Chapter 102: The Story Nobody Told Her

Chapter 102 — The Story Nobody Told Her

The academy café smelled of cinnamon and burnt sugar, and it was nearly empty at that hour. Elias had claimed a corner table by the window, where two visiting students sat with their drinks, already watching the door.

"Roxanne," he said, rising. "This is Mira, and this is Callum. They trained with me in the northern territory."

"Nice to meet you," Roxanne said.

Mira smiled warmly, but her eyes slid to Elias at once, as though she were waiting for him to add something. He didn’t. Callum looked Roxanne up and down with the polite attention of a man reading the small print.

"So you’re the guest," he said.

"I’m the guest."

"Unusual choice."

Roxanne sat down and accepted the cup Elias slid toward her. The silence that followed had a weight to it, the kind that settles when people have agreed beforehand not to mention something.

"Is there a reason everyone looks like I’ve walked into the wrong classroom?" she asked.

Callum stirred his drink. "We were just surprised."

"By my face?"

"By your company."

Elias set his cup down with a quiet click. "If you have something to say about me, say it to me."

Roxanne looked from one of them to the other and understood, with sudden clarity, that the tension had nothing to do with her. She had simply walked into the middle of it. She felt the sting of the implication that she didn’t belong at the table, and she refused to let it show.

"Please carry on," she said lightly. "I’m only here for the pastries."

Mira laughed, too quickly, and the moment loosened without quite breaking.

It took a few minutes of careful small talk before the real subject surfaced. Callum brought it up the way someone presses on a bruise, casually and on purpose.

"Have you told her about the Highland Trials?"

"Callum," Mira murmured.

"It’s a fair question. She’s attending as your guest."

Elias didn’t look away. "I haven’t told her anything yet."

Roxanne waited. She had heard fragments in the dining hall over the past term, the sort of whispers that never had an author. A major inter-pack training event. A serious argument with someone on his team. Elias withdrawing in the middle of it, and the story that he had abandoned the people who needed him.

"The version going around isn’t accurate," Elias said at last, quietly. "It’s incomplete."

"Incomplete," Callum repeated, with an edge. ℯ

"Yes."

He offered nothing more. There was no speech about honour, no list of excuses, no appeal for sympathy. He simply let the sentence stand, and Roxanne noticed how much effort that took.

Mira leaned forward. "I always thought there was more to it," she said, a little too brightly. "Anyway, did you two hear that they’re bringing in a proper band for the evening?"

It was a clumsy change of subject, but Roxanne caught what lay under it. Mira knew something, or suspected it, and wanted the conversation away from it.

Roxanne turned to Elias instead.

"You don’t have to explain it to me today," she said. "When you’re ready, I’ll listen. But I’m not going to pretend I didn’t notice something is wrong."

His shoulders eased by a fraction. "That’s fair."

"I’m a good listener. I’m also terrible at pretending."

"I’ve noticed."

Callum, however, had not finished.

"I’m just saying what people will think," he said, turning his cup slowly in its saucer. "Elias arrives at the social with a girl who’s practically attached to the Moonstone family. It looks like he’s borrowing their name to repair his own. People will assume he’s using her."

Elias drew a breath to answer, but Roxanne spoke first.

"I made my own decision."

Callum glanced at her.

"I accepted because I wanted to," she said, evenly. "Nobody made that choice for me. Not Elias, and certainly not the Moonstones. If you have a problem with him, discuss it with him. Don’t turn me into an argument."

Callum opened his mouth, then closed it. For once he had nothing clever ready.

Mira’s shoulders dropped with relief. Elias stared at Roxanne as though he had expected her to either retreat or fight his battle for him, and had been surprised to find that she had done neither. She had defended her own decision, which left his dignity exactly where it belonged.

Callum finished his drink in silence, muttered something about meeting a friend, and left. Mira lingered long enough to squeeze Roxanne’s hand and say, "I’m glad you came," then hurried after him.

The café seemed larger without them.

Elias rubbed his forehead. "I thought it might be uncomfortable. I didn’t think Callum would raise the Highland Trials in the first ten minutes."

"Is it always like that with him?"

"Only when he thinks he’s right." He gave a short, tired laugh. "I’m sorry."

"Don’t apologise for him." Roxanne turned her cup in her hands. "Do you still want me to come to the social?"

"Yes." He said it without hesitating. "But if you’d rather not, I’d understand. You can change your mind, and I won’t be offended. I’d rather you stay home than feel dragged into my history."

She thought about it, though not for long.

"I’m still going."

"You’re sure?"

"I don’t like being pushed away from something because other people might talk," she said. "I’ve had enough of that. If you tell me to stay home, I’ll go anyway and eat your share of the pastries."

Elias smiled, and this time it reached his eyes. "Then I’ll save you a seat."

"Good."

It wasn’t a grand moment. Nobody said anything dramatic. But as they left the café together, Roxanne felt the friendship settle into something sturdier than it had been an hour before, built on the simple fact that neither of them had asked the other to be anything else.

Later that afternoon, she passed the student activity board on her way to the library and slowed.

Arabella stood beside it, speaking with Mira. Her posture was relaxed, her voice warm. She was pointing out something on a seating chart, and Mira was nodding along with obvious gratitude.

Roxanne listened for her own name, for a hint of poison in the pleasantries. There was none. Arabella said nothing about her at all, and somehow that was more unsettling than if she had.

When Mira thanked her and hurried off, Arabella turned and noticed Roxanne standing there. Her smile was polite and perfectly composed.

"Good afternoon, Roxanne."

"Good afternoon," Roxanne said, cautiously.

That was all. Arabella went back to her papers, and Roxanne kept walking. She didn’t mistake courtesy for forgiveness, but she wasn’t going to invent a confrontation out of a greeting, either. Whatever Arabella was doing, she was doing it quietly, and she was paying close attention to the people around Roxanne.

That evening, Roxanne crossed the main hall on her way to dinner and stopped at the noticeboard.

The announcement for the visiting students’ social had been freshly pinned at the centre. Beside it, held by a single brass tack, was a photograph she hadn’t seen before.

It showed a group of trainees squinting into the sun, arms slung over one another’s shoulders. Elias stood in the middle row, younger, grinning widely. Everyone in the picture was smiling except one boy at the edge, and his face had been scratched out with a pen, over and over, until the paper had worn thin.

Roxanne unpinned the photograph and turned it over.

Across the back, in slanted handwriting, someone had written: You should have told them what really happened.

She looked around the hall. Students drifted past in twos and threes, and nobody glanced her way. Whoever had left it was long gone.

She didn’t take it as proof of anything. It didn’t mean Elias was guilty, and it didn’t mean he had lied. It only told her that the past he refused to discuss was still touching the people around him, and that someone else was tired of the silence too.

She turned the photograph over once more to look at his face, and noticed the date printed in faded ink along the bottom edge.

The photograph had been taken only weeks before Elias transferred to Moonstone Academy.