I turned.
Thaliel reached first, which was always how it went.
She was tall, with the kind of presence that occupied more space than her physical fra technically required.
Her hair was black with a depth that didn’t behave quite like normal black, changing at the edges into sothing closer to the void between stars when the light caught it at certain angles.
Her eyes were a deep, depthless violet that shone when caught by, almost looking like two beautiful pieces of athyst.
Her skin was pale in the way that things are pale when light doesn’t reach them often.
She wore the academy uniform, and that only seed to cause her curves to be explicitly shown.
She was, and I say this with full acknowledgnt that the observation is inconvenient, genuinely stunning.
Emyria beside her was a different kind of stunning entirely.
Where Thaliel read as depth, Emyria read as beginning.
Her hair was the white of sothing that hasn’t been touched yet, pristine and luminous, falling past her shoulders in a way that seed to generate its own faint light rather than reflect anyone else’s.
Her eyes were a soft, warm gold that shouldn’t have worked alongside that much white but still did sohow.
Her skin carried a faint luminescence that wasn’t exactly a glow, more like the suggestion of it, the way the air looks just before sothing is created inside it.
She was slightly shorter than Thaliel and held herself with a composure so complete it read less as personality and more as nature.
The Goddess of the Abyss and the Goddess of Creation.
Standing side by side, they looked like the opening and closing of sothing vast.
"Thaliel and Emyria."
Neither of them returned the greeting.
They looked at the way they always looked at , which was with an enormous hate etched on their eyes, as if I had truly stolen sothing precious to them.
Well... I didn’t exactly steal Lunara, but they think I did.
"Where is Lunara?" Thaliel spoke first.
"Student council office," I replied, barely holding the urge to get the fuck out of here.
"Competition preparation."
Thalied nodded slighly at my words, humming thoughtfully while Emyria’s warm gold eyes stayed on with their usual complete steadiness.
And surprisingly, it was Emyria who asked the next question.
"When are you leaving her?"
The announcent hall continued its noise around us as I barely registered his words. I an, who would ask soone to when they would leave her?
Like, at least give sothing precious to make leave her!
"Oh!!!" Kael, beside , stopped breathing.
And Tyrian beca very interested in a fixed point on the wall to his left.
I looked at Emyria.
"I’m not."
I an... It’s not like I can leave Lunara. She’d probably follow to the end of the Divine Realm, but well... I quite like her.
...Maybe even sprouted love for her.
Her gold eyes didn’t waver.
"You will eventually," she pressed on, with the specific confidence of soone who believes they’re stating sothing inevitable rather than sothing desired.
"You always leave."
"That’s an interesting thing to know about soone you’ve spoken to a handful of tis."
"I’ve paid attention to your actions... and I also know about Selindra, who’s been missing for over a year. But it was said that you were the last one seeing her..." her eyes narrowed slighly.
Selindra...
I know that she’s alive since she gave her life ter. But I guess... the mission that I gave her to find the Primordial Court’s main base was simply too hard.
She was just taking longer than expected.
That was the version I was going with.
"Selindra makes her own choices."
I looked to the other side and noticed that Thaliel hadn’t moved.
Her depthless violet eyes were on with the patience of still water, which was considerably more unsettling than open hostility would have been.
I rember that the first ti I t her, she tried to duel for Lunara’s hand. Lunara was with at that ti, and simply outright refused her for .
"You collect won as trophies!" Emyria stated, pulling my attention back to her. Her tone had changed, and even gained a colder edge.
"Selindra. The ones at your base. The ones who follow you into things they shouldn’t survive... Lunara will beco another one of them."
"Lunara is not a trophy- She makes her own decisions about where she stands."
"She made that decision before she knew the full picture," Thaliel mumbled.
First words she’d spoken in a minute.
"The full picture...?"
"Mm."
And then she reached into her uniform.
What she took out was not sothing I had been expecting.
