Deep blue hair brushed to one side. Eyes the sa colour, calm in the way that calm and commanding were the sa thing when they lived in the sa person.
Zael Voss. King of Silvic High.
He didn’t look a day different from when I’d last seen him, which had been several months ago, before his unexplained absence from school. The rumours had filled the gap the way rumours always did.
Suspension was the most popular theory, sothing coded quietly between certain staff mbers to protect the school’s image. Others said he’d been sent overseas by his father, which was the version that involved parental authority and therefore required no further explanation.
But he was walking into the arena now like soone who had simply decided it was ti to co back, and the room — the entire room — was already adjusting itself around that fact.
"We discussed this, Cain." Zael said it with the ease of soone revisiting a settled conversation. He moved through the arena and beca the centre of it without trying. "I let your operation function on the condition that you stay out of anything that touches my school. And here you are in my arena, on a Friday night, causing a scene." He let the observation sit. "Explain that."
Cain, the lollipop guy, apparently was doing sothing complicated with his face. Resilience and fear occupying the sa expression at the sa ti, the way they do when soone has a long history with a person and none of it ended in their favour.
He held himself still, but the stillness was costing him.
"The boss ordered to bring in a student." His head dipped slightly. "I apologise."
"He did?" Zael crouched and picked up one of the switch knives from the floor, one of the ones that had scattered during the fight. He studied it with the unhurried interest of soone appreciating craftsmanship. His fingers moved up the flat of the blade. "And he told you the student was from my school. He specified that."
"On his behalf, I—"
FLICK.
The knife left Zael’s hand at a speed that I barely registered. It passed Cain’s cheek, passed mine, one centitre, maybe less, and buried itself in the shoulder of the gang mber standing directly behind him.
The scream that followed was imdiate and specific. The guy folded, hand going to the hilt, blood already moving through his fingers and down his jacket. He crumpled toward the ground, and the sound of that was the only sound in the arena.
Cain didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. He just kept his eyes on Zael with the focused attention of soone who had already decided that reacting wasn’t available to him.
"Apologies." Zael sighed, like the word itself had weight he was tired of carrying. "Everyone always apologises. How much of a patient person do you all think I am?" He walked up to Cain and held out his hand. "Your phone."
Cain produced it from inside his jacket without hesitation. Zael took it, looked at it briefly, then handed it back.
"Call him."
Cain dialled. The room stayed quiet. The ringing was audible to everyone, and when the line connected— a glitched crackle on the other end— Cain put it to his ear.
"No, boss. We don’t have him." He paused. "Silvic’s King just showed up. He wants to talk to you."
Zael received the phone and put it on speaker. He didn’t open with anything. He let the silence settle first, let the other person decide to fill it.
"Zael." The boss’s voice arrived carefully, each word carrying the weight of soone who was working hard to sound like they weren’t concerned. "I didn’t expect you back this soon. For the record, I’m not looking for a war with Silvic High. This was just one thing. Soone in your school hurt my brother and I can’t let that go unanswered—"
"We had a deal, Dante." Zael’s voice didn’t change at all. "I told you clearly, everything that happens to a student in this school goes through . Every outco is mine to decide. Not yours." A pause. "So walk through what logic brought you to a surprise entrance in my own arena and tell where that sits with our arrangent."
Silence was on the line. The kind that ant Dante was trying to find a version of an answer that didn’t make things worse and not finding one.
"We can sort this out," Dante said finally. The word desperation was doing quiet work underneath the composure.
"Of course we can." Zael smoothed out a crease in Cain’s jacket with two fingers, easy and unhurried. "Who suggested otherwise? But it goes in my terms. Like last ti."
"What are your terms?"
"Simple. You give your brother’s na and which school he’s at. I’d have a conversation with him — nothing dramatic. And we close the file." He let the offer breathe. "And as a bonus, whatever tension’s been sitting between you and ? Consider it cleared. That’s a good deal, Dante. Take a mont."
The silence that followed had a different quality. This was soone doing a real calculation.
I wasn’t expecting Dante to take it. A gang boss ratting out his own brother to the King of Silvic High — the sa King whose school had been the origin of the problem, because the alternative was ongoing conflict with soone like Zael.
It was the kind of trade that required you to believe the trade was actually better than what you were giving up.
Apparently Dante reached a different conclusion.
"You know what, Zael?" His voice had changed. The managed coolness had finally given way to sothing more honest and raw. "Fuck you." He yelled. "If you think I’m laying my brother out for you, you’re out of your fucking mind. You fucking asshole—"
Beep.
Zael ended the call. His expression was the sa half-smile I’d seen on Cael’s face, the version that was doing sothing more controlled than it appeared. He slipped the phone back into Cain’s jacket and stood there for a mont, a quiet sound escaping him every few seconds. It took a beat to register that he was chuckling.
