Chapter 207. She Fell Asleep Because She Chose To, Not Because She Collapsed
The silence that followed was immediate and deafening. Kaela’s face went through a rapid succession of emotions: confusion, disbelief, and finally, a flash of pure, unadulterated jealousy that made her ears turn crimson.
"A greatsword...?" Kaela repeated, her voice climbing half an octave. "You’re telling me that after all this time, that stick-in-the-mud Lia Valestria got to train with a greatsword?!"
"She did," William said, nodding solemnly. "She said it felt ’honest,’ said she enjoyed proving herself wrong about her own limitations."
Kaela let out an outraged noise, throwing her hands up in exasperation. "That’s cheating! That’s completely unfair!"
"I’m stuck practicing with these ridiculous light swords because Instructor Olivia says my wrists can’t handle the torque of anything heavier, and she gets to play around with a mountain of steel?!"
"It’s not ’playing around,’ Kaela. It’s training..."
"It’s favoritism!" Kaela countered, pacing a tight circle in front of him like a caged predator. "I could handle a greatsword!"
"I could handle a claymore! I could probably handle a two-handed war hammer if I really put my mind to it!"
William watched her pout, finding the display unexpectedly endearing. "I don’t doubt it... But you’re complaining about a handicap that you yourself insisted was ’fine for agility training’ last week."
"That was last week!" she shouted, then immediately lowered her voice, glaring at him when he smirked. "That was before I knew she was getting the cool weapons."
She stopped pacing and slumped slightly, the fire of her jealousy dimming into something more sulky. "Anyway... she’s actually improving? Really?"
William’s expression softened. The teasing vanished, replaced by the quiet sincerity that had defined his day.
"She is. She’s doing more than improving, Kaela." William looked at the sky. "She’s starting to fight for herself instead of fighting against her own shadow."
Kaela looked away, staring at the darkened academy spires. For a moment, the bravado dropped, revealing the genuine concern she usually hid behind her aggression.
"Good," she whispered, almost too quiet to hear. "She deserves that... Even if she is a showoff with a big sword soon."
She turned back to him, the fierce look returning, though it lacked its earlier venom. "Now, if you’re done being a philosophical menace, you’re going to tell me exactly what technique she used for that redirect."
"And if you leave out any details, I’ll make sure your next training session involves me using you as a practice dummy."
William grinned. "Lead the way, Captain."
...
Inside the confines of her dormitory room, the silence felt heavier than usual. Lia sat on the edge of her narrow bed, the dim lamplight casting long, wavering shadows across the stone walls.
Her body was a map of dull aches; her shoulders throbbed with every breath, and her forearms felt as though they had been fused into solid wood.
Yet, her eyes kept drifting to the corner of the room where her equipment lay.
Her mind was a storm of conflicting impulses. Part of her, the part that had been forged in the relentless fires of her family’s expectations screamed at her to stand up.
That part demanded she grab the practice blade, head back to the courtyard, and swing until her muscles tore. She felt an almost frantic need to chase that feeling from earlier: that moment of raw, honest connection with the steel.
She wanted to prove she could master it faster, stronger, and better. She wanted to drown out the emptiness with the rhythmic clang of metal.
’Just one more hour,’ her inner voice whispered. ’If you train through the pain, you’ll surpass them...’
’You’ll become undeniable.’
Her hand reached out instinctively, fingers twitching as if already gripping the leather-wrapped hilt. She imagined the weight of the greatsword, the way the center of gravity demanded her entire being.
She wanted to sink back into that struggle, because in that struggle, she wasn’t a Valestria, and she wasn’t a disappointment; other than that, she was simply a force in motion.
But as her fingers grazed the cold metal of her current training sword, a shiver ran up her spine.
A memory surfaced, unbidden and startlingly clear. It wasn’t a memory of a blade, but of a voice.
"Mastery isn’t about making something easy; it’s about making the difficulty become part of you."
"Everything’s difficult the first time... I’ve just had a lot of first times by now."
The words echoed in the quiet room, each one landing with the weight of a physical blow. She remembered the way William had looked at her not with pity, not with the clinical assessment of a teacher, but with something that felt dangerously like understanding.
