A Crowded Room
632 Words
The announcement came during morning assembly, which meant the entire student body was packed into the main hall when the headmaster's voice cut through the usual pre-class murmur.
"This term, Blackthorn will once again compete in the Inter-Academy Tournament."
The room actually went silent. Seraphine had been at Blackthorn three weeks now and had not yet seen that happen.
"As always, selection is limited. Eight spots. Trials begin in four weeks."
The silence broke into immediate, electric noise, whispers, a few outright cheers, someone three rows back already loudly calculating their odds.
Seraphine stood near the back, mostly ignored, which was exactly where she liked to be.
Eight spots, out of an entire student body. She did the math without trying to. Whatever this tournament actually was, it wasn't decorative.
"Tournament's a big deal," said the boy beside her — not someone she'd spoken to before, apparently feeling chatty. "Last year's winner basically got handpicked for a government internship. People go feral for this."
"Good to know," Seraphine said.
She was filing the information when the crowd shifted, bodies repositioning as the assembly started breaking into clusters, everyone already forming opinions about who'd make the cut.
She felt him before she saw him.
"Eight spots," Damian's voice said, low, directly behind her. Close enough that she felt the words more than heard them over the noise. "And you're thinking about something other than the tournament."
She didn't turn around immediately. "Are you reading my mind now, Volkoff?"
"You get a specific look. Slightly more dangerous than usual."
That got her attention. She turned, finding him closer than she expected, the crowd pressing them into proximity neither of them had really chosen.
"I have a dangerous look?"
"You have several." His expression didn't shift, but something in his tone did, dry, almost amused. "This one means you're already planning something."
"Maybe I'm just excited about the tournament."
"You're not the type to get excited."
"You don't know what type I am."
"No," he agreed, and there was something underneath the single word that she didn't have time to examine before the crowd surged again, someone shoving past with an apology, putting half a step more distance between them.
She held his gaze across that distance anyway.
"Careful, Volkoff," she said, lighter than she meant to sound. "Keep watching me that closely and people will start to talk."
Something flickered behind his eyes, not quite surprise, but close. Like she'd said something he hadn't accounted for in whatever calculation he ran on her.
"Let them talk," he said.
It wasn't flirtatious, exactly. He said it the way he said everything, flat, certain, like a fact rather than a feeling. But it landed somewhere low in her chest anyway, unwelcome and entirely noted.
"De Valcourt." Camille's voice arrived, warm and easy, threading through the crowd toward them both. "There you are."
The "you" in question was clearly Damian. Seraphine just happened to be standing in the blast radius.
"I was just telling Seraphine she should consider the tournament trials," Damian said, before Camille could redirect the conversation entirely.
Both women looked at him.
"Me?" Seraphine said.
"Her?" Camille said, half a second later, her smile not moving but her eyes doing something slightly different.
"She held her own against Reeves," Damian said simply, like that settled it.
Camille's laugh was light, easy, perfectly pleasant. "Reeves goes easy on new students. It's sweet that you'd consider it though." She turned to Seraphine, warm as ever. "The trials are intense. No judgment if it's not really your scene."
"No judgment taken," Seraphine said.
She caught Damian's gaze over Camille's shoulder for exactly one second.
He didn't say anything else. He didn't need to.
She was, against every instinct telling her to stay invisible, starting to enjoy this.
- Writer
