Chapter 114 — "Three Days"
She came back Friday evening with the paper bag tucked under her arm.
Most of it was gone.
The hedgehog was definitely gone.
One bird remained.
She walked through the academy gates as if the bag were incidental, as if it meant nothing at all.
The guards said nothing.
Professional of them.
Tax was waiting on the gate post. His gaze dropped to the bag, to the lone bird, then to her face.
"How was it."
She looked ahead instead—toward the dormitory, toward evening settling over the academy.
"Fine."
"Your parents."
"Fine."
"The letters."
Her eyes stayed on the path.
"I read them."
Tax went quiet.
"All one hundred seventeen."
Still nothing.
"Forty-eight from my father."
A beat.
"Sixty-nine from my mother."
He flew down from the post and fell into place beside her.
"My mother," she said, then restarted. "She writes exactly the way she talks."
"Yes."
"Every letter feels like she’s standing in the room."
"Yes."
He glanced toward the gates, the path, the deepening dusk.
"That sounds like her."
She kept walking.
He flew beside her.
For a while, neither of them spoke. Around them, the academy slipped into its evening rhythm. Students drifted back from wherever students went on Fridays. Lanterns kindled one by one. The whole place moved with the steady machinery of a life kept on schedule.
"My father wrote more than I expected," she said at last.
"Yes."
"Forty-eight is still somehow less than my mother and also much more than I thought I was getting."
Tax looked at her.
"What did he say."
She kept her attention on the dormitory ahead, on the light still burning in her window.
"The same things," she said softly. "Just differently."
A pause.
"Come home safe."
Another.
"Learn everything."
And then, quieter still—
"We’ll be here."
The path received that in silence.
Tax said nothing.
Because nothing was the right answer.
She kept walking.
Toward the dormitory.
Toward the light.
Toward three days.
Saturday morning arrived without ceremony.
She was awake before it fully began.
For a while she stayed in bed, staring at the ceiling.
At Monday.
At Varen somewhere beyond Monday.
At five years beyond Varen.
All of it seemed to hang overhead like something that had moved in and had no intention of leaving.
She sat up and opened her drawer.
The letters were there now.
All one hundred seventeen.
Read.
She looked down at them. At her mother’s handwriting on sixty-nine envelopes. At the sharper, steadier hand on forty-eight more.
Then she closed the drawer and got up.
Tax was already in the corridor when she opened the door.
Not waiting.
Simply existing in the corridor.
With the professional neutrality of a crow who happened to be present.
She looked at him.
"You slept in the corridor."
"I was patrolling."
"For what."
"Various threats."
"Tax."
"Security matters."
"You were waiting for me."
"I was patrolling."
She looked at him.
He looked down the corridor.
At the many threats he had clearly neutralized in the night.
She started toward breakfast.
He flew beside her.
The corridor was quiet at this hour. Most students had the sense to sleep later on Saturdays.
Reasonable of them.
She pushed open the dining hall door—
and stopped.
Kael was already at the table.
Tea beside him.
And something resting next to her plate.
She took it in from the doorway.
Small.
Wrapped.
She crossed the room, sat down, studied it, then lifted her gaze to him.
He was reading.
"Kael."
"Hm."
"What is that."
"Open it."
"I’m going to start refusing these."
"You haven’t yet."
"I’m building toward it."
"Open it."
She looked from the wrapped object to the book in his hands, then to Tax, who landed beside it at once and began inspecting it with professional concentration.
"Tax."
"I’m assessing it."
"For what."
"Quality."
"Leave it."
"I’m ensuring—"
"Tax."
He stepped back.
One step.
Still watching.
She unwrapped it.
Inside was a small notebook.
Not dark blue.
This one was pale, nearly white, with a single symbol pressed into the cover. No words. Just the mark itself.
She turned it once in her hand, then looked at Kael.
"What is this."
"A notebook."
"The symbol."
He kept his eyes on the page.
"Kestral’s."
Her gaze dropped back to the cover.
To the academy she was going to, existing suddenly in the shape of a notebook beside her breakfast plate.
"How did you get this."
"I asked."
"Who."
"Someone who knew someone."
"Kael."
"It’s useful to know people."
She looked at the notebook again.
At the pale cover.
At the symbol.
At what it was, and what it wasn’t.
Not a gift that said I’ll miss you.
A gift that said go prepared.
Something shifted, quiet and sharp, in the center of her chest.
She slid the notebook into her bag.
Said nothing.
He said nothing.
