. Every choice gets scrutinised through the lens of family reputation.”

They’d reached the intersection where paths diverged, the Studium’s geometry branching before them. Bells chimed from somewhere high in the crystalline dome, notes hanging in salt-tinged air. G’raha hesitated, clearly wanting to offer comfort that wouldn’t be welcome.

“Theoretical Applications?” he asked Elysia instead, bouncing slightly while Alisaie checked her phone.

“If I survive it.”

“You will. You survived Louisoix.”

Had she? She could still feel the weight of his attention, the way he’d dissected her argument with surgical precision. The way his Hingan had been perfect, unexpected, devastating.

“Actually,” G’raha said, shifting his weight, “Louisoix did an internship teaching graduate seminars last year. Remarkable for someone his age—he’s only twenty-six.”

“Twenty-six?” Alisaie frowned. “And already faculty?”

“He’s brilliant but...” G’raha chose his words carefully. “Hard to approach. Everyone wants his attention. Students line up outside his office, senior faculty compete for collaboration, the Forum elite invite him to private dinners. He could have his pick of research partners or social connections, has little time to spare, rarely entertains discussion tangents in class.”

“Sounds delightful,” Alisaie murmured.

“The point is,” G’raha looked at Elysia, “he acknowledged what you said, in Hingan no less, when half the room couldn’t follow. That’s unusual.”

Wonderful. Marked as unusual by the professor who’d made her knees weak just by existing. Who spoke her native tongue like the upper-class boys she’d watched from afar in her youth. Who’d looked at her like he could see every hidden thought and found them wanting.

“I need to go,” she said abruptly, waving goodbye as they continued discussing the Forum dinner, Alisaie’s complaints mixing with G’raha’s gentle optimism.

The walk to Theoretical Applications gave her time to rebuild her armour piece by piece. Bigger problems existed than inconvenient attraction to someone who’d never see her as more than an ‘adequate’ student.

Yet settling into Lahabrea’s lecture on mathematical proofs, she found herself writing in her notebook’s margins: Binocular vision. Each eye sees differently… together they show depth.

He’d called it adequate, but he’d also waited for her answer, held the entire auditorium suspended while she found her words. That had to mean something.

It couldn’t mean anything. No.

She scratched through the words and forced focus onto Lahabrea’s equations, onto the scholarship requirements folded in her pocket, onto all the reasons she couldn’t afford distraction.

But her mind kept circling back to striking sapphire eyes and silver hair, to the way he’d said “adequate” like it physically pained him to offer even that much praise. To the way he’d looked at her in that final moment before dismissal, like she was a problem he hadn’t expected to encounter.

She’d felt attraction before—fleeting things, easily dismissed. But this was different. This was immediate and overwhelming, like being pulled into an undertow she hadn’t seen coming. And he was precisely the kind of person she couldn’t want: brilliant, untouchable, from a world that would never include her.

She was so thoroughly fucked. 

Chapter Text

Saturday broke over Scholar’s Harbour on salt‑wet wind: gulls keening, dockhands shouting over their first catch, laughter tumbling up from the plaza below. Here, in the city’s lower district, life pressed close in a way the pristine Studium never could. Immigrants like her had carved a corner of Sharlayan from grit and hunger and hope; uphill, scholars preferred to study that fact rather than live it. The taverns were shuttered at this hour, but the markets already surged—stalls bright with slick‑scaled fish and fruit still jewelled with dew.

“We have eggs,” G’raha announced, navigating the steep stone pathways with one hand pressed against the cliff wall whilst steering clear of early shoppers threatening to squeeze him against weathered stone. “And that bread from Thursday.”

“The bread’s gone solid as a brick.” Alisaie wrapped her coat tighter against the crisp air, her breath forming small clouds. “Besides, Elysia promised to bring me down here ages ago.”

“She promised to consider it,” G’raha corrected.

“Same thing.”

Elysia shifted her satchel against her hip. “Keep your hands on your wallets. We’re far from the Studium’s protection now.”

The market hall enveloped them in sensory assault—fresh-baked bread punctuated by exotic spices. Voices rose and fell in polyglot cacophony, at least six languages creating a constant backdrop of haggling and gossip.  

“Considerably louder than anticipated,” G’raha observed, moving closer to Alisaie as a heavily laden cart thundered past, filling the air with cinnamon and cardamom.

“Best prices at this hour.” Elysia examined apples with practiced eye, greeting the elderly Hingan seller in his native tongue, earning a genuine smile and subtle nod toward the choicest fruit.

“It’s absolutely perfect,” Alisaie breathed, her usual composure giving way to barely contained excitement as she moved toward a tea stall. “This is real Sharlayan. Not that museum piece up there.”

Despite her enthusiasm, inexperience showed. Elysia watched her navigate unfamiliar territory with determination and wide-eyed wonder, someone whose family’s wealth had never required such expeditions.

G’raha maintained careful observation, protective instincts warring with respect for Alisaie’s independence. Even his concerns couldn’t suppress the small smile as he watched her engage the tea merchant, hands gesturing expressively whilst examining tins.

“The merchant’s overcharging her,” Elysia murmured.

“How can you tell?”

“Local rate’s half what he’s quoting. See that chalk board? Tourist prices. Locals know to ask for real rates.”

G’raha tracked her gesture, then studied the stall in silence, eyes moving from the board to the exchange at the counter. “What should we do?”

Elysia weighed the queue and the vendor’s attention. “I need to haggle him down.”

G’raha didn’t answer at once. He looked back to the board, jaw tight, then to Alisaie. After a beat, he straightened. “Let me try.”

Elysia raised a brow.

His ears flicked back, but he held her gaze. “Alisaie refuses her family’s allowance. She insists on managing her own budget. If I could help those gil stretch further…”

Elysia heard everything he didn’t say—six months of careful attention to Alisaie’s needs.

“First, stand like you’re not about to defend a thesis.”

She spent the next twenty minutes coaching him through the basics—how to lean against stalls like you had nowhere urgent to be, how to examine goods with mild disinterest, how to walk away at the right moment. G’raha proved a quick study, though his natural politeness kept breaking through.

“You can’t apologise for haggling,” she explained after his third ‘sorry’ to a bemused fruit seller. “It’s expected. They factor it into prices.”

“Right. Expected.” He squared his shoulders, approached the tea merchant with studied casualness. “Morning. Bit dear for last season’s blend, isn’t it?”

The merchant launched into elaborate justification. G’raha listened, nodded, then offered half price with such genuine concern for the merchant’s wellbeing that the man actually laughed.

“Your friend’s got the words but not the music,” he told Elysia in Hannish. “Too honest.”

She replied in kind, her street-learned Hannish rough but effective. “He’s learning. Maybe give him a fair price? For entertainment value.”

The merchant grinned, named a number only slightly above local rate. G’raha, not understanding the exchange but recognising success, paid quickly before his luck changed.

“Did you see that?” He bounded back to Alisaie, who watched with amusement over the tins in her arms. “Proper haggling!”

“You apologised twice.”

“Only twice! Improvement!”

Alisaie laughed—genuine delight. “Next time try for once. We’ll make a local of you yet.”

The way G’raha’s face lit up at her approving smile made Elysia look away, giving them privacy in the crowded square. Which was why she noticed him first.

Themis Louisoix stood at a vegetable stall, maintaining perfect posture in a pressed coat of fine wool, the kind cut to fit by a tailor, not pulled from a rack. Silver buttons gleamed against dark fabric, and the gloss on his boots hadn’t yet scuffed from the harbour grit. The outfit probably cost more than her term’s expenses. But his shoulders held a fraction too rigid, and his gaze swept the stall’s offerings without really seeing them—the careful study of someone who had no idea what constituted a good tomato.

The vegetable vendor recognised it immediately, as did the surrounding crowds—some gaping and pointing like they’d struck gold, particularly the women clustering near adjacent stalls, craning their necks and whispering behind gloved hands. When the vendor spoke, Themis’s head tilted slightly, the polite attention of a man translating unfamiliar dialect in his head before responding. She watched the vendor’s weathered face split into a grin as he leaned forward, selecting the finest specimens from his display with theatrical care. He held up each tomato to the light, turning it slowly before placing it in a cloth bag with exaggerated reverence.

The quoted price would have fed Elysia for a week—for three tomatoes and a cabbage.

Themis reached for his wallet without hesitation, fingers steady as he counted out notes that looked freshly minted.

“Shit,” she muttered, her feet already moving before she’d made the conscious decision to intervene.

“Thirty for all that?” She inserted herself between Themis and the stall, switching to Thavnairian. Not the academic variant he’d probably studied, but the rough port dialect that marked her as someone who knew exactly what things should cost. “You trying to retire early?”

The vendor’s expression shifted, calculating. She leaned against his stall with practiced ease, examining vegetables critically.

“These tomatoes are yesterday’s at least.” She continued. “The cabbage is fine, but thirty? What would your mother say?”

“Twenty,” the vendor countered, recognising the game.

“Five.”

The vendor’s shoulders sagged.

“Eight, and only because you speak properly.”

She nodded, switched back to common tongue. “Eight gil, Professor. Fair price.”

Themis hadn’t moved throughout the entire exchange, watching her negotiate with an expression she couldn’t read. Now he carefully counted out exact change, accepted his vegetables, and turned that unreadable look on her fully.

“You know Thavnairian.”

“Enough to get by.”

Something shifted in his expression—surprise maybe, or interest. “Would you...” He paused, recalculating with precision. “That is, I should thank you. Perhaps coffee? There must be coffee nearby, if you have time.”

She nearly refused. Should have refused. But G’raha and Alisaie had caught up, and somehow agreeing became a group decision, and before she quite processed it they were sitting at what generously qualified as a café—three rickety tables crammed against the harbour wall, chairs that wobbled on uneven cobbles, and a tarp strung overhead that leaked in two places.

Themis ordered coffee with the same careful precision he probably used for citing sources, then sat perfectly straight on a chair with visible grease stains, managing not to touch the table’s sticky surface. 

Alisaie gave Elysia a knowing look which made her cheeks heat. She avoided Themis’s gaze and pretended to count her gil in her wallet, while Themis made small talk with a passing server. When the coffee arrived—thick as tar in chipped mugs—he took a sip and his eyes widened fractionally before he controlled his expression.

“Strong,” he managed, setting the mug down with deliberate care.

“It’s meant to wake up dock workers at four in the morning,” Elysia said, surprised by her steady voice. “Not exactly academic blend.”

“No, it’s… educational.” He took another sip, careful as if bracing for it, and she caught the flicker of a grimace before he masked it.

“I should introduce myself properly,” he said, setting the mug down neatly, fingertips resting against the chipped rim. “Themis Louisoix, Ancient History. Though I suspect you’re already aware.” His gaze lingered on Elysia, steady and expectant. “And you are?”

“Elysia Ishikawa.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, fingers lingering at her neck. “First year, Historical Linguistics.”

“Alisaie Leveilleur.” Alisaie leaned back in her chair, folding her arms. “First year, Theoretical Aetherology and Applied Mathematics.”

“Leveilleur,” Themis repeated, studying her face with familiar recognition. “Alphinaud’s twin. I have met him at several functions, though I don’t believe we’ve been formally introduced.”

Alisaie’s mouth curled. “Lucky you.”

“G’raha Tia,” G’raha said quickly, leaning in over the table to cut the tension. “First year graduate student, International Relations and Diplomatic History.”

Themis inclined his head before glancing to the side, out past the tables where vendors called their wares and children darted between stalls clutching copper coins. 

“I’ve never actually been,” he said, drawing his hands back from the table. “To a real market, I mean. I’ve read about them, of course—but seeing it...” He gestured at the sprawl of crates and haggling voices. “It’s far more alive than I expected.”

“How do you buy food?” Alisaie asked with typical directness.

“I... Don’t. Usually. The estate has—there are arrangements.”

“Servants,” Alisaie translated flatly. “Of course.”

G’raha kicked her under the table. She kicked back.

“But you’re here today,” Elysia said quietly, then caught herself. “I mean—what made you decide to?”

His attention focused on her. “Curiosity. My research touches on trade routes, commercial practices. It seemed... incomplete to study markets without experiencing one. Though I’ll admit, the execution proved more challenging than anticipated.” A self-deprecating smile touched his lips. “Apparently, perfect theory doesn’t account for vegetable vendors who can spot an easy mark.”

Something fluttered in her chest at that smile—genuine, not the polite mask he wore in lectures. “And how is it?” Elysia lifted her mug, the coffee warming her palms as she watched him over the rim. Heat crept up her neck at the way he leaned forward, as if her question mattered.

“Fascinating. The vendor raised prices specifically for me?”

“Your coat costs more than he makes in a month,” Alisaie pointed out. “Of course he did.”

“Brilliant.” He said it like he meant it, turning to Elysia with genuine interest. “And you,” he studied her, “Historical Linguistics makes perfect sense. And yet the accent emphasis. That was deliberate.”

It wasn’t really a question, but Elysia answered anyway. “Accents matter here. The academic Thavnairian you’re probably used to marks you as educated, distant. Street dialect suggests I’m from here—that I know people, know prices. Know who to complain to if someone’s being unfair.”

“Practical,” he murmured, with an enthusiasm that made her knees buckle. “Far more effective than theory.”

“Academic language still has its place,” G’raha offered diplomatically.

Themis angled a look at him. “When it clarifies, yes. Too often, though, it obfuscates. That vendor grasped Miss Ishikawa’s intent with more precision than a page of scholarly discourse would allow.”

“You’re lecturing,” Alisaie observed. “Saturday morning, no podium, and you’re still lecturing.”

He blinked, catching himself with a slightly sheepish expression. “Apologies. Occupational hazard, I’m afraid.”

“Don’t apologise,” Elysia said without thinking. “It’s interesting.”

He looked at her again, that intensity softened by something almost playful. “You find my inability to purchase vegetables interesting?”

Across the table, Alisaie raised her eyebrows at Elysia with a knowing smirk.

“I find—“ She stopped, reorganised. “Most professors wouldn’t admit to not knowing something. Especially not to students.”

“Would pretending knowledge serve better purpose? Besides,” his eyes held a glint of mischief, “if one can’t trust his students to rescue him from vegetable-related bankruptcy, what’s the point of teaching?”

