The carriages arrived at the main gate of the academy in the morning, three vehicles bearing an emblem of a dragon engraved in gold on a dark background, which Kaiden did not recognize from afar, but the guards surrounding them, in their elegant uniform, were enough to explain why half of the students in the yard stopped to watch.
Kaiden was not among them at first. He was returning from another morning training session with the director, less exhausted this time, when he passed by the crowd gathered at the gate.
"What is happening?" he asked a student he barely knew.
"The daughter of the duke of the west has arrived. From House Draiken," the student said, without lifting his eyes from the scene. "They say she is the strongest young swordswoman to come out of the west in years."
Kaiden did not care much, he had heard exaggerated descriptions about new students before, usually evaporating in front of a less exciting reality. He continued his way, passing the crowd, until he heard a sharp metallic clash behind him.
He turned around out of curiosity despite himself.
She was there, in the middle of a space the crowd quickly emptied, wearing an outfit that seems more practical than any outfit he had seen on another female student, and a long sword hanging on her back instead of her waist, a detail Kaiden noticed without understanding its importance immediately.
She was training, alone, against three moving wooden dummies mechanically, of the type the academy usually uses to test advanced students alone, not new arrivals on their first day.
She drew her sword in one smooth movement, and rushed toward the first dummy, split it from shoulder to waist with one blow, then turned without stopping toward the second, avoiding its wooden arm with a slight bend before she thrust her sword into its main joint.
The third dummy was faster, programmed to learn from the opponent’s movements; it rushed at a surprising angle that almost reached the girl’s shoulder, forcing her to step back half a step and regain her balance with quick flexibility before directing a horizontal cutting blow that dropped the wooden dummy’s head to the ground.
Silence prevailed for seconds, then scattered applause from the surrounding crowd.
The girl flicked her sword with an elegant movement before returning it to its sheath, and looked around her with an expression that does not carry clear pride, closer to boredom.
"Is this all this academy has?" she said in a clear voice, directing the question to one of the supervisors standing at the edge. "Wooden dolls?"
The supervisor did not answer immediately, and Kaiden found himself smiling despite himself, without knowing exactly why.
Lucy approached him from among the crowd, her eyes slightly wide. "Did you see that?"
"I saw," Kaiden said. "Fast."
"And too confident," Lucy added, but without a clear negative tone, just an observation.
The crowd gradually dispersed after that, and the girl walked toward the administrative building accompanied by two guards, without casting another glance at those who remained watching her.
Kaiden knew her name after that by a day, when one of the professors announced in history class about the joining of "Miss Eveline Draiken, daughter of the duke of the west," to an advanced class designated for students with exceptional talent, a class Kaiden himself was not part of despite all his progress.
He did not think about her much after that, busy with his intensive training schedule with the director, until he met her by chance in the library after about a week.
He was looking for a specific book about advanced air control when he found the shelf he needs empty of the only available copy, and found it in another hand.
"Are you finished with this?" he asked, trying not to sound more annoyed than necessary.
Eveline raised her eyes from the page, and looked at him with a quick assessment, from head to toe, as if deciding if he deserves an answer at all.
"No," she said simply, and returned to reading.
Kaiden stood there for a second, not sure if this is all the answer he will get. "I need it for research."
"Me too," she said without raising her gaze this time.
"You are a swordswoman," Kaiden said, trying a logic that seemed reasonable to him. "Why do you need a book about advanced air control?"
This time she raised her head completely, and looked at him with something between astonishment and annoyance. "Does the sword exempt me from understanding my opponents? Half the students here are mages. If I do not understand how you think, I will lose in front of the first of them."
Kaiden did not have a ready response to that.
"You are the mage who defeated an advanced with three consecutive spells," she added suddenly, as if remembering something just now. "I heard about that."
"And I heard about you cutting wooden dolls without effort," Kaiden replied.
Eveline smiled a small smile, the first smile he saw on her face. "The dolls are not an achievement. They were designed for students at your level, not mine."
Kaiden did not know if this was an insult or just a fact said coldly.
"So," he said finally, trying to change the course of the conversation. "The book?"
She looked at him for a moment, then at the book in her hands, then closed it and handed it to him. "Take it. I did not find in it what I need anyway."
Kaiden took it, a little surprised at the ease of the matter after all that short argument. "Thank you."
"Do not thank me," she said as she stood up, gathering her papers from the table. "I do not need your friendship, Kaiden. I just wanted the book to make sure it is not worth my time."
Kaiden stopped for a moment. "How do you know my name?"
She looked at him over her shoulder, and another slight smile appeared then disappeared quickly. "Your name is repeated a lot in the academy. You defeated an advanced student after six months of your arrival, and it is hard not to hear about that."
She walked away without a formal farewell, leaving Kaiden standing there, holding a book he was not completely sure why he felt that this short exchange was more important than it appeared superficially.
He sat at the same table she was sitting at, and opened the book, and found margins written in precise handwriting on several pages, notes not about air control, but about how to break the mage’s concentration during preparing his spell, timings, distances, attack angles.
Those notes remained in his mind even after he closed the book. Eveline did not have only the strength of the sword; she knew how to think like her opponent. And for some reason, Kaiden felt that this type of people would be very annoying in the battle arena.