THE DISCARDED LUNA‘S REVENGE

Chapter Thirteen

LYRA’S POV

The sound of the fourth-period warning bell was still ringing in my ears as I practically threw myself down the concrete steps of the south wing.

Every minute after dismissal was a calculation of pure logistics. I ran through the main gates of Garrison Heights, the stiff wool of my uniform blazer chafing against my neck, and didn’t stop moving until I hit the gravel transit turnout. The valley bus was already idling, its exhaust coughing out thick, gray diesel smoke that smelled entirely of the flats. I squeezed into a middle row, my canvas backpack jammed between my knees, my eyes tracking the digital clock on my terminal screen as the vehicle began its steep, braking descent down the mountain switchbacks.

Thirty-two minutes. That was the absolute limit of my transit window.

The moment the bus doors hissed open at the corner of 4th and Elm, I was on the pavement. I sprinted the remaining two blocks to our tenement building, the straps of my heavy bag digging deep into my shoulders. I took the stairs two at a time, the concrete steps smelling of old cabbage and damp brick, before bursting through the door of our cramped apartment.

The flat was completely silent. My father wasn't home yet from his shift at the lower docks, and the small living space felt small, heavy, and stagnant. I didn't let my feet stop. I tore off the pristine, tailored uniform of the ridge elite—the white silk shirt, the pleated skirt, the identical gray blazer and threw them onto the back of a kitchen chair like a skin I was desperate to shed.

In their place, I pulled on a faded gray t-shirt and a pair of worn jeans, my movements frantic as I checked the time again. Three minutes to four. I grabbed a cheap rubber band from the kitchen counter and pulled my hair back into a severe, unforgiving knot at the base of my neck to keep it out of the fryers. My raw fingers, still tender and stinging from the caustic ammonia burns I’d gotten the night before, throbbed sharply against my scalp as I tightened the band.

I didn't even have time to look in the mirror. I grabbed my keys, bolted back down the stairwell, and ran the final stretch to The Rusty Spoke.

The air inside the diner at 11:45 PM was always thickest right before the griddle was turned down. It was a heavy mixture of scorched lard, cheap floor disinfectant, and the stale tobacco smoke that clung to the vinyl booths.

I stood by the industrial dual-basket deep fryer, my face flushed a deep, burning red from the heat radiating off the oil. The oversized denim apron was tied twice around my waist to keep the grease from soaking through my t-shirt, its thick canvas stiff against my skin.

"Lyra! Wipe down table three and check the napkin dispensers!" Mitch barked from the dish pit, his voice cutting through the low, rhythmic rattle of the ventilation fan. "And don't use the good rags on the syrup spills. Use the burlap scraps."

"On it," I muttered.

My voice was a flat, mechanical drone. My legs felt like lead columns, the muscles in my lower back screaming after a twelve-hour sprint that had begun in the pristine lecture halls of the academy and was now ending in the grease-slicked trenches of the flats. I gripped the damp, scratchy burlap rag and walked out onto the scuffed linoleum. The diner was nearly empty, save for two graveyard-shift rail workers nursing lukewarm mugs of black coffee at the counter, their heavy denim jackets smelling of diesel.

Then, the heavy glass door swung open.

A wave of sharp, high-end perfume and expensive cologne cut through the heavy smell of fried onions like a knife. It was a scent that didn't belong in the flats, it smelled of French lavender, aged leather, and the crisp, clean mountain air of the ridge. Along with the scent came a chorus of high, artificial laughter, the voices loud and entirely unbothered by the late-hour gravity of the room.

"Oh my god, Julian, you can’t be serious," a voice tittered, high and melodic.

My spine locked instantly into a rigid, freezing line. I didn't need to turn around to know that exact vocal register. It was Chloe.

"I told you, didn't I?" Julian Vance’s lazy, arrogant drawl echoed off the low laminate ceiling. "If you want to see how the valley rats actually live, you have to catch them in their natural habitat after midnight. Look at this place. I think the grease on the walls is older than my father's conglomerate portfolio."

