She carried that thought for the rest of the day’s walk. Every time the story looped back around, drawing another chorus of praise for Vincent, she found her eyes drifting. Cane Valerian walked a little apart from the main group, near Raven Harbringer, saying nothing. He just walked, his shoulders slumped with what looked like simple exhaustion. This was not normal. She thought of the last time his name had come up in a crowd, the humiliating incident with her underwear weeks ago. He had inserted himself into the middle of it all, loud and shameless, twisting the entire narrative back onto Vincent before she’d even finished being embarrassed. He never let a moment pass without commentary. Now, he let an entire day of Vincent’s growing legend pass without a single snide remark.
Aria watched him more closely after that. He wasn’t even needling Raven the way he usually did—no crude jokes about her expression, no attempts at wit that wouldn’t land. At one point, Raven said something to him, a short, clipped phrase Aria couldn’t hear. Cane didn’t reply with his usual stream of infuriating nonsense. He just nodded once and kept walking, his gaze fixed on the path ahead. She filed that away, too.
She remembered, now that she was looking for it, other small moments from that first day that had never fully added up. How neatly he had talked his way out of trouble after Vincent accused him of staring. How his wounded, theatrical performance of a man wrongly accused never quite matched the cool calculation underneath.
She had noticed it then, a flicker of something too clever for the idiot everyone said he was, and she had let it go.
She did not let it go now.
That evening, they made camp for the last night before the return journey. Fires flickered to life, sending sparks spiralling into the deepening twilight. Students scattered into smaller clusters, chores divided amongst the weary groups. Aria volunteered to fetch water from a nearby stream, needing a moment away from the cheerful bonfire and Vincent’s endless story. She found the stream easily, a ribbon of black water chuckling over smooth stones. She wasn’t alone.
Cane was already there, kneeling by the bank, splashing water on his face. He hadn’t noticed her. She watched him for a moment before speaking, deciding to test the theory forming in her head. She kept her tone light, conversational.
"It was lucky, wasn’t it? How that alpha got distracted right when it did."
He flinched, startled, and looked up. For a half-beat, his expression was unguarded. Then the mask slammed back into place. He reached for his usual deflection immediately, a crude joke sputtering from his lips.
"Luck always favours the incompetent. It’s the only way we survive."
He pushed himself to his feet, wiping his face on his sleeve. Then, as if he couldn’t help himself, he pivoted, his gaze raking over her.
"Though I have to say, for someone who’s spent two days trudging through duskfang territory, you still manage to look remarkably put-together." He phrased it in that specific, irritating way he had, a compliment laced with just enough lechery to fluster its target off the subject entirely. "Even beautiful."
She didn’t blush. She just watched him. She saw the slight delay before he answered, the way his eyes had slid off hers a fraction too fast before he changed the topic. It was all she needed.
She let it go anyway, giving him the exit he so desperately wanted.
"I should get this water back before the fire dies down."
She didn’t call him on it. She didn’t need to. She dipped her waterskin into the cold stream, the quiet gurgle of the water filling the silence. She already knew.
Back at the fire, Vincent told the story again. The duskfang was the size of a small horse now, its fangs like daggers. The other students ate it up, their faces rapt in the flickering firelight. At one point, he dropped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close.
"Glad we still have each other after all that," he said, his voice easy and warm and presumptuous in the way it had always been.
She let him keep his arm there. What she felt sitting next to him was familiar. It was comfortable. It was the same feeling she had when her brother hugged her after a long trip away. It was unmistakably sibling-shaped, nothing at all like the grand romance she knew he believed was blooming between them.
Her gaze drifted across the crackling flames. Cane sat slightly apart from the main group, trading a few clipped words with Raven and otherwise keeping to himself. He looked tired, hunched over, a study in quiet isolation. Whatever she felt looking at him wasn’t comfortable at all. It wasn’t unpleasant, either. It was just unfamiliar. It sat differently in her stomach than anything Vincent stirred.
She decided, quietly, without telling anyone, that she wasn’t going to say what she suspected. She was just going to start paying attention. Actual attention, not the reflexive exasperation she had given Cane Valerian since the day they met.
The final march to the academy gates happened the next morning under a cool grey sky. Proctors with clipboards checked names off lists, and the crowd of returning students finally thinned as people peeled off toward their dorms, their beds, and a hot bath. Aria was in the middle of saying something noncommittal to Vincent when she saw it.
Cane, standing a few yards away, had his attention snag on nothing at all. For a brief second, his eyes went unfocused, fixed on a point in the air just in front of his face. His expression was slack, concentrated. Then it was gone, as if he’d blinked it away. She had no explanation for it. She filed it next to everything else she didn’t have an explanation for.
What was he looking at? It looked like he was reading something, or at least comprehending something, but there’s nothing in front of him.