Amelia arrived early.
The training area behind the main hall was still quiet, the air cool enough that her breath barely showed when she exhaled through her nose.
A few students were already moving in the distance, warming up in small groups, the soft thuds of feet and the occasional scrape of boots echoing faintly, but the space Brynja had claimed yesterday sat empty for now, older stone marked by years of impact and movement.
Amelia stepped onto it and rolled her shoulders once.
Her chest still hurt.
Not like yesterday's sharp, confusing ache that came out of nowhere and made her want to shake her own ribs until the feeling fell out, but like something lodged behind them that refused to loosen.
A knot you couldn't pull at without making it tighter.
A pressure that didn't match exertion and didn't respond to rest.
Her tail flicked once, annoyed at her own body.
So she did what she always did when her body felt wrong.
She moved.
A step.
A punch.
A hook.
Her knuckles cut through air that didn't resist, and the lack of resistance made it worse, because hitting nothing wasn't satisfying.
It didn't shut her thoughts up.
It didn't drown out that memory of Soren's voice, casual and warm, and the way her own mouth had said no like it was a sensible answer.
She struck again, faster, letting instinct carry her through the motions, trying to push the ache down through sweat and repetition.
Her ears tracked everything automatically, the distant voices, the faint hum of mana somewhere else in the building, the movement of air through stone corridors.
Then footsteps approached.
Heavy and confident.
Not trying to hide.
"Oi, Princess."
Brynja's voice sounded exactly the same as yesterday, rough and unbothered.
Amelia turned her head.
Brynja was already grinning, shirt loose, arms bare, scars visible without shame.
Her striped tail swayed behind her like it had never once been taught to behave, and she carried a small cloth bag in one hand, the faint smell of dried meat drifting out of it.
"You actually showed," Brynja said, sounding faintly impressed.
Amelia stared at her.
"I said I would."
Brynja snorted.
"Nobles say lots of things."
"I'm not 'nobles,'" Amelia replied, flat and clipped.
Brynja's grin widened like she had been waiting for that exact response. "Sure you aren't, Princess."
Amelia didn't argue; it didn't matter.
Brynja dropped the bag near the wall and stretched her arms overhead with a loud, unapologetic yawn, then looked Amelia up and down with the sharpness of a fighter who didn't waste time pretending assessment was rude.
"You still look pissed," Brynja said.
Amelia's ears flicked.
"I'm not."
Brynja raised her brows.
"Princess, if you're gonna lie, at least do it better."
Amelia's tail lifted slightly, bristling at the casual way Brynja spoke to her, the title tossed out like it had no weight.
Most people at Stellaris either bowed, stiffened, or overcompensated when they addressed her, terrified of getting it wrong.
Brynja did none of that.
She didn't flinch.
That was irritating.
Also, strangely, a little relieving, because it meant Amelia didn't have to think too hard, or have to wonder what words were being hidden behind politeness.
Amelia exhaled once through her nose.
"Are we sparring again?"
Brynja's grin turned satisfied.
"Now you're talkin'."
Amelia took her stance without ceremony.
No bow.
No greeting.
No wasted movement.
Just readiness that lived in muscle and instinct, shoulders settling, weight balanced, ears angled forward.
Brynja dropped into her own stance, grounded and predatory, hands open and ready to grab, posture more like a hunter than a duelist.
Then Amelia tilted her head.
"Rules?" she asked, like they were optional.
"No mana, and don't break my bones."
"You'd heal, but fine."
Amelia didn't respond.
Brynja stepped forward first this time, closing distance with a casual confidence that made it obvious she wasn't afraid of Amelia's reputation.
Amelia met her without hesitation, feet sliding into position on the old stone, the first exchange happening so quickly it barely felt like a start.
Amelia's fist snapped toward Brynja's jaw.
Brynja's hand caught her wrist.
Amelia twisted.
Brynja used the twist to pull her balance.
Amelia drove a knee up.
Brynja shifted and hooked her leg, trying to turn it into a throw.
Amelia's tail flared, correcting her centre of gravity before the throw could fully land, and she planted hard enough to make the stone feel it.
Brynja clicked her tongue like she approved.
"Still got that stupid balance," Brynja muttered.
Amelia's ears twitched.
"It's not stupid."
"It's annoyin'," Brynja corrected, and surged in again.
This time Brynja didn't try to block Amelia's strikes directly, not in the clean way most fighters did.
She let them graze, let them miss by a fraction, moving just enough to avoid taking full impact while focusing on what she actually wanted.
Contact.
Grip.
Control.
Her claws didn't dig in; she had restraint, and that restraint was almost more unsettling than aggression, because it meant she could choose when to be dangerous.
The threat of them made Amelia's instincts sharpen anyway, her body reading the possibility in the way Brynja's fingers flexed.
Brynja grabbed Amelia's forearm and yanked her forward.
