The academy opened up differently outside the lecture halls.
The corridors gave way to open walkways lined with dark stone arches, and between them the morning had settled into something quieter. Pale light falling across the courtyard flagstones, the trees along the east wing still carrying the last of the night's cold in their leaves. The architecture was the kind that had been built to last longer than the people inside it. High vaulted ceilings where the covered walkways met the open air, iron lanterns not yet lit, stone walls that absorbed the light instead of reflecting it.
Azrael walked with his hands at his sides and said nothing for a moment.
Azrael: "You'll be joining our class then?"
Maria: "For now, yes. Not all the students have arrived yet. Some come later in the semester."
Azrael: "I didn't know that."
Maria: "You didn't know a lot of things this morning." The corner of her mouth moved. "Don't worry about it. I'm here."
Azrael sighed.
They passed beneath one of the stone arches and into a longer walkway that ran alongside the academy's west garden. Low hedges trimmed into clean lines, a fountain at the center whose basin had gone dark with age. A few students moved in the distance. The sky above was the particular blue of a morning that had decided to be generous.
Azrael: "When you said Romano. One of the twelve. I didn't really understand what that meant."
Maria: "There are twelve noble families that sit above the rest. They don't just hold wealth. They hold function. Each one serves the kingdom in a specific domain. The king relies on them and they on him. It has been that way for a long time."
Azrael: "Like what?"
Maria: "The Montblanc family. Your cheerful classmate's house. They manage the country's finances. Trade routes, markets, economic policy. If money moves in this kingdom it moves because a Montblanc decided it should. Each family is similar. A specific domain. A specific kind of power."
They passed a row of tall narrow windows looking into an empty reading room. Dark wood shelves, morning light cutting across the floor in long pale strips.
Azrael: "And the Romano family?"
Maria: "Too soon."
Her voice had shifted. Not cold, but closed. The door that had been open a crack had been pulled shut.
Maria: "Focus on what's in front of you for now."
Azrael looked at her profile. He didn't push.
He looked ahead instead.
And stopped.
At the end of the walkway, where the path opened onto a small stone courtyard fringed with pale flowering trees, a young woman stood alone. Silver hair, long and luminous, catching the morning light in a way that made it look like something poured rather than grown. Eyes the colour of pale blue ice with the faintest rose at the edges.
She turned.
Her gaze found Azrael first. One second, unhurried. Then moved to Maria.
Something changed in the courtyard without anything moving.
Selena had gone still. Not blank. Still. The particular stillness of someone evaluating something very carefully and very quickly. Across from her Maria had gone equally composed, the warmth she'd worn all morning replaced with something smoother and less readable.
Two people who had never met, looking at each other like they already knew something about the other they hadn't been told.
Azrael looked between them and understood nothing.
Selena broke the silence first.
Selena: "Since when are you here?"
Not rude. Not warm. The question of someone who kept track of things and had found an anomaly.
Maria: "It's natural for the Romano heir to be here." Then, almost as an addition: "Is there something you'd like to say to us, Princess?"
The word Princess landed lightly. Too lightly.
Selena: "I need to speak with Azrael."
Maria turned to him. She reached out and caught the end of his braid between her fingers. A small deliberate pull. She leaned close enough that her voice arrived before her words did.
Maria: "Since when do you keep company with the princess?"
Azrael: "She's my class partner."
Maria: "Of course she is!"
She released his braid. Straightened. Turned back to Selena with the expression of someone gracefully surrendering a turn in a game she was still winning.
Maria: "Very well. Do take care of my fiancé, Princess Selena."
The word landed.
Selena's eyes moved to Azrael.
He couldn't name what was in them. Not anger. Something adjacent to it, sitting behind the composure like weight behind glass. The same face she wore in public, the same careful stillness. But with something underneath it that hadn't been there this morning.
Was it disgust? Or something else entirely.
He couldn't tell.
Maria's footsteps receded down the walkway without hurry, without looking back.
Azrael: "What did you want to talk about?"
Selena said nothing. She turned and began walking.
Azrael: "Selena!"
Nothing.
Azrael: "What is it? What happened?"
She walked and said nothing and he followed because there was nothing else to do. The space between them full of questions she had decided not to answer and a silence that had weight without explanation.
And so they walked. Azrael two steps behind, Selena two steps ahead, neither speaking, neither stopping. Above them the sky had begun its slow transformation, the blue of morning bleeding into something deeper and rosier at the edges, the sun already half-surrendered below the horizon. At the far end of the sky, faint but unmistakable, the two moons had begun their rise. Pale and unhurried, as though the world had been waiting for them without knowing it.
He didn't know what she wanted. She didn't say.
They kept walking.