I kept my back to them, my fingers clenching the burlap rag so hard the dirty water pooled around my knuckles. Through the dark reflection of the grease-stained window in front of me, I watched the entourage filter in. There were six of them. Julian was leading the team, his expensive Garrison Heights uniform blazer tossed carelessly over one shoulder. Chloe followed close behind, her perfectly manicured fingers clutching a designer leather clutch, her small, sharp nose wrinkled in profound disgust. Behind them were three other legacy seniors from the middle tiers, all of them flushed, radiant, and clearly riding the high of an exclusive ridge party.

Gabriel Jakes was not with them. His separate, heavy orbit was missing from the cluster, a detail my mind registered even through the rising tide of anxiety in my chest.

"Can we actually sit down here?" one of the legacy boys asked, laughing as he kicked a chrome stool with his hand-tooled leather shoe. "I feel like I’m going to catch a systemic infection just by breathing the oxygen."

"Don't be a coward, Pierce," Julian mocked, sliding his tall frame into the center booth—the very booth I had just finished wiping down. He slammed his car keys onto the laminate table with a loud, metallic clack that made the salt shakers rattle. "Hey! Service! Who runs the ledger in this pit?"

I closed my eyes for a fraction of a second, forcing the air into my lungs, steadying the erratic, hammering pulse in my throat. I turned around, tucking the grease-stained order pad into the waist of my apron, and walked toward the booth. I kept my chin tucked, my eyes trained strictly on the scratched laminate surface of their table, completely hiding my face beneath the shadow of my bangs.

"Welcome to The Rusty Spoke," I said, my voice dropping into a flat, entirely generic customer-service tone that carried absolutely no trace of the girl who sat in the top tier of Advanced Macroeconomics. "What can I get started for you tonight?"

The table went completely silent.

For two seconds, the only sound was the low, vibrating hum of the deep fryer. I could feel Julian’s eyes—sharp, malicious, and heavy with privilege boring into the top of my head.

"Well, well, well," Julian murmured, a slow grin spreading across his face as he leaned forward, resting his elbows on the sticky table. "Look who it is. The level-four transfer."

Chloe gasped, her hand flying to her mouth as her eyes widened in a mixture of horror and cruel delight. "Oh my god... Lyra? You actually work here? Like, for real?"

"I don't believe it," Pierce laughed, leaning over the back of the vinyl seat to get a better look at my canvas sneakers and the grease stains on my oversized apron. "The scholarship prodigy is a short-order grease monkey. This is gold. Wait until the rest of the tier hears about this."

I kept my eyes fixed entirely on the order pad, my pen poised over the paper. I did not look up, and I did not let a single emotion touch my face. "May I take your order, please?"

"Oh, we’re ordering," Julian said, his voice dropping into that low, dangerous register he used when he wanted to assert total authority. He deliberately reached out and tipped the glass salt shaker over, letting the white grains spill out across the laminate surface in a messy, deliberate pile. "Give us three plates of your greasiest fries and make sure you handle them yourself, transfer. I want to see if that industrial smell on your skin is contagious."

"Three orders of fries," I repeated mechanically, writing it down with a steady hand. "Anything else?"

"Yeah," Chloe chimed in, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness as she pulled a pristine silk handkerchief from her clutch and wiped the edge of the table where my rag had been. "Can you bring some clean water? Like, from a bottle? I really don’t trust whatever comes out of the valley pipes. My skin is highly sensitive to low-tier minerals."

"Understood. Three fries and bottled water," I said.

I turned on my heel and walked back toward the kitchen, my boots heavy. As I retreated, the loud, unbothered laughter exploded behind my back.

"Did you see her hands?" Pierce whispered loudly enough to echo across the entire room. "They're totally red. She looks like a common dock worker."

"That's because she is one," Julian replied, his voice lazy and triumphant. "Her father used to manage the low-dock rail ledgers until his clearance was wiped. The apple doesn't roll far from the mountain, Pierce."

