’Jesse Burns...’
Lucavion’s gaze fixed on her the mont the na was spoken, but it was not recognition that struck him first—it was dissonance. The syllables carried no imdiate weight, not at first. Just another na in a long procession of military ghosts he had long since buried beneath logic and necessity. But then—
He saw her.
And the noise in the hall vanished.
Her stride was cleaner now. Her poise sharpened with the polish of courts and hardened by the brutality of campaigns. But beneath the tailored lines of her uniform, beneath the distant clatter of noble expectation and performance, he saw it.
The sa hair.
The sa eyes.
That infernal, storm-scarred resilience.
’So it is her...’
And with that, the na struck ho.
Jesse Burns. That girl from the ashfields. The one who had collapsed into his shadow like a broken blade, too proud to beg and too tired to flee. She had co to the front lines like soone already dead, hollowed by betrayal and starved of warmth. And yet... she had lived.
Because she chose to.
Because she listened.
He rembered her not because she was loud, or brilliant, or strategic.
But because when the world had tried to swallow her whole, she looked lost....
At that ti.....Jesse remined him of himself from the past.
Lucavion’s expression barely shifted. Not in ways most could read. His mouth remained its usual line, his posture unfaltering. But his eyes?
They flickered.
Just briefly. Like a candle catching wind.
And in that flicker—there was a ripple. Not nostalgia. Not affection.
But curiosity.
’How long has it been...?’
Years, at least. Long enough for the battlefield to beco story. Long enough for scars to fade, and nas to slip through the sieve of ti.
And yet she stood there now—polished, formidable, and unmistakably Jesse.=
’Jesse Burns...’
Lucavion blinked once, and the weight of it—truly seeing her—landed with more force than he anticipated.
’No... That’s...’
He hadn’t expected this. Not here. Not now. Not across a gilded hall soaked in politics and veiled blades. Jesse Burns was supposed to be a mory—filed away in the category of "those who survived." She was part of the old script, one of the forgotten lines in the war chronicle he had already rewritten.
So how was she here?
How did she co to the academy? Was this supposed to happen? Was this yet another ripple caused by his interference? Another fracture in the narrative he thought he still had so grasp on?
His jaw tensed, not visibly, but inwardly—coiling against the spike of unpredictability. He’d changed too much already. Threads were unraveling in places he hadn’t yet looked. And now, Jesse—Jesse, of all people—stood before him not as a ghost, but as a contender.
But...
Was it even important?
That fire in her eyes said otherwise.
It wasn’t resentnt. It wasn’t even longing. It was sothing else. Sothing more primal.
And—he felt it. A strange, electric shiver slithering down his spine.
That look...
He tried to break it down, to decode it. But it wasn’t calculation that answered him—it was instinct. The sa instinct that had warned him once, in the trenches, when a beast of a man had lunged from the fog with a halberd and murder in his heart.
Only now... the danger didn’t co with steel.
It ca with silence.
And pride.
Her pride.
She had grown. Not just stronger—but solid, poised. Beautiful, in a way that was far removed from ornant or design. Her brown hair was longer now, tied back with that sa utilitarian disregard—but it shimred under the torchlight, catching stray glints like a weapon half-drawn. And those eyes... orange, like smoldering embers, locking with his like a challenge unspoken.
To think... that girl from the barracks managed to co here...
Lucavion’s gaze lingered, not on Jesse’s uniform or her poise, but on sothing deeper—on the remnants of soone he rembered beneath all that strength. The contrast was jarring.
She had been so small back then.
Not physically—but spiritually. A thing barely stitched together, hiding the seams behind stubborn silence. He rembered the first day she stumbled into camp—mud-streaked, eyes hollow, shoulders too straight for soone so clearly on the verge of breaking. The Awakened spark in her hadn’t ant much then. Power didn’t translate into survival. Not when you didn’t believe you were ant to survive.
She had sat on the edge of her cot that first night, knees drawn up, staring at the floor like it might open and drag her down.
No fear. Just emptiness.
Lucavion had seen that look before.
In the mirror. Years ago.
’She looked like she’d already buried herself.’
He hadn’t planned to get involved. He never did. That was the rule. After the squad—his squad—was wiped out in one glorious display of tactical arrogance that wasn’t his fault but still ended with blood on his hands... Lucavion stopped belonging to anyone. He drifted from unit to unit, never staying long enough to let nas stick.
And then Jesse arrived.
Timid. Lost. Wrong, in all the sa ways he had been.
’She reminded of .’
He wasn’t kind out of so noble instinct. It wasn’t pity either. He was lonely. The kind of loneliness that creeps beneath armor and settles behind the eyes. So he offered her sothing quiet. Words that weren’t warm, but real. Directions. Warnings. Hard truths. The things he had needed once, and never gotten.
And Jesse? She listened. Not because she trusted him—no, not at first—but because she had nothing else to hold on to.
So he gave her sothing. Grit. Resolve. The spine to endure the war, not to win it. To live.
But he couldn’t stay.
He never could.
Not after what happened. Not when the war started burning through units like dry paper and the higher-ups began reshuffling soldiers like pawns. Lucavion had his own threads to chase, and a mission far beyond the trenches. So one day—he left.
’She must be quite angry.’
He would be. She deserved to be. He hadn’t warned her. He hadn’t said goodbye.
He’d just vanished—like every other thing in her life had.
And now... here she was.
Standing tall.
Standing proud.
A fire in her eyes where once there had been ashes.
Lucavion didn’t smile, but his chest shifted slightly with sothing unspoken. Was it guilt? Regret? No... sothing more honest.
’Maybe she didn’t need as long as I thought.’
He inhaled once, slow. The duel was about to begin. Eyes were on them. The court bristled with polished anticipation.
Lucavion’s lips curled—just faintly. A twitch at the corner. Not enough to be called a smile by courtly standards. But for him?
It was thunder.
This feeling...
It had been so long since sothing breached the polished armor of his detachnt, since soone had. The hall around him was still gilded with expectation, brimming with noble curiosity and veiled calculation, but for a flicker of ti—
It all felt... distant.
’I guess a part of was quite selfish, wasn’t it?’
The thought surfaced uninvited, stripped of bitterness. Honest. Unapologetic. To think, he of all people—crafted from ash and pragmatism, stitched together with strategy and silence—had yearned, in so part of himself, to be needed.
How embarrassingly childish.
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