The two of them sat there with tea and books and three days between now and Monday, saying everything by leaving it unsaid.
Tax looked from one to the other, then up at the ceiling, then nowhere.
Daren appeared at the courtyard gate at ten.
She was outside reading when his face pressed dramatically against the bars.
"Let me in."
"You don’t have a token."
"The festival is over."
"Correct."
"That’s unfair."
"That’s the system."
He gripped the bars and looked in at her with the expression of a man facing state injustice.
"Three days."
"Yes."
"That is not enough time."
"It’s what we have."
He looked down at his hands wrapped around the iron, then back at her.
At the very specific image he was making of himself.
"Daren."
"Hm."
"You look like you’re in prison."
"I feel like I’m in prison."
"You’re outside."
"You’re inside."
"That’s the opposite of prison."
"It’s prison for me."
She looked at him.
At the bars.
At the hands.
At everything he was doing on purpose.
Something softened briefly across her face.
She stood, crossed the courtyard, and stopped on the other side of the gate.
Close enough.
He looked at her.
At the iron between them.
At three days.
"You’re going to write."
"Every letter."
"Even when Varen is terrible."
"Especially then."
"And when it’s cold."
"Tax told you."
"He tells me things."
Daren let go of the bars and stepped back.
"I’m not going to be dramatic about this."
"You’re already being dramatic."
"I’m being restrained."
"Daren."
"This is my restrained face."
She studied the face in question.
At everything it was managing not to say.
"I know," she said.
He met her gaze.
"Come back different."
"You said that already."
"I’m saying it again."
"You also said every letter."
"Also saying that again."
She looked at him, then at the gate between them, at the bars his hands had just left, at Saturday with only two days behind it.
"Daren."
"Hm."
"Thank you."
"For what."
"The bench."
He huffed a laugh.
"Three weeks on a bench."
"It was a good bench."
"Rowan’s paperwork."
"He’ll deny doing it."
"I know."
"You should thank him directly."
"I will."
His attention shifted to the gate, the bars, the courtyard behind her.
"The bread," he said.
She looked back at him.
"Was a good plan."
She pointed at him.
He pointed back.
The gate between them, both of them accusing each other through iron bars.
She laughed.
Short.
Real.
The kind that escaped before she could stop it.
His grin broke wide and genuine.
"There it is," he said.
She lowered her hand.
Looked at the gate again.
At Saturday.
At two days.
"I’ll see you before Monday."
"Obviously."
He bent, picked something up from the bench, and held it through the bars.
A paper bag.
She looked at it.
"Daren."
"For the road."
"I leave Monday."
"For Saturday."
"It’s ten in the morning."
"Bread doesn’t have hours."
She took the bag and opened it.
A fox.
Two bears.
She looked up.
"The hedgehog."
"They were out."
"Of the hedgehog specifically."
"Supply issues."
"Daren."
But he was already walking away, heading back toward the bench, whistling as if he had not just said anything incriminating at all.
She looked down at the bag.
At the fox.
At the gate.
At Saturday.
At the two days still left.
Then she went back to the courtyard bench, opened the bag, and ate the fox first.
Because she felt like it.
Because she was leaving Monday.
Because some things did not need to be examined.
Tax landed beside her and peered into the bag.
At the missing fox.
At the two bears left behind.
"The fox first."
"Don’t."
"That’s new."
"Tax."
"Usually the hedgehog."
"There was no hedgehog."
"The fox, then."
"Obviously."
"Interesting."
"It’s bread, Tax."
"Yes."
He looked at the bears, at the courtyard, at the Saturday morning unfolding around them, at the academy doing whatever academies did on Saturdays, at two days.
"Boss."
"Hm."
"Are you ready."
She looked at the bears.
At the pale Kestral notebook in her bag.
At the compass in her pocket.
At the ribbon around her wrist.
At the words her father kept returning to, in one form or another.
Come home safe.
Learn everything.
We’ll be here.
She lifted her gaze to the courtyard.
To the academy.
To the gate.
To all of it.
"No," she said.
Tax looked at her.
"Good."
She turned to him.
"My mother said the same thing."
"Your mother is a smart woman."
She looked back at the bag.
"Going somewhere ready—"
"Is going somewhere you don’t need to go."
Tax watched her.
Something in his expression turned real for a moment.
Unhidden.
There and gone.
"Yes," he said.
She looked out across the courtyard.
At Saturday.
At two more days.
Then she picked up one of the bears and took a bite.
The academy went on around her.
Unaware.
Present.
The way places were.