Chapter 83: The List (3)
The four of them froze, their breathing halting mid-draw as the faint shuffle of shoes pressed into the grass stopped right beside the bush.
Whoever, whatever it was, had positioned themselves so close that Lucien could see the faint sway of shadowed fabric through the gaps in the leaves.
The faint scent of something sharp, almost metallic, drifted in the night air, and the silence between each heartbeat felt like it could split the world open.
The unknown figure didn’t move at first.
Just… stood there.
Waiting.
Watching.
Lucien’s pulse thudded so hard he was certain whoever was on the other side could hear it.
He risked the tiniest glance toward Vaelira, who was holding her wooden sword in a death grip, her knuckles pale under the faint moonlight.
She raised an eyebrow at him like, ‘Well?,’ but he was already angling his head toward the source of the sound, straining to catch even the slightest hint of what was going on.
Then came the second set of footsteps.
Lighter, quicker, almost tiptoeing.
The grass rustled faintly as another presence slid in from the other side of the bush.
The air around them felt tighter now, compressed under the weight of two unseen voices circling one another.
The first voice spoke, low and sharp, male, with a dry rasp like someone who’d been smoking or shouting too much.
“You didn’t bring enough. Again.”
The newcomer’s voice was higher, slightly breathless, female, but no less edged.
“I told you, the stock’s running low. You want more, you’re paying double.”
“Double? For this?”
The man snapped, his tone curling with disgust.
“The last batch was garbage. Barely worked. You’re lucky I didn’t-”
“Didn’t what?”
The woman cut in, voice dropping into an almost taunting whisper.
“Go crying to the Academic Board? You think you’ll walk out of here clean? You’ve used it too, remember?”
Lucien felt the couple next to him shift uneasily, the boy muttering something under his breath that earned him a sharp elbow from the girl.
They were trying to press themselves deeper into the earth, as though the right angle would make them merge with the soil entirely.
The man outside the bush gave a low, derisive laugh.
“If you keep this up, I’ll find someone else to deal with. Someone who actually delivers quality.”
“Good luck with that,” the woman shot back immediately.
“Unless you’ve suddenly got connections I don’t know about, you’ll be crawling back here in a week. Begging.”
The man’s tone dropped to a dangerous whisper.
“Drop the price. Last warning.”
There was a heartbeat of silence before the woman replied, icy and slow:
“Try it, and we both go down.”
The silence after that was worse than the argument itself.
No more words, only the faint sound of shallow, tense breathing one on each side of the bush.
Then, almost in unison, the two sets of footsteps retreated in opposite directions.
The air felt lighter, but only just slightly.
Lucien was the first to move, poking his head out of the foliage and scanning both ends of the path.
The courtyard was empty again, shadows stretching lazy and harmless in the moonlight.
“All clear,” he whispered, leaning back to the group.
Vaelira let out a deep, shaky breath and muttered under her breath, “What the hell was that?”
“Probably some shady student deal,” Lucien said, brushing twigs off his sleeves.
“Didn’t sound like a teacher or a warden. Just idiots with… whatever that was.”
When he glanced at the couple, their expressions were nothing short of bewildered horror, as if they’d just discovered a swamp creature squatting among their late-night hideout.
Their eyes darted between him and Vaelira with something between disbelief and secondhand embarrassment.
Vaelira, on the other hand, went very still before realizing what the other two were possibly up to before their intrusion and exactly what she and Lucien must have looked like, crouched together in a bush at this hour.
Her face turned scarlet, and she practically leapt to her feet, grabbing Lucien’s wrist in a sudden, desperate motion.
“Alright, we’re leaving,” she hissed, yanking him upright.
Lucien, completely oblivious to the reason for her fluster, looked over his shoulder at the couple and offered a confused wave before being hauled away.
“What’s your problem? I was just-”
“Shut up and walk.”
And so he did, with no idea that Vaelira’s embarrassment had nothing to do with shady student dealings at all.
***
The gravel crunched sharply beneath their feet as Vaelira dragged Lucien by the wrist like a woman possessed, storming across the courtyard with the seething energy of someone whose dignity had just been dragged through the mud.
Her grip was vice-tight, and her gait a march of fury, part embarrassed retreat, part damage control.
Lucien, meanwhile, stumbled along behind her like a confused puppy being led away from the scene of a crime he didn’t know he committed.
“Alright, alright, slow down,” Lucien finally said, half-laughing, half out of breath.
“What’s with the dramatic exit? We weren’t the ones doing anything weird.”
