Helena didn’t quite know what she expected when she finally found an excuse to approach the Ancient Studies classroom the next day, only that sitting still waiting for the next dream felt far more frightening than acting.
She wasn’t enrolled in that track.
Her reason for being there, returning a scroll of Valeria’s royal history her mother had lent to the academy’s archives years ago, was plausible enough not to raise suspicion, though she knew perfectly well the real reason was far more complicated than a simple administrative errand.
She stood outside the classroom door just as the bell rang for the change of period, students beginning to file out one by one, her heart pounding harder with every new face that passed, none of them matching the image still burned clearly into her mind since the night before.
Then she saw him.
Hair black as pitch.
Dark eyes staring straight ahead with a calm that felt too old for what should have been a seven-year-old’s face.
A posture upright but not stiff, like someone long since used to being watched without ever growing entirely comfortable with it.
For a moment, Helena forgot how to breathe.
Lucifer saw her standing near the door, clearly not a student of this class, clearly waiting for something, or someone, in a way that was awkward yet trying hard to look casual.
He stopped walking directly in front of her, partly out of politeness, partly because something in the girl’s expression made him curious in a way he rarely felt around strangers.
“You’re blocking the way,” he said, echoing a line Theo had told him just days before, though his tone came out much softer.
Helena startled, as if only now realizing she was standing squarely in the path of students leaving class.
“Sorry, I’m, um. I’m waiting for Professor Halric.”
“He’s still inside,” Lucifer said, studying her with a calm curiosity, nothing at all like the wary looks he usually got from adults who knew who he was.
“Are you a new student too?”
“No,” Helena answered, too quickly, then, realizing how nervous her own voice sounded, tried to correct it.
“I mean, I’ve been here a year already. Divine Arts. I’m just, returning something.”
“Oh.” Lucifer looked at her a moment longer, then, not knowing what else to say but also not wanting to simply walk away, added, “I’m Lucifer.”
The name landed between them with far more weight than he’d intended, and Helena felt her chest tighten instantly, the memory of a burning sky and a calm face amid the ruin flashing through her mind before she managed to push it back down.
“Helena,” she said, her voice a little quieter than before.
“Helena Valeria.”
Something flickered in Lucifer’s eyes, not full recognition, just a faint awareness that the name meant something, an echo from one of the kingdom history books he’d read.
“Valeria. The academy kingdom.”
“You know about Valeria?”
“I read a lot of books before coming here,” he answered, the same thing he’d told Archmagus Coren days before.
“The Queen of Valeria is your mother?”
Helena nodded, and for a moment the two of them stood in a silence that wasn’t entirely awkward, but wasn’t entirely comfortable either, two children who’d just exchanged names, each carrying a weight far heavier than a simple introduction could explain.
“I heard you broke the placement exam,” Helena finally said, trying to steer the conversation toward something that felt safer than whatever she actually wanted to ask.
Lucifer startled slightly, not expecting the rumor to have spread that fast.
“Not broke. Just, it couldn’t read anything off me.”
“That’s never happened before, people are saying.”
“That’s what Professor Yrsa said too,” Lucifer answered, choosing not to explain further, though something in Helena’s tone made him feel like she was asking for more than idle curiosity.
Professor Halric finally emerged from the room, carrying a stack of scrolls nearly slipping from his arms, and the moment between them broke just like that, replaced by Helena’s actual errand, which wasn’t nearly as important as the excuse she’d built around it.
“Sorry to bother you,” Helena said quickly to Halric, handing over the scroll she carried.
“My mother wanted this returned to the academy archives.”
Halric accepted it with a brief nod, barely paying attention to the situation around him, too preoccupied with his own stack.
“Thank you, Your Highness. Give my regards to the Queen.”
Helena nodded, then glanced once more toward Lucifer, who still stood there with an expression hard to read, as if weighing something he hadn’t finished understanding himself.
“See you around, maybe,” Helena said, sounding more like a hope than an ordinary statement.
“Maybe,” Lucifer answered, and for a moment, something crossed his face that almost resembled a smile, though it never quite fully formed.
Helena walked away faster than she meant to, her heart still pounding, her mind full of questions she didn’t dare say out loud, whether the face she’d just seen truly matched the one that had haunted her dreams, or whether it was only a coincidence made convincing by how badly she wanted to believe it.
She hadn’t felt anything strange from Lucifer directly, no sign of great power or hidden threat, just a quiet boy who seemed more interested in history books than in the world supposedly waiting for him out there.
But something in her chest, the same thread that had pulled taut the night before, didn’t loosen at all, even after their meeting had ended.
Lucifer stood in the hallway a while longer, watching the direction Helena disappeared into among the other students, thinking about something he couldn’t entirely explain even to himself.
He’d met plenty of people since arriving at the academy, Theo, a few other students in his class, teachers who treated him politely but from a careful distance.
None of them had made him feel anything like what he’d just felt during that brief exchange, a faint awareness that the girl had been searching for something in him, something even she herself didn’t seem to fully understand.
He didn’t know that far away, in the dorm room Helena had just left, a locked journal sat tucked beneath her pillow, filled with years of notes about the same recurring dream, growing clearer each time, and that the most recent entry, written that very morning before she’d gone to find him, held only a single short line.
I think I just met him.