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Lady Lesso did not dream.
This was a fact — not preference, not pride. Just the truth. Sleep, for her, was a necessary deadness. An interlude between days, void of color or comfort. And when it wasn’t void, it was worse — a cacophony of fire, blood, shrieking steel. Nightmares like bruises.So when she opened her eyes before dawn with a strange softness lingering in her chest — warmth where there was usually cold — she knew at once something had gone wrong.
Something had slipped.
The air in her chambers felt foreign, too still. Moonlight bled through the slats in her shutters, silvering the floor like spilled magic. She sat up slowly in bed, careful, as if trying not to disturb something fragile that might still be clinging to her.
What had she dreamt?
It came back to her in pieces. Lavender light. Laughter. Fingers grazing her wrist. A woman with a voice like sunlight filtered through trees — warm, golden, familiar.
Clarissa.
The name hit like a thrown stone.
Lady Lesso’s jaw clenched. No. Not possible. Not her.
She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, exhaling sharply through her nose. Dreams were tricks of the brain. Chemicals and chaos. She did not indulge in their meanings, not like the teachers across the bridge who saw metaphors in dandelions and destinies in tea leaves.
But still.
She hadn’t just seen Clarissa in the dream. She had felt her. The way her hand had rested against Lesso’s cheek — without pity, without fear. As if she belonged there.
A shiver passed down her spine, but not from cold.
"This is poison," she murmured. “Or worse.”
She pulled on her robe, dark and severe, cinched it with a flick of her wrist, and left her room without so much as a glance in the mirror. Mirrors lied. They always had.
The halls of the School for Evil were quieter than usual. Too quiet. No distant screams from restless Nevers. No echoing clatter of mischief. Just the hum of torches and the sigh of old stone.
Magic, then.
That was the only explanation. Some enchantment buried in her tea, perhaps. A curse slipped into her drink by a student bold enough to play puppet master.
Or — a more troubling thought — it wasn’t magic at all.
It was her.
She crossed into the rotunda with hard, deliberate steps, ignoring the ache in her knee. Downward she went, past the carved serpents and the flickering shadows of broken armor, until she stood before the threshold between schools. The bridge. That damn, cursed bridge.
Even in the moonlight, the School for Good glowed like a dream. All soft towers and golden spires. She hated it.
She hated the way its beauty made her pause.
She hated that Clarissa was likely still asleep over there, warm in her bed, dreaming sweet, infuriating dreams of gardens and promises.
She hated—
That she had felt loved in that dream.
Not adored. Not feared. Not envied. But loved.
And somehow, impossibly, it had felt like the most dangerous magic of all.
The bridge always felt longer than it looked. A stretch of stone suspended between absolutes — Good and Evil, sun and shadow, her and Clarissa.
Lady Lesso’s boots struck each slab with purpose, as if defying hesitation. She had crossed this path too many times to count, always under the banner of duty. Meetings. Discipline. Strategy.
Never because she’d felt something.
Never because she’d dreamed of the enemy.
The School for Good greeted her with a gust of jasmine-sweet wind. Lanterns still glowed faintly along the path, casting golden rings on the cobbled walkways. Everything was too bright, even in darkness. Too clean. Too open.
Too Clarissa.
Lesso moved like a shadow through the gardens, resisting the urge to flatten her hair or straighten her collar. She hated being seen here — it made her feel misplaced, wrong. But tonight, she couldn’t care. Tonight, the wrongness was inside her.
She knew the way to Clarissa’s quarters, of course. Had been there often enough in the early days, back when they still believed the faculty should work together. Before lines were drawn in smiles and silence.
The door was gilded. Naturally. But unlocked.
She hesitated — only for a breath — and knocked. Once.
Then again.
No answer.
For a moment she considered turning back. The rational part of her — cold, calculating — insisted this was foolish. Clarissa couldn’t possibly have invaded her dreams. This was exhaustion, hormones, madness.
And yet.
The door creaked open before she could knock a third time. Clarissa stood in the soft spill of lamplight, wrapped in a pale robe, her hair undone in a rare cascade of gold over her shoulder.
She blinked. “Lesso?”
Her voice was hoarse with sleep.
Lesso swallowed something sharp. “I need to speak with you.”