Vaelira came to a dead stop, whirled around, and looked him dead in the eye, her face still beet red from both the exercise and the absurdity of the past five minutes.
“You seriously don’t get it?”
She hissed.
“Lucien, do you even realize what those two were doing? And where we jumped into?”
Lucien blinked at her, his face the picture of nonchalance.
“Yeah. The other two were really going at it by the looks of it.”
Vaelira's jaw dropped.
“Why would you say that out loud?!”
Lucien tilted his head, confused.
“I mean… it was pretty obvious? The girl’s hair was all over the guy’s face, they were redder than your face is right now, and they looked like they were seconds away from-”
“-Don’t finish that sentence!”
Vaelira clapped a hand over his mouth, her entire face now glowing like a forge.
“Oh gods. How are you saying this with a straight face?!”
Lucien pried her hand off with the grace of someone used to this kind of melodrama and simply shrugged.
“That’s what teens do. It’s natural. Hormones, secret spots, awkward fumbling. The usual.”
Vaelira let out the most exasperated sigh he’d ever heard from a living being and covered her face with both hands.
“We jumped behind that bush, Lucien. That one. Mid–”
Lucien gave her an unbothered look.
“Well, to be fair, there weren’t many options at the time. It was either that or get caught red-handed swinging ‘borrowed’ swords and sparring in the middle of the night.”
“I would prefer detention over what just happened!”
“We didn’t get caught,” Lucien said brightly.
“I’d call that a win.”
Vaelira glared at him.
“We did get seen. By them.”
Lucien just chuckled and waved it off like a passing breeze.
“Please. Those two lovebirds are too embarrassed to even make eye contact with a window for the next month. No way they tell anyone. If anything, they should be thanking us. We gave them a good scare, added some excitement to their night.”
Vaelira opened her mouth to protest, then gave up and just groaned into her palms.
“Seriously,” Lucien continued, deadpan, “I think we really brought them closer together. Nothing like mutual terror to bond people.”
Vaelira made a sound halfway between a groan and a strangled laugh as they finally reached the dormitory steps.
“You are impossible,” she muttered.
Lucien offered her a lazy salute. “And yet here we are, sword-sparring at midnight together. Life’s funny like that.”
“Oh and return those ‘borrowed’ gear,” Lucien emphasised on the borrowed part again in a cheek and tongue way.
“Before the club realises they are gone.”
That got a laugh out of Vaelira.
***
The next morning.
Lucien yawned as he cracked open the door to his dorm room, wearing the expression of a man halfway between sleep and sentience.
His hair looked like it had hosted a minor storm, and his eyes blinked blearily against the hallway light.
All he wanted was a short shuffle to the bathroom before breakfast.
The thought of the classes he has to attend looming over his head like a revenant.
Yet.
What he got instead was a leather glove slapping against his chest.
Lucien blinked down at it, looked up, and found himself face to face with the boy from the bush.
Tall, ruffled, and absolutely brimming with indignant honor, the boy’s face was beet red but determined.
He held a second glove in his other hand, trembling slightly as if this had been rehearsed twelve times in the mirror and still didn’t feel quite real.
“I challenge you,” the boy declared, loud enough for the next three dorms over to hear, “to a gentleman’s duel!”
Lucien stared at him.
There was a long silence.
Then he blinked again, slowly.
“A what?”
“A duel!”
The boy repeated, gesturing with the glove like it was a sword.
“For… for besmirching the sacred privacy of a gentleman and his lady!”
Lucien tilted his head slightly.
“…Didn’t you besmirch the bush first?”
The boy faltered.
“That’s-! That’s not the point!”
Lucien scratched the back of his neck.
“Look, I was just hiding from some sketchy midnight drug dealers. I didn’t intend to interrupt your late-night makeout session.”
“Aha! So you admit you saw us!”
Lucien deadpanned.
“You were five inches from my nose. I think I could smell your cologne.”
The boy turned a darker shade of crimson.
Just as things were escalating toward another round of melodramatic declarations, Vaelira appeared at the far end of the hallway, took one look at the scene, and immediately turned back around with a muttered, “No, thank you.”
But the boy was already winding up again, picking the glove back up and this time throwing down the metaphorical gauntlet and physical glove with all the righteous fury of someone whose honor had been tangled up in shrubbery.
“Today at noon! At the gymnasium! Wooden swords or padded staffs, your choice, fiend!”
Lucien rubbed his face with both hands.
“Can we… maybe not do this at all? I have classes-”
Too late.
The boy was already storming off down the hall like an offended stag.
Lucien looked down at the glove on the floor.
“…Is it too late to just transfer schools?”