A stack of photographs, held together loosely, printed on what looked like high-quality divine paper that suggested soone had put genuine effort into the docuntation.
She looked at for exactly one second with those depthless violet eyes.
Then she threw them at my face.
FWAP!
They scattered.
Dozens of them, catching the air and spinning outward in every direction, so fluttering to the floor, so sailing past my shoulder, several hitting my chest and face before I could register what they were.
Students nearby turned to look.
I caught one and looked at it.
Vivian and I, her hand in mine, walking through the capital. Taken from a distance with a good composition, actually.
The light had been doing sothing interesting that afternoon.
I caught another.
Rose, at the café, was leaning across the table toward with that small smile she had.
Another.
Lilith. I wasn’t going to describe that one.
Another.
Christina, her golden hair catching sunlight, her arm through mine, sowhere I didn’t imdiately recognize.
I looked at the spread of photographs now decorating the hallway floor around my feet.
Kael had gone completely still beside .
Tyrian was looking at the photographs on the floor with the expression of a man counting inwardly and arriving at a number larger than he’d thought.
"...Aestrea," Kael called out.
I bent down and picked up one of Rose at the café.
The angle had genuinely caught sothing good. The way the light ca through the window, and the way she was leaning forward.
I slid it into my breast pocket.
"That was a good angle," I nodded with a faint smile.
The hallway fell into silence.
Kael looked at Tyrian.
Tyrian looked at the floor.
The floor had nothing to offer either of them.
"How many?" Kael asked lightly, with the voice of soone who needed a number to finish processing.
He didn’t even sound jealous or accuse of sothing.
I didn’t answer him.
Thaliel stepped forward, closing the distance between us by half, her voice dropping even colder than it already was.
"This is what Lunara doesn’t know... yet," she stated, gesturing at the photographs still scattered across the hallway floor.
To those words, my lips curled up lightly.
"Lunara has t all of them."
The hallway went very quiet in our imdiate vicinity.
Thaliel’s violet eyes didn’t move from mine.
"...Excuse ?"
"She’s t all of them," I repeated, keeping my voice as neutral as ever. "She knows who they are. She knows that they currently live with ... She knows everything."
Emyria, who had maintained her composure through the entire exchange with the serenity of soone whose authority was literally the concept of creation, blinked.
Once.
It was the most expressive thing I’d ever seen her do.
Thaliel’s jaw tightened instantly.
"And she accepted that?!" Her voice actually got louder.
"You’d have to ask her," I smiled, deciding to mock her because of how annoying they truly were.
"But she’s in the student council office, and you’d be interrupting competition preparation, so I’d wait until after the announcent if I were you."
Thaliel stared at .
"A person like you doesn’t deserve her," she mumbled almost to herself, but I obviously caught it and quickly replied.
"Probably not."
That stopped her again.
"But she disagrees," I added.
"And it’s her opinion that matters."
I bent down and picked up one more photograph from the floor. Looked at it briefly. Put it in my pocket with the other one.
Then I straightened, looked at both of them one last ti, and turned toward the announcent hall.
"The bracket’s up," I said to Kael and Tyrian.
"Let’s go."
Kael stepped over a photograph carefully, as if it might react to being stepped on.
Tyrian fell into step beside with the specific silence of soone who had several hundred questions and was deciding which ones were survivable to ask.
"...How many?" he finally asked, as we walked.
"Tyrian."
"I’m asking as soone who considers himself reasonably inford about your life."
"You’re not."
"Clearly!!!" he uttered with remarkable composure.
"HOW MANY?!!!!"
"...Seventeen."
Both Kael and Tyrian stopped at my words, looking at with the look of soone who practically wanted to commit murder right here and now.
"SEVENTEEN?!"
"SEVENTEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN?!!!!!!"
The two of them shouted loudly, gathering the attention of everyone. But since I was already expecting this, I instantly teleported away, leaving the two idiots there.
Phew...
Now, onto this damned competition.
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