He hadn’t asked her to stop because she was weak; he had asked her to understand the struggle.
She pulled her hand back from the sword as if it had burned her.
"If you think difficulty is an obstacle to mastery, you’ll stop when it gets hard. But if you understand that difficulty IS the mastery, you’ll keep going."
She closed her eyes, breathing shakily. She realized then that she had been misinterpreting his lesson.
She had thought mastery meant relentless, punishing forward momentum. But William had implied something else: that mastery required the wisdom to know when the battle was internal.
To push through exhaustion was courage, but to respect the body’s limits was discipline. And she had never been taught discipline; she had only been taught endurance.
’Is this what he meant?’ she wondered, her heart hammering against her ribs. ’That I can’t conquer the sword if I’m too broken to hold it?’
The frantic energy that had been driving her toward the door began to drain away, replaced by a profound, bone-deep realization. Her body wasn’t failing her; it was speaking to her.
And for the first time in her life, she chose to listen.
Moving slowly, as if her bones were made of glass, Lia stood up.
The instinct to train was still there, a low hum beneath her skin, but she consciously pushed it down, placing it aside like a weapon she wasn’t ready to draw.
She walked toward the small washroom, her footsteps heavy but deliberate. The water she ran into the basin was warm, and as she began to wash away the sweat and dried blood from the day’s exertion, the tension in her neck began to unravel.
The steam rose around her, blurring the sharp edges of the room, creating a cocoon of heat that seemed to soften the harsh memories that usually haunted her.
As she cleaned the grime from her skin, she didn’t think about sword forms or footwork. Instead, she thought about the way the sunset had looked.
She thought about the quiet, effortless conversation she had shared with a man who didn’t seem to fear her darkness.
When she finally emerged from the bathroom, wrapped in simple linen, she felt strangely light. The ache was still there, but it no longer felt like an enemy; apart from that, it felt like proof.
She crawled beneath the cool sheets of her bed, pulling the blanket up to her chin. Her mind tried to wander back to the greatsword one last time, to the grip, the weight, and the power, but she gently redirected it.
She focused instead on the rhythm of her own breathing, steady and slow.
For the first time in years, Lia Valestria didn’t fall asleep out of collapse. She fell asleep because she allowed herself to.
And as darkness claimed the room, she drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep, leaving the sword in the corner to wait for the morning.
...
The moonlight filtered through the tall windows of Catherine’s private study, casting silver ribs across the floorboards. The room smelled of old parchment, beeswax candles, and the faint, sharp tang of ink.
It was a quiet sanctuary, insulated from the rest of the academy by layers of stone and tradition, but tonight, the silence felt different, less like isolation and more like shared solitude.
William lay sprawled across Catherine’s bed, his arms folded behind his head. The mattress was softer than anything he had slept on in months, a luxury that felt almost alien against his body.
His muscles were still humming from the day’s exertion, but the adrenaline had long since faded, leaving behind a pleasant, heavy lethargy.
A few feet away, seated at the massive oak desk, Catherine remained a figure of focused composure. The only sound in the room was the rhythmic scritch scratch of her quill against paper as she methodically worked through the final stack of administrative reports.
The candlelight flickered across her sharp features, highlighting the concentration etched into her brow.
William watched her for a moment, marveling at her capacity for discipline. She never seemed to tire; she simply moved from one duty to the next with the inevitability of the tides.
"You know, Catherine," William said suddenly, his voice cutting through the quiet.
It wasn’t loud, but in the stillness of the room, it carried weight. "You should learn to appreciate the art of doing absolutely nothing... Even a blade needs to be sheathed eventually."
Catherine didn’t look up immediately. She finished the sentence she was writing, blotted the ink with practiced precision, and then finally set the quill aside.
She turned her chair slightly toward him, the lamplight catching the weary but amused glint in her eyes.
"And you, William, seem to have made a career out of the art of doing absolutely nothing," she countered smoothly. "Though I suppose I can’t complain too loudly when your presence here has proven... marginally productive."
William let out a short, dry laugh. "Marginally? I’ll take it."
"Coming from you, that’s practically a standing ovation." He shifted on the bed, turning onto his side to face her. "Anyway..."
"I wanted to tell you something... about today."