I was eating alone in the eastern refectory — the one reserved for scholarship students, with its cracked benches and flickering lanterns nobody bothered to maintain — when Sarp dropped onto the bench across from me looking insufferably pleased with himself.
"Good morning, sunshine." He stole a piece of bread from my plate. "You look dreadful. Have you considered sleeping? It's this remarkable activity where you close your eyes and stop being miserable for six to eight hours."
"What do you want, Sarp?"
"Can't a man share breakfast with his best friend without ulterior motive?"
"You have never once in your life done anything without ulterior motive."
"Harsh but fair." He bit into my bread, chewing with theatrical contentment. "Fine. I have news. Ada and I are attending the Moonlight Ball together tonight. She asked me. Well — I suggested it and she didn't say no, which in the language of women who've been relentlessly avoided by their childhood best friend for three years, basically counts as a declaration of passionate intent."
I kept my eyes on my plate. Cut a piece of meat. Chewed. Swallowed.
"Fascinating," I said.
"I thought so. I'm wearing the dark blue coat — the one that makes my shoulders look heroic. I've had two baths. One for hygiene, one for confidence." He leaned forward. "I'm thinking of buying her jasmine from the night market beforehand. Thoughts?"
The knife in my hand bent. I hadn't meant to grip it that hard, hadn't even felt the pressure until the metal gave. For one terrible second I thought I'd feel the shadows too — the creep of them across the tablecloth, the cold pooling at my feet that had been waking me three nights running — but there was nothing. Just the knife, bent wrong in my fist, and Sarp watching me from across the table.
I set it down before he could get a better look.
"I think," I said, "that you should do whatever you want. I've told you I don't care."
"You've told me that eleven times now. I've been counting." Sarp studied me with those sharp eyes that saw too much. "At what number does it stop being convincing? Because I'd argue we passed that threshold around declaration four."
"Stop talking before I put this knife somewhere creative."
"There he is. The charming Hakan we all know and tolerate." He stood, brushing crumbs from his coat. "Ball starts at sundown. You should come. Practice having a facial expression that isn't 'homicidal brooding.'"
He left whistling. I sat with my bent knife and my cold breakfast and the darkness somewhere under the table, and I told myself I wouldn't go.
I went.
* * *
The Moonlight Ball was the Academy's annual exercise in aristocratic vanity — three hundred students crammed into the great hall beneath floating silver lanterns, dressed in their finest, competing to out-dazzle each other while priests blessed the wine. The marble floors reflected the lanterns like still water, and the crystal columns threw fractured light across everything, making the whole hall shimmer like the inside of a diamond.
I stood against the far wall in black with a cup of wine I hadn't touched.
Then she walked in.
Ada wore silver — not the white-and-gold the court expected, but something that caught the lantern-glow and threw it back in ways that made her look less like a princess and morelike something elemental. Her dark hair was loose around her shoulders, and she was laughing at something Sarp had said, her hand resting on his arm with an ease that made my chest do something I didn't have a name for.
Sarp looked good. I hated that he looked good — the dark blue coat doing exactly what he'd promised, his smile warm and genuine in a way mine had never been. He leaned down to say something near her ear and she turned her face up toward him, still smiling, her whole body tilted just slightly into the space where he was.
She hadn't looked at me once.
Two weeks since the garden. Since she'd saidI'm not going anywhereand I'd saidyou shouldand neither of us had moved. Since then — nothing. She was doing exactly what I'd told her to do.
She was staying away. And letting Sarp fill the space I'd created.
I drained my wine and signalled for more.
Across the hall, I tracked Tahir as he moved through the crowd — handshakes, smiles, that practiced warmth old-blood families taught their sons alongside light magic. I watched him stop to speak with Serkan near the musicians' alcove. Brief. Casual. A nod exchanged that looked like nothing and meant everything.
Then Tahir walked toward Ada and asked her to dance.
The way she accepted — it wasn't enthusiastic, wasn't reluctant, just gracious, the small polite smile she gave strangers. I watched Tahir's hand find her waist, watched him pull her a half-step closer than the dance called for. He knew exactly how charming he was being. You could see it in every gesture.Ada said something back, whatever polite thing the moment required. Her expression gave nothing away.