Before she could suppress her smile, a familiar voice cut through the morning air.

“Professor Louisoix?” Alphinaud approached their table, flanked by two guards in pressed uniforms and an attendant who kept a respectful distance. His gaze swept the group before settling on Themis. “How unusual to see you in this side of the city. And Alisaie—what fortuitous timing!”

Themis glanced up with an easy smile. “Alphinaud.” A flick at his watch, barely past eight. “I thought it too early for bureaucrats to be making their rounds.” Elysia caught the shift in his tone, polite on the surface but carrying just enough edge to let his opinion through.

“I was seeing off Father’s guest at the harbour—the ambassador to the Black Shroud.” Alphinaud cupped a hand beside his mouth, the gesture more theatre than secrecy. “Odd fellow. Insisted on sailing instead of the airship.”

Themis offered a noncommittal hum, returning his attention to his coffee.

“Alphinaud.” Alisaie’s voice could have frosted glass. “Not fortuitous at all. We live nearby. You don’t.”

“About the Forum dinner—“

“No.”

“You haven’t heard—“

“Don’t need to. No.”

She pushed back her chair with sudden force, the scrape of wood snapping through the air. Rising to her feet, she fixed her brother with a hard stare.

“Father specifically requested—“ Alphinaud pressed.

“Father can specifically request my presence when he specifically remembers I exist outside of Forum dinners.” Her words struck like a blade as she turned on her heel. “We’re done here.”

Alisaie cut away toward the fishmongers, her stride quick, cloak tugged by the wind. G’raha faltered, torn between apology and impulse, then rose belatedly, offering Alphinaud a muted word before following after her.

Alphinaud’s hand curled into a fist at his side before smoothing over the buttons of his coat, composure reasserted by force. He watched them go with exasperation. “She’s impossible.”

Elysia set her empty mug back on the table, the soft thud breaking the tension. “She’s consistent,” she countered, surprising herself by speaking. “There’s a difference.”

He turned his attention to her, evaluating. “You’re the scholarship student. Elysia Ishikawa.”

Not a question. Of course he’d know—probably had her entire academic record memorised.

Alphinaud pulled out a chair, frowning slightly at the grime coating its surface. His attendant stepped forward immediately, producing a cloth to wipe it clean before he sat, returning his attention to Themis. “I attended your guest lecture on Allagan economics last year. Brilliant work.”

“Kind of you to say so.” Themis’s expression remained politely neutral, though his fingers tightened almost imperceptibly around his mug.

They fell into academic discussion that Elysia couldn’t quite follow—theoretical frameworks and Forum politics mixed with names she didn’t recognise. She should leave, follow her roommates, but something kept her seated. She found herself watching Themis instead, noting how his responses grew increasingly brief, how his coffee sat untouched as Alphinaud monopolised conversation. Her own mug warmed her hands as she waited for gaps in the discussion that never came.

“—of course, the Forum dinner provides excellent networking opportunities,” Alphinaud was saying. “Father always says proper connections matter more than pure academics.”

“Does he.” Themis’s tone had gone sharp.

“Oh, absolutely. Take Elysia’s situation. Exceptional test scores, certainly, but without proper backing...” He shrugged, the gesture somehow dismissive. “Well, scholarship students face unique challenges.”

“Such as?”

“Integration, primarily. Different background, different preparation. The Forum dinners, for instance. Does the scholarship cover appropriate attire? The unspoken protocols? These events shape careers, but they’re designed for those who already understand them.”

Elysia’s hands tightened on her coffee mug. He wasn’t wrong—she’d been dreading the dinner precisely because she had nothing suitable to wear, no idea what ‘Forum formal’ even meant. But hearing it stated so baldly, like her inadequacy was assumed fact...

“Interesting perspective,” Themis said lightly. His tone was smooth, almost courteous, but there was the faintest tilt at the edges of his smile. “You believe success depends on unspoken protocols rather than academic merit?”

“I believe they’re intertwined. Brilliance without proper presentation remains unrecognised.”

“And those without inherited understanding of ‘proper presentation’ should accept their limitation?”

Alphinaud laughed, missing the steel beneath the words. “Hardly limitation. Simply different paths. Scholarship students serve important purpose. They remind us that education should be accessible. But expecting them to compete at Forum level without proper background… well, it’s rather cruel, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Themis said softly. His gaze fixed on the worn wood of the table. “Cruelty does seem to be built into the system.”

The words landed like a stone in water. For the first time, Alphinaud’s polish faltered. He glanced at his watch with exaggerated surprise, the gesture edged with retreat. “I should go. Professor, a pleasure. Elysia…” His pause lingered a heartbeat too long, searching for the courtesy that no longer fit. “Good luck with your studies.”

He left them in silence that stretched until Elysia couldn’t bear it.

“He’s not wrong.”

“Do you honestly believe that?”

“I don’t have appropriate attire. I don’t know the protocols. I’ll attend because it’s mandatory, but I’ll spend the entire evening trying not to embarrass the institution that took a chance on me.” She stood, suddenly exhausted. “Thank you for the coffee.”

“Wait.” Themis rose as she moved to go, stepping close enough that she could see the dark flecks in his sapphire eyes. For a moment his brows drew faintly together, as though he might challenge the words she’d taken from Alphinaud. Then the tension eased, his focus narrowing on her instead.

“You helped me when you could have let me pay the tourist price. Why?”

The question caught her off guard. “I—because it was wrong.”

“The price?”

“The assumption. That because you could afford it, you deserved it. Markets have rules, codes. Taking advantage breaks them.”

“And the Forum dinner?” Themis’s voice carried a certain gravity. “The presumption that differing origins should bar one from entry? Is it not the same?”

Elysia faltered for a breath, the corner of her throat tightening before she steadied herself. She met his eyes, heat rising unbidden to her cheeks. “It isn’t that I think I don’t belong. It’s that I don’t yet know how to belong, and I would rather learn the rules than feign that I already do.” The admission left her feeling exposed, as if he’d cornered her into revealing something she hadn’t intended to share.

He studied her with careful attention. “You are far more compelling than your essays reveal, remarkable as they are.”

Before she could respond, Alisaie’s voice carried across the market: “Elysia! We’re leaving!”

“I should go.”

“Of course.” He gathered his overpriced vegetables with deliberate dignity, every movement neat, composed. “And thank you again, for your assistance at the market.”

She slipped away and found her roommates near the fishmongers, Alisaie gesticulating furiously while G’raha listened with the unshaken patience of someone long accustomed to her outbursts.

“—the absolute nerve! Fortuitous timing, as though I exist solely to receive his messages!”

“He means well,” G’raha offered.

“He means to manage. There’s a difference.” Alisaie caught sight of Elysia and softened her tone. “Sorry about that. Alphinaud has a talent for spoiling mornings.”

“It’s fine.”

“What did Louisoix want?” G’raha asked. “After we left?”

“To discuss the Forum dinner.” She shrugged, keeping her movements loose, as if that could disguise the unease lingering in her chest—the memory of standing exposed under his scrutiny, having admitted things she’d never said aloud.

“Ugh, that thing.” Alisaie kicked a loose stone. “Four months until we’re all paraded around like show ponies.”

“You’ll be fine,” G’raha assured her. “You know these events.”

“Knowing and wanting are different things.” She glanced at Elysia. “What about you? Have anything formal?”

“I’ll figure it out.”

Alisaie studied her with unexpected sharpness. “Right. Well, if you need to borrow anything...”

The offer, so genuinely meant, made Elysia’s throat tighten. “Thanks.”

They climbed back toward campus, revealing Sharlayan in layers—harbour below, Studium above, the whole city structured like visual metaphor for social hierarchy.

She thought about Themis in the market, brilliant and precise in equal measure. About the way he’d dissected Alphinaud’s words with surgical clarity while challenging her own assumptions with unexpected grace. About the dark flecks in sapphire eyes and how intently he’d studied her when she’d admitted her uncertainties.

That moment when he’d called her compelling—like he’d seen something in her she couldn’t see herself. As if her careful honesty were worth more than her polished essays.

She felt exposed in ways that had nothing to do with academic performance. And the way he’d said it, quiet, considered… maybe that wasn’t entirely bad.

Or maybe she was simply, utterly fucked.

Chapter Text

The Last Stand occupied a coveted corner of the Studium’s east wing, the only commercial establishment permitted within university walls. Steam from the espresso machine fogged the windows overlooking the square, where students hurried between lectures, collars turned against autumn wind.

Elysia nursed her usual—the house blend, cheapest on the menu—while Alisaie sprawled across the opposite chair, feet propped on an empty seat. Behind the counter, Hythlodaeus worked the machine with practiced ease, lavender braid swaying as he reached for clean cups. The afternoon rush had thinned, leaving only the dedicated studiers and gossips.

“You went completely rigid,” Alisaie said, not bothering to lower her voice. “Like someone had replaced you with a statue. Then when Louisoix asked about your interpretation of the Sundering texts—“ She mimicked Elysia’s stammering response with cruel accuracy.

Hythlodaeus glanced up from wiping down the steam wand. “The new Ancient History professor?” Something flickered across his violet eyes. Amusement, perhaps recognition.

“She’s besotted.” Alisaie stirred sugar into her latte with unnecessary vigour. “First time I’ve seen her lose composure over anyone.”

Heat crept up Elysia’s neck. With anyone else, she might have fled to the library stacks, but Hythlodaeus had a way of making mortification bearable. He’d kept their confidences before—about Alisaie’s failed fencing match, about Elysia’s scholarship review fears.

A shriek from the corner table cut through the cafe’s ambient noise. Three second-years huddled over a mobile phone, zooming in on what appeared to be a photograph taken from behind a lecture hall pillar.

“Is that his office hours schedule?” one whispered, though her volume defeated the purpose.

Hythlodaeus’s mouth quirked. “Poor Themis. Never did learn to handle that sort of attention.”

Alisaie’s eyebrows rose. “You know him?”

“We shared seminars during postgrad.” He pulled shots for a new order, movements unhurried. “Our families’ estates neighbour each other in Scholar’s Row. Summer garden parties, that sort of thing.”

Alisaie’s eyes gained a calculating gleam that made Elysia’s stomach drop.

“So.” Alisaie leaned forward on her elbows. “Does the perfect professor have someone, or are his standards impossibly high?”

Coffee went down the wrong way. Elysia coughed, eyes watering.

Hythlodaeus passed her a napkin, his laugh warm. “Themis has spent his life exceeding every expectation set before him. The Louisoix legacy incarnate—his ancestors probably toast him nightly from beyond.” The espresso machine hissed. “Makes for a rather narrow social calendar.”

The words settled like stones in Elysia’s chest. The Louisoix name carried weight even in her homeland’s slums, where Sharlayan meant distant excellence, unreachable scholarship. She pressed her thumb against the chip in her mug’s handle—a flaw the Last Stand’s other customers would never tolerate.

“Already disqualifying yourself?” Hythlodaeus’s tone was gentle but knowing.

She glared, though it lacked heat.

“Actually,” he continued, sliding a fresh latte toward Alisaie, “Themis mentioned your essay yesterday. The one on Sharlayan’s unexamined demographics.”

Both women straightened.

“He shared it at the faculty drinks. Called it ‘remarkable’—his word. Said he looked forward to your future insights.”

“G’raha mentioned that too.” Alisaie nudged Elysia’s shoulder. “The whole department’s talking about it. Imagine his reaction if you could actually speak in complete sentences around him.”

Elysia stared into her coffee’s dark surface. “How exactly does one recover from this?”

“You could try treating him like a person,” Hythlodaeus suggested, though his eyes danced with barely suppressed mirth. “Novel concept, I know.”

The corner girls erupted again, chairs scraping as they gathered their things, apparently having decoded Themis’s whereabouts for the afternoon.

“Or,” Alisaie said, watching them leave, “you could join his fan club. I’m sure they have matching badges by now.”

Elysia buried her face in her hands. Through her fingers, she caught Hythlodaeus and Alisaie exchanging a look—the kind that preceded their worst schemes.

“Don’t,” she warned.

Their innocent expressions fooled no one.

Days blurred together—essays bleeding into quizzes, exams into sleepless nights. Elysia had managed to reduce her stammering in Ancient History to occasional stumbles, though her stomach still performed acrobatics whenever Themis greeted her in the corridors. His casual “Good morning, Miss Ishikawa” invariably drew glares from the second-years who’d taken to lingering near his usual routes.

She’d even managed a proper debate last Tuesday, challenging his interpretation of Eastern oral traditions. The proud smile he’d given her had cost her a full night’s sleep.

Rain hammered the Studium windows as Elysia pushed into the Last Stand, two hours before the usual tea break rush. Warmth wrapped around her damp clothes, the familiar scent of coffee grounds promising refuge from both weather and coursework.

The cafe sat nearly empty. She approached the counter, scanning for Hythlodaeus, when movement in the corner caught her eye. Silver-white hair bent over papers, sapphire eyes focused on margins filled with red ink. Her stomach executed its now-familiar backflip.

“Your usual?” Hythlodaeus materialised beside the register, his tone suggesting he’d noticed exactly where her attention had landed.

She leaned across the counter. “Why is Professor Louisoix here?”

“People do occasionally venture beyond their offices.” He began preparing her coffee with theatrical precision. “Revolutionary concept, I know.”

“But G’raha said he always—“

“Joined the fan club’s intelligence network, have we?”

“No.” Warmth bloomed across her cheeks. “I just meant—“

“The man deserves better company than four walls and student essays.” Hythlodaeus slid her mug across the counter.

Elysia turned to survey the room, frowning. Despite the sparse crowd, yellow reserved cards marked every table. “Large group coming?”

“Something like that.” Hythlodaeus lifted a tray laden with pastries and an elaborate coffee service, moving toward Themis’s corner. “Unfortunately, no free tables. Though some people might not mind sharing.”

She had no choice but to follow, clutching her mug and balancing an armload of books against her hip.

Themis looked up at their approach, his professional smile warming into something more genuine. “About time I took you up on the invitation.”

“Empty offices have their charm, but occasionally one needs actual atmosphere.” Hythlodaeus set the tray down on a table clearly meant for four. Themis’s leather satchel occupied the opposite bench. “You know Elysia, of course?”

