Elara's POV
I saw Lyris coming before she saw me.
It was during break, the corridors busy enough that you could reasonably disappear into the crowd if you wanted to, moving with the flow of people until you ended up somewhere else entirely.
I had every intention of doing exactly that until she looked up and our eyes met and I knew she was going to say something because that was just the kind of person she was, easy and open and impossible to avoid.
She smiled, that open smile she had that everyone seemed to find so disarming, the one that had half the school already treating her like she had always been there, and she opened her mouth.
I looked away and kept walking.
I felt it the moment I passed her, that awareness of having been deliberately cold to someone who had done nothing wo
