"Psst."
I was ignoring Rowan. He was either too persistent or too oblivious to register that. Probably both.
"Psst."
Another shoulder tap incoming. If he put his hand on me one more time, there was a genuine chance I'd grab him and fling him through the wall. I meant that in a literal sense. My stats weren't what they used to be.
"Ren." He pitched his voice low, the whisper of someone trying to stay inconspicuous while doing everything wrong. "Ren."
"I already told you." I turned to him, not bothering to lower my voice. "I'm not teaching you how to fight."
He looked at me the way people look at a decision they've decided to keep pushing on. Like I was something with a lever and he hadn't found the right one yet.
The reason was simple enough that I didn't feel the need to explain it again, I wasn't about to drag him into whatever was currently tracking me.
I'd spent the early part of my situation thinking that getting stronger would create distance between me and conflict. What it had actually done was generate new and more creative conflict.
Every level of capability I built seemed to function as an invitation for the next problem to arrive. Rowan was already on the edge of that radius. I wasn't going to pull him further in.
"Where's Ren Mora?"
I closed my eyes briefly.
Still on.
Five students walked into class A-3 in dark blue uniforms that weren't ours, moving with the specific energy of people who had arrived somewhere with a purpose and weren't particularly concerned about the setting.
East High. All five of them. And leading them— walking through the classroom like he'd rented the square footage — was a guy with ginger-coloured hair and reddish-brown eyes that were carrying a level of contempt that seemed to predate this specific situation.
The room went quiet in the way it goes quiet when something walks in that changes the atmosphere before anyone has spoken.
"Julian Redgrave?" Someone said it like they were confirming what they were seeing.
I didn't know the face. But I knew the name. Julian Redgrave, King of East High— a school that had spent roughly a decade in a mutual, unresolved rivalry with Silvic High, right up until Zael showed up and settled the entire thing in three minutes.
That history made what was happening right now either very brave or very stupid, depending on how you looked at it. Five East High students walking into Silvic High uninvited, without announcement, in the middle of a school day. If the Order found them here, they were not leaving in the same condition they'd arrived.
Julian stopped at my desk.
"You're Ren Mora." Not a question. His eyes had a faint glow in them, something below the surface running warm. "You're the one who hurt my Ace."
I was aware, somewhere in the back of my mind, of the full shape of his version of events. Sancho was East High's Ace.
And whatever had happened in that warehouse probably reached Julian's ears in a format that skipped the kidnapping and the poisoning and the ten men with bats and knives and led with: someone from Silvic High hurt him.
That was the version that made sense of walking five people into enemy school territory. Revenge with a narrative.
There wouldn't be much point explaining. He'd come here for one reason and had the expression of someone who had already finished the conversation in his head.
"I'm asking you directly." He said it with the last of whatever patience he'd carried in. "Was it you who hurt Sancho?"
"You know, this is all a misunderstanding—" Rowan started.
"So?" My eyes stayed on Julian. "What if it was? What are you going to do about it?"
The frown lines deepened. He'd been managing the anger up to that point, keeping it in his eyes where it could be controlled. The frown was a sign that the management was getting harder.
I expected something sophisticated. A threat, maybe. The King-of-East-High variety of patience demonstration. Something that at least acknowledged the setting.
Instead he grabbed my collar and threw me.
It was within a single second. One moment I was sitting at my desk, the next I was airborne, and then I was going through the far wall of the classroom, leaving an open hole in the debris. I registered impact. I registered the classroom erupting, students scrambling for the door, repositioning at the windows, voices colliding over each other.
"Why is a high tier going after the cripple?"
"He's dead. That's it."
"Someone record this—"
I stood. Moved my back carefully, checking the inventory. There was an ache in several places but my spine appeared to be intact, which was the important metric.
Julian and his cohorts were already crossing the room toward me.
"Apologise." He said it with the calm of someone who had already decided on the outcome and was offering a procedural step that might shorten it. "Apologise for what you did to Sancho. Do that, and I won't push this further."
Apologise?
The laugh started quiet and got away from me. The genuine, building kind that I couldn't pull back once it got momentum.
