Chapter 138: The Late Enrollee
Their winter break in Queenstown ended the way all good things end—abruptly, and with the added cruelty of a long-winded Monday morning assembly.
The new school term started in mid-July, and returning to Alchymia was, to put it generously, underwhelming.
Gone were the majestic ice-capped mountains and the winding roads that hugged deep blue lakes. Their weekend getaways into the hinterlands now meant farm produce markets, wine tastings where hosts romanticised barrels and soil, and nature reserves where native trees stood skeletal and unkempt against dry, yellowed grass.
The hot springs, however, had been all heat and steam in every sens—definitely not an appropriate memory to revisit, Astra scolded herself.
It had been otherwise peaceful. No one had been kidnapped, no one had come close to dying at the hands of an overpowered homicidal maniac, and most importantly…
The Van Nassau operatives had gone completely off the grid. Even Indigo was having difficulty locating their base of operations, despite managing to link Taika’s energy signature to a litany of global cold cases.
“Welcome back, everyone. I hope you had a good winter break. The outbreaks have been contained and our dorms are back to normal. The quarantine zone has been lifted…”
Speaking of the devil.
Astra stood in the assembly hall among hundreds of students, all listening intently as Athena Van Nassau, the infamous Student Council President, delivered her speech.
Athena’s voice was smooth and pleasant to the ear, her presence regal. She had tried to keep her last name out of the spotlight by using her mother’s maiden name. But ever since the Masquerade disaster, the cat was out of the bag, meowing across countless billboard screens.
Now her popularity had skyrocketed. Elite heirs jockeyed for her attention. The detention room was going to be a mosh pit by Friday.
Scanning the assembly hall, Astra noted a few new faces who had enrolled late in the second half of the year. Most looked visibly transfixed by Athena’s voice.
Most.
Except one.
A girl standing three rows ahead had sea-glass eyes that were unbothered yet cutting. They veered sideways and, with absolutely no suspicious intent whatsoever, neatly locked onto Astra before continuing on their way forward.
Interesting.
Astra didn’t have time to study that apathetic gaze when a movement caught her peripheral vision. On her right, standing shoulder to shoulder even though there was room for at least two other people, was Eydis.
The Queen of Shadows looked bored out of her mind, lips pressed tight and trembling slightly at the corners, before she straightened her back as if she hadn’t already looked regal enough. She had swapped her oversized fit for a fully tailored uniform, upgrading from polyester to cashmere, and had captured the school’s attention without so much as trying.
Cute, if a little vain, but it was hypocritical for Astra to judge when she had done the same.
Was Eydis fighting back a yawn?
It was her own fault, really. Thanks to their recent… proclivities—No. Absolutely not the moment.
Astra felt her face beginning to heat up, so she decided to recruit an accomplice. “Hmm, yawning isn’t very regal, Your Majesty,” she teased softly against Eydis’s ear, making sure to subtly edit the audio so only the two of them could hear.
Eydis turned to her with an amused arch of her sculpted brow. “And you, as the esteemed Council member, should be paying proper attention to your Student President’s speech, no?”
Astra knew Eydis was trying to fluster her. Unfortunately for the Queen of Shadows, she had already built up quite the resistance. “And miss a view like this? I think not.”
“What view?” Eydis blinked, and subconsciously darting her gaze downward before she caught herself.
Astra bit the inner of her cheek to fight back a smile.
Eydis narrowed her eyes. “You’re smiling, Astra.”
“And you’re sulking. I like it.”
Eydis’s face faintly stained pink, finally matching the colour of Astra’s cheeks. “You do realise, your Holiness…” She trailed a dark plum-polished finger across Astra’s lower lip. “This attitude invites consequences.”
Astra was well aware that even though their conversation couldn’t be heard, some surrounding students had begun to steal glances with wide eyes. It was background noise to her.
“Maybe I’m looking forward to them. Seeing as they’ve rendered my Majesty this exhausted.” Astra let her words graze the dark nail.
Eydis’s amber eyes ignited with mischief even as her breathing quickened. She leaned closer. “You know I love a challenge.”
“You haven’t quite lived up to your threat yet. I’m still waiting.” Astra’s voice came out a little too husky, a little too revealing. She pressed her lips together when she saw Eydis’s mouth curve into a wicked smile.
“I’m taking my time, Astra.” Eydis’s lips hovered just above her flushed ear. “One idea at a time.”
Astra’s heart pounded in her ears, intensified by the heat of Eydis’s breath trailing along her jawline.
But even in the haze of that seductive suggestion, Astra remained vigilant and didn’t miss it.
The new student three rows ahead glanced back again.
Those sea-glass eyes moved past Astra this time and pierced toward Eydis, no longer indifferent but…
Fascinated?
The stranger’s eyes glowed with a viridian flash before receding. Pupils expanded as if hungry. Even as she kept her face neutral, Astra still sensed a predator when she saw one.
She spent most of her days flirting with one, after all.
When the new student’s eyes found hers, and Astra felt every second tick by, there was a weight behind that look that read like someone who had seen. After four seconds, the student—no, this was clearly an adult woman, no matter how youthful she looked—smiled at Astra.