Themis rose upon noticing her. “Miss Ishikawa. Please, join me if you’d like. Unless you’d prefer—“

“No, I—thank you, Professor.” 

He gathered his scattered papers into neat piles, though this still left only the space beside him on his bench. The opposite side remained claimed by his bag and books.

Elysia perched on the bench’s edge, maintaining what she hoped was appropriate distance. Her satchel—worn leather with a broken buckle she kept meaning to fix—looked shabby beside his.

“Sorry for imposing.”

“Not at all.” He’d shifted closer to the window, giving her more room while returning his attention to the paper before him. 

She pulled out her Eastern Mythology text, trying to focus on tomorrow’s reading. The words swam. She was acutely aware of his breathing, the scratch of his pen, the way the cafe light caught the silver in his hair.

“Ambitious topic.” His voice made her jump. He nodded toward her open page. “The flood myths. Most students avoid the comparative analysis.”

“It’s fascinating how the same story appears across unconnected cultures.”

“With crucial variations.” He set down his pen. “The Hingashi version has the gods weeping, while the Doman account—“

“Makes it an act of divine rage.” The words came easier when focused on academics. “But both include the single survivor who rebuilds.”

“Hope persisting through catastrophe.” Rain streaked the window beside them. “Rather fitting for a day like this.”

She smiled despite herself. “Though I doubt we’ll need an ark.”

“The term papers I’m grading might qualify as their own flood.” He gestured at the stack. “First-years discovering they can’t simply summarise the textbook.”

“We’re not all that bad.”

“No.” He picked up his pen again. “Some write remarkable essays on Sharlayan’s unexamined assumptions.”

The compliment hung between them. Elysia stared at her textbook, warmth spreading through her chest.

Hythlodaeus appeared with fresh coffee, setting it down with a knowing look before vanishing again. The reserved signs on other tables hadn’t attracted any groups. The cafe remained theirs, filled with rain-sound and the comfortable scratch of pen on paper.

Two days later, rain lashed the windows again. Elysia pushed through the Last Stand’s door at the same early hour, shaking droplets from her inadequate umbrella. Her eyes found the corner table immediately—silver hair bent over papers, the same focused concentration.

She forced herself to approach the counter casually, as if she hadn’t noticed him.

“The usual?” Hythlodaeus’s cheerfulness bordered on suspicious.

“Please.” She accepted her mug, turned to find a seat, and stopped. Yellow reserved cards decorated every empty table. Again.

“No free tables,” she said flatly. “Again.”

“Large group coming.” His violet eyes sparkled with barely suppressed mischief. “Any moment now. Though I’m certain Themis wouldn’t mind—“

“Miss Ishikawa.” Themis had looked up, taking in the reserved signs with a slight frown. “Please, join me. No sense standing about waiting for tables that may not free up.”

She caught Hythlodaeus’s wink as she crossed to the corner. No large group existed. She’d stake her scholarship on it.

“You’re soaked.” Themis pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, pristine white with embroidered edges. “Please. Half your class is down with colds.”

“It’s fine, Professor. It’ll dry—“

“I insist.” The concern in his eyes made refusal impossible.

She took the handkerchief, patting the worst of the rain from her hair while acutely aware of his attention. When she smiled her thanks—too eager, definitely too eager—he returned it before turning back to his book.

She spread her materials across the available space, falling into the familiar rhythm of cross-referencing articles with historical texts. The rain drummed steadily. Lo-fi music drifted from hidden speakers. Across the cafe, two graduate students argued quietly over diagrams. Hythlodaeus read behind the counter, occasionally turning pages.

Hours dissolved. Her eyelids grew heavy. Too many late nights maintaining her grades, proving she belonged here. The words began to blur. Her head drooped sideways.

She jerked awake at the contact with something solid and warm. Themis’s shoulder. Heat flooded her face as she straightened.

“I—sorry, Professor.”

He blinked, colour rising in his own cheeks. “No, that’s—quite alright.” A pause. “Perhaps you need rest.”

“Yeah.” She began gathering her books. “Good idea.”

“Wait.” He turned pages in his text. “I might have something to keep you awake. I’d been meaning to ask your perspective on this.”

She leaned closer, scanning the page. Her exhaustion evaporated. “The Lost Emperor of Doma.” Her finger traced the familiar text. “I wrote about this last term for Professor Gaia’s class.”

“Most scholars believe he existed but was erased from records.”

“Do you have the original Doman text here? Not the translation?”

Themis flipped several pages, presenting columns of ancient script. “You’ve compared versions?”

“I spent weeks on it.” She pulled the book closer, their shoulders nearly touching. “Look. These honorifics. ‘Divine-who-walks’ and ‘heaven-touched sovereign.’ I cross-referenced them with the Imperial Archive manuscripts. They weren’t invented until the Fifth Dynasty—two hundred years after this emperor supposedly lived.”

Themis leaned in, following her finger across the characters. “Anachronistic language.”

“That’s what convinced me. But also this character.” She pointed to a complex symbol. “His supposed personal seal. It contains the radical for ‘autumn harvest.’ No Doman emperor would ever use that—autumn was the dying season, unlucky for imperial names. Only merchants used autumn-radicals, for accounting purposes.”

“You’re suggesting the Lost Emperor never existed?”

“Someone in the Fifth Dynasty invented him. Probably court historians who needed to explain a gap in the records.” She looked up, found him watching her intently. “They used their contemporary language and accidentally included merchant-class writing conventions because they were probably copying from trade documents to make it seem authentic.”

“But the gap in succession records—“

“I checked the agricultural surveys. The ‘lost reign’ perfectly matches three years of drought. The court likely went into exile, and later historians were too embarrassed to admit the empire briefly collapsed, so they invented a convenient scapegoat emperor.”

“Remarkable.” Something shifted in his expression, surprise melting into something warmer. “You spent weeks researching this for an undergraduate essay?”

“Professor Gaia said I was overthinking it.”

“Overthinking?” He closed the book carefully. “You’ve just provided more convincing evidence than most doctoral dissertations on the subject. The linguistic analysis alone could be a journal article.”

Her face burned at the praise. She fidgeted with her pen, unable to meet his eyes. “It’s just practical. History isn’t just what nobles write down.”

“No,” he agreed quietly. “It isn’t.”

They sat in comfortable silence until he reached for his bag. “Do you usually come here at this hour?”

“When I can.” She stood, gathering the rest of her things. “It’s quiet.”

“Then I’ll see you Tuesday.” He rose as well, organising his papers with practiced efficiency. “And please, no need to hunt for tables. You’re welcome to share mine.” A smile played at his lips. “Besides, your presence might discourage some of the more persistent questions about my office hours and weekend plans.”

She mustered her confidence, meeting his eyes directly. “Using me as a shield against your admirers?”

“Mutual benefit. You get a table, I get to discuss actual scholarship.” He adjusted the strap of his satchel. “Tuesday, then?”

She nodded, watching him stop at the counter to speak with Hythlodaeus. Whatever Themis said made Hythlodaeus glance her way, his grin widening with obvious satisfaction.

The reserved signs would mysteriously vanish by Tuesday.

By the third week, their corner table had become routine. The stammering that once paralysed Elysia had faded—first to occasional hesitation when he smiled at her, then to nothing at all. Last Monday, she’d interrupted him mid-sentence to point out a dating inconsistency in the text he was citing. On Wednesday, when he’d mispronounced an Eastern place name, she’d corrected him without thinking twice, and he’d laughed—actually laughed—at his own mistake.

In lectures, she’d stopped hiding behind her notebook. When he posed questions to the class, her hand rose alongside others, no longer waiting to be certain everyone else was wrong first. He’d call on her—“Miss Ishikawa, your thoughts?”—without the careful neutrality he’d once maintained. Last week, when she’d challenged his interpretation of the Allagan succession crisis, he’d devoted twenty minutes to the debate, eyes bright with genuine interest. The second-years had glared daggers at her afterward, but she’d been too elated to care.

She’d begun to notice things about him—how his shoulders relaxed the moment he entered the cafe, away from the second-years who “accidentally” bumped into him in corridors with questions about assignments not due for weeks. How he’d taken to arriving fifteen minutes earlier, claiming he needed the quiet. Yesterday, when a cluster of faculty wives had cornered him near the entrance, their voices carrying (“Oh, Professor Louisoix, you simply must judge our charity auction!”), he’d looked genuinely trapped. She’d invented an urgent translation question that required immediate discussion. The grateful look he’d given her had warmed her for hours.

He no longer felt like an untouchable figure from academic legend but someone who brought an extra pastry because he’d noticed she skipped breakfast on Tuesdays, who remembered she took her coffee with one sugar when stressed and black when focused, who saved interesting articles he’d casually mention as “things you might appreciate.” She’d stopped checking her appearance in every reflective surface before entering the cafe, stopped rehearsing potential conversations during her morning shower. Their discussions had become something she looked forward to rather than feared.

The autumn sun broke through clouds for the first time in days, warming their corner. Elysia chewed her pen cap while wrestling with her Thavnairian essay, occasionally glancing at Themis’s stack of papers. Red ink covered most of them.

“First years?” she asked.

“Second.” He rubbed his temple. “Somehow worse. They think citing Wikipedia in footnotes makes it academic.”

She winced sympathetically, then returned to her own work. The Thavnairian text swam before her eyes.

“This makes no sense.” She pushed the paper toward him. “The same passage uses three different terms for what seems to be the same thing—‘dominance,’ ‘ownership,’ and ‘guardianship.’ My translation guide says they’re interchangeable.”

He set down his marking to examine her work. “What’s the context?”

“Third Era trade agreements. Professor Mitron wants us to analyse the spice war declarations.”

“Ah.” He pulled the paper closer. “Those aren’t synonyms at all. The confusion is historical, not linguistic.”

“But Archon Moenbryda’s translation—“

“Moenbryda was brilliant, but she translated before we understood Thavnairian merchant culture.” He pointed to the three terms. “These describe completely different commercial relationships. ‘Dominance’ meant exclusive trading rights. ‘Ownership’ referred to warehouse districts. ‘Guardianship’ indicated protection contracts for merchant vessels.”

“So when the text says Radz-at-Han established dominance over the cinnamon routes...”

“They negotiated exclusive supplier contracts. Not military conquest.” He sketched a quick timeline on her scratch paper. “The Third Era Thavnairians were merchants first. What generations of scholars interpreted as warfare was actually commercial expansion.”

Understanding dawned. “That’s why the narrative seems contradictory. They’re not describing battles, they’re describing trade negotiations.”

“Exactly. The maritime records discovered last decade confirm it, but most textbooks haven’t updated yet.”

She crossed out entire paragraphs, mind racing. “Professor Mitron still teaches the conquest theory.”

“Mitron’s entitled to his interpretation.” His diplomatic tone suggested opinions he wouldn’t voice.

“Even when that interpretation is completely wrong?”

“Academic disagreement can be healthy. Though you might want to cite the maritime records directly. Harder to dispute primary sources.”

She pulled up the library database. “Of course they’re in Old Thavnairian.”

“There are recent translations in the restricted section. Actual merchant guides, not Moenbryda’s creative interpretations.” He glanced at his watch. “I could write you a reference slip if you need access.”

“You’d do that?”

“Historical accuracy matters.” A smile tugged at his lips. “Besides, watching Mitron try to argue against primary sources might be entertaining.”

She laughed, forgetting to be nervous. “That’s surprisingly petty of you.”

“Correcting decades of misunderstanding isn’t petty. It’s a public service.”

The cafe door chimed. Alisaie burst through with G’raha trailing behind, his arms full of books.

“Elysia! Perfect. G’raha needs your Eastern Mythology notes and—“ She stopped, taking in the scene—Elysia and Themis bent over the same paper, shoulders nearly touching, both smiling like conspirators.

G’raha’s eyes widened. “Professor Louisoix. We didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Not at all.” Themis straightened, though colour touched his cheeks. “Miss Ishikawa was just showing me how Moenbryda’s translations have been misleading students for years.”

“She was correcting the great Moenbryda?” Alisaie’s eyebrows climbed.

“The maritime records reframe everything about Third Era trade,” Elysia said, trying to sound casual despite her burning face. “Professor Louisoix was explaining the historical context.”

“Fascinating,” Alisaie said in a tone suggesting otherwise. She dropped into an empty chair. “Don’t let us disturb your... historical discussion.”

G’raha remained standing, looking between them with growing delight. “Actually, if you’re discussing Thavnairian history, I’m writing about their influence on Corvosi architecture—“

“The temple designs?” Themis leaned forward. “I’ve always wondered why they used maritime navigation patterns in religious buildings.”

“Exactly! The geometric ratios match their star charts, not their sacred texts.”

And suddenly they were all talking—G’raha sketching diagrams on napkins, Alisaie challenging assumptions with sharp wit, Themis offering historical context that reframed everything. Elysia found herself debating freely, the nervous energy that once paralysed her completely forgotten.

“You’re all mad,” Alisaie declared after G’raha suggested the temples were actually astronomical calculators. “Next you’ll claim the Garlean Empire was founded by pacifist poets.”

“Well,” Themis said with mock seriousness, “the early Garlean Empire did execute citizens who couldn’t maintain proper rhyme scheme in court testimony.”

Elysia choked on her coffee. “You’re joking.”

“Absolutely true. Three failed couplets meant the gallows.”

“That can’t be real,” G’raha protested, already pulling up the library database.

“Archive section, restricted collection.” Themis’s expression remained perfectly deadpan. “Volume twelve, chapter six.”

“I’m checking that right now.” G’raha was frantically typing. “Wait, this just says ‘Sheep Farming in Northern Territories—‘ Professor!”

“I can’t believe you fell for that,” Alisaie said, hauling the still-protesting G’raha to his feet. “Come on, we have fencing practice.” She paused, looking between Themis and Elysia with undisguised interest. “We’ll leave you two to your... collaborative research.”

The meaningful look she gave Elysia promised future interrogation.

After they left, silence settled. Elysia became acutely aware they were alone again, that she’d spent the last hour treating him like a colleague rather than a professor, that he’d let her.

“I should write that reference slip,” Themis said, not moving.

“Right. For the maritime records.”

“For your essay.”