"I'd rather you knock me closer to death than do that," I said, when it settled enough to speak through. "I don't apologise for things that weren't wrong. Haven't for a while. It's a principle."
Julian's expression shifted from anger to something more specific, the quiet amusement of someone calibrating exactly how long you'll be able to maintain that energy. "How long do you think that lasts when I'm the one deciding what happens to you?"
"Now, Julian."
Riven walked in from the hallway. Mint-tinted hair, jaw working on something, small smile that communicated he found the situation mildly more entertaining than it was inconvenient.
The Ace of Silvic High. Not egoistic in the Order's typical way, more just thoroughly comfortable with his own presence, which had a similar effect.
"You've come a long way to make a scene in our school over a personal grudge." Riven tilted his head, still chewing. "That's a significant amount of confidence, my good man."
"My business isn't with you, Riven." Julian said it flatly, dismissing the conversation before it started. His eyes came back to me. "I came for him."
Riven exhaled. "Personal grudges don't get settled on school premises. You know this. Everyone knows this." He straightened slightly. "I'm going to need you to take this elsewhere, or you're going to give me a reason to break a streak on no-violence. I've come a long way, you know?"
Julian's four escorts tightened behind him immediately, hands coming up, postures shifting into the ready configuration. They held it there. But they didn't move forward.
There was something in their collective stillness that looked like defending a position rather than preparing an attack, like they understood that going at Riven was a different category of decision than the one they'd arrived here prepared to make.
Riven looked at all of them. Let the pause sit.
"After school. Outside the premises." He said. "I'll keep quiet about you being here. Won't whisper a word to Zael. That's a fair arrangement."
Julian's anger was still present in his eyes but the frown had eased. Something in Riven's last words had reached him— probably the implication about Zael, the part where 'King being back' became relevant information in whatever calculation Julian was running.
"After school, Ren Mora." Julian looked at me with a finality that didn't require much decoration. "Both of you." His eyes moved to Rowan briefly, casually, like Rowan was a detail he was logging rather than addressing. "Don't count on luck a second time."
He left. His four people filed out behind him. Riven followed with one last glance at me that could have meant several things, and then the doorway was empty.
Class A-3 refilled from the windows and hallway in stages, the specific re-entry of students who had watched something they were going to be discussing for the rest of the day and weren't quite done processing yet. The noise started low and built. They'd probably follow us after school for the continuation.
Scratch probably. They definitely would.
I looked at Rowan.
He had the expression I'd expected. The layered one, fear underneath uncertainty underneath the specific look of someone who has just had a consequence arrive that they hadn't fully believed was coming.
This was exactly the thing I'd been trying to keep him away from. And he'd walked into it by saying two sentences on my behalf without being asked to.
I was going to approach him. Get his head into the reality of what was in front of him.
But he ran.
He stormed out of the classroom, into the hallway, gone before I'd taken two steps.
He's going to do something stupid.
I followed him. Which was not something I would have predicted myself doing at any point last Tuesday, or any Tuesday before it. A week ago I wouldn't have walked into a warehouse for this person. Now I was jogging out of class after him before the period had ended.
When I got outside, I found him.
He was already on his knees, a few metres from Julian, who had apparently not gotten far. I stopped.
"Hey." I grabbed Rowan's shoulder. "What are you doing? Get up."
"Get off me!" He pushed my hand off. "You won't teach me anyway." His voice was quiet, aimed below Julian's hearing range, but the resignation in it was loud. "If you won't do that, I'll handle it the way I know how to."
He turned back to Julian and raised his voice. "I apologise. For both of us. Whatever happened with Sancho, Ren didn't mean it, and neither did I. Please... just— just let this go."
For a moment, I just looked at him there.
Rowan on his knees again. Rowan reducing himself again. Rowan doing the same calculation he'd been doing since the first day I saw him, finding the position that would make the threat go away fastest, regardless of what it cost him.
The same Rowan who had sat in a chair in that warehouse, bloody, and asked me to teach him how to fight.
I didn't think. I walked up to him, grabbed his collar, and hit him in the face.
WHACK.
He went down. His body hit the dirt.
"You fool—"