Chapter 122: Discovery

Chapter 122: Chapter 122: Discovery

Chapter 122: Discovery

Cyrus Calder looked as if he had come back to the classroom to sleep.

His arms were folded on the desk. His head rested against them. His breathing stayed even enough that anyone passing by would have assumed he had shut out the rest of the world until gym class ended.

In reality, he was still thinking about Faye Larkin.

Faye had said she was only copying her notes again to help herself remember the material. She had said it gently, with the same mild voice she used whenever she tried to make other people feel that nothing was wrong.

Cyrus had not believed her.

The problem was that disbelief alone did not give him the right to press. Faye had covered the page. She had avoided explaining. If he forced the issue without a clear reason, he would only become another person crowding her.

So he stayed where he was and listened to the quiet scrape of her pen.

The sound continued until the bell rang outside.

Gym class ended. Students were supposed to return together, and the missing presence of two background students would not matter to anyone organizing the line. Cyrus and Faye were both the kind of people teachers only noticed when attendance forced the issue.

The classroom began filling again in scattered waves.

A few students entered while laughing about something that had happened near the courts. Someone complained about being sweaty. Another student shook a half-empty water bottle like the noise might create more water.

Then three girls came in together and walked straight toward Faye’s desk.

Cyrus did not lift his head immediately.

Their voices reached him anyway.

"I knew Faye’s notes would be detailed."

The rustle of pages followed.

"Seriously, thank you for doing these. Your handwriting is so neat."

"Thank you, thank you. You are saving us."

The words sounded friendly if someone listened carelessly. The tone underneath them did not.

Cyrus opened his eyes.

He slowly sat up.

The three girls noticed him then, as if the corner had only now produced another living person. None of them looked embarrassed. One smiled with the effortless confidence of someone who had already decided he did not matter. Another held one of Faye’s notebooks against her chest.

They left together.

As they passed the door, the girl holding the notebook waved it lightly in Faye’s direction.

A few soft laughs drifted behind them.

Cyrus watched them go. When he looked back at Faye, her shoulders seemed to lower, not in relief from receiving help, but in relief that the girls had left without asking for anything else.

Because they had not kept pushing?

Cyrus’s brows drew together.

The thing he had worried about had happened after all.

Someone was actually bullying Faye.

For a second, the conclusion made him angry enough that the room around him seemed clearer than before, every chair leg and desk corner too sharp. Then doubt interfered. The conversation he had just seen had not been openly hostile. It had been packaged as thanks. The girls had laughed, but students laughed all the time. The notebook could have been borrowed voluntarily.

It looked wrong.

It also looked just friendly enough for an outsider to be accused of misunderstanding.

That was what made it worse.

The rest of the class came back, and the room grew noisy again. Chairs scraped. Bags hit the floor. Someone asked what the homework had been. A group near the door argued over whether the gym teacher had counted walking laps as real participation.

Cyrus kept his focus on Faye’s back.

After a while, he spoke quietly.

"Did you copy those notes because you wanted to?"

Faye turned slightly in her chair.

A faint surprise passed over her face, then disappeared beneath a small, careful smile.

"Yes. It is all right."

She paused, as though she could feel the question behind his question.

"Really, it is fine. Thank you for worrying."

Her voice stayed warm.

The smile did not reach anywhere important.

Cyrus looked at the curve of her mouth and felt the wrongness settle deeper.

It was too empty.

Still, she had answered him. He could not walk across the room and interrogate three girls he barely knew because Faye’s smile looked hollow. Maybe she really had chosen to help them. Faye was gentle by nature, and gentle people sometimes offered more than others deserved.

Cyrus gave himself that explanation because he needed one.

It did not quiet the irritation in his chest.

He reached into his desk for the next class’s book and pulled it out too quickly. The edge of a page slid across his finger.

Pain flashed through his hand.

It was small, sharp, and immediate enough to pull his attention away from Faye.

Cyrus looked down.

The cut was not large, but it bled more than the size deserved. A line of red welled up along his fingertip and began gathering at the edge.

If he had been alone, he could have frozen the cut shut on the spot. Frostborn bodies were good at cold. A little ice, a little rest, and the problem would probably be gone by morning.

Unfortunately, he was in a classroom full of students.

Human society had human methods, and he was supposed to use those when people could see him.

There was still time before the next class. Enough for the nurse’s office.

Cyrus lifted his hand slightly to keep the blood from dripping onto the floor and stepped out of the classroom.

He had barely entered the hallway when he saw the same three girls ahead of him, walking together toward the bathroom.

Outside the classroom, with no teacher nearby and no Faye within hearing distance, their voices became looser.

"I swear, if people had not said that girl stole money, I would not even have noticed our class had such a perfect little doormat."