“The essay. Yes.”

She glanced up just as he did. They both quickly found other things to study—she became fascinated by her laptop keyboard, he by the stack of papers he’d already organised twice.

“Same time Thursday?” he asked.

“I’ll be here.”

He gathered his things with unusual slowness. She stood to let him out, stepping back from the table. He moved toward the door, then stopped halfway across the café. His shoulders shifted slightly.

“These discussions have been… I’d forgotten how invigorating it is to debate with someone who sees past the conventional answers. It’s brilliant.”

The words hung in the quiet space. Before she could respond, he was moving again, pushing through the door into the autumn wind.

She settled back onto the bench, staring at her laptop screen. The cursor blinked against unfinished sentences. Through the window’s reflection, she caught sight of her own face—cheeks still warm, an involuntary smile she hadn’t noticed forming.

Her fingers found the keyboard. For the first time in months, the words came easily.

Chapter Text

The Great Gubal Library at two in the morning held a particular quality of silence—not empty but expectant, as if the leather-bound spines themselves were drawing breath. Elysia had claimed her usual spot on the third floor, a secluded table surrounded by shelves of statistical analysis texts that might as well have been written in ancient Allagan for all the sense they made at this hour. Professor Venat’s script lay before her, its symbols swimming together as her second coffee lost its battle against exhaustion. Her pen tapped against her notebook in restless staccato that echoed in the vast space.

Three floors above, Themis was grading. She’d seen him arrive two hours ago through the main doors, arms full of papers, wool coat still damp from the mist outside, looking as perfectly composed as if it were noon rather than midnight. He’d paused at the side exit door leading to the stairwell. Their eyes had met across the distance—a moment suspended, his gaze holding hers with an intensity that made her forget to breathe. A half-smile, barely there, then he’d disappeared through the door. The knowledge of his presence created weight in her chest, a gravitational pull she kept trying to ignore by pressing her pen harder against the page. Even after weeks of lectures, corridor greetings, and those careful conversations at the Last Stand where they’d sit just close enough for their knees to almost touch, her pulse still quickened at the thought of him.

“This is ridiculous,” Alisaie muttered from across the table, where she’d been attacking the same economic theorem for twenty minutes. Her usually pristine notes lay scattered like casualties of war, one sheet bearing the wrinkled evidence of her grip. “Who needs supply chain logistics at this level of detail?”

“Someone whose family owns half the shipping routes in Eorzea?” G’raha suggested mildly, not looking up. His hand moved steadily across the page, but Elysia noticed he’d been filling in the same formula for the past five minutes, the ink growing darker with each repetitive stroke.

“Exactly why I don’t need to know it. That’s what accountants are for.” Alisaie stretched, her chair creaking in protest.

“Compelling argument.” His pen continued its steady movement. “Except you’re too stubborn to trust anyone else’s calculations.”

Alisaie’s head snapped up, ready to argue, but the lights flickered.

Once. The overhead fluorescents buzzed like dying insects, dimmed to half their brightness.

Twice. A strange clicking from the electrical panels, metallic and wrong.

Then darkness, complete and sudden, pressing against them like a physical weight.

“Nobody move,” G’raha’s voice came immediately, steady despite his quickened breathing. “Emergency protocols will kick in any second.”

Red emergency lighting sputtered to life along the baseboards, casting everything in hellish shadows that turned familiar spaces alien. The bookshelves loomed like monoliths, their shadows stretching and warping across the floor. The ancient heating pipes groaned in the walls, a sound like the building itself protesting. Then came mechanical sounds—heavy clicks echoing through the building like bones breaking.

“What was that?” Elysia’s hand found the table’s edge, gripping hard enough to feel the grain of the wood bite into her palm.

“Exit seals,” Alisaie said, voice tight. She was already standing, her chair scraping loud in the darkness. “Security measure. If there’s a power failure, they lock down to prevent theft of rare texts.” She moved toward the main doors, footsteps sharp and too quick, almost running. “We need to get out before—“

A solid thunk reverberated through the floor, felt as much as heard, like a giant’s fist striking stone.

“Too late,” G’raha said. His phone’s torch clicked on, the beam cutting through the red-tinged darkness as he swept it across the space. Empty except for them—the other study carrels abandoned, chairs pushed back as if their occupants had fled. “The main doors are sealed.”

“The manual overrides?” Alisaie’s breath came in short bursts, her control fraying at the edges.

“Under maintenance this week. I saw the notice yesterday.” G’raha’s light found the side exit, the door standing like a mouth in the wall. “The stairwells will be completely sealed too. Safety measure to—“

“To trap people,” Alisaie finished. In the phone’s harsh white light mixing with the red emergency glow, her knuckles showed bone-white where she gripped her own arms. “Right. Wonderful.”

“How long until maintenance arrives?” Elysia asked, already knowing the answer would be bad.

“Friday overnight shift? Could be hours.”

Elysia moved toward the side exit where she’d last seen Themis, navigating carefully between tables and shelves. Her hands traced the furniture edges for guidance as the red lights grew dimmer in this corner of the library, as if the emergency system had forgotten this particular alcove existed. By the time she reached the door, darkness had thickened to the consistency of tar. Her hands traced the walls, feeling the cold stone beneath layers of paint, finding the door frame’s smooth metal edge.

The sliding glass door stood partially open—a small mercy, just enough space for a body to slip through. She turned sideways and squeezed into the gap, the glass cold against her back, the metal frame catching at her clothes.

The door hissed along its track and sealed shut behind her with a soft pneumatic thud, final as a tomb closing.

Her eyes struggled to adjust to the near-complete darkness. The emergency lights here were even weaker, just a faint red glow from a single strip near the floor. Her fingers found concrete where the downward stairs should have been—already sealed, the barrier cold and implacable. Her heart sank as she traced the wall toward where the upward staircase should be, the stone rough beneath her fingertips. But her hand met fabric instead—soft wool, warm, alive.

She gasped.

The emergency lights flickered, strengthened slightly, and Themis materialised from the darkness like a revelation. He stood with his back to what should have been the upward stairs, now blocked by another concrete barrier. His usually perfect appearance had cracked—wool coat hanging open and askew, sleeves pushed up unevenly, that strand of silver hair falling across his forehead in a way that made him look less composed, more human.

“Professor?” Her voice cracked on the title.

“Miss Ishikawa.” His voice held no tension despite their predicament, though she caught the slight widening of his eyes, the way his hand had jerked back from where she’d touched it. “It seems we’ve both been caught by the security protocols.”

The space measured perhaps eight feet by four—she could tell now that her eyes were adjusting. Stone walls on three sides still held the day’s cold, making the air sharp in her lungs. The glass door behind her led back to the library room, now locked tight. A small window punctuated the opposite wall, too high and narrow to offer escape but letting in a sliver of moonlight that caught the silver in his hair. They were trapped in this concrete purgatory with so little space she could smell everything about him—his cologne (something expensive, with notes of cedar and sage), the coffee on his breath, paper and ink on his clothes, and underneath it all, something warmer, distinctly masculine, essentially him.

“Your friends?” he asked, and she noticed how his usually artful dishevelment had become genuine—that strand of hair he kept pushing back only to have it fall again.

“Trapped in the library.” She tried the door mechanism though she knew it was pointless, needed to do something with her hands. The metal burned cold against her palm, already frosting with condensation. “These won’t budge until power’s restored.”

“Ah.” The sound carried layers—resignation, discomfort, and something that might have been curiosity about their forced proximity, or perhaps worry about the propriety of it all.

They stood in awkward silence for a moment, bodies carefully angled away from each other in the small space, both hyperaware of every breath, every small movement that might bring them closer. The air between them felt charged, crackling with unspoken things. Then both spoke at once:

“I suppose we should—“

“Should we try—“

They stopped. In daylight, in a classroom, this would be nothing—a simple social awkwardness to laugh away. But here, in this strange red twilight with shadows moving across his face like living things, the normal scripts had dissolved.

“Sitting might be wise,” Themis said finally, his formal tone at odds with how he was already sliding down the wall, expensive wool coat catching on rough stone with a sound like a sigh. “Conserve energy. We don’t know how long...” He trailed off, then began shrugging out of his coat with movements made clumsy by the confined space. “You’ll be cold. The temperature will drop without the heating system.”

“I’m fine—“

“Take it.” Not a request. The coat landed beside her, still warm from his body, carrying his scent like a secret.

They settled on opposite sides of the narrow space, backs against stone walls. The floor was ice-cold even through her jeans. She pulled his coat around her shoulders, the silk lining whispering against her neck, breathing in wool and cedar and him. The darkness was nearly complete now, emergency lights providing only the faintest red outline of shapes. She could hear him breathing—controlled but not quite steady, each exhale slightly too long, as if he was counting them.

“Does this happen often?” His voice emerged from the darkness lower than usual, rougher, as if the darkness had stripped away some layer of polish.

“The power failures? Every few months. Usually during storms, but tonight...” She shrugged, though he couldn’t see it. The movement sent dust motes dancing into the faint red light, tiny particles catching and swirling like snow. “Budget cuts, probably. The city keeps promising infrastructure updates.”

“I meant students being trapped.”

“Oh.” She pulled her knees up, his coat large enough to tent over them completely. “No, most people know to avoid the side stairwells after midnight. The main stairs stay accessible—different locking mechanism.” She traced a pattern on her knee through the coat fabric. “The building’s old. Original Sharlayan construction. These were servant stairs once, back when the library had live-in staff.”

“Yet you came here.”

The words triggered memory—that harbour café, his questions drawing admissions she hadn’t meant to share about learning to belong rather than pretending she already did.

“I was checking on you.” The darkness made confession easier, like speaking into the void. “I mean—checking if you were affected. By the outage.”

Silence stretched between them, but not uncomfortable. The darkness created its own strange intimacy, as if they existed outside normal time and space. Fabric rustled as he shifted—the expensive cotton of his shirt, the whisper of wool trousers against stone. The warmth of another body in the small space was almost palpable, raising the temperature degree by degree.

“I’ve been coming here since I was five,” Themis said suddenly. The words seemed to surprise him. She heard it in the slight catch of his breath after, as if he hadn’t meant to speak. “My parents would bring me to the children’s reading room on Saturdays. They’d leave me there while they worked in their offices upstairs. But I’d sneak up to the real collections. Got caught in Restricted Texts when I was seven, reading about Allagan summoning theory.”

“At seven?”

“I was a peculiar child.” A pause, then soft laughter that she’d never heard from him before—self-deprecating and oddly young, almost boyish. “Am a peculiar adult, I suppose.”

“Focused,” she corrected without thinking. “Driven.”

“Isolated.” The word dropped between them like a stone in still water, ripples spreading outward. His breathing shifted, became less controlled, more vulnerable.

“By choice?” she asked carefully.

“By necessity, I thought. Excellence requires...” He trailed off, and she heard his head make a soft thunk against the wall. “When did you first come here? To Sharlayan?”

“Sixteen.” She pulled her knees tighter, arms wrapped around them, making herself smaller. “I’d won the provisional scholarship—a year of advanced secondary preparation. Had to pass equivalency exams to even qualify for university applications later.”

“Sixteen is young to be alone in a foreign city.”

“Fifteen when I left home, actually. The scholarship process took months.” She rested her chin on her knees, tasting memory like copper on her tongue. “The bookshops near the docks were warm. Had clean bathrooms. Security who’d let you stay if you were quiet, if you bought something small every few hours.”

She heard him shift, shirt rustling against stone. Moving closer, though still not touching. The space between them decreased by inches. “You were homeless?”

“Temporarily displaced.” The social worker’s euphemism tasted bitter even now. “The stipend covered a hostel bed three nights a week. Bookshops covered the rest. 

Another shift. Definitely closer now. She could feel heat radiating from him in the small space, warming the air between them. “I’m sorry.”

“For what? It worked. Passed the exams, got the certification.” Her laugh came out sharp, brittle. “Went back to Kugane after, finished regular secondary school during days, worked the docks at night. Saved everything for five years. Applied here with bigger dreams.”

“You went back? After that year?”

“Had to. The prep year just proved I could handle Sharlayan academics. Still needed proper credentials, money for university.” She stretched her legs out slowly, carefully in the small space. Her foot bumped his shoe—expensive leather against her worn trainers. Neither moved away. The contact point burned with awareness. “That year taught me survival. Mrs Takahashi made premium ginseng soup when I got back. Used a week’s food budget. She cried when she saw how thin I’d gotten.” The memory warmed her more than his coat. “Worth it.”

“Was it?”

The question surprised her with its intensity. She turned toward his voice in the darkness. “Of course. I’m here.”

“So am I,” he said quietly. “Born here. Could read before I could walk. Declared prodigy at seven. Published at fifteen. Doctorate at twenty-two. Youngest professor in Studium history.” His breath shuddered, and she realised with a start that his perfect control was cracking like ice in spring. “And sitting in this concrete cage, realising I’ve never actually chosen anything. Not once.”

The words hung between them, heavy with years of unspoken weight. She shifted slightly, her shoulder finding the wall closer to him, closing distance without quite touching.

“You chose to teach.”

“My family chose. The institution chose. I excelled, so I advanced. Excellence became expectation became obligation.” His voice dropped to barely audible, she had to lean closer to hear. “Did you know I’ve never been anywhere without academic purpose? Never travelled without a conference to attend? That market, with you—first time I’d bought my own groceries. Twenty-six years old and I didn’t know how to pick produce.”

The confession hurt to hear. The space between them felt charged, electric with possibility and impossibility in equal measure.

“But you’re brilliant.”

“I’m programmed. There’s a difference.”

They sat in silence, processing admissions that daylight would never allow. The darkness was permission, absolution, a confessional where professor and student ceased to exist, leaving only two people carrying their separate wounds.

“I dream about failing,” Elysia said suddenly, the words pulling from her throat like fishhooks. “Every night. Show up without assignments. Forget exams. Lose my scholarship over something stupid—wearing the wrong shoes, using the wrong fork at a formal dinner.” Her laugh cracked in the middle. “Wake up at three, four in the morning, checking my grades online, making sure they’re still perfect.”

“What would happen? If you did fail?”

“I’d go back. To nothing. To being forgotten except as a cautionary tale about reaching too high. The dock girl who thought she could be a scholar.”