Amelia went with it.
Instead of resisting the pull, she used it to close distance and drove her shoulder into Brynja's chest, a brutal, simple collision meant to disrupt footing and rhythm.
Brynja staggered half a step, laughed under her breath, and wrapped her arms around Amelia's waist again.
The grappler's embrace returned, stronger this time.
Brynja's hips shifted; her weight dropped.
Amelia recognised the leverage a heartbeat before it happened.
She didn't panic.
Panic was for people who didn't understand what was coming.
Amelia shifted her own weight and twisted, trying to break the throw before it completed, muscles tightening as both of them argued over the same piece of space.
For a second, they locked like that.
Amelia's teeth clenched.
Her chest tightened.
Not the weird ache.
A different tightness, clean and familiar, the one that came from effort and pressure and being met by someone who could actually hold her for more than a heartbeat.
Then Amelia snapped her elbow up, not aiming to crack Brynja's face, but to force her arms to loosen.
Brynja released just enough to avoid getting clipped, and Amelia used the opening to slip free, stepping back into space with a smooth, practiced retreat.
They separated, both breathing harder now, sweat already forming at temples and along collars.
Brynja's eyes were bright.
Amelia's tail rose, not wagging, but alive, the movement sharp and honest.
They went again.
Amelia pushed harder, driving in with speed and power, forcing Brynja to keep up.
Brynja stayed sticky, refusing to let Amelia fully disengage, catching wrists, hooking elbows, dragging her back into contact with relentless hands.
The exchange was dense, bodies colliding, footwork scuffing across old stone, and Amelia felt herself settling into the fight in a way she hadn't been able to settle into anything else all week.
And it didn't take long for her to notice it.
When Brynja grabbed her, it didn't make her chest ache.
When Brynja crowded her space, it didn't feel wrong.
It was just fighting.
Just bodies moving.
Just strength and technique and pressure.
No confusion.
No invisible pane of glass.
No stupid, senseless pain behind her ribs.
That difference dropped into Amelia's mind like a stone.
It didn't make the problem smaller.
It made it clearer.
They exchanged several more bursts, Amelia pushing, Brynja catching and turning, both of them adjusting in small ways, testing where the other bent and where they didn't.
Amelia got her shoulder in again, felt Brynja's grip bite at fabric, twisted out, then drove a palm strike into Brynja's sternum hard enough to make her step back with a grunt.
Brynja lifted a hand.
"Alright, alright," she said, stepping back and shaking out her arms. "That's enough before we start doing something dumb."
Amelia stopped as well, breath steadying.
Sweat cooled on her skin as the air moved around them, the quiet of the training area settling back in like nothing had happened.
Brynja walked over to her bag, pulled out a strip of dried meat, and bit into it like it was the most normal thing in the world.
Then she tossed another piece toward Amelia.
Amelia caught it on reflex and stared at it.
"It's not poison," Brynja said around her bite.
Amelia took a bite anyway, mostly because refusing would be a waste of energy.
The meat was tough and salty.
Chewing gave her something to do while the rest of her tried to settle.
They stood there in a quiet that wasn't awkward so much as functional, the kind that happened after two people tested each other and decided neither of them was soft.
Brynja leaned back against the wall and looked at Amelia like she was still watching every movement, still reading.
"So," she said eventually, casual on purpose, "you always train like that when you're fine?"
Amelia's ears flicked.
"I am fine."
Brynja snorted.
"Sure."
Amelia's tail twitched in irritation.
Brynja didn't push immediately.
She just let the silence sit for a second, like she was giving Amelia the option to keep lying or stop wasting time, and Amelia hated that it worked, hated that Brynja's patience felt like pressure anyway.
Then Brynja spoke again.
"Give me the cheap version. One sentence. What's wrong."
Amelia stared at the stone floor.
She didn't have words for it, not proper ones.
Everything that rose up sounded stupid the moment it tried to turn into speech, and the stupidness made her want to bite it back down.
But Brynja was still watching, and the worst part was that Amelia could tell she wasn't doing it to mock her.
She was watching the way you watched an opponent's shoulders before a strike, because it mattered and because information was useful.
Amelia forced something out.
"I didn't go," she said.
Brynja's brows lifted slightly.
"Didn't go where."
"…To eat," Amelia answered, clipped.
Brynja nodded once, filing it away.
"With who."
Amelia hesitated.
The name sat in her throat like it didn't want to be spoken, like saying it aloud would make the problem more real.
"…Soren Arden."
Brynja's expression didn't blow up into anything dramatic.
It just shifted into a quieter kind of understanding that made Amelia's ears twitch again, annoyed.
"And after you said no, you felt worse." Brynja said, tone steady.
Amelia didn't answer.
Brynja watched her anyway.
"It's not a question," Brynja added. "You're wearing it in your shoulders."
