Chapter 162 The Girl Nobody Remembers

Pryce brought the gavel down twice, "As acting President, I declare this session of the Student Council open."

The Student Council chamber smelled of wax and ambition, forty seats ringing a long table under the portrait wall. Riven slipped through the side door with the taste of iron sitting on his tongue like a stolen coin.

"Point of order, who exactly signed off on that sash?" a boy named Bessel asked, half rising from the second row.

"Since the chair emptied, the sash signs itself," Pryce said, puffing out his chest like a pigeon.

Ysabel sat in that very chair, one leg crossed over the other, red nails tapping while nobody turned a head.

Pryce rested both palms flat on the long table, then frowned down at his own suddenly trembling knees. They folded slowly beneath him, exactly the way a tent folds when someone quietly cuts the center pole.

"Why are my legs doing this?"

"Kneel, Pryce," Ysabel said pleasantly, examining her nails, "or I’ll help."

He hit the floor before the full Council with a thud that rattled every inkwell on the table. Forty students watched the acting President kneel to an empty chair, none of them able to say why.

"Lord Pryce, the motion was to adjourn," Bessel said carefully, leaning away from him.

Scarlet to the ears, Pryce wheezed at the floor, "I am examining the carpet."

’That’s her. Nobody else sees her, but her name still tastes like iron... Maw’s Tongue is holding on.’

Bessel wrote the carpet remark into the minutes with a pained expression, glancing twice at the empty chair. The room shuffled papers in the awkward quiet of people who sensed a wrongness they could not name.

"Shall the minutes say why you knelt?" Bessel asked, pen hovering.

"The minutes may say I was inspecting for dust," Pryce said, climbing up with a wobble.

Riven crossed the chamber without hurry, stepping around the kneeling acting President like a puddle in a hallway. Ysabel’s eyes found him the moment he stepped into the lamplight, her nails going still on the armrest.

"You’re looking at me," she said, voice gone thin as paper.

Her face stayed composed like a duke’s daughter’s, but one fingertip trembled hard against the carved wood.

"You’re hard to miss," he said, "sitting in a chair that isn’t yours."

She stood so fast the chair scraped away, then seized his sleeve in both small fists. Her knuckles shook against his arm, a weakness she plainly hated showing in front of anyone.

"Kneel to me," she ordered, glaring up at him, "I need to know you’re real."

"No."

"Kneel!" she shouted, pushing down with everything she owned.

Gravity dropped on him like a cart tipped off a roof, bending his knees a finger’s width. He found the gap between two of her pulses, then stood inside it, hands in his pockets.

’Thinner than the morning she made Class Zero bow... a name is what weight hangs on, and hers is gone.’

The pressure faded, and Ysabel stared at his unbent back as if the floor were insulting her personally. A wet, furious laugh broke out of her while she dragged one knuckle roughly across her hot cheek.

"Still standing," she whispered, shaking her head, "I hate how glad I am."

"Everyone else forgot you," he said, "I don’t know why I didn’t."

He tapped his jaw, "Maw’s Tongue... it keeps the taste of anything real."

"Then your tongue finally earned its keep," she said, voice cracking on the last word.

"Stay mad at me on the walk," Riven said, offering his arm like a footman.

"On the walk to where?"

"A second opinion."

In the corridor students drifted around her like water around a post, their eyes sliding off her entirely. A first-year walked straight into her shoulder, then apologized to the wall for the bump she never noticed.

"Do not look at me like that," Ysabel muttered, jaw tight, "I am not crying in a hallway."

"Nobody can see you," he said, "so it’s technically private."

The Zero Wing common room held the whole Council when they arrived, every head bent over the map table. Mara lifted her head first, nose wrinkling at the empty space beside his shoulder as her ears swiveled sharply.

"You smell like violets and iron... who is that?" she asked, sliding off her stool.

She circled the empty spot twice with her tail low, nose working at a scent her eyes denied. Ysabel stood perfectly still, watching the sniffing with an expression caught halfway between open offense and fragile hope.

"Ysabel is right here," Riven said, pointing at nothing.

Nix hopped onto the table with her knees tucked up, "A secret girlfriend nobody can see is the oldest scam—"

"Nix," Mara growled, tail lashing.

"Fine, I’m only saying it’s a suspicious setup," she said, kicking her heels against the table leg.

Isolde rose with the bound rulebook hugged to her chest, plainly scandalized by the whole absurd situation. She opened it to a page already marked, her finger landing on the line before anyone asked.

"I object on procedure," Isolde said, "a motion cannot be seconded by a person nobody can perceive."

"I am perceived by him," Ysabel snapped, "and that is enough."

Veska planted her spear beside the door, eyes narrowed at the spot where a duke’s daughter apparently stood. Something about the pressure made her instincts itch, though they could not find a face to aim at.

"Something here outweighs the furniture," she said, "I will log it as hostile until corrected."

"She is only hostile to Pryce’s dignity," Riven said.

"Then it is a minor threat," Veska said, stamping the verdict into her ledger with one precise nod.

"It is a very large dignity."

Yukine never left her chair by the window, watching Riven’s face instead of the empty space beside him. She set her pen down with a quiet click, like a clerk closing a ledger for the night.

"Last winter’s budget carries a signature nobody can name," she said, sliding the page across the table.

Violet ink curled above a blank line, a signer who plainly existed with nobody left to claim her.

Yukine kept her gaze on Riven while she spoke, cataloguing his reaction the way she scored a chess opening. He met it without a single flinch, offering the one piece of evidence she always trusted over any document.

"He has never lied to me over something free," Yukine said, "he would not start with something this embarrassing."

’She proved it with paperwork, a signature with no signer... only Yukine would think to audit the budget.’

Nix leaned over the map, drawing a finger along the hymn’s route through the sleeping eastern districts. A thief’s grin spread across her face the way it did when a lock finally gave up.

"If the Choir stole her name into a song," she said, "then the song has a door."

"That’s the best thing you’ve said all week."

"I know, put it in the minutes."

Ysabel stepped into the lamplight beside him, looking smaller than any version of her he remembered. She caught his hand under the table, red nails biting into his palm until it stung.

"If you forget me too," she murmured, "I’ll crush you flat."