Inside the kitchen, the heat hit me like a physical wall. I stood by the fry station, my hands gripping the metal handle of the basket as the frozen potatoes dropped into the boiling lard with a violent, spitting hiss. I forced myself to focus purely on the timer on the wall. I couldn't let them see a single c***k. If I showed even a hint of frustration, they would carry it straight back to the academy by morning.

I waited until the fries were golden-brown, then dumped them onto three scratched plastic plates. I grabbed a pitcher of tap water and six mismatched glasses, loading everything onto a heavy brown tray that sent a sharp, shooting pain through my ammonia-burned wrist.

When I walked back out, the situation at table three had grown significantly worse.

Julian had deliberately torn open a dozen sugar packets, scattering the fine white crystals across the seats and the floorboards. Chloe had used her stylus pen to scratch a crude, jagged line into the vinyl backing of the booth, laughing as she did it. They were treating the space like a playground, a temporary cage where the rules of the ridge didn't apply because the inhabitants weren't considered human enough to matter.

"Here are your orders," I said, setting the plastic plates down one by one with a steady, unbothered rhythm.

"Thanks, sweetie," Pierce mocked, deliberately knocking his fork off the table so it landed right at my feet. "Oh, oops. My bad. You don't mind getting that, do you? You're already down there anyway."

The two rail workers at the counter shifted uncomfortably, their knuckles whitening around their coffee mugs, but they didn't speak. A single complaint from a valley resident against a legacy family like the Vances could get their entire dock shift laid off by sunrise. The classism wasn't just loud, it was an invisible, crushing ceiling.

I leaned down, my knees cracking slightly from the exhaustion, and picked up the heavy metal fork. As I stood back up, Julian suddenly leaned out into the aisle, blocking my path with his long leg.

"You know, Lyra," Julian said, his amber eyes glittering with a dark, mocking curiosity as he looked up at my severe ponytail and my pale, sweat-sheened face. "I'm actually impressed. Most girls from the flats would be crying by now. They’d be begging us not to tell Harrison or the board. But you... you just stand there like a piece of wood. What’s it take to make a level-four snap? Do we need to buy out your father’s lease? Because my family’s logistics wing could do that with a single ledger entry."

The mention of my father made my chest tighten, but I kept my gaze leveled strictly at the counter behind them. I stood entirely still, refusing to offer him the satisfaction of a response, a defense, or an angry glance.

When he realized I wasn't going to engage, Julian's grin faltered slightly. A flash of genuine irritation crossed his features as he realized his efforts had failed to produce a result. He hadn't broken me, and he hadn't forced a reaction.

"Whatever," Julian muttered, shoving a greasy fry into his mouth and leaning back into the booth with a scowl. "This place is boring anyway. The food tastes like cardboard."

For the next forty-five minutes, I retreated to the back line, working until my arms trembled, ignoring the sharp, degrading remarks that drifted over the counter every time Chloe or Pierce burst into another round of laughter. They stayed until past one in the morning, leaving behind a massive, catastrophic mess of crushed fries ground into the scuffed linoleum, spilled sugar slurry on the table, and a single, crumpled five-dollar bill dropped into a puddle of spilled water as a final, insulting tip.

When the heavy glass door finally closed behind them, their expensive perfumes vanishing into the cold valley mist, the silence of the diner rushed back in, heavy and absolute.

"Arrogant bastards," Mitch spat from the kitchen, walking out with a mop bucket, his face tight with a dark, helpless anger. "I'm sorry, kid. If I could afford to throw them out, I would."

"It's fine, Mitch," I said, my voice barely a whisper as I walked over to the booth, my hands starting to shake now that the adrenaline was draining from my system.

I dropped the crumpled five-dollar bill into the trash, then picked up the scraper to clear the ground-in fries from the floor, my raw fingers burning as I scrubbed the mess they left behind. The ridge had invaded my territory, but the floorboards were still standing.