“And that terrifies you.”

“Doesn’t it terrify you?”

“No.” His voice was soft, almost wondering. “What terrifies me is succeeding forever. Never stopping. Never choosing. Just perpetually meeting expectations until—“ He stopped.

“Until what?”

“Until I’m too old to have actually lived. Until I wake up at sixty and realise I’ve never done a single thing that wasn’t expected of me.”

The emergency lights flickered, strengthened slightly. Still dim, but enough now to make out shapes, suggestions of features. They’d shifted during conversation without realising it, close enough now that she could see his profile—the sharp line of his nose, silver hair catching red light like blood on snow, the way his throat worked when he swallowed.

“Your parents must be proud,” she offered, not sure why she was prolonging this painful excavation of truths.

“Ecstatic. Their prodigy son, following the prescribed path to institutional glory.” Bitterness cut through his tone like a blade. “Yours?”

“Dead.”

His head turned sharply toward her. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. They died when I was young. Honestly, it simplified things. No expectations to fail, no one to disappoint.”

“That’s a terrible thing to be grateful for.”

“Most of my gratitudes are terrible.” She pulled his coat tighter, burying her nose in the collar. “Grateful for hunger—it drove me. Grateful for loneliness—no distractions. Grateful for not fitting in—had to work harder.”

“Do you ever wonder who you’d be without the struggle?”

“Happier. Definitely stupider.” She caught his eyes in the dim light. They looked darker, pupils blown wide in the darkness. “Do you wonder who you’d be with it?”

“Every day.” Raw honesty in his voice. “Whether struggle makes you real. Whether comfort makes you hollow.”

The admission hung between them. His hand rested on his knee, pale in the red light, close enough that if she just shifted slightly...

Somewhere in the building, G’raha was keeping Alisaie steady through her building panic. The darkness pressed in from all sides, making her chest tight, her breathing shallow.

“Hey.” His voice cut through the black, closer than she’d expected. “Focus on me. Just my voice.”

“I can’t—“ Her breath hitched. “It’s too dark, too small—“

“Give me your hand.”

She reached out blindly, fingers shaking, until his hand caught hers. Warm. Solid. He pulled her against him without hesitation, arm wrapping around her waist to hold her steady.

“Breathe with me.” His chest rose and fell against her back, a rhythm she could follow. “In. Out. That’s it.”

She should have pulled away. Should have been mortified at the intimacy, the way she was pressed against him. But the panic was receding, replaced by something else entirely—the realisation that G’raha’s hands were steady, sure, nothing like his usual careful distance.

“Better?” His breath stirred her hair.

She nodded, not trusting her voice. His arm tightened briefly before loosening, giving her the option to step away. She didn’t take it.

“Want to hear something ridiculous?” His voice had dropped lower, meant only for her. “About ancient Allagan architecture?”

“You’re really going to lecture me now?”

“They built forty-floor towers instead of roads. Thought walking was beneath them.”

Despite everything, she laughed—shaky but real. “That’s terrible.”

“I have worse.”

But she was already turning in his arms to face him, barely visible in the emergency lighting. Something had shifted in those moments—his hands on her waist, the way he’d taken charge without question. The careful, nervous G’raha she knew had been replaced by someone else entirely.

Someone who was still holding her like she might disappear.

Back in the stairwell, Themis was saying, “I’ve been watching you. In class, I mean.” He sounded almost embarrassed by the admission. “The way you take notes. You write in three languages simultaneously, switching mid-sentence sometimes.”

“I think in three languages.” She was acutely aware of proximity now, could see fine lines around his eyes that suggested he smiled more than she’d ever witnessed in public. “It’s not intentional. My brain just... switches, depending on which language has the better word for what I’m thinking.”

“You see patterns across cultures. Your mind makes connections pure academic training doesn’t create.”

“Street smarts,” she said deprecatingly.

“Practical wisdom. What the Studium desperately needs but refuses to acknowledge.” His hand moved slightly on his knee. Then suddenly his fingertips were touching hers, barely, the lightest pressure, but it sent electricity racing up her arm and down her spine. “That’s why you answered my Hingan. That first lecture.”

“I answered because you were right. About gaps in official records. What oral traditions preserve.” His fingers moved against hers, deliberate now—a slow slide along her index finger that made her pulse stutter and race. “Also because your accent fascinates me. Street Hingan mixed with academic pronunciation. The way you roll your Rs is purely colloquial, but your formal address structures are textbook perfect. I’ve never heard anything like it.”

“Embarrassing, you mean.” The words came out breathless. Her heart hammered so hard she was certain he could hear it in the silence.

“Unique. Real. Proof language lives beyond textbooks.” His thumb brushed her knuckle, traced the bone beneath thin skin with devastating gentleness. Her breath caught, held. Heat pooled low in her stomach, spreading outward like spilled wine until her whole body felt too warm despite the cold stone at her back. “Beautiful.”

She turned to look at him properly. Even in the dim red light, his eyes held that same intensity he brought to lectures, that focused attention that made everything else disappear. But there was heat there too, carefully controlled but unmistakable, turning his sapphire eyes dark as midnight oceans. His fingers laced between hers, and the intimacy of palm pressed to palm in the dim light made her dizzy.

“Why tell me this?”

“Because darkness makes honesty easier.” His smile faltered at the edges, becoming something unguarded that she’d never seen before—vulnerable in a way that made her chest tighten. For a moment he looked entirely defenceless, stripped of his usual composure. “Also because we might die here and I’d rather not take observations to my grave.”

“We’re not going to die.” Her voice shook. He was leaning closer, she could feel his breath on her cheek, warm and coffee-scented.

“No, but when these doors open, I’ll be Professor Louisoix again. You’ll be my student. This conversation becomes impossible.” His free hand rose slowly, telegraphing the movement, giving her time to pull away. She didn’t. His palm cupped her cheek, so careful it ached. His thumb traced her cheekbone, and she couldn’t suppress the shiver that ran through her. “This... whatever this is... becomes impossible.”

“It’s already impossible.” But she didn’t move away. Instead she leaned into his touch, watching his eyes darken further. His sharp intake of breath sent heat straight through her core.

“Yet here we are.” His voice had gone rough, all pretence of control abandoning him. His other hand still held hers, thumb finding her pulse where it hammered against her wrist. “Elysia...”

Her name—not Miss Ishikawa, just Elysia—spoken in that rough voice made her whole body tighten with want.

He leaned closer, his hand on her cheek guiding her toward him with gentle pressure. She could see the moment his control shattered completely—his gaze dropping to her mouth, lingering there, his own lips parting slightly. The space between them narrowed to inches, then less. His breath was warm against her lips, and she could see his pulse jumping in his throat, as affected as she was. She tilted her face up, eyes fluttering closed, lips parting in anticipation, waiting for—

The lights slammed on. Harsh, fluorescent, merciless.

They jerked apart like they’d been burned, but not fast enough. His hand was still on her cheek, thumb pressed to her racing pulse, both of them breathing hard. In the sudden brightness, she could see everything—the flush across his cheekbones, the way his pupils remained dilated despite the glare, his lips still parted, still leaning toward her slightly as if his body hadn’t caught up to the interruption.

“When these doors open,” Elysia said urgently, desperately, “what happens?”

“We return to our roles. Pretend this didn’t happen.”

“Is that what you want?”

He looked at her directly then, and she saw everything written across his face—regret, longing, frustration, the weight of what they couldn’t have. His hand tightened on hers, desperate pressure, as if he could hold onto this moment through touch alone.

“What I want,” he said slowly, “is irrelevant.”

Mechanical clicks of locks disengaging echoed through the stairwell like gunshots. The gates began rising with a grinding mechanical whine that seemed to go on forever.

They stood quickly, bodies separating as though caught, putting proper distance between them as footsteps approached from the library room. Her hand felt cold without his, bereft. She could still feel the ghost of his thumb on her cheek.

“Elysia! Thank the Twelve—“ Alisaie appeared as the door opened, face flushed with relief and residual panic, G’raha close behind with his hand steady on her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” Elysia said, not looking at Themis, not trusting what her face might reveal. “No longer trapped.”

Behind her, he coughed softly—deliberate, controlled, nothing caught in his throat but words he couldn’t say.

“Professor,” G’raha nodded respectfully, his sharp eyes flicking between them, lingering on the expensive wool coat still draped around Elysia’s shoulders, the way they stood just a bit too far apart to be natural. “Hope you weren’t too inconvenienced.”

“Not at all,” Themis replied, and his professor’s voice was back, all distance and formality, though Elysia caught the slight roughness underneath, like sandpaper beneath silk. “Miss Ishikawa proved surprisingly informative company.”

The formal address stung after hearing her name in his mouth, but Elysia understood. The doors were open. The lights were bright. They were who they had to be again.

“We should go,” Alisaie said, tugging Elysia’s arm. “It’s nearly four. You have that early tutorial.”

Elysia pulled his coat from her shoulders slowly, reluctantly, already missing its warmth. She held it out to him, careful not to let their fingers touch as he took it. “Thank you. For the coat.”

He took it wordlessly, but his eyes held hers for a moment longer than appropriate, saying everything they couldn’t voice.

She glanced back once as they reached the main corridor. Themis stood in the now-bright stairwell, watching her leave with an expression so carefully neutral it was its own kind of confession. The harsh fluorescent lights turned his silver hair white, made him look older, more distant, already transforming back into Professor Louisoix.

The moment passed, the masks returned, and they went their separate ways into what remained of the night, carrying confessions that daylight would pretend never happened.

Chapter Text

Three days. Seventy-two hours since the stairwell landing, and her skin still burned where he’d touched her.

Elysia pressed her pencil harder against the page, forcing the Hingan characters to stay in focus. They kept dissolving into the memory of his thumb against her cheek, the way his gaze had lingered on her lips. The library’s musty air couldn’t mask the phantom scent of his cologne that had surrounded her in that narrow space.

The walk home after the power outage had stretched like pulled taffy. G’raha’s hand had stayed pressed to the small of Alisaie’s back the entire way, guiding her through empty streets as if she might disappear. Neither spoke. The silence had weight to it, pressing down on all three of them until Elysia’s ears rang with it.

She’d counted her steps to avoid thinking. One hundred and thirty-seven to the corner shop. Forty-two past the shuttered bakery. Six hundred and eight to their building’s entrance. Each number a barrier against replaying his words, his voice cracking on her name, the tremor in his hands when he’d pulled back.

Their flat had smelled of yesterday’s coffee and Alisaie’s forgotten dinner on the counter. The normality of it felt obscene. Alisaie had collapsed onto the sofa, legs sprawled, head tipped back against worn cushions.

“Something happened between you and Professor Louisoix.”

Not a question. Alisaie’s eyes had stayed closed, but her fingers drummed against her thigh—waiting.

“He was going to kiss me.” The words had come out smaller than Elysia intended.

Alisaie’s eyes snapped open. She’d pushed herself upright, sleep forgotten, mouth curving into something between delight and disbelief. “Did you let him?”

Heat had crawled up Elysia’s neck. She’d bitten her lip, looked away, and that had been answer enough.

“So he does have feelings like us mere humans.” Alisaie’s grin had been wicked, the kind that usually preceded terrible ideas.

They’d shared a look—the sort that would have dissolved into shrieking and pillow-throwing if the sun hadn’t been threatening the horizon.

G’raha had cleared his throat from where he’d been hovering by his bedroom door. The sound cut through their moment like cold water. “He’s a professor, Elysia. There are rules.”

“Don’t be such a—“

“Your scholarship.” G’raha’s words had been quiet but they’d landed like stones. “His position. The ethics committee.”

The smile had died on Elysia’s face. Of course she knew. The student handbook sat on her desk, page forty-seven dog-eared where it outlined appropriate conduct. She’d memorised the consequences during orientation: immediate termination of financial aid, possible expulsion, mandatory reporting to future institutions.

G’raha had pushed off from the doorframe, exhaustion making his movements heavy. “I’m not saying... Just be careful.”

They’d scattered to their rooms after that, leaving everything unresolved, hanging in the air with the dust motes and dawn light.

Now Elysia hunched in the library’s forgotten corner, where the tables bore decades of carved initials and the chairs wobbled on uneven legs. No one came here. The overhead light flickered every few minutes, casting shadows that jumped and settled. 

Tuesday. Three o’clock. She should have been at the Last Stand an hour ago, working through translations while Themis scratched notes in the margins of his research. For a month now, Tuesdays and Thursdays had meant his quiet presence at the corner table, the coffee-scented warmth around them both familiar and charged with something unspoken. Sometimes he’d lean over to correct her grammar, his voice low and patient. Other times they’d argue about interpretations of ancient texts until he’d shake his head, smiling, calling her remarkable in that way that made her stomach flip.

They’d been almost friends.

But here she sat instead, in this abandoned corner where the dust made her nose itch and the broken radiator clanged every few minutes. She’d chosen it deliberately—somewhere no one would ever think to look, somewhere that didn’t carry the memory of his careful annotations in her margins or the way he’d drum his fingers against the table when thinking.

Her Hingan textbook lay open to a chapter she’d read four times without absorbing a single character. The words kept rearranging themselves into the memory of his voice saying beautiful—that single word that had carried so much more than its syllables, his thumb tracing circles on her knuckles as he said it.

She forced her attention to the spread of materials across the scarred table. Old newspapers, their edges brown and crumbling. Treaty documents photocopied so many times the text had gone soft. She picked up a clipping, the date circled in red ink by some long-ago researcher.

“The Garlean delegation never arrived,” she muttered as a way to mask the deafening scatter of her thoughts. “How do two kingdoms negotiate a treaty with someone who wasn’t there?”

“Talking to yourself is the first sign of academic madness.”

Her pen skittered across parchment, leaving an ugly streak of ink. Themis stood by a nearby shelf, impeccably dressed as always—crisp white shirt, dark waistcoat, not a thread out of place. His document case hung from one hand with studied casualness that didn’t quite hide the tension in his shoulders.

“Professor.” The title cracked in her throat.

“Miss Ishikawa.” He shifted his weight. “I was just heading to the fifth floor to finish some—“ He stopped mid-sentence, fingers tightening on his document case. “No. That’s not true.” His jaw worked, gaze dropping to the floor before lifting back to hers. “I came looking for you.”