Amelia's jaw tightened.
Her tail flicked once, betraying her into motion before she could stop it.
Brynja noticed, of course she did, it was obvious after all.
"Alright, so here's the part you're not gonna like—" Brynja said, pushing off the wall. "You're fightin' yourself. Not him. Not whatever he did. You."
Amelia stared at her.
"That doesn't make sense," she said, because it was the only defence she had, and because if it didn't make sense then it didn't have to be real.
"It makes perfect sense," Brynja replied without hesitation. "You wanted to be there, but the moment you imagined it, somethin' in you tightened up. So you avoided it."
She tapped her chest once with two fingers, the gesture blunt.
"Then your instincts got pissed off anyway."
Amelia's chest tightened at the accuracy of it.
Not the strange ache this time, not the wrong pain, but the uncomfortable squeeze that came from hearing your thoughts spoken by someone else.
Brynja wasn't being cruel.
She wasn't mocking.
That almost made it worse, because it meant she wasn't throwing random guesses, she was reading Amelia like she read a fight.
Brynja shrugged like she didn't care whether Amelia accepted it or not.
"You're used to problems you can hit," she continued. "You're used to pain that comes with bruises. This is the kind that sits in your ribs and doesn't give you a target."
Amelia's claws flexed once, irritation flaring through her fingers.
Brynja's gaze flicked to them and then back to Amelia's face, unbothered.
"You're not sick," Brynja said, tone matter-of-fact. "You're just… out of your depth. It happens. Even to people who can tear monsters apart with their bare hands."
Amelia's ears twitched, offended and relieved at the same time, and she hated that those two feelings could exist together without cancelling each other out.
Being told she was out of her depth felt like an insult.
Being told it was normal felt like a permission she hadn't realised she wanted.
Brynja lifted the strip of meat again, gesturing with it like it was a pointer.
"Let me ask you this, when he's close, does it feel normal?"
Amelia didn't answer fast enough.
Her mouth opened, and nothing came out in time, and that delay was its own answer.
Brynja nodded as if she had expected it.
"And when he walks off, does it still feel normal?"
Amelia's tail went still, as if her body had decided the safest option was to stop moving entirely.
Brynja didn't smile.
She didn't say anything smug.
She simply said, "Yeah. Thought so."
Amelia's voice came out flatter than she intended, stripped of its usual bite.
"I don't know what to do with it."
Brynja's mouth twitched, not from amusement, but more like she had heard that line before from people who only knew how to solve things with violence and suddenly found themselves facing something that didn't bleed.
"You don't have to do anything fancy. You don't need to name it. You don't need to understand it today."
She paused, then chose the most practical wording possible, as if dressing it in bluntness made it easier to swallow.
"But if you keep forcing yourself to act like you don't want what you want, you're gonna keep feeling that ache."
Amelia stared at her.
That sentence annoyed her because it made the problem sound simple, like it could be handled the same way you handled a cut: stop reopening it, let it heal.
It also made the problem sound solvable, which was worse, because solvable meant she couldn't just sit with it and hope time fixed it.
Solvable meant she had to do something.
Her tail flicked once, irritated at the thought.
Brynja pushed off the wall and slung her bag over her shoulder, movements easy, as if this conversation hadn't asked Amelia to expose anything at all.
She started walking toward the exit like she had already decided the discussion was done.
"So here's my advice," Brynja called without looking back. "Next time you make a choice, don't make it just to get rid of the feeling. That never works."
Amelia's ears flicked.
"Then what do I do."
Brynja paused at the doorway and glanced back over her shoulder, eyes sharp but not unkind.
"You do what you actually meant to do the first time," she said. "And then you see if the world ends."
Amelia's tail twitched once, sharp.
Brynja's grin returned, quick and confident, like she liked the idea of Amelia testing herself.
"Same time tomorrow," Brynja added. "If you're still punchin' air, I'm gonna start charging you."
Amelia hesitated only a fraction, then nodded once, clipped.
"…Tomorrow."
Brynja gave her a lazy wave and left, boots heavy on stone as her footsteps faded into the distance.
Amelia stood still in the training hall, sweat cooling on her skin while the quiet settled back around her.
Her chest still didn't feel right, but it felt different now.
Less like a wound she couldn't touch, and more like a problem with edges, something she could actually grab hold of without it slipping away into confusion.
Amelia looked down at her hands, flexed her fingers once, then exhaled slowly.
Soren hadn't done anything wrong.
So whatever this was… she couldn't fix it by avoiding him.
Her tail twitched, uncertain and irritated, like it didn't approve of the conclusion but couldn't deny it either.
Amelia hated being told what to do, and Brynja hadn't exactly told her, but she had drawn the outline of the truth so clearly that Amelia couldn't pretend she didn't see it.
Amelia turned and started walking, already thinking about tomorrow.
————「❤︎」————