Soliana had started to learn Inferna’s rhythm in the smallest ways.

  Not the grand kind people wrote about—battle plans and royal decrees and the weight of crowns—but the quiet rhythm that lived in corridors. In footsteps that did not linger. In hands that moved before words were finished. In doors that opened only long enough for someone to pass through, then shut again like the castle itself disliked drafts.

  Today, her task was simple.

  A stack of books, tied with a thin leather strap, heavy enough to make her arms ache but light enough that no one would stop her for carrying it.

  That was the strange part.

  A week ago, people would have stopped her just for existing in the wrong place.

  Now they barely looked at her.

  She walked with the books pressed to her chest, chin slightly lowered so she could see past the top volume. The spines were worn, labels rubbed pale from years of use. Records. Procedures. Inventory. The kind of books that didn’t feel like stories until you realized they were the skeleton holding everything upright.

  The corridor was cool and narrow, torchlight painting the stone in dull amber.

  Soliana adjusted her grip.

  The strap bit into her fingers. She shifted the weight the way she’d learned—left hand under the base, right arm bracing the side. If you held it wrong, it wasn’t the books that punished you. It was your wrists.

  She turned a corner and nearly walked into someone.

  “Woah—!”

  The books jerked in her arms. Her foot slid on the stone. For one awful second she saw the entire stack slipping, falling, bursting across the floor like a loud, humiliating confession.

  She caught it.

  Barely.

  The top book slid half an inch before she pinned it back with her palm.

  She froze, breathing too shallow.

  The boy in front of her had recoiled as if she’d been the one who hit him. He wore light training clothes instead of armor—loose shirt, darker trousers, sleeves pushed up. His face was bruised across one cheekbone, a smear of purple and yellow like someone had pressed a thumb into him and tried to erase it afterward.

  Eric.

  He stared at her, blinking like his brain was catching up.

  Then he grinned, crooked and far too pleased with himself for someone who looked like he’d been used as a sparring dummy.

  “Hey. It’s you.”

  Soliana tightened her hold on the books. “….Eric.”

  Eric leaned slightly, peering at the stack as if it were a puzzle. “You’re carrying all that alone?”

  Soliana nodded once. It wasn’t bragging. It was just true.

  Eric’s grin widened. “That’s insane. Do you need help?” he asked, already taking some before she could answer.

  Soliana glanced at the bruise on his face. “What happened to you?”

  Eric’s expression brightened with the kind of joy that only came from having an audience.

  “Oh, you noticed.” He tapped the bruised cheek gently, winced, then pretended he hadn’t. “That would be my stupid instructor”

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Soliana blinked. “Your instructor did that?”

  Eric scoffed like she’d asked if the sky was blue. “Yeah, and I’m starting to think it was personal.”

  He began walking without asking if she was coming, as if the corridor belonged to him by default.

  Soliana hesitated, then followed.

  Eric kept pace beside her for a few steps, then reached out without warning and took the majority of the stack.

  Soliana jerked instinctively.

  “It’s fine,” Eric said quickly, lifting the books with a grunt. “I’m on break. I’m allowed to do something that doesn’t involve suffering.”

  Soliana’s arms lightened so suddenly she almost stumbled forward.

  “You don’t have to,” she said.

  Eric waved his free hand dismissively. “Nah. I would feel bad to let you carry this much while I do nothing. ”

  Soliana didn’t know what to say, so she let him carry them.

  They walked together down the corridor. The sound of their footsteps overlapped—hers quiet, careful. His louder, careless, the way people walked when they were too exhausted to pretend to be silent.

  Eric talked like he’d been saving it up.

  “I swear,” he said, shaking his head, “this man has a personal vendetta against me.”

  Soliana glanced at him. “Your instructor?”

  “Yeah,” Eric repeated, like the word itself tasted bitter. “He calls it ‘training.’”

  He mimicked a voice—flat and calm and entirely unimpressed.

  “Again.”

  Then he returned to his own voice, indignation flaring.

  “Again. Always again. Like I’m a sword he’s sharpening and he won’t stop until I’m either perfect or snapped in half!”