Clarissa stepped aside without question. Of course she did.
Inside, her quarters smelled like rosewater and tea. A book lay open on a velvet chaise, a half-finished cup beside it. The room was warm, aglow with quiet light and even quieter magic.
Lesso stood stiff in the center, arms crossed.
Clarissa shut the door gently behind them. “Is something wrong?”
“Yes,” Lesso said, and hated how brittle her voice sounded. “I dreamt.”
Clarissa tilted her head. “Is that… unusual?”
“I don’t dream,” she snapped. “I relive horrors. Night after night. But tonight—” She looked away. “It wasn’t horror.”
Clarissa was quiet for a moment. Not in confusion, but in comprehension. She always had that unnerving habit — reading between Lesso’s silences like they were written in ink.
“What did you dream?”
Lesso’s hands clenched at her sides. “You.”
The word hung there. Not sharp. Not soft. Just true.
Clarissa’s breath caught, barely. “Me?”
Lesso met her eyes, jaw set like stone. “You touched me.”
Clarissa’s lips parted. No denial. No laughter.
“It felt real,” Lesso continued, low. “Too real. And I want to know if you did something. If this was… a spell. A joke.”
There was no anger in her voice. Just a terrible vulnerability wearing the mask of suspicion.
Clarissa stepped closer, voice like balm. “You think I cast a spell to visit your dreams?”
“I think I don’t understand what’s happening to me.”
And that, finally, cracked the ice.
Clarissa reached for her, not with caution — but with kindness. Fingers brushed against Lesso’s sleeve, a gentle tether. “I didn’t enchant you. I wouldn’t.”
Lesso didn’t flinch from her touch.
Clarissa’s eyes searched hers. “But I have dreamt of you before.”
Silence.
Thunderous.
Lesso blinked. “What?”
Clarissa smiled faintly, the kind of smile that ached. “Not nightmares. Not sweet either. Just… honest. I’ve seen you in the garden, reading. I’ve seen us talking like we used to. I’ve seen you smile.”
“I don’t smile.”
Clarissa stepped closer. “You did. In the dream.”
Lesso’s throat tightened. “So you’re saying this is… what? A coincidence?”
“I don’t know,” Clarissa said softly. “Maybe it’s magic. Maybe it’s longing. But if it’s the second… I don’t think I’m the only one who feels it.”
Lesso looked at her then — really looked. At the softness Clarissa always wore like armor, the way she saw people, even the ones who didn’t want to be seen.
And for the first time in years, Lesso let herself be seen.
Lesso tore her gaze away first.
It was always that way between them.
Clarissa could look and hold, unblinking, while Lesso — fierce as she was in battle, in lectures, in politics — never quite learned how to bear being seen for too long. Especially not like this.
Especially not by her.
“I shouldn’t have come.”
Clarissa’s hand dropped. “Lesso—”
“No.” The word came out sharp, like a blade catching light. “I… don’t know what you think this is. But it’s not that.”
“That?” Clarissa repeated gently, though there was a tremor beneath her calm.
Lesso stepped back. Her spine straight, her face carved in marble. “Whatever this dream meant, whatever you felt — I won’t entertain the idea that it meant anything.”
“But you came here,” Clarissa said, no judgment in her voice — only ache. “You crossed the bridge in the middle of the night.”
“I came because I thought I’d been cursed.”
The silence that followed was heavier than any spell.
Lesso regretted the words the moment they left her mouth. But they were already in the room, settling like ash between them. Clarissa didn't flinch, but her smile — the faintest trace of one — vanished without drama.
“I see,” she said.
Lesso couldn’t stand the way Clarissa was looking at her now — not hurt, not angry. Just understanding. Too much understanding.
“I don’t do this,” Lesso hissed, low and furious. “I don’t feel things just because someone is kind to me. I don’t confuse dreams for… for truths.”
Clarissa tilted her head. “Then why does it scare you so much?” The words were gentle, but they struck like a slap.
“Scare me?” Lesso spat. “You think I’m afraid?”
“I think you’re running.”
Lesso laughed, bitter and hollow. “From you?”
“From hope,” Clarissa said simply. “From wanting something you think you don’t deserve.”
