She turned to look for her own friends, ready to finally escape the courtyard, and stopped. Something else caught her eye first. Raven Harbringer stood apart from the crowd, her arms crossed, and she was watching Cane. Not with the wary distance most students kept from him, not with fear or disinterest. It was a look of intense, dissecting stillness. The look of someone working something out, the same way Aria had been working something out for the past two days.
Aria didn’t know what to make of that, either. She only knew, watching Raven’s unblinking stare fixated on Cane’s back, that she wasn’t the only person at Hale Academy who had stopped believing the official version of what happened in those woods.
Aria Vale loved a good mystery. Anyone could tell you that, and right now, she just found a mystery that she was really interested in unraveling.
With that thought still unresolved, the exam ended.
The first light of dawn was a weak, grey thing trickling through the window, but it was enough. Cane’s eyes snapped open. He was awake before his usual groggy panic, before the crushing weight of his predicament could fully settle in. He sat up, the sheets pooling around his waist. That was it. No more four hours of sleep fuelled by spite and the fear of a humiliating, plot-mandated death. A proper sleep schedule. That was the first real step.
Sleep schedules are for bitches. Focus.
He ignored the familiar, crude text that shimmered at the edge of his vision. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, his feet hitting the cold stone floor with a soft thud. His brain was still catching up to the sudden motion when he saw it.
Across the room, bathed in the soft morning light, was Kai. He was mid-change, one slender arm threaded through the sleeve of a fresh uniform blouse. The rest of him was gloriously, distractingly bare.
A high-pitched yelp, the sound a startled songbird might make, tore through the quiet room. Kai scrambled, his eyes wide with pure, unadulterated mortification. He lunged for the nearest piece of fabric, which happened to be a hand towel draped over the back of a chair. It was roughly the size of a dinner napkin. He slapped it against his front in a gesture of profound futility. The small square of terrycloth rode low over one hip, doing absolutely nothing to conceal the smooth, pale skin of his stomach, a waist that seemed far too narrow for the rest of his build, or the generous, scandalous flare of his hips. His thighs, plump and soft, were pressed together in a useless attempt at modesty that only succeeded in drawing the eye directly to the round curve of his ass, which the towel failed to cover in any meaningful way.
"I’m so sorry! I didn’t think... I didn’t think you’d be up! I usually have more time! I’m sorry, please, just look away!" The words tumbled out of him, a frantic, tripping apology. He half-turned, trying to shield his body with one elbow and the pathetic towel and his own hunched shoulders, a strategy that failed on all fronts.
Cane’s eyes caught and held for a treacherous second. It was the same helpless, involuntary pull he’d felt that first day, a pure, aesthetic appreciation for a shape that was just objectively perfect. The sheer unfairness of it—that body, that ass, on a boy—crashed over him. The appreciation curdled, turning sour in his gut. It wasn’t a pleasant warmth; it was a hot spike of irritation, aimed squarely at himself and his own traitorous fucking eyes.
He threw an arm up, physically blocking the view as if it were a solar eclipse.
"Just... just hurry up and put some goddamn clothes on."
Fabric rustled frantically behind him. "I’m sorry, I’m so sorry," Kai mumbled, his voice thick with shame. "It won’t happen again. I swear. I swear it!"
Cane waited until the sounds of dressing stopped. When he risked a look, Kai was fully uniformed, his face a blotchy, miserable red from his hairline to his collar. Cane grunted, too quickly.
"It’s fine."
He busied himself finding his own uniform, needing somewhere else to put his hands, his attention, his entire being. They finished getting ready in a stiff, formal silence, the air thick with the unspoken memory of Kai’s spectacular backside.
When they were both presentable, they headed out together. Kai trailed a half-step behind, the tips of his ears still faintly pink. Cane walked a little faster than necessary, as if he could put enough distance between himself and the dorm room to retroactively erase the last five minutes from existence. The long corridors were already filling with the low thrum of morning activity, a river of students flowing toward the dining hall. The smell of bacon and fresh bread reached them before the massive double doors came into view. They stepped through together, and the noise and the crowd washed over them.
They fell into the line for food, the clatter of plates and silverware a welcome distraction.
"So, how did the Trial actually go?" Kai asked, his voice still a little shaky. The question was genuine, his wide eyes full of curiosity, not the gossip-hungry gleam Cane saw in most students.
"It was fine." Cane kept his answer flat, piling sausages onto his plate. "Nothing worth the epic poem Vincent’s been spinning for anyone who’ll listen."
Kai didn’t push, but he giggled slightly. They collected their trays and navigated the crush of bodies, finding a mostly empty table in a far corner. As they sat, the quiet settled between them again. Cane took a bite of his food, chewed, and swallowed.
He gestured vaguely with his fork.
"You know, you don’t have to sit with me. Go find your own crowd." He delivered the line with a careless half-smirk, a performance of indifference that cost him nothing.
Kai went quiet for a beat too long. He stared down at his plate, pushing a piece of egg around with his own fork.
"I don’t really have anyone else to sit with," he admitted, his voice small but clear. There was no self-pity in it, just a flat statement of fact he clearly expected Cane to let drop.
Cane didn’t press. But the simple, unadorned loneliness of the confession snagged on something in the back of his mind, another piece of the puzzle that was Kai Fell that didn’t quite fit with the others.