The words came out rushed, unlike him. He set his case down on the table with too much care.

“I thought—hoped—I’d see you at the Last Stand today.” His voice dropped. “You’ve been avoiding me in corridors, sitting at the back of my lectures where you think I won’t notice.” He drew in a slow breath. “Though I always do.”

Elysia stared at the ink streak across her page, watching it dry.

“I should apologise. For what happened that night. I overstepped.”

She looked up then, caught the uncertainty in his expression before he masked it. “You’re apologising for almost kissing me?”

His jaw tightened. 

“What happened between us was real. To me.” The words tumbled out before she could stop them. “I just didn’t know how to face you after, when I wasn’t sure what...” She gestured helplessly at the space between them. “What any of it meant.”

He moved closer to the table, some of the rigid control leaving his shoulders. “It was real to me too.” His voice was softer now, more certain. “All of it.”

Elysia traced the edge of her textbook, keeping her voice carefully neutral. “So what happens now? With the lights back on?”

She watched him process the reference to his own words in the stairwell landing, when he’d said they’d pretend nothing happened once the power returned. Her fingers tightened on the book’s worn cover. He’d just admitted everything was real, contradicting his promise to forget. Now she needed to know which version of him she was dealing with—the one who drew lines or the one who crossed them.

His fingers stilled on the table’s edge.

“I don’t know.” The admission came out raw. “I thought I did. In the stairwell, I was certain we could just... But I can’t seem to follow my own rules.”

He looked as lost as she felt, all his careful control unravelling into honesty. Part of her wanted him to be certain, to set the boundary she couldn’t seem to hold. But his eyes held hers, vulnerable in a way that made him seem younger, less like a professor and more like someone equally out of his depth.

Neither moved. The broken radiator clanged, making them both start.

Themis cleared his throat, straightening as if physically pulling himself back from the edge of something. She watched him retreat into safer territory—the familiar ground of scholarship where the rules were clear. Whether he was buying time or genuinely trying to distract himself, she couldn’t tell. But she recognised the tactic; she’d been doing the same thing for three days.

“May I?” He gestured toward the scrolls, keeping the table between them like a barrier.

She nodded, tucking the unanswered question away with all the others she’d been collecting since that night. For now, they could pretend this was simple—just a professor interested in a student’s research. For now.

He leaned over the documents from across the table, maintaining distance even as curiosity pulled him closer.

“What are you researching?” He tilted his head, reading upside down. “Those are Merchant Guild records.”

“The Treaty of the Two Kingdoms. Something about it never made sense.” She pulled another document forward. “The official accounts describe three days of intensive negotiations with the Garlean delegation. Very specific details. Their chief envoy’s red beard, the translator’s stutter, even what they ate at the formal dinner.”

“That level of detail suggests authenticity.”

“Or performance. I wanted to see if anyone else recorded the same event, so I checked the Merchant Guild archives. They document everything—who’s in port, what they’re buying, which inns are full.” She spread three scrolls across the table. “The merchants were there when the Garlean delegation supposedly arrived. But look. No mention of foreign ships in the harbour register. No surge in wine purchases, which always happens with diplomatic visits. No complaints about roads being cleared for official processions.”

“Perhaps they were discrete—“

“Look at the dates.” She turned the scroll towards him, careful to pull her hands back before he reached for it. “The Garlean ship manifests show they never left port. Weather logs confirm storms in the strait for two weeks. The delegation couldn’t have made the crossing.”

His eyes sharpened, academic interest overtaking earlier tension. “But the Western accounts describe three days of negotiations with their representatives.”

“Exactly. So who were they negotiating with?” She pulled forward another document. 

“The harbourmaster notes here—“ She pointed to a cramped margin note. “Payment to the Crimson Players theatrical troupe. Twelve gold for ‘diplomatic services.’ The same dates as the supposed negotiations.”

“Actors.” She kept her eyes on the text. “They negotiated with actors whilst the real delegation was delayed by storms. Look at this. The treaty terms heavily favour Western trade routes the real Garleans had explicitly rejected in previous correspondence.”

“This completely reframes the treaty’s legitimacy.” His excitement cracked through the awkwardness, genuine interest making him forget to maintain distance. He moved around the table, drawn by discovery. “If the Garleans never actually agreed—“

“Then the Western kingdoms invented their consent.” She risked meeting his eyes. They held for a moment before both looked away. “The whole trade agreement that shaped the next century was theatre.”

He studied her translation notes, and she noticed how he kept his hands carefully flat on the table, away from hers. This close, she could smell the bergamot tea he favoured, see the tension in his shoulders that matched her own.

“How did you know to look for the Merchant Guild records?”

“They were just the first thing that came to mind. Another perspective on the same event.” She traced the edge of a document with her finger. “When official accounts feel too neat, too detailed, I look for what else was happening in the background. The mundane things people don’t think to fabricate.”

Her hand moved to pull another paper forward, accidentally brushing his. They both pulled back.

“Your practical experience revealed academic fraud.” A smile ghosted across his face—not his lecture smile but something more genuine, more dangerous. “This is exactly what I was discussing with the department. Traditional methodology would never have caught this.”

“It’s just street knowledge.”

“It’s brilliant.” He pulled research from his case, movements sharp, contained. “I’ve been working on something similar—examining how the Autumn Accord of 1367 appears in Eastern versus Western chronicles. The same event, but the accounts might as well describe different wars.”

She took his papers, careful not to let their fingers meet in the exchange. His handwriting was precise, controlled. Nothing like the way his hand had shaken when he’d cupped her face.

“Have you looked at the Hannish records? They were mediators, though I suppose their dialect makes them difficult to access.”

“You read Old Hannish?”

“A little. The stevedores at home still use bits of it for counting cargo. Numbers and goods stayed mostly the same even when the language evolved.” She pointed to a date in his timeline, her finger accidentally grazing his notes. “I think this might be wrong. Hannish calendar back then ran lunar, not solar. If you adjust for that—“

“The battles happened in reverse order.” His eyes widened, and for a moment he was just Themis, brilliant and young and amazed. “The Western ‘retaliation’ came first. They started the war then rewrote the chronology.”

“History’s written by the victors.”

Silence stretched between them, taut as a held breath. Her scrolls mixed with his papers, ideas sparking in the space they couldn’t cross. This was worse than the stairwell—there, darkness had excused the intimacy. Here, in stark library light, every moment of connection felt like stepping towards a cliff edge.

He straightened, fingers drumming once against the table before he caught himself. “I have a proposition.”

The formal tone made her stomach drop.

“The department approved my research proposal this morning. ‘Comparative Historical Memory: How Eastern and Western Civilisations Record Shared Events.’” He paused. “I need a research assistant.”

Her pen rolled off the table. Neither moved to retrieve it.

“I’m sure graduate students—“

“Would all use the same traditional methods. I need someone who thinks differently. Who sees what academic training teaches us to overlook.” His fingers found the table’s edge again. “I need you.”

The last three words hung between them, weighted with more than professional interest.

“I’m an undergraduate.”

“With language skills most professors lack and instincts that just revolutionised my theoretical framework.” He leaned back, rebuilding distance. “You’d receive proper academic credit. Joint authorship on any papers. It’s real research experience, the kind that shapes careers.”

She wanted to say yes immediately. Wanted to say no just as fiercely. “Why really?”

“Because you’re brilliant in ways the academy doesn’t recognise. Because your perspective could change how we understand historical truth.” He stopped, jaw tightening.

“And?”

“Because in that stairwell, you understood me in ten minutes better than anyone has in years.”

The confession landed between them like dropped glass. She couldn’t breathe properly. The safe answer would be no. The wise answer. But wisdom had fled the moment he’d found her.

“I want to be clear.” His voice steadied, professional mask sliding back into place. “I’m asking because of your academic merit. What you’ve shown me today—that’s why I need you on this project. Everything else is...” He searched for words. “Separate. It has to be.”

She studied the ink streak across her page, weighing his words. Separate. He was offering her what she’d wanted. Real research experience, academic credibility, a chance to prove herself. The rest, whatever hummed between them, would stay locked away. Perhaps that was enough. Perhaps this wasn’t impossible.

“When would we work?”

“Evenings, mostly. My office.” Each word sounded carefully measured. “We’d need to prepare a presentation for the Departmental Colloquium in eight weeks—nothing elaborate, just sharing preliminary findings with faculty and graduate students.” He hesitated. “Would that be... manageable? Working alone together?”

The question beneath the question was clear. Could they maintain boundaries in his office, surrounded by books and ideas and the dangerous intimacy of shared discovery?

“Think about it. Let me know by tomorrow?”

She nodded, not trusting her voice.

He collected his papers slowly, as if reluctant to leave. At the shelf where he’d first appeared, he turned back. “We’ll be working late in my office. Just the two of us.” A pause, weighted with everything they weren’t saying. “The lights don’t always stay on after hours.”

The words carried both warning and promise—an acknowledgment that he couldn’t guarantee his own restraint, that the boundaries they needed might not hold in those quiet evening hours. Then he was gone, leaving her with scattered documents and the ghost of bergamot tea.

“Absolutely not.” G’raha paced their common room, each turn sharp and agitated. “Do you have any idea what you’re risking?”

Alisaie watched from the armchair as Elysia pulled her knees to her chest on the sofa, making herself smaller against the worn cushions. She’d never seen G’raha like this—protective fury radiating from every line of his body.

“Since when do you care so much about university regulations?” Alisaie kept her voice mild, though surprise prickled beneath it.

G’raha stopped mid-stride, fixing Elysia with an expression that was almost parental. “Since our friend started making decisions that could destroy her future.”

“It’s research,” Elysia said quietly. “Academic work.”

“Don’t.” G’raha’s tail lashed once before he controlled it. “Don’t pretend this is just about academics. Not after what nearly happened in that stairwell.”

The words landed like a slap. Elysia flinched, colour draining from her face.

“G’raha—“ Alisaie started.

“No.” He turned on her, hands clenched. “Someone needs to say this. You think the university will care that he’s brilliant? That he stopped himself before actually kissing her? They’ll see a professor who compromised his position and a scholarship student who should have known better.”

“That’s not fair,” Elysia whispered.

“Fair?” G’raha laughed, bitter and sharp. “You think they’ll be fair when they’re stripping your scholarship? When every professor questions whether you earned your grades or your... proximity to him earned them for you?”

Elysia’s knuckles went white where she gripped the cushion. Alisaie saw the moment the words hit home—the slight tremor in her shoulders, the way her jaw clenched against tears.

“Enough.” Alisaie’s voice cut through the tension. “G’raha, sit down. You’re not helping.”

He deflated suddenly, sinking onto the ottoman with his head in his hands. “I’m sorry. I just—“ His voice cracked. “I’ve seen what happens. My sister, at the Conservatory. Her mentor said all the right things too. Research partnership, academic mentorship. Then rumours started. Even though nothing happened—nothing—she couldn’t walk into a classroom without whispers following.”

Silence stretched, broken only by footsteps from the flat above and the creak of old pipes in the walls.

“She transferred,” G’raha continued, quieter now. “Lost a year of work. Still flinches when anyone mentions his name.”

Alisaie watched Elysia absorb this, saw her curl tighter into herself. The parallel was too obvious to need stating.

“But something did happen,” Elysia said finally, voice steady despite everything. “Between Themis and me. Pretending otherwise would be the real lie.”

“Which is precisely why this is dangerous.” Alisaie abandoned neutrality, leaning forward. “Look, I’ve watched you these past weeks. Ever since Hythlodaeus orchestrated those coffee shop study sessions—yes, he told me everything—you’ve been different. Lighter. Like you finally found someone who sees how extraordinary you are.”

Elysia’s eyes widened, but Alisaie pressed on.

“And that’s beautiful. It is. But it’s also why you can’t do this. Whatever’s between you two isn’t going away. Working together, alone, evening after evening?” She shook her head. “You’re asking for the impossible. To be near him and not want more.”

“Eight weeks.” Elysia’s voice gained strength. “The work ends after the colloquium presentation.”

“And then?” G’raha looked up, eyes red-rimmed. “You think feelings like that just stop? You’ll still see him in lectures, in corridors. Every time will hurt.”

“Maybe.” Elysia uncurled slightly, meeting his gaze. “But I’ll have the research. Publications. Proof that I’m more than just...” She swallowed. “More than what people assume about girls like me.”

The words hung heavy. Girls like her—scholarship students, outsiders, the ones who had to work twice as hard for half the recognition.

Alisaie reached for the teapot, needing something to do with her hands. The familiar ritual gave her time to process the shift in the room’s emotional temperature.

“The Louisoix name means something,” she said carefully, pouring three cups. “Generations of academic integrity. But Hythlodaeus says something else too—that in all their years at university together, through undergraduate and graduate work, Themis never pursued anyone. Never dated, never seemed to notice when people were interested. Like that part of him simply wasn’t engaged.”

She handed G’raha a cup, though his hands shook taking it.

“Which means what you have is real to him too. Real enough to risk everything he’s built.” She turned to Elysia. “That’s not small. It’s also not safe. When something matters this much to people who’ve never felt it before...”

“It consumes them,” G’raha finished quietly. “Burns through everything else until there’s nothing left but ash and regret.”

Elysia set down the cushion, squaring her shoulders. “You’re asking me to be afraid of something that might happen. But I’m already afraid—of never being taken seriously, of staying invisible, of wondering what could have been if I’d been brave enough to try.”

“And if it destroys you?” G’raha’s question came out raw.

“Then at least I’ll have chosen it myself. Not had it chosen for me by fear or propriety or other people’s cautionary tales.”

The defiance in her voice made Alisaie’s chest tight. She recognised that particular brand of determination—the kind that walked into fire eyes open.

G’raha stared into his tea for a long moment. When he looked up, the anger had drained away, leaving only resignation and something like grief.

“You’ve already decided.”

It wasn’t a question. Elysia nodded once.

“Then we can’t stop you.” He set down his untouched tea with excessive care. “But when this explodes—and it will—we’ll be here.”

“With chocolate and tissues,” Alisaie added, trying to lighten the weight pressing down on them all. “And absolutely no ‘told you so’s.”