"She is so passive. We barely had to ask, and she agreed to copy something that was obviously unreasonable."

"That is what makes it funny."

The hallway was not crowded enough to hide anything.

Cyrus heard every word.

The girls walked slowly, still laughing among themselves. Cyrus passed them from behind, his injured hand raised slightly, blood visible along his finger.

One of them noticed the blood first.

Then she noticed him.

The unremarkable boy from the corner turned his head and looked at the three of them.

It was only one glance.

No threat. No accusation. No raised voice.

The girl still felt something strange about it.

Before she could decide what that was, Cyrus had already turned the corner and disappeared.

"What was that about?" she muttered.

The others did not care enough to answer.

Cyrus stopped outside the school nurse’s office and looked through the door window before entering.

The girls who had been hiding there earlier were gone. Only Vera Sable remained inside, slouched in her chair with her phone in one hand. She looked lazy, comfortable, and far too pleased with herself for someone on duty.

Cyrus opened the door.

Vera looked up. When she recognized the gloomy boy from St. Alder’s senior advisory, she adjusted her posture just enough to look like she had been doing work.

Her mouth opened, probably to tease him.

Then she saw his finger.

"Band-Aid, please," Cyrus said.

"Sit down first. I need to disinfect it."

Vera pulled a chair closer with her foot and gestured for him to take it. Once he sat, she picked up his hand with an easy professional motion.

"How did this happen?"

"Paper cut."

Vera nodded, already reaching for supplies.

The wound truly was minor. It should have taken half a minute to clean and cover.

Instead, she pressed near the cut with gentle, unnecessary pressure.

More blood rose.

Cyrus noticed but did not react. The pressure did not hurt enough to matter, and he assumed she wanted to clean it properly.

Vera watched the fresh blood slide along his finger.

Her throat moved slightly.

The scent was faint, almost too faint for an ordinary person to notice. Vera noticed anyway.

The boy in front of her was still the same one she had privately labeled as a hormone-ridden disaster after previous encounters, but now the air around him seemed to change because of one line of blood.

It smelled good.

Better than good, which was extremely inconvenient.

A quiet agitation moved through her body, unexpected enough that she pretended to study the cut more carefully.

Was this what the older people in her family used to talk about?

They had claimed that some blood carried a natural pull. Not every person’s, not every rare-blood’s, not anything so simple. A particular taste, a particular body, a particular compatibility. They made it sound like a delicacy and a warning at the same time.

Vera had always assumed they were exaggerating.

The human world had plenty of better things than blood. Coffee, pastry, late-night fries, good whiskey, expensive chocolate, fresh seafood, even the vending machine crackers outside the faculty lounge when boredom became desperate. Blood had seemed too primitive a craving to take seriously.

Until now.

The thought arrived calmly.

Tasting a little should be fine.

Cyrus did not know why the nurse had gone so still over his finger. He only watched as Vera, with a strangely focused expression, began guiding his injured hand toward her mouth.

He pulled back immediately.

His hand slipped free from her grasp.

"What are you doing?"

Vera did not look flustered.

She blinked once, then supplied the excuse a little too late.

"Saliva can disinfect wounds."

A question mark practically formed over Cyrus’s head.

What kind of nurse was this?

Did she think he did not know basic nonsense when he heard it? If spit could disinfect a wound properly, then why did schools pay nurses to sit in offices with antiseptic and bandages? Why did humans buy medical supplies at pharmacies instead of licking every injury like stray cats?

Why did every attractive woman in the human world seem to have something wrong with her head?

Cyrus stared at her with open suspicion.

Vera seemed to recognize that she had lost the moment. She coughed lightly, then became extremely proper. The rest of the treatment was clean and standard. She wiped the cut with antiseptic, dried the surrounding skin, applied a small bandage, and then used a wet wipe to clean the blood that had smeared along his finger.

Her motions became almost too careful.

Her pale fingers held the wipe delicately, brushing over his skin until the red was gone and his hand looked clean again. Only then did she release him.

"There. Try not to get it wet for a while."

Cyrus said nothing. He nodded once.

The nurse’s attention still felt wrong.

He stood and prepared to leave.

Vera leaned back in her chair, the lazy smile returning to her face.

"What about the medicine with the ten percent discount? You are not buying it today?"

"In a few days."

Cyrus left the answer behind him and walked out.

Vera watched until he vanished from sight.

Only then did her eyes lower to the wet wipe stained with his blood.

Regret passed across her face.

Unfortunately, her tastes were not strange enough to lick a used wipe in the school nurse’s office.

Not yet.

She tossed the bloodstained wipe into the trash without further ceremony and stretched back in her chair, more relaxed than before.

He would come back anyway.

Next time, she could find another chance.

This school nurse job was becoming more interesting by the day.