Chapter 143 MORE THAN FRIENDS?

Chapter 143 MORE THAN FRIENDS?
Yvaine reached out and took his hand for a moment. She squeezed once and let go. “He’ll tell you,” she said. “I think he’s ready to.”

Kai looked at her. “You trust him.”

“I trust that he’s been carrying this news for years and now you carry some pieces of it without the whole thing to make sense of them,” she answered plainly. “I think he’s done with that too”

Kai was quiet for a moment.

Then: “How is she?”

Yvaine’s expression warmed. “Ate this morning. Properly, not just the few bites she managed yesterday.” She paused. “She asked about the tournament.”

“She remembers it?”

“She doesn’t remember it. She asked about it. There’s a difference, but it’s a good thing. She mentioned remembering that it happened every year.” Yvaine looked at him. “She’s reaching. The right things are calling to her.”

He nodded.

“Come to the library with me,” Yvaine suggested. “I have an idea.”

~

They went to the library and selected three books—one on dragon history, illustrated, with images detailed enough to serve as real reference material; one on the tournament’s historical records that included accounts of past competitions useful for context; and one on riding formations that contained diagrams of the manoeuvres Lyra had performed during the elemental round and the ball game.

Kai carried them.

They knocked at Lyra’s room.

She was sitting on the mattress when they entered, her back against the wall, her good leg bent, her injured ankle stretched out before her, gazing at the window with the slightly distant expression she had worn since waking.

She turned when Kai knocked at the open door.

Something in her face shifted when she saw him. Warmth spread across her face, it had not been there a moment earlier and she smiled at him with ease. 

“Come in,” she invited.

He entered, sat on the chair beside the bed and opened the illustrated book across his knees, “I promised to bring you some good books to keep you company and I have delivered to you reading materials” he announced proudly.

“Reading materials,” she repeated, her voice carrying a dry edge that was entirely hers. “You look like you have been worrying about something.”

“I’m fine,” he lied.

She studied him quietly “You’re doing the jaw thing,” she observed.

“What jaw thing?”

“The thing where your jaw is tight and you think it isn’t obvious,” she pointed out. “It’s obvious.”

From the doorway Yvaine made a sound that was close to a laugh and quickly smoothed into something more neutral when Kai glanced her way.

He looked back at Lyra.

She was watching him with something in her eyes that was amused with warmth. 

He opened the book to the tournament section and began.

He told her about the elemental round first, described the formation of the clouds, the quality of the lightning, the way the crowd had gone silent before the sound struck. He did not tell her it was her he was describing. He spoke of it the way one describes something extraordinary witnessed firsthand, and he watched her face as he talked.

She listened with her whole attention.

He moved through the tournament in sequence, the speed round, the ball game, the final against Stoneheart, using the book’s illustrations to anchor each part, turning the pages toward her so she could see the diagrams of formation flying and the drawings of competition configurations. 

She studied the images with her undivided attention. He was watching her face closely enough to catch the moment something shifted in it.

Not full recognition but something more significant, like a change in the way the eyes focused.

He sat close to her on the bed and turned the book to show her an illustration of a dragon performing an elemental demonstration, wings fully extended, the artist’s impression of lightning arcing from the wingtips.

She reached out and touched the page. Touching, with the flat of her fingers, as if she could feel the dragon itself if she reached far enough.

“This,” she murmured.

He waited.

“This feels—” She stopped. Pressed her fingers a little harder against the page. “Like something I know.”

He did not speak nor did not move. She looked up from the page.

Their faces were close, the book between them, angled toward her to show the illustration, his body turned toward hers, the space between them almost non existent. 

She looked at his face, he looked at hers.

Her eyes moved—just briefly, only the fraction of a movement to his lips then back to his eyes. The warmth that had been in her face since he walked in deepened and spread into something else, something that asked a question she did not yet have the words for.

He could feel his own heartbeat.

She looked back at the book.

“Tell me more,” she said quietly. “About the tournament.”

He turned the page, his hands were entirely steady but everything else was not.

LYRA

I swallowed.

The book was still open across Kai’s knees and he was still talking… explaining something about the tournament’s ball game, tracing the diagram on the page with one finger and I was looking at the page but hearing absolutely none of it because my pulse had decided to do something completely unreasonable and I could not make it stop.

I had nearly kissed him.

Not nearly in the sense of leaning forward, reaching out or doing anything that could be obvious. I was close because I wanted to. I looked at the page.

The illustration of the dragon was very detailed and I could not tell a single thing about it. I snuck a glance sideways.

He was reading now, his eyes moving across the text with focused attention, his jaw was flexing slightly with each word. His eyes when they moved to the illustration were their usual green m, sparkling with interest. I looked back at the page.

What if we were more than friends?