“Liar.” Elysia’s smile was watery but real.

“Complete liar,” Alisaie agreed. “But we’ll wait at least a day before saying it.”

G’raha stood abruptly, the movement too sharp. “I need air.”

He left without looking back. Elysia started to rise, but Alisaie caught her wrist.

“Let him go. He needs to process.” She squeezed gently. “He’s not angry at you. He’s angry at the situation. At not being able to protect you from it.”

“His sister—“

“Is his ghost, not your future.” Alisaie released her. “But Elysia? He’s not wrong about the risks. Neither of us is.”

“I know.” Elysia’s voice was small but certain. “I know, and I’m choosing it anyway.”

Later, after Elysia had retreated to her room, Alisaie stood at the kitchen counter packing away her baking supplies. Flour still dusted her hands, and she’d managed to get batter on her sleeve somehow. G’raha hadn’t moved from the window, apple core forgotten in his hand as he watched the darkened street.

“That was unexpected.” She aligned measuring cups in their drawer with unnecessary precision. “The protective older brother routine.”

“Someone had to say it.”

His voice carried that same steady confidence from the library that night without power—when he’d guided her through the dark without hesitation, hands sure on her waist. The memory made her focus harder on organising spoons.

“Since when do you do ‘had to’? You usually just make concerned faces and offer tea.”

“Since—“ He turned from the window, and she caught something raw in his expression before he masked it. “Things change.”

The words hung between them, weighted with everything they weren’t discussing. The darkness. His hands. The way she’d let him lead her, trusted him completely without thought.

She closed the drawer with more force than necessary. “Well. Don’t make a habit of it.”

“Of what? Caring what happens to our friends?”

“Of being right.”

His laugh was soft, surprised. She didn’t look at him, couldn’t quite manage it yet. Whatever had shifted between them that night in the library was still too new, too unnamed. As long as they didn’t examine it directly, she could pretend nothing had changed.

For now.

Chapter Text

Seven o’clock struck across the Studium’s towers. Elysia gathered her translation materials into neat stacks, each reference marked with coloured tabs she’d cut herself. The corridor stretched empty before her, most students already gone to their evening meals. Only scattered rectangles of lamplight marked occupied offices in the faculty wing of the Studium’s central building.

She crossed the square as the streetlights flickered to life, sensors detecting the fading daylight. October wind cut through her coat—her best wool one, though she’d spent too long deciding whether to wear it. Just research, she told herself. Nothing more. But her mind wouldn’t quiet: alone with Themis.

She shook her head, hard enough that her long black hair whipped across her shoulders. Her heart hammered as she climbed the familiar stairs. At his door, she paused. The brass nameplate caught the lamplight: “Professor T. Louisoix, Ancient History.” Two knocks, sharp and professional.

“Come in.”

Leather and old paper filled her lungs the moment she entered, that particular scent of books whose edges had begun to fox with age. Beneath it drifted cedar, bergamot tea, and something else—his cologne, subtle but unmistakable. Bookshelves consumed three walls, each spine labeled in his precise script, organised by region then period. His mahogany desk anchored the room’s centre, document stacks weighted with glass paperweights that held fragments of colour like trapped jewels.

He wore wire-rimmed reading glasses. The sight stopped her breath. Silver frames perched on his nose, his jacket draped over his chair back, white sleeves rolled to his elbows. The lamplight revealed forearms she hadn’t expected—corded muscle shifting as his fountain pen moved across parchment. She watched his fingers guide the pen and remembered that first glimpse on the platform, sunlight blurring everything but his profile.

Gods, he was beautiful. Unfairly, impossibly beautiful.

“Elysia.” He stood too quickly. Papers scattered from his desk like startled doves. His hand shot out, catching them mid-flight with reflexes that belonged in a training yard, not a study. “Please, sit.”

She took the leather chair across from him and heard herself speak before reason could intervene. “I accept.”

His face transformed—surprise melting into a smile that reached his eyes. He turned to his filing cabinet, withdrawing a folder marked with the university seal. Official forms, watermarked and proper. The compensation figure made her throat close.

“This is too much.”

“It’s standard rate for specialised translation.” He removed his glasses, thumb and forefinger pressing the bridge of his nose. A strand of silver hair had rebelled against his usual styling, falling across his forehead. His hand twitched toward it, then dropped. “Your linguistic skills are rare. The university compensates accordingly.”

She signed before doubt could creep in, her name flowing across the line. When she returned the papers, their fingers brushed. His skin burned hotter than she’d imagined.

“Good.” The word came out rough. He cleared his throat, shuffled papers that were already aligned. “We should discuss methodology. The texts require specific handling protocols.”

They retreated to safer ground—academic process, source verification, cross-referencing techniques. He demonstrated his cataloguing system, explained his notation methods. But awareness thrummed beneath every word, every gesture, like a note too low to hear but impossible not to feel.

When he leaned over to examine a water-damaged passage, his scent enveloped her—cedar and tea and warm skin beneath starched cotton. His breath stirred the fine hairs at her nape as he pointed to faded characters. In the window’s reflection, she watched his jaw tighten when she twirled her pen between her fingers, an old nervous habit. Watched his gaze track the movement of her throat when she swallowed.

“This character,” he murmured near her ear. “The scribes often confused it with—“

“With the harbour district marking.” She turned slightly, finding him closer than expected. Close enough to see gold flecks in his blue eyes. “But the tail stroke curves left, not right. Changes the entire meaning.”

“Show me.”

She demonstrated with her pen. He leaned closer still, until heat radiated through his shirt against her shoulder. Neither breathed.

He withdrew first, setting careful distance between them, though his voice remained rough. “That’s enough for tonight. Three times a week from now on.”

By the second week, they’d developed a routine that vibrated with unspoken tension. Themis maintained rigid professionalism—a discipline she found both relieving and quietly disappointing. She doubted her own ability to resist if he didn’t.

Wednesday and Thursday evenings in his office. They’d abandoned the Last Stand without discussion, both understanding that being seen together too often would invite the wrong kind of attention. Sunday afternoons in the library’s restricted archives.

They never mentioned the stairwell. Never acknowledged that moment in the library’s forgotten corner. But both memories lived in the precise eighteen inches he kept between their bodies, measured like distances in his ancient maps. Lived in how his jaw clenched when she stretched after hours hunched over manuscripts, her spine arching, a soft sound escaping before she could stop it.

“This passage.” Thursday evening, October rain drumming against tall windows like impatient fingers. The lamp pooled golden light around them, leaving the office corners in shadow. She indicated a water-stained section of a Hingan merchant’s diary, ink faded to sepia. “He’s describing the negotiation, but these metaphors... in street dialect, this combination means performance. Theatre. Like the documents I found in the archives.”

His chair rolled closer on the Persian rug’s thick pile. He leaned in to study the text. Beneath the desk, his thigh pressed against hers through wool and cotton. Heat raced up her spine. Neither moved away.

“You’re saying this was staged too?” His breath warmed her cheek, bergamot-scented from their shared tea.

“Everyone knew.” The words emerged breathless. “The street sources all use theatrical language—stage directions disguised as merchant terminology. Look—“ She pointed to another line. “This word for ‘customer’ is actually dock-slang for ‘audience.’”

“Brilliant.” The word scraped from his throat. He wasn’t looking at the text anymore but at the curve of her neck where her pulse fluttered visibly.

She turned. Close enough to count his eyelashes, to see how lamplight turned his hair to spun moonlight. His lips parted. His breathing went shallow.

“We should—“ she started.

“Focus.” But his hand moved across polished wood, deliberate and slow, until his smallest finger grazed her wrist where her pulse hammered against skin.

The air thickened, charged like the moment before lightning splits the sky. She could see his chest rise and fall beneath white cotton, could trace his throat as he swallowed. One breath, one heartbeat, one tiny movement forward—

The knock shattered everything. They jerked apart. Her chair rolled backward, wheels protesting against sudden movement before she caught the desk edge, steadying herself.

Emet-Selch entered without invitation, bringing winter air and expensive cologne.

“Burning the midnight oil?” His golden eyes catalogued everything instantly—flushed faces, the space hastily opened between their chairs, Themis’s white-knuckled grip on the desk. “How... dedicated.”

“Professor Emet-Selch.” Themis’s professional mask locked into place, though colour still stained his cheekbones. “We’re preparing for the Colloquium. The translations require significant attention.”

“Indeed.” Emet-Selch moved with predatory grace, academic robes swirling. “I’ve come for your preliminary abstract—the committee requires all submissions by morning.” A folder appeared from his robes with practiced flourish. “Quite the sensation you’re planning. Alternative histories. Questioning established narratives.” His gaze found Elysia, lingered like cold fingers. “Dangerous territory for someone so... junior.”

“Evidence supports our conclusions,” she said, voice steady despite her racing pulse.

“Evidence can be interpreted many ways. Especially by those with limited perspective.” His smile cut sharp as winter moonlight on glass. “But I’m certain Themis has considered the implications. For both your careers.”

Themis opened a drawer with controlled precision, withdrawing a sealed envelope bearing his personal seal. “The abstract, as requested.”

“Excellent. The committee will be most... interested.” Emet-Selch paused at the door. “Do be careful. These old buildings... so many shadows. So many places for things to go wrong.”

The door closed with a soft click that rang like a gunshot.

Silence stretched taut.

“He’s trying to intimidate you,” Themis said finally.

“It’s working.”

He moved to stand beside her. She had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes, and the angle sent unwanted images flooding through her mind—him above her, that same intense gaze but in entirely different circumstances. She forced the thought away, heat climbing her neck.

“Don’t let it.” He returned to his seat, pulling it closer to her with deliberate intent. His hand covered hers on the desk, warm and solid. “Your insights are transforming everything we thought we knew. The way you see patterns where others see chaos...”

“Your career—“

“Is mine to risk.” His thumb traced her knuckles once before he pulled back. “This research matters more than academic politics. Your insights matter more.” He paused, words hovering unspoken before he cleared his throat. “We should get back to work.”

Three days later, during a lull in their work, she mentioned the harbour markets whilst translating—how vendors still sang Hingan counting songs from the war period, melodies that encoded histories in rhythm and verse. His eyes lit with scholarly hunger.

“Show me.”

Which was how she found herself guiding him through Scholar’s Harbour on a Sunday afternoon. The autumn sun hung low and weak behind clouds, casting everything in grey-gold light. The market crowds pressed around them—families haggling over winter vegetables, merchants calling their wares, children darting between legs. Steam rose from dumpling stalls, mixing with the salt-smell rolling in from the harbour.

She was painfully aware of him beside her—how he kept shortening his stride to match hers, how his coat sleeve brushed her arm when the crowd pushed them together. How he angled his body to shield her from the worst of the jostling, his hand settling at the small of her back when the press grew thick.

“Stop walking like you own the place,” she said, catching his elbow to steer him away from yet another close call.

In the span of three streets, she’d watched him nearly lose his pocket watch twice. The first pickpocket had been a boy, no more than twelve, whose fingers had actually brushed the gold chain before Themis’s reflexes kicked in—his hand snapping down to catch the child’s wrist with the same precision he’d shown catching those papers. He’d let the boy go with a stern look that belonged in a lecture hall, not a harbour market. The second attempt came from a woman with a baby strapped to her chest—a classic distraction technique. The third had been brazen, a man “accidentally” bumping into Themis while his partner reached for his coat pocket.

“Like what?” A hint of amusement coloured his voice, so different from his careful academic tones.

Here, away from the Studium’s stone walls, he seemed younger somehow. The grey afternoon light softened the silver in his hair, and his formal bearing had loosened just enough to reveal the man beneath the professor. They could have been any young couple wandering the Sunday market, picking through vegetables and arguing over prices.

She stepped behind him, hands settling on his shoulders. Through the wool coat, she felt how he carried his tension—locked between his shoulder blades like armour. “You’re holding yourself like you’re about to lecture on the Allagan Empire. All authority and expectation.” She pressed gently at the rigid spot. “That makes you a target. Every cutpurse in a three-street radius can spot wealth and naivety. Here, you need to blend. Feel the rhythm of the crowd. Move with it, not through it.”

He turned his head, profile sharp against the pearl-grey sky. “Like this?” He deliberately slouched, an exaggerated pantomime of casual posture that made him look like a marionette with cut strings.

“Better.” Her hands lingered a heartbeat before dropping. “Though perhaps less like you’ve been drinking since noon.”

At a fish stall, his formal Hingan made the vendor’s weathered face crease with deep lines of amusement. The old woman corrected him with the patience of a grandmother teaching a particularly slow grandchild. The crowd pressed closer as more customers arrived, forcing Elysia against his side. She rose on her toes to reach his ear, coaching him through the proper market-dialect phrases. When her lips accidentally grazed his earlobe, his whole body went rigid, a sharp intake of breath that she felt more than heard.

“Softer consonants,” she murmured, pretending not to notice how his hand had clenched at his side. “Let the words flow like water, not march like soldiers.”

He tried again, tongue wrapping around the unfamiliar sounds with increasing confidence. The vendor nodded approval, her eyes crinkling.

After his third attempt, she gave them decent prices on pearl-shell rice. “Young love,” she said in Hingan, winking as she wrapped their purchase in brown paper. “Always distracted by each other, these two. Can see it in how you keep finding excuses to touch.”

Neither corrected her.

They found a tea shop wedged between a rope-maker and a fortune teller, so narrow they had to turn sideways to enter. Steam from the kitchen fogged its single window, creating a private world within the glass. The interior smelled of jasmine and fried dough, packed with dock workers taking their break. The only free table was a small round thing meant for one, its surface scarred by years of hot cups and idle knife marks.

They squeezed in, knees bumping as they settled. The table’s diameter forced them close—close enough that she could feel the heat from his body, smell the way his cologne had mixed with harbour salt and market spices. Under the scarred wood, their ankles tangled together. She started to pull back, but his foot shifted, catching hers, holding it there. Deliberate. Unmistakable.

Her pulse jumped. She focused on her tea, watching steam curl between them like unspoken words.

“Listen,” she said, indicating a group of elderly men at the corner table. They sang as they played cards, a counting song she’d heard variations of across three different districts. “That melody—it’s mapping the old trade routes. Each verse is a different harbour, coded in the rhythm.”

