Chapter 15: Preparation.
Elian wasn’t sure if it was because of Bellamy or of Milena’s presence, but the incoming traffic with the sole purpose of striking up a conversation with him had considerably died down.
Elian managed to actually finish half a plate before the questions picked back up.
Proof, at least, that Bellamy and Milena together created some kind of buffer zone the rest of the hall seemed reluctant to cross, whether out of respect for Elian’s reputation or simple unwillingness to compete with Bellamy’s volume, or the most likely option, they were scared of Milena and her flat, annoyed, stares.
"You’re eating like someone who forgot food was a thing that existed," Bellamy observed, not unkindly.
"I had a long morning."
"You’ve been having long mornings for a while, from what I heard. Six generations of waiting, resuscitating dead relic, a terrifying amount of relatives involving themselves, a truly influential haircut. Genuinely, when do you sleep?"
"Rarely," Elian admitted, which got a short, surprised laugh out of Milena that she seemed almost annoyed to have let slip.
"See, that’s the spirit." Bellamy pointed his fork at him like he’d made some kind of winning argument.
"You made her laugh. Do you understand how hard that is to accomplish before breakfast’s even finished? Especially with someone like her?"
"What’s wrong with someone like me?" Milena raised an eyebrow.
"Nothing, spare me please." He paused, "Actually, I don’t think I’ve got your name yet"
"Milena."
"I’m Bellamy."
Bellamy looked entirely unbothered by the interaction, already moving on to steal a piece of fruit off her tray this time, which she allowed with the weary resignation of someone who’d apparently already lost this particular battle before she even fought.
Elian watched the exchange with something like fascination—the easy, unbothered rhythm of it, neither of them performing for the other, just existing loudly and quietly beside each other without either mode needing to justify itself.
It was different from anything he’d grown up around. Roderic’s warmth had always come wrapped in some careful awareness of Elian’s comfort; his father’s precision left no room for anything unplanned. This was neither of those. This was just noise, freely made, landing wherever it landed.
"You’re staring again," Milena said, without looking up.
"I do that, apparently."
"You do that a lot," Bellamy agreed cheerfully.
"It’s fine. Gives your pretty face something to do besides looking terrified."
Elian paused.
"I don’t look terrified."
"You look politely terrified," Bellamy said, shrugging. "Which is worse, honestly."
Elian didn’t have a good answer for that one, mostly because it was accurate, so he focused on his plate instead and let the two of them fill the silence for him—Milena needling, Bellamy absorbing it and giving it right back doubled, the dining hall’s noise settling into something almost bearable now that he wasn’t the only thing it was pointed at.
He still had the east yard waiting for him after this.
Five names, called out of nowhere, for reasons Vale hadn’t bothered explaining.
For now, though, breakfast was almost peaceful, and he decided to let it be.
***
The east yard was already busy by the time they arrived, not with spectators, just with the unnervingly suffocating presences of the four other names Vale had called, spread out in a loose, unintroduced cluster that made it obvious nobody here had spoken to anybody else yet either.
Elian spotted the golden haired boy first.
He was Tall, composed, standing with the kind of stillness that read as deliberate rather than idle—Rudra Suryavanshi, he guessed, already being watched by exactly nobody and somehow still managing to look like he expected an audience. Elian could loosely make an educated guess from the little he knew about the boy that he wasn’t from Selenoire, his country. And the golden hair, it indicated that Rudra was of a high birth most from wherever he was.
Closer to the yard’s edge stood someone with a different presence entirely—pale, silver hair, poised, dressed in a way that made ’training gear’ look like it had been tailored specifically for her, arms folded with the composed patience of someone who’d spent her whole life being looked at and had stopped minding it somewhere around age six. Another high born, possibly even above nobility, he guessed before he’d even had the thought confirmed, purely from the way the small handful of other students nearby kept their distance without seeming to notice they were doing it.
And off to one side, sitting on an overturned crate like the wait didn’t bother him in the slightest, was a boy in gear that had clearly seen more use than anyone else’s—practical, worn soft at the joints, nothing about him performing for anyone. It was easy to figure that he was of a common origin. It was the one thing that was different about Lucenhall compared to every other academy in the country, it didn’t care about your background, or lineage. All that mattered were your skills. So coming accross a few commoners once in a while was normal for someone who studied in Lucenall.
Darrow Tanner caught Elian’s eye first, of the three, and offered an easy, unbothered nod that asked for nothing in return.
"I think we’re late," Milena said, to no one in particular, dropping her bag by the yard’s low wall.