A challenge.
Astra kept her expression blank and laced her fingers with Eydis’s while staring the woman down. The stranger’s mouth stretched wider before she turned her attention back to Athena on the podium.
“To our new students, a warm welcome to St. Kevin’s…”
Athena’s own speech paused a few milliseconds too long and Astra could feel her golden eyes on them, before subtly flicking towards the mysterious new student.
“Just a quick reminder to get your names in for the Gifted Showcase,” the President continued smoothly. “Expressions of interest close next week…”
Eydis glanced sideways at Astra, a sharp flash of canine visible as she offered a delighted smile, a predator acknowledging a predator.
She must have reached the same conclusion.
The Van Nassaus were back.
Astra walked through the Main Hall of St. Kevin’s until she found her target. With a hand on his green-blazer-clad elbow, she dragged him through the smaller doorway, along the East Wing, and into a small conference room accessible only by Student Council card swipe.
Cameras and recordings were disabled in this room, but Astra still splayed her hand and wrapped the walls in her barrier. Visible white energy rippled along the walls, granting their conversation privacy.
Her target’s gaze dropped from the rippling ceiling to her face before he sank into the swirling chair. “Neat trick,” he said, the corner of his mouth quirking upward. “I’m trying to work out which part of metal manipulation pulls that off.”
“I’m trying to work out when you started asking questions.” Astra leaned against the door.
“I’m not running away, hey!” He raised both arms in mock surrender, then reached into his messenger bag and pulled out his bulky laptop.
It was black with green light glowing along the edge. Probably bulletproof — Astra saw a dent that looked suspiciously like a stopped bullet. Definitely not school issue.
Astra pushed off the wall with one shoulder and flashed behind him in one stride, coming to rest with one hand on his desk. The golden skull charm on her wrist made a dull tap against her leather bracelet, a gift from Eydis.
His long green hair lifted in the sudden breeze. He jumped slightly and looked over his shoulder. “Just a thought. You could shuffle your feet a little?”
Do all nerds talk the same? She could still recall the countless times Indigo had complained about her habit of sneaking up on him.
A fond smile rose on her lips before she twisted it into a grimace at the complicated thought of her friend. “What did you find, Elias?”
Seeing the hacker eyeing her warily like she might bite, she sighed. “I’m not her.”
“I am aware.” Elias plugged a USB-C into his laptop and began to flick through the files. He pulled up captures of two different helicopters crossing the Alchymia city ten minutes apart, both following the same route.
She made a mental note of their appearances and trajectories.
“I tracked them to -36.8110, 143.8931. Lost them there. Here are the details.” Elias showed her a document listing every coordinate the two helicopters passed that was marked by private properties’ sky-facing cameras.
“If you need to get into the Council’s system, I can do it. No charge.” He removed the USB-C and held it out.
Astra’s lips twitched as she took it. “You’re unexpectedly proactive. And curious.”
“It’s not hard to figure out those helicopters belong to the International Vanguard.”
“And you’re still willing to put yourself at risk?”
“It’s not easy to kill me.” Elias smiled humbly, a look that was hard to reconcile with his old aloof and arrogant persona. “Still have eight lives left.”
“Thank you, but that won’t be necessary.” Astra slipped the USB into her blazer pocket and headed towards the door, pausing before glancing back. “Just one more thing…”
Elias was already standing, snapping his laptop closed. “I take it this is a secret, even from your… eh, girlfriend?”
“She doesn’t need to know.” Astra wondered why Elias avoided saying Eydis’s name.
He offered a sincere smile as he shrugged. “Then what secret?”
Astra nodded, grateful for his help. But the thing that had been nagging at the back of her mind chose that moment to sharpen into a question.
She turned back fully. “How have you been avoiding Athena’s power?”
Elias’s face iced over, his gaze suddenly guarded.
“Someone as careful as you wouldn’t blindly trust that she wouldn’t probe your mind and uncover your secret,” she added, “as Chimera.”
He took a moment too long to reply, and when he did, it was a cryptic non-answer. “I have figured out a way.”
Elias was a genius in his own right, but there was no documented method to resist a mind read. How Indigo knew and taught Lionel was a myth even to Astra.
As for her, she assumed her own divinity was protection enough beyond this realm. Elias could have easily said he found it through his dark web network, but he didn’t. Which meant…
“Did someone teach you?” she asked in a low voice.
Someone familiar with the mechanics of Electromagnetic Spectrum Gifts?
“I wonder when you became so curious about me,” Elias deflected. “But thank you for the concern. And trust me, your secret does not exist. Not to Eydis. Not to Athena.”
The firmness in his tone cleanly closed the conversation.
Astra searched his eyes, now downcast, and flexed her fingers, dropping her barrier and follow-up questions altogether.
“Appreciate it,” she said simply. Then she turned and left it there.
Eydis had been right about Elias. It seemed his motivation for gathering crypto coins as a black hat hacker was not purely greed.
Then what was it? Important enough to risk his life for someone who claimed to be selfish? Astra brushed the questions aside for now.
She needed to pay the Council’s regional office a visit first.