The academy had a way of pretending nothing was happening while everything quietly was.
The days blurred. Lessons stacked on lessons. Names became familiar, then distant again. I learned which instructors tolerated questions and which treated curiosity like a liability. I learned which corridors stayed empty after dusk. Which windows caught the sun in the afternoon and which never did.
Routine returned.
And with it, expectation.
I stopped volunteering. Stopped correcting others. Let my answers arrive half a second late, imperfect around the edges. It worked. Mostly. Attention drifted elsewhere. New talents rose. New gossip replaced my name.
Except Elira's.
She did not approach me directly. Not at first. That was intentional. Instead, she existed at the edges of my day. A presence I couldn't prove but couldn't ignore.
She spoke to my instructors longer than necessary. She lingered near the dorm steps at hours that made no sense. Once, I caught her glancing at my notes left unattended on a bench, her expression unreadable, like she was solving a puzzle she already knew the answer to.
I did not confront her.
Confrontation implies equal footing. I wasn't convinced we had that.
One evening, Tomas dragged me to the common hall despite my protests. "You're rotting," he said, blunt as always. "Come sit. Lose at cards. Be human."
I lost badly. On purpose. He noticed. Pretended not to.
Laughter filled the hall, warm and uneven. Someone spilled a drink. Someone else argued about regional trade routes like it mattered. For a while, I almost forgot.
Almost.
Then the door opened.
Elira stepped inside.
No dramatic entrance. No silence falling. She didn't command rooms like that. She blended, which was more dangerous. Dark coat, academy insignia worn casually, hair tied back like she'd forgotten about it.
She scanned the room once.
Found me immediately.
Her eyes did not linger. That was the trick. She let me see that she had seen me, then looked away. A courtesy. Or a test.
I excused myself ten minutes later. Said something about fatigue. Tomas rolled his eyes but didn't stop me.
Outside, the air was cold enough to bite. I walked without direction, letting my thoughts pace themselves. I didn't hear footsteps behind me until they matched my own.
"You walk like you're expecting to be followed," Elira said.
I didn't stop. "And you talk like you already are."
She smiled. I could hear it in her voice. "Observation, not threat."
"Those are rarely separate."
We walked side by side now, distance measured, not accidental. The academy walls loomed above us, stone darkened by age and weather.
"You didn't answer," she said. "After everything I told you."
"I said I'd think."
"And?"
"I'm still thinking."
She hummed softly. "Careful. That's how people end up choosing without realizing they have."
I finally stopped. Turned to face her.
"Why me," I asked.
There it was. The question I had been circling for days, stripping of emotion, sharpening into something precise.
She studied me. Really studied me. Not like a student. Like a variable.
"You don't panic," she said. "You don't rush. And you don't believe systems are benevolent."
"That's not rare."
"It is at your age."
There it was again. The age thing. The line she refused to cross directly.
"I didn't ask to be noticed," I said.
"No," she agreed. "But you made yourself legible."
Silence stretched. Wind moved through the courtyard trees, leaves whispering like they were exchanging secrets.
"I won't be owned," I said quietly.
Her expression shifted. Not surprise. Approval.
"Good," she said. "Then this conversation would have ended differently."
That was not comforting.
She stepped back, giving me space, an exit. Another test.
"Think faster," she added. "Others already are."
Then she turned and left, footsteps fading into stone and shadow.
I stood there long after she was gone, heart steady, mind anything but.
This wasn't a trap.
It was an invitation wrapped in inevitability.
And the worst part?
Somewhere deep down, a part of me was already planning how to refuse without closing the door.