"We’re not late," Elian corrected her. "We’re exactly on time."
"Miss Vale’s not here yet, so we might be safe." She said it with the flat certainty of someone who knew what she was talking about.
The gold-haired one—Rudra—turned at the sound of her voice, gaze sweeping over the two of them with the quick, assessing thoroughness of someone cataloguing competition rather than meeting people.
His eyes landed on Elian a half-second longer than the rest.
"Valcourt?" he said, voice several notches deeper than anything Elian had ever heard in his life. It wasn’t particularly warm either.
"That’s me."
"I’ve heard." Whatever else was behind that sentence, Rudra Suryavanshi didn’t offer it, turning his attention back toward the yard’s center instead, composed and unreadable.
The boy on the crate, by contrast, lifted a hand in an easy wave.
"Darrow," he said, like introductions were simply the polite thing to do and nobody else in this yard had bothered yet.
"Figured somebody should say it."
"Elian."
"Yeah. Everyone knows." Darrow said it without any particular weight, just fact, and went back to leaning against the crate, apparently content to let the silence settle again.
Only the royal girl hadn’t moved or spoken at all—watching the yard, watching all of them, with an expression so carefully neutral it gave away considerably more by refusing to give away anything.
Though he did remember her name from the announcement, Oizys Rosemere.
Elian didn’t know why, but he had a feeling that he’d heard that name somewhere before.
He glanced at Milena, a silent question in it, and got nothing back but a small, humorless shrug, the universal gesture for your guess is as good as mine.
Rowan Vale arrived without fanfare a few minutes later, no announcement, no dramatic entrance, just the low chatter around the yard cutting off mid-sentence as the five of them, and the people lingering around further away, registered her presence at the same moment, like she’d been standing there for a while and simply hadn’t bothered making it known.
"Good. Nobody wandered off." She crossed the yard at an unhurried pace, taking them in one by one with the same flat, assessing look she’d given Elian in the courtyard the day before.
"Sit."
There was nowhere obvious to sit. She said it anyway, and a beat later the ground beneath them shifted—smooth stone rising in a loose half-circle of low seats, quiet and precise, gone as quickly from her attention as it had arrived.
Nobody commented on it. He got the sense nobody apart from Elian here was surprised enough to bother.
He sat first, placing his staff neatly on his lap.
The others followed a moment later—Darrow easy about it, dropping down like he’d done this before somewhere. Milena choosing the seat right next to Elian. Oizys, the silent girl, settling with the kind of composed grace that made the stone look like it had been designed around her specifically; Rudra taking his seat like he resented needing one at all.
Vale remained standing, arms crossed, looking over the five of them with an expression that gave away exactly nothing.
"Five names," she said. "I presume you’re wondering why."
Nobody answered. She didn’t seem to expect them to.
"I’ve never done this before, as you all might have correctly guessed. I do not, as a rule, pull students out for special attention before I’ve seen them fight, or do something in general that impresses me. In fact, i don’t pull students out at all."
Her gaze moved down the row, unhurried, lingering half a second longer on Elian than the others before continuing.
"I’m making an exception this year, for reasons that will become clear once you’ve actually earned the explanation instead of just being told it. The earning part will come sooner rather than later, if I deem you worthy that is."
"That’s not ominous at all," Darrow muttered, mostly to himself.
"It’s meant to be." Vale didn’t smile, but something in her tone shifted, dry and faintly amused.
"You’re not here because you’re the strongest first-years I’ve seen. Some of you might be. But that’s not the qualifier."
She let that sit a moment, the yard gone quiet enough that Elian could hear the wind moving through the practice grounds beyond it.
"You’re here because each of you is carrying something the rest of this school hasn’t seen the shape of yet, what it is you can figure it out among yourselves."
Then her eyes found Elian’s again, brief and unreadable.
"I’d rather figure out what that means for each of you now, in private, than let fate do it for me in front of an audience. Worst case scenario being in the coming tournament."
Milena shifted slightly beside him—not quite discomfort, more like recalculation, like she was already reassessing everyone else on this stone half-circle in light of that sentence.
"So," Vale said, clapping once, brisk, the gravity of the moment folding back into something closer to routine.
"Before we get into the depths of it. I want to see what you’ve actually got. One at a time. No ranks, no records, no reputations, i want none of it. Just show me what happens when you actually have to fight, alone without any of the decorations that you got by being born."
Her gaze settled last on Elian, and stayed there.
"You first."