Chapter 363: spoke
They sat on the floor in a loose square.
Morning sun came through the wide panes of Lia’s front room and laid itself across the boards in a hard, clean sheet.
The wood was still cool at the edges. Only the strip under the light had begun to warm.
Dust turned slowly in it. Somewhere deeper in the house a clock marked the hour with a soft wooden click that sounded too loud in a room this still.
Sunday had emptied the street outside. Only the distant roll of a single cart, and then nothing.
Sophia sat first.
The short skirt pooled around her thighs the moment she folded her legs. Most of her skin met the floor.
She tucked the hem under herself and kept one hand there, fingers tight in the cloth, as if that would stop it climbing.
Lia sat sideways, one knee drawn up. The dress rode her thigh and stayed there.
Olivia sat last.
Back straight. Hands on her knees. The light blue blouse pulled across her breasts as she settled back on her heels. The black pants creased hard at the hips and bit a little at the thigh. She arranged herself the way she sat in class.
Lor reached into his pocket and took out the silver coin.
"Let’s get started then."
Nobody spoke.
They nodded.
Lor closed his eyes.
When he opened his eyes glowed ethereal.
Pale light sat in them.
Bright enough that the coin at the centre picked it up and held it.
The silver shivered.
Sophia’s hand left her skirt.
The coin lifted.
It rose as if the air itself had decided to hold it. Slow. No wobble at first. Then a single turn.
A thin glow ran the rim. The room felt tighter. As if the four of them had been drawn a half-step toward the same point.
Lia’s mouth had gone still.
Olivia did not look at the coin. She looked at Lor’s face, at the light sitting in his eyes, at the way his breathing had changed.
The voice that came out of him was not his.
Deeper. Cooler. It seemed to come from a little behind his teeth.
"What guidance do you seek, child?"
Olivia answered first. Her throat moved once. Her hands stayed on her knees.
"I want to make my magic stronger."
The coin turned. The glow on its edge did not change.
Sophia’s voice came smaller. Her fingers had gone white where they had found the hem again.
"I want to learn different kinds of magic."
Lia leaned in.
The dress shifted across her chest.
"I just want to beat Class C. I want the same magic they used on us. The one they used to humiliate me. Teach me wind magic. I will blow the clothes off Lila until she is stark naked in front of everyone during the exam."
Sophia’s head snapped toward her.
Behind the pale eyes, something in Lor clicked. Surprise. Then the face held.
The coin hung.
For two seconds more.
Then the coin dropped.
Dead on the wood. No bounce. No glow. Only the flat click of metal hitting floor.
The tightness in the air went with it.
Lor grunted and pressed two fingers to his temple. The wince looked real enough. When he lifted his head his eyes were hazel again, a little raw at the edges.
"The Light accepted your requests."
Olivia did not waste the quiet.
"What does it want?"
"It’s weird. This time it wants you to please me using stockings."
The word landed in the room and stayed there.
Sophia looked down at her own legs before she looked at anyone else. Bare from the hem of the skirt to the floor. She pulled the cloth an inch lower. It did not help.
Lia glanced at her thigh, then at Olivia, then let out a short breath through her nose.
"I knew this was going to be perverted."
"True," Sophia muttered.
Olivia’s mouth tightened. She had expected something filthy. Stockings was only the shape of it.
Her eyes moved once around the room as if a pair might be hanging on a chair. Nothing. Only morning sun, wood, and three pairs of bare or almost-bare legs.
"Fine. We don’t have any."
She looked at Lia.
"Do you have stockings here?"
Lia shook her head. Red curls moved against her shoulders.
"I don’t wear them. My mother might." She shut that down before Olivia could take it.
"But wait, No. If we use hers they’ll get ruined and she’ll notice. They don’t fit me anyway. They go loose on my thighs."
Sophia’s gaze flicked to the quiet street beyond the glass.
"Then we have to buy them?"
Olivia was already standing.
She stood over the dead coin with her jaw set, already counting the walk.
"That’s a walk to my house or a walk to a shop. Either way we lose the morning." She looked at Lor. "Is there no other way? Ask the Light. The exams start tomorrow. We don’t have time to waste."
All three of them looked at him.
Lor grinned.
It was the small, smug one he wore when a problem had already been solved in his head and everyone else was still standing in it.
"You shouldn’t underestimate the Light."
Olivia frowned.
"What does that mean?"
Lia looked at the dead coin, then at him.
"You just said it wants stockings. We don’t have stockings."
Sophia’s hands were still in her skirt.
"Is it going to change its mind?"
Lor did not answer that.
"Lia. Do you have clothes you don’t use anymore? Old ones. Anything."
Lia stared at him for a second.
"Why?"
"Just bring them."
She clicked her tongue and left the room. Her footsteps went down the hall, a door opened, drawers moved, fabric rustled.
When she came back she had a small pile in her arms.
Worn house dresses. An old undershirt. A pair of soft pants with the hem coming loose. Things that had already been forgotten at the back of a cupboard.
She dropped them on the floor between them.
"That’s all I could find that Mother won’t notice."