Themis pulled out his notebook, pen moving quickly across the page. One of the elders noticed their interest and ambled over, speaking in rapid dock-dialect about pre-war routes his grandfather had sailed. Routes that, according to every official record, had never existed.

“This contradicts everything,” Themis murmured, still transcribing. The elder had returned to his game, leaving them with pages of notes that could rewrite accepted history. “The Imperial records, the trade manifestos, even the tax documents—they all claim these routes were established post-occupation.”

He looked up from his notes, and something in his expression had shifted. The scholarly excitement was still there, but beneath it burned something else—intense, almost hungry.

“You see through all of it,” he said quietly. “The official narratives, the accepted truths. You look at the same documents everyone else has studied for decades and find what we all missed.” His hand moved across the table’s surface, fingers tracing patterns in the condensation from their drink. Each spiral brought his hand closer to hers. “I’ve spent years in those archives. But with you, it’s like seeing them for the first time. Not just the history. The city itself becomes different through your eyes. The way you navigate these streets, these people...”

His fingers had nearly reached hers, close enough she could feel the warmth radiating from his skin.

“Elysia...”

The way he said her name—like he was tasting it—made heat pool low in her stomach. His fingers found hers, traced the delicate bones of her hand with academic precision that felt anything but scholarly.

“We should go,” she said, though she didn’t move.

“Yes,” he agreed, though his thumb continued its slow stroke across her knuckles. 

Then, with deliberate mischief she hadn’t expected from him, he lifted her hand. His eyes held hers, watching, waiting for her reaction as he brought her fingers to his lips. The kiss he pressed to her knuckles was feather-light but lingering, his mouth warm against her skin. A smile played at the corners of his lips as her breath caught, as colour flooded her cheeks. He was enjoying this—enjoying how he’d made her speechless, how her pupils had dilated, how her fingers trembled slightly in his grasp.

“Shall we?” He released her hand with obvious reluctance, that hint of smugness still dancing in his eyes.

She could only nod, not trusting her voice.

Walking back through streets now bright with afternoon sun, he insisted on seeing her home. The fog had burned away, leaving everything sharp-edged and clear—the harbour bells ringing six o’clock, merchants beginning to pack their stalls, children playing in puddles that reflected the sky. At her building, lamplight was just beginning to flicker on, casting long shadows across worn stone steps.

“Tuesday?” he asked, voice carefully neutral though his hand had found the small of her back again, thumb moving in small, maddening circles through her coat. “That bookshop you mentioned—the one with the contested documents?”

“Behind the spice merchant. Down a rather questionable alley. Not exactly proper for a professor.”

“Nothing about this is proper.” His hand rose to her face, catching a strand of hair that had escaped her braid. But instead of simply tucking it behind her ear, he wound it around his finger, studying how the afternoon light caught in it, revealing streaks of red from her attempts at dyeing. “You have beautiful hair,” he murmured, then seemed to catch himself, colour rising in his cheeks. “I mean—I’ve thought that since—” He stopped, flustered in a way that made him look years younger. “What I mean to say is…”

She rose on her toes and pressed a finger to his lips, stopping his rambling. “Tuesday,” she agreed softly.

His eyes went dark at the touch. When she lowered her hand, he caught it, pressing it flat against his chest where she could feel his heart racing beneath wool and cotton.

“I find I care less about propriety every day,” he said, voice rough. “Every hour, really. Every moment you’re near me, all my careful rules seem to matter less than the way you—“ He stopped himself again, jaw clenching. “Tuesday. I should go. Before I do something we’ll both—“

“Regret?”

“Remember.” The word came out like a confession. “Something we’ll remember when we should be thinking about ancient trade routes and translation matrices.”

But he didn’t move away. Instead, his free hand came up to frame her face, thumb tracing her cheekbone with reverent care. “You’re undoing me, Elysia. Completely undoing me.”

He stepped back then, each inch of distance seemingly requiring enormous effort. His hands dropped to his sides, clenching once before relaxing. “Goodnight, Elysia.” He turned and walked away with measured steps, not quite hiding the tension in his shoulders. She watched him reach the corner where he paused, just for a heartbeat, his hand braced against the brick wall as if steadying himself. Then he straightened, continuing on without looking back, leaving her standing in her doorway with her heart hammering and her knuckles still burning from his kiss.

Tuesday arrived unseasonably warm, the kind of false summer day that October sometimes offered as apology for what was coming. Themis waited outside the spice merchant in civilian clothes—dark jeans that fit too well and a grey pullover that made his eyes somehow bluer. Without his usual formal attire, he looked less like landed gentry and more like any other graduate student, someone she might have met in the library stacks or at a coffee shop. He leaned against the brick wall, and the way his face lit up when he saw her made her stomach flutter with unexpected intensity.

They navigated the narrow alleyway, Themis positioning himself between her and the press of bodies, his hand hovering near her elbow. The protective gesture only made the butterflies worse.

The bookshop occupied a basement through an unmarked door that looked more like a service entrance. The stairway was so narrow they had to descend single file, her leading, hyperaware of him behind her—the soft catch in his breathing in the enclosed space, his hand sliding along the wall for balance, the creak of old wood under their combined weight.

Inside, towering stacks created a maze of passages barely wide enough for one. Books rose to the ceiling in precarious towers, organised by some arcane system only the owner understood. The air hung thick with old paper and mildew, and somewhere in the depths, a cat yowled its displeasure.

They had to press together to navigate, her back to his chest as they sidled through gaps between teetering columns. His hand found the small of her back, steadying her through the labyrinth, and she could feel his heartbeat against her shoulder blade, quick and uneven.

They found the text they needed in a forgotten corner—disputed trading records bound in salt-stained leather, pages yellowed and brittle as autumn leaves. Without chairs, he sat on the floor, then caught her hand to pull her down beside him. The space was so tight their thighs pressed together from hip to knee. To see the text properly, she had to lean across him, her hair forming a curtain that brushed his jaw. He made a soft sound, almost pained.

“This symbol,” she said, trying to focus though every nerve screamed awareness of him—his warmth, his scent, the way his breathing had gone shallow. “It’s been mistranslated for decades.”

“Show me.” His voice came out rough, scraped raw.

She traced the character with one finger, and he leaned closer, chest pressing against her shoulder, solid and warm.

“Wait,” she caught his wrist as he reached for a fragile page. His pulse raced beneath her fingers. “These pages... careful.”

She demonstrated the proper technique, fingers covering his, guiding the gentle movement needed to turn brittle parchment without damage. His hand was larger than hers, requiring her to stretch to cover it properly. When she looked up, his face was inches from hers, close enough that their breath mingled in the dusty air.

“This is hardly an ideal research position,” he murmured, but his eyes had gone dark, pupils dilated in the dim light.

She realised she was nearly in his lap, one hand braced on his thigh for balance. His hand rose to her hair, fingers threading through the strands, thumb tracing her cheekbone with reverent care. She leaned into the touch, eyes fluttering closed, and felt him lean closer, his forehead touching hers.

“What are we doing?” The question came out resigned, rhetorical, like he already knew the answer and was powerless to stop it.

Before Elysia could answer—

“Closing early!” The owner’s voice shattered the moment like cold water. “Storm coming in! Everyone out!”

They scrambled apart, Themis helping her to her feet. His hand lingered on her elbow as they navigated back through the maze, steadying her when she stumbled on an uneven floorboard.

Outside, evening painted everything amber and gold, though storm clouds pressed close overhead, heavy and swollen with rain. They walked the harbour wall where waves crashed against stone, sending up sprays of salt water that caught the dying light. Their arms brushed with each step, and neither moved away.

“This view,” he said, stopping where the whole harbour spread before them—ships at anchor, lights beginning to twinkle on, the city rising behind in terraced layers. Wonder transformed his face, made him look younger, almost boyish in his amazement. “I’ve never seen it before.”

“It was always here.”

“Was it?” He turned to face her, sunset turning his silver hair to burnished copper, making him look like something out of legend—some ancient hero stepped from the pages they’d been studying. “Or did I need you to show me how to see?”

His hand found hers, fingers interlacing with deliberate slowness, as though memorising the feeling.

She should have worried about being seen, but contentment had softened his features and she found she couldn’t bring herself to care. His hand felt right in hers—the weight of it, the warmth, how his thumb traced absent circles against her palm.

“Themis.” His name slipped from her lips quietly, almost without thought.

He went still. Something shifted in his expression—surprise, then something deeper. The circles his thumb had been tracing stopped.

“Say it again,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

But the first fat drops of rain struck the cobblestones like warning shots. Within seconds, the promised storm arrived in earnest, sending vendors scrambling to cover their wares and pedestrians diving for doorways.

“There!” She pointed to a half-constructed building, its stone walls rising but not yet complete, gaps where windows would eventually be. They ran, hands still clasped, rain soaking through their clothes in the dozen steps it took to reach the shelter.

The building’s interior was empty, tools abandoned for the day, sawdust turning to mud where rain leaked through the incomplete roof. Stone walls rose around them, solid on three sides but open where the main entrance would eventually stand. Canvas tarps flapped in the wind, and the space smelled of wet mortar and fresh-cut wood.

They stood there for a moment, catching their breath, hands still joined. The silence stretched between them, filled only by the drumming of rain on canvas and their gradually slowing heartbeats.

He turned to face her, and she took a step back instinctively—overwhelmed by the intensity in his eyes, the way he looked at her like she was everything. The cold stone wall met her shoulders, rain-damp jacket doing nothing to protect her from the chill.

“I could cite a hundred reasons this is impossible.” He moved closer still, body caging hers without quite touching, one hand braced against stone beside her head. She could feel the heat radiating from him despite their soaked clothes, could see his pulse jumping wildly in his throat. “But I can’t stop thinking about you. Every moment. Every breath.”

“We can’t.” The words emerged without conviction.

“Tell me you don’t feel this.” His forehead dropped to rest against hers, eyes closing as if in pain. “Tell me to stop, and I will. I’ll walk away right now.”

She couldn’t. Her hands fisted in his pullover, holding him close, anchoring him to her.

“After the Colloquium—“ she started.

“No. No after. No waiting. Just this. Just now. Please.”

He leaned down with agonising slowness, giving her every chance to pull away, to be sensible, to remember all the reasons this was madness.

She didn’t.

The first touch of his lips was barely there—a whisper of contact so gentle she might have imagined it. But her entire body ignited, every nerve ending sparking to life like struck flint. Months of careful distance, of measured words and maintained propriety, shattered in an instant. Her hands slid up to his neck, fingers tangling in wet hair at his nape, and he made a desperate, broken sound against her mouth before pressing closer.

The second kiss was nothing like the first. This was hunger finally unleashed, restraint crumbling like wet sand. His hands slid beneath her rain-soaked jacket, finding bare skin where her blouse had ridden up, thumbs stroking along her hipbones with reverent desperation. She arched into him, needing his warmth, needing more, always more. A whimper escaped her throat that he swallowed with a groan, fingers tightening possessively against her waist.

They broke apart, breathing ragged. His pupils were blown wide, making his eyes look nearly black in the storm-light.

“We can’t,” she whispered again, though her hands wouldn’t release him.

“I know.”

But he kissed her again, deeper, all pretence of control abandoned. His lips moved from her mouth to her jaw, then lower, finding that sensitive spot where neck met shoulder. She gasped, head falling back against stone, fingers tightening in silver strands that wrapped around her fingers like silk. She tugged gently, experimentally, and the raw sound he made sent heat pooling low in her belly.

His thigh pressed between hers, and she rocked against it without thinking, the thin fabric of her rain-soaked skirt offering no barrier. His breath hitched, and he captured her mouth again, urgent now, hungry in a way that made her dizzy.

“Elysia,” he breathed against her lips, her name both prayer and plea. “We should stop. I should—“

But his hand slid higher beneath her blouse, palm burning against her ribs, thumb brushing the underside of her breast through damp cotton. Her answering moan surprised them both with its intensity.

“Oi! Get those bleedin’ crates under cover before they’re ruined!”

Dock voices shattered the moment. Themis jerked back, stepping away quickly, running both hands through thoroughly disheveled hair. The rain had gentled to a soft patter, revealing they’d lost track of time completely—the storm passing while they’d been lost in each other.

From the wharf below, dock workers scrambled to salvage cargo, oblivious to the pair in the half-built shelter. A foreman’s voice carried clearly: “This silk’ll be worthless if it gets wet! Move your arses!”

A slow chuckle escaped them both, the crude urgency of the dock workers a stark contrast to their stolen moment. The laughter turned softer, dissolving into something resigned as reality crept back—the dampness of their clothes, the fading light, the world beyond these incomplete walls with all its expectations and limitations.

“You should go first,” she said, smoothing her blouse where his hands had rumpled it. Her fingers moved to her hair, attempting to restore some order to the rain-tangled strands.

He hesitated, eyes still dark with wanting. “Let me walk you home at least. These docks—“

“It’s fine,” she interrupted gently. “I know my way around better than you do. Professor.” The title was deliberately placed, a reminder of who they were supposed to be.

“Yes.” But he stepped closer again, deliberately ignoring the barrier attempted to build. His hands framed her face like she was something precious, something breakable, thumbs brushing across her cheekbones with infinite care. “And you are beautiful. Everything about you. Your mind, your passion, the way you see the world...”

She turned to press a kiss to his palm, felt him shudder.

“After the Forum dinner,” he said finally, voice rough with layered meaning. “Final preparations.” His thumb traced her lower lip as he spoke, making it clear he wasn’t referring only to their research. “For the Colloquium. For... everything.”

She nodded, not trusting her voice.

He started to leave, made it three steps before turning back. Crossed to her in two strides and kissed her once more—quick, fierce, a promise and ending and beginning all at once. Then he was gone, disappearing into the gathering dusk.

Elysia walked home feeling weightless, as if her feet barely touched the rain-slicked cobblestones. The world seemed sharper somehow—colours more vivid despite the grey evening, sounds clearer. The harbour bells rang the hour and sounded like music. Even the puddles reflected light like scattered stars. Her lips still tingled, her skin still burned where he’d touched her. This was what the poets meant, she realised. This dizzy, terrifying, wonderful feeling of falling with no ground in sight.