There it was. The truth, laid bare.
Lesso hated how quickly her hands balled into fists, how her chest ached in places she thought had long since gone numb.
“This is your specialty, isn’t it?” she snarled. “Finding the broken parts and smiling sweetly while you press them until they bleed.”
Clarissa didn’t flinch. “Only because I know they can heal.”
The silence stretched.
Lesso turned away, toward the door. Her robe fluttered slightly with the movement, dark and dramatic as always, as though she could swathe herself in distance.
“You should forget this happened,” she said. “Forget the dream. Forget tonight. It was nothing.”
Clarissa took a step forward, her voice quiet but firm. “It wasn’t nothing to me.”
Lesso paused, her hand on the door handle. But she didn’t turn back.
She couldn’t.
“I’m not one of your princes, Clarissa,” she said. “I don’t have a heart waiting to be saved. Whatever you saw in that dream — it’s a lie.”
And with that, she was gone.
The door closed softly behind her, but the echo lingered like a wound.
Clarissa didn’t chase her. That wasn’t her way. She stood in the quiet room, one hand on her own wrist where Lesso’s warmth had once been.
Above the fireplace, the fire dimmed, curling in on itself.
And still, she waited.
It had been years ago. Perhaps a decade. Perhaps longer. In Etheria, time bent strangely around old magic, but Lesso remembered that night with painful clarity.
The Masquerade Ball was held once a decade, a rare truce where Good and Evil gathered in uneasy peace. Masks softened judgment, and wine blurred boundaries. Not even the School Masters interfered — as though the night itself was a spell of forgetting.
Lesso had gone begrudgingly, a goblet in hand, her mask a simple slip of black velvet. Her suit was midnight black, sharply tailored, with silver trim that caught the candlelight like a blade. She looked like a storm dressed for war. She hated crowds, loathed dances, and had every intention of staying just long enough to make her appearance known before slipping away.
Until she saw Clarissa.
Across the ballroom, glowing in a dress the color of stormlight and silver. Masked in pearl and frost, Clarissa Dovey laughed — softly, elegantly — at something Professor Anemone said. Her hair was pinned high, loose strands framing her cheekbones like whispers.
Lesso hated how beautiful she looked. Hated it in the way you hate the rain when you're already drenched — because there's no point resisting.
She turned away. Reached for a second drink.
Clarissa appeared beside her like a ghost with impeccable posture.
“You look like you’re about to set the curtains on fire just to escape,” she said, sipping from her crystal glass.
“I might,” Lesso muttered, adjusting the cuff of her coat. “Depends on how many more slow waltzes I’m expected to endure.”
Clarissa smiled. “One more. At least.”
Lesso raised a brow. “That a threat or an invitation?”
That had not been the plan. The words slipped out before she could rein them in — too casual, too dangerous. But Clarissa didn’t falter.
“Would it change your answer?”
There it was again. That unbearable ease. Clarissa always wielded kindness like a blade — soft on the outside, honed beneath.
Lesso didn’t answer. Instead, she looked away, toward the dancers twirling beneath chandeliers enchanted to flicker like stars.
“Why do you stay?” Clarissa asked quietly.
Lesso blinked. “What?”
“In Evil. In the School. In this... war. You could leave. Live a quieter life somewhere. You're not bound by blood or curse.”
It was the kind of question no one had dared ask her. Not even Sader.
Lesso drank instead of answering. But Clarissa waited.
Eventually, Lesso said, “Maybe I like watching the world burn.”
Clarissa smiled softly. “No, you don’t.”
Something in Lesso’s throat twisted. “Don’t presume to know me.”
“I don’t presume,” Clarissa said. “I notice.”
Lesso wanted to leave. She should have left. But her feet stayed rooted. Her heart betrayed her — beating too fast, too loud.
“I saw you last week,” Clarissa continued. “You healed a wyvern with a broken wing.”
“It belonged to my student. I needed him focused.”
“You wrapped the wing yourself.”
“Efficiency.”
“You sang to it.”
Lesso looked away. “That was a binding spell.”
Clarissa stepped closer. Her perfume was subtle — something floral and deep, like midnight gardens.
“You can lie to the world all you want, Lesso. But not to me.”