He was also trying to contain sothing that wasn’t a chuckle.
His eyes found Cain’s. And in that fraction of a second, Cain’s composure, which had been holding under significant pressure, finally showed a crack. Just a small one. But it was there.
"Your boss is a loyal man," Zael said. "I’ll give him that. Sends eight people into a rival school’s territory to protect his brother. Protecting family— is that the new trend lately?" He tilted his head slightly. "It’s a sha he decided to express it in my building."
Cain said nothing. He had the look of soone who knew exactly what shape the next few seconds were going to take.
"Unfortunately." Zael turned toward the exit, moving with the sa unhurried quality he’d entered with. "You eight are the ssage I’m sending back to him." He reached the door. "Don’t hold back guys."
The arena beca sothing else in the next second.
Students ca down from the seats, off the ring, out of every corner, moving fast, yelling, the whole accumulated energy of a Friday night crowd that had just been given permission.
Abilities discharged. Fists connected. Silvic High students outnumbered and outmatched Cain’s crew in every direction at once, and the gang, who had walked in looking like they owned the outco — found very quickly that they didn’t.
I watched from where I was.
Zael glanced at on his way out. Just a mont — two seconds, maybe less. Long enough to read sothing and file it.
The King of Silvic High was back, and sothing told that he was going to be a problem soon enough.
***
[External POV]
"Mhmm... Riven—"
The last thing on Ms Kira’s mind, as his lips found hers again, was anything happening in the outside world.
Which was notable, given that Ms Kira’s professional identity was built around awareness, control, and the careful maintenance of appearances. As the head staff, she’d been reserved. Unimpeachable.
Or so the staff room understood her.
She would not have predicted, at any point in the last three years, that her Friday nights would co to look like this, sitting on her own desk at 8:30pm, hands wrapped around the Ace of Silvic High, her professional composure sowhere on the floor alongside the dignity she’d spent a decade building.
Riven kissed her more deeply. His lips moved to her neck— quiet, deliberate — and his hands found her thighs with the particular confidence of soone who understood exactly what he was doing and had no uncertainty about it. She felt her grip on her own thoughts loosen by several degrees.
Almost.
"Riven." Her voice ca out wrong, less firm than intended, more of a moan. "We’re in the staff room. If soone walks in—"
Riven was not, by nature, a person who responded well to interruption. He was also not the kind of person who accepted incomplete evenings philosophically.
He had waited in the hotel room for over two hours according to their standard arrangent, every Friday, the hotel where they’d been eting since the beginning of whatever this was.
She had called to say she was running behind, that the paperwork on her desk had expanded in the way it sotis did and she’d get there when she could.
Two hours passed. Then three. The door didn’t open.
He had grabbed his keys.
He’d found her exactly where she’d said she’d still be, sa desk, still working— and had walked straight to her and kissed her before she’d had ti to react to his presence. Deep enough that the surprise dissolved before she could hold onto it.
She was still thinking about the risk.
"And?" He pulled back just enough that they were looking at each other. "What if soone walks in? Who, exactly, is going to be the one to file that report?"
"I could be reported. I’m not prepared to hand in a resignation letter right—" She pushed at him, but he didn’t move. "Worst case, I could get fired."
"We’ll just have to wait and see who tries to send you away." He smiled. The sa smile that had started all of this, the one she’d classified as dangerous the first ti she’d seen it and then spent several months finding excuses to be in the sa room as. "Do you trust ?"
"I — yes."
"Then stop worrying and let do this."
He kissed her again. His hands moved, slowly, with intention, and she stopped resisting the logic of the situation. The sounds she made were quiet —barely sounds at all — but her hands had found his arm and were communicating sothing that contradicted her earlier argunt entirely.
Riven followed the signal. His breath moved against hers. His other hand went to the buttons of her shirt, working through them with the patience of soone who believed the pace was the point. A kiss against her collarbone for each one that ca loose.
BUZZ.
The phone in his pocket rang loud. Repeated.
He stopped.
"Let just—" He reached for it with the intention of silencing it, and then saw the na on the screen.
King.
He looked at Kira. She had registered the interruption and was watching him with an expression that occupied the space between suspense and irritation.
"I have to take this." He answered before she could respond to that. "I’m in the middle of sothing—"
"Order eting. Fifteen minutes." Zael’s voice had the specific quality of soone for whom instructions existed only as a courtesy, the actual expectation was already set. "I need everyone there."
There was no version of this conversation where Riven negotiated the tiline.
"On my way." A sigh. Then he ended the call.
Kira was looking at him.
"Zael?" she asked.
"Yeah." He picked up his keys. Moved toward the door. Paused at it with a last look back. "I wonder what this is about." He turned the handle. "Hopefully not as bad as last ti."
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