Chapter 116 — "Monday"
Four forty-five.
The dormitory was dark.
She had been awake since four, lying in the deliberate stillness of someone who had already finished sleeping and was only waiting for an acceptable hour to stop pretending otherwise.
At last, she sat up and looked around.
The packed bag in the corner. The desk stripped bare except for the lamp. The walls. The ceiling that had held fifty-three days of her thoughts and was about to inherit someone else’s.
She dressed, then checked the bag.
Not because anything was missing. Because her hands needed something to do.
Compass.
Notebooks.
Hair pin box.
Thimble.
Flower.
Ribbon—already on her wrist, not packed.
The letters from her parents. All tucked carefully between the notebooks.
She zipped the bag, lifted it, and walked to the door.
Then stopped.
She looked back at the room one last time.
The windowsill where Tax had spent three weeks. The desk where gifts had appeared without warning. The drawer that had once refused to close.
Empty now.
The letters gone. Everything gone, or packed, or both.
She switched off the lamp and left.
At four fifty, the academy was not quieter than it was at any other hour.
Just more itself.
Stone more visibly stone. Corridors more distinctly corridor. The particular quality of a place existing without needing to be witnessed.
She moved through it slowly.
Past the east wing. Past the courtyard. Past the bakery building, dark at this hour. Past the narrow path behind the library she had taken twice a week for three weeks.
There, she paused.
She studied the entrance, the path itself, the shortcut she had found on Day 4 for reasons that had once felt urgent and now felt like something else entirely.
She walked through it one last time.
Not toward the bakery.
Just through.
Just because it belonged to her.
Then she came out the other side and kept going toward the main gate.
Tax was waiting there.
Not on her shoulder. On the gate post, staring out at the road beyond, into the dark, toward the direction of Varen somewhere impossibly far away.
She stopped beside him.
He did not look at her right away.
They stood with the gate between inside and outside, the academy behind her, the road ahead, the dark doing what dark did before five in the morning.
"Tax."
"Hm."
"You’re not coming."
"No."
"Kestral."
"No companions."
"Of any kind."
"No."
She looked out at the road again.
"I know."
Tax lowered his gaze to the gate post, then to the road.
"Boss."
"Hm."
"The first winter will feel impossible."
"Yes."
"The second will feel normal."
"Third."
"I won’t notice it."
"Yes."
She turned to him.
To the gold of his eyes. To the ancient thing behind them that had been there since before she knew what ancient meant.
"Tax."
"Hm."
"I’m going to miss you."
He kept looking ahead, into the dark, toward Varen.
For a long moment, he said nothing.
Then, quietly, "I know."
She looked at him.
At the crow who had stayed on her shoulder through everything. Who had chosen her when he had not needed to. Who was staying now because she had asked him to. Who would still be here when she came back, because Tax kept the things he said, even the difficult ones.
She reached out and touched one finger to his small head.
Just for a moment.
He did not move. Did not speak. Only accepted it.
Then she lifted her bag, looked once at the gate, the road, Monday itself, and pushed the gate open.
She stepped through.
The academy behind her.
The road ahead.
The dark stretched between this place and everything that came after.
She walked.
Daren was at the bench.
Obviously.
With bread.
Also obviously.
At four fifty-five in the morning, on a bench he had occupied for three weeks, in the dark, holding bread as if this had always been the inevitable shape of the moment.
She stopped in front of him.
He looked up.
At her. At the bag. At the road behind her. At the academy gate. At Monday, at four fifty-five, in the dark.
Then he stood and held out the bread.
She took it and ate where she stood.
He watched in silence.
The city was still. The road waited.
When she finished, he reached into his coat and pulled out a small folded paper.
She looked at it.
"From Rowan," he said.
She took it and unfolded it.
Inside was a list.
Merchant contacts in Varen.
Three names.
Addresses.
And beneath them, in Rowan’s handwriting:
If you need anything. They know me.
She looked at the list again.
At the names. The addresses. The exact shape of the gift.
Not emotional on the surface.
Practical.
The most Rowan thing he had ever done.
"He’s not here," she said.
"He said goodbyes were inefficient."
Her eyes stayed on the page.
"He also said to tell you," Daren went on, "that the noble path process will be complete by the time you read this."
She looked up.
"He finished it."
"Last night."
"He stayed up."
"He said it needed to be done before you left."
She lowered her eyes to the paper again.
To Rowan’s handwriting. To the three contacts. To what it meant that he had finished the process last night.
What it meant for Kael.
What it meant for all of it.
She folded the paper and placed it in her bag beside the flower, beside the compass, beside everything else she was taking with her.
"Daren."
"Hm."
"Tell him—"
"What?"
She looked at the road. At the dark. At Monday.
"He knows."
Daren studied her for a second.
"Yeah," he said. "He does."
She picked up her bag.
He stayed where he was beside the bench, beside the road.
"Every letter," he said.
"Every letter," she answered.
He nodded once, the way people did when they had said what mattered and knew there was nothing useful to add.
She turned and walked.
Three steps down the road, she stopped.
Something was fixed to the gate.
She had not seen it on her way out.
On the post opposite the one Tax had been perched on, a small piece of paper sat folded once.
She walked back.
Looked at it.
At the gate. At the academy beyond it. At the dark corridors inside. At the practice hall somewhere within them. At the north garden. At the bench there. At all of it.
Then she picked up the note and unfolded it.
One line.
His handwriting.
She had never seen it before.
Clean. Spare. Unmistakably his.
Come back.
Two words.
She stood there looking at them.
At the handwriting. At the gate. At the academy. At Monday, four fifty-seven, in the dark.
Something moved through her.
Not the filed thing.
Not the warm thing.
Not the thing without a name.
Something that contained all three at once.
She folded the paper and slipped it into her pocket.
Not the bag.
Her pocket.
Close.
Then she turned and walked down the road.
The academy behind her.
The city around her.
The dark ahead.
Daren watched her go.
From the bench, in the dark, as her figure grew smaller.
Then he sat down and looked at the gate.
At the place where the note had been.
At the bare post.
At the academy beyond it.
At Monday.
Tax flew down from inside the gate and landed beside him.
Together they watched the road.
The distant figure. The dark. Monday at four fifty-eight.
"She took the note," Daren said.
"Yes."
"In her pocket."
"Yes."
"Not the bag."
"No."
Daren kept his eyes on the road as the darkness gradually swallowed what remained of her shape.
"Tax."
"Hm."
"Where’s Kael."
Tax glanced toward the academy, toward the practice hall window visible from here.
Dark.
"Inside."
"He didn’t come."
"No."
"She asked him not to."
"Yes."
"He listened."
Tax looked back at the road.
"Yes."
Daren let out a breath and stared at the empty post, then toward the pocket the note now rested in, then at the distance opening between here and there.
At five years.
"The note," he said. "What did it say?"
Tax watched the road, where she was nearly gone now.
"Come back."
Daren huffed softly.
"Two words."
"Yes."
"That’s very him."
"Yes."
He sat there in the dark with the bread in his hand, looking at the road, the gate, the academy, the empty place where she had been standing, and the five years now settled into Monday morning like something that had arrived with every intention of staying.
"Tax."
"Hm."
"I’m going to be extremely dramatic about this later."
"I know."
"When I have more bread."
"Obviously."
Daren looked down at what remained of it, then back at the road.
"This is not enough bread for this."
Tax said nothing.
Which was agreement.
Which was enough.
The road went on.
The dark held.
Her figure was gone now.
Only the road remained.
Only Monday.
Only five years sitting in the morning, waiting to be lived through.