Lesso turned then, sharply, as if to snap something cruel, something cold. But the words caught in her mouth.
Clarissa was too close. Too calm.
“I don’t want this,” Lesso said hoarsely.
Clarissa tilted her head. “Don’t want what?”
“This… conversation. This game.”
“It’s not a game.”
Lesso’s eyes flicked downward — to Clarissa’s mouth, then quickly away. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
Clarissa’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”
And then — for one impossible second — neither of them moved. The ballroom spun around them, all masks and music, and Lesso could feel every breath between them like static in her bones.
She leaned in — a fraction. Barely a tremor of a movement.
But she stopped.
Of course she stopped.
Because Lady Lesso did not kiss fairy godmothers at masquerades. She did not allow herself hope.
Instead, she said, “This night will end. And when it does, you’ll forget this.”
Clarissa’s smile faded into something sadder. “Will you?”
But Lesso had already turned, already walking away through the crowd, eyes forward, heart armoured.
And still—
She remembered.
Lady Lesso did not dream again.
That was the first sign.
The second was subtler: she noticed. The details. The absences. The rhythms of Clarissa’s days that once meant nothing now played in her head like an unwanted refrain. When Clarissa was late to breakfast, Lesso noticed. When Clarissa skipped lunch in the faculty hall, Lesso noticed. When Clarissa no longer met her eyes at bridge crossings—she noticed.
She kept noticing.
She had once thrived in silence, reveled in it like a wolf in fresh snow. Now, it weighed differently. It wasn’t peace. It was pause. A long breath before something cracked.
The dream had been a fluke, she told herself. A magical residue, perhaps. A spell misfired in her sleep. The air had been full of shifting enchantments that week — some student’s ill-formed charm to summon a familiar had nearly torn a rift in the tapestry hall. Easy explanation. Rational.
And yet…
Her office felt colder without the echo of it. Without the memory of Clarissa’s voice, low and tender, asking her to stay.
Worse than the dream’s presence was its absence. Because that meant it hadn’t been real. Hadn’t meant anything. And that made everything harder.
Lesso buried herself in her work.
She supervised the Nevers' battle tactics. She rewrote the defense curriculum for Year Five. She rewired her warded door, twice. She bled hours into menial precision — anything to keep her thoughts corralled like restless wolves.
But memory slipped in, uninvited.
The ball. The almost. Clarissa’s question: “Will you forget this?”
Lesso had tried. Gods, she had tried.
But then came the third sign.
A knock. Late evening. Her office.
Not many dared disturb her after dusk, and fewer still lingered when the hour crept toward the whispering dark. She expected a student in trouble. Or Sader, perhaps, with another vague prophecy.
She did not expect the door to crash open without warning.
Clarissa Dovey entered like a storm bottled too long, expression hard as diamond, pale coat flaring behind her like a battle standard. Her hair, usually so neatly pinned, had come loose — and her eyes burned with something bright and furious.
"Clarissa—?" Lesso rose from her chair, startled.
"No," Clarissa snapped, the word sharp enough to slice through steel. "Not tonight. You don’t get to start this one."
She shut the door with a flick of her wrist — quiet, but final. The sound of it was louder than any yell.
Lesso’s brow furrowed. "You shouldn’t be here."
Clarissa stepped forward. "And you shouldn’t get to walk into my life, wreck it with a dream, and then act like you felt nothing. But here we are."
Lesso opened her mouth to retort — too slow.
"I’ve waited," Clarissa continued, voice rising, low and shaking. "I’ve waited through your silence, your lectures, your cruel little smiles. I gave you space, and grace, and all the gods-damned patience in the world. But I am done."
Lesso stood still, as if rooted in place. "You’re upset."
"I’m furious, Leonora. I am so angry I can barely breathe. And the worst part? It’s not because you don’t feel something. It’s because you do. And you still run."
The name landed like a blow. Lesso flinched.
Clarissa’s hands trembled at her sides, clenched into pale fists. "You look at me like I’m the one wielding a blade, when all I’ve ever done is offer you something soft. Something safe. And you punish me for it."
"I never meant—"
"Don’t lie to me," Clarissa cut in. "You meant every word when you said the dream was a curse. You meant it when you ran. And now you want to pretend none of it matters, because that’s easier than admitting you want something. That you want me."