  Soliana adjusted the remaining books in her arms. “Maybe he wants you to be strong.”

  Eric looked at her as if she’d suggested the palace was built out of bread.

  “I am strong,” he said instantly. “That’s the problem. He sees potential and decides I deserve pain for it.”

  Soliana kept her face neutral. She’d learned that in Inferna, expressions were invitations.

  Eric kept going anyway.

  “I can’t even complain properly because he doesn’t react,” he said. “You know the worst kind of person? The kind you can’t annoy.”

  Soliana’s gaze flicked to his bruises again. “Did you annoy him?”

  Eric snorted. “No. This is from training.”

  He shifted the books, the strap creaking. “If I annoyed him, I’d be limping…no— Id be dead.”

  Soliana made a small sound—half laugh, half breath.

  They passed a set of narrow windows. Outside, the sky was pale, the courtyard below filled with movement—guards drilling, servants crossing, everything in motion. Inferna didn’t look busy. It looked organized. Like a machine that hated idleness.

  Eric glanced out the window and muttered, “Sometimes it feels like the world is just against me.”

  Eric looked down at the books in his arms. “What are you carrying, by the way?”

  Eric tipped the stack slightly so he could read the spine. “Something boring. Something important. Something that will get me yelled at. Bla bla bla.”

  Soliana nodded as if that explained everything.

  Eric huffed. “Honestly, it’s unfair.”

  “What is?”

  Eric turned his head toward her, suddenly earnest. “You.”

  Soliana’s steps slowed a fraction. “Me?”

  Eric waved a hand at the books. “You just… do things. Quietly. Like you have no problems in life at all.”

  Soliana blinked. The statement landed in a place she hadn’t expected.

  “I do,” she said carefully.

  Eric stared at her like she’d spoken another language.

  Then he laughed.

  Not cruelly. Just with the bright disbelief of someone who couldn’t imagine her being afraid.

  “Well,” he said, voice still amused, “if you do, you hide it better than I do.”

  Soliana didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure what the answer would even be.

  They reached a turn where the corridor widened into a junction. A servant passed them carrying linens. She nodded once at Soliana, barely glancing at Eric. Another guard strode past, eyes forward.

  No one stopped them.

  No one questioned her.

  The fact still felt unreal.

  Eric’s voice lowered slightly, conspiratorial again. “Anyway. You know what the worst part is?”

  Soliana glanced at him. “The bruises?”

  “The bruises are fine,” Eric said quickly, like a liar. “The worst part is his standards.”

  He leaned closer, as if the walls might report him.

  “He’s not like the other instructors,” Eric whispered. “The others yell. They threaten. They make you feel small.”

  Eric straightened, adjusting his grip on the books.

  “He doesn’t do any of that. He just looks at you like you’re stupid.”

  Soliana’s fingers tightened around her stack.

  Eric’s mouth pulled into a grimace. “Like you’re a problem he doesn’t understand so he breaks you instead.”

  Soliana swallowed. The corridor felt colder, and her impression of that instructor rose.

  Eric sighed, long and heavy, like someone deflating. “I think he hates me.”

  Soliana stared ahead. “Does he?”

  Eric shrugged, then winced as if the motion hurt. “No. But it feels like it.”

  Soliana knew that feeling.

  The kind that made your stomach twist before you even did anything wrong.

  She glanced at Eric again, then at his bruised face, then at the way he tried to act like it didn’t matter.

  She didn’t like it.

  She didn’t like him describing someone like that so casually.

  She also didn’t like how easily she believed him.

  Soliana hesitated, then asked, as if she needed it for safety:

  “What’s your instructor’s name?”

  Eric’s expression brightened instantly, like she’d finally asked the correct question.

  “Name?” he repeated, rolling it around like it was a joke.

  Then he said it.

  “Oh, it’s Leon.”

  He adjusted the stack in his arms, the leather strap creaking.

  “I swear,” Eric added, dead serious in the way only children could be, “even his name is already giving me an omen.”