Lesso’s voice cracked. "I don’t know how to want without breaking everything I touch."
Clarissa stepped closer, eyes like wildfire. "Then learn. Gods, Lesso, if you cared even a fraction of how much I think you do—"
"Don’t," Lesso rasped. "Don’t say it."
Clarissa stopped. And then, quieter — a breath before a storm breaks — she said:
"Say it, then. Say you feel nothing. Say it to my face, and I will walk away. For good."
Lesso said nothing.
"Say it, Leonora."
The silence split the room open.
When Lesso finally spoke, her voice was raw. "You don’t get to use that name."
Clarissa blinked. "Why not?"
"Because when you say it, I want to believe it means something."
Clarissa’s fury dimmed just enough to let pain through. "It does. Gods help me, it always did. But I can’t keep loving someone who treats hope like a weapon."
Lesso turned away. Her hands trembled at her sides. "I’m not kind, Clarissa. I’m not safe. You know that."
"I never asked for safe," Clarissa whispered. "I asked for honest. And I deserve that much."
A long pause.
Clarissa’s voice, finally, turned cold. Steady. "When — if — you decide to stop punishing yourself for being human, you know where to find me. But don’t come to me half-formed. I’ve seen the whole of you. I dreamed it."
And with that, she left.
The door didn’t slam. It didn’t need to. The silence she left behind hit harder than any spell.
Lesso didn’t move. Not for a long time.
But her name — Leonora — still echoed in the air, like something waiting to bloom.
Days passed. Clarissa did not cross the bridge again.
She smiled when spoken to, nodded through staff meetings, drank her tea in silence. Her students never noticed the difference. Most teachers didn’t either. But Lesso did.
Gods, she noticed everything now.
The gap at the faculty table. The way Clarissa no longer looked her way during shared lessons. The echo where a smile used to live.
She tried to tell herself it was a mercy — that the quiet was peace. But it wasn’t. It was absence. And it was unbearable.
So when the sun dipped behind the towers one evening, casting the school in twilight gold, Lesso walked.
Not out of impulse. Not rage. Not confusion.
Intention.
She crossed the bridge.
This time, every step was deliberate. No storm. No pride.
The gardens of Good glowed with soft magic. Lanterns floated low, swaying gently above the roses. Clarissa was there, seated on a bench, a book in hand — untouched.
Lesso stopped a few feet away. The silence between them stretched.
Clarissa didn’t turn. "If you’re here to deny it again, don’t. I’ve heard enough."
Lesso swallowed. Her voice was low. Steady. "I wanted it to be a dream so I could wake up and forget. Because if it was real… it meant I’d already ruined something I never deserved."
Clarissa slowly closed her book. But didn’t speak.
Lesso stepped closer. "But I don’t want to forget. Not anymore."
Still, no response.
So she said it.
"I love you."
It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t perfect. But it was real.
Clarissa finally looked up. Her gaze didn’t soften. Not yet. "Say it again. Like you mean it. Not like it hurts you."
Lesso took a breath. Her armor fell.
"I love you, Clarissa. Not in spite of who I am. Because of who you are. Because you saw me when I didn’t want to be seen. Because you still do."
A long silence.
Then, slowly, Clarissa stood. She looked at Lesso for a long time — measuring.
Then she said, simply:
"Then come here."
Lesso didn’t hesitate.
And when their hands met, it wasn’t explosive.
It was quiet.
And then it wasn’t.
Clarissa leaned in first, her fingers tightening around Lesso’s. The kiss that followed was not hesitant, nor chaste. It was hungry — not from lust alone, but from years of longing buried under pride and silence.
Lesso kissed back with something like desperation, her hands finding Clarissa’s waist, grounding herself in the reality of this moment. The scent of roses clung to Clarissa’s skin; the taste of something soft and aching lingered between them.
They stumbled back into the shadows beneath the garden arch, pressed between stone and moonlight. Clarissa’s hand slid into Lesso’s hair, pulling her closer with something bordering on feral.
Lesso groaned against her mouth, the sound low and unguarded.
It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t gentle.
But it was real.
And it burned beautifully.