Charisma 100: My Academy Life As A Heartbreaking Commoner-Chapter 246: Leash

Once again, Aegis found herself in Valdris’s office.

Sylceris was standing near the window, arms crossed, looking about as thrilled to be here as Aegis felt. Their eyes met when Aegis walked in, and for a brief second, the air between them got a little heavier.

[Great. Her again.]

"Starcaller," Valdris said. "Sit."

Aegis sat.

"I’ll keep this brief. Miss Wynne here has been placed in all of your classes, effective immediately."

"..."

Aegis blinked. She looked at Sylceris, who hadn’t moved, then back at Valdris.

"All of them?"

"All of them."

[Okay. Think. Why would Valdris put the girl who knocked out a noble on her first day into every single one of my classes?]

She glanced at Sylceris again. The girl’s jaw was tight, her eyes fixed on the wall behind Valdris like she was trying to burn a hole through it. She wasn’t happy about this either.

[Ah. I see. Valdris isn’t rewarding me. She’s giving me a job. After the entrance hall thing, she told me Sylceris’s actions reflect on me. Now she’s making sure I can’t avoid that responsibility.]

Aegis sighed.

[She wants me to be this girl’s leash.]

"Is there a reason for this," Aegis said, keeping her tone polite, "or is the Headmistress just feeling generous with my schedule?"

"The reason," Valdris said, "is that Miss Wynne has demonstrated a talent for making poor first impressions, and you have demonstrated a talent for cleaning them up. I’m simply optimizing."

Sylceris’s eye twitched.

"You’re dismissed. Both of you. First class starts in twenty minutes."

They walked through the halls side by side, neither of them speaking for the first thirty seconds or so. Aegis could feel Sylceris’s irritation radiating off her like heat from a furnace, which, honestly, was kind of satisfying given the knife-to-throat thing from yesterday.

"So," Aegis said, breaking the silence first. "You gonna be glued to my side every second of the day now? Following me to class, sitting next to me, walking me to lunch?"

"Don’t flatter yourself." Sylceris kept her eyes forward. "I didn’t ask for this."

"Neither did I, and yet here we are."

"You could have said no."

"To Valdris? Sure. I’ll just tell the most powerful woman in the academy, save for my wife, that I’d rather not, thanks. I’m sure that’d go over great."

Sylceris’s lip curled.

"Being a noble has already gotten to your head, hasn’t it? A year ago you were a scholarship student and now you can’t even push back against an old woman because you’re afraid of what it might do to your stature."

"A year ago I was a scholarship student who talked her way out of expulsion on day one, whereas you needed someone else to do the same for you. I pick my battles carefully. You might want to try it sometime, seeing as your current strategy of punching people in the face hasn’t exactly been working out."

Sylceris opened her mouth, closed it, and then looked away.

They turned a corner into the main corridor and the foot traffic picked up. Students moving between buildings, chatting, carrying books, all of them sneaking glances at Aegis because apparently that was just her life now. A few of them noticed Sylceris walking next to her and the glances turned into full-on stares.

And then, from somewhere in the crowd, a flash of pink hair.

Serilla appeared out of nowhere, stepping directly into Aegis’s path with that wide, shameless grin of hers, her blue eyes locked on like a predator spotting a meal.

"There you are," Serilla said. "I’ve been looking for you all morning."

"Have you? I—"

Serilla grabbed the front of Aegis’s uniform, pulled her in, and kissed her. Not a polite kiss. Not a quick peck. A full, open-mouthed, tongue-and-all kiss in the middle of a crowded hallway, one hand fisted in Aegis’s collar and the other sliding down to grab her ass.

[Oh, hello.]

Aegis leaned into it, because why wouldn’t she, and kissed Serilla back hard enough to make a passing first-year drop his textbook. Serilla’s tongue pushed into her mouth and Aegis bit her lower lip, tugging on it before letting go.

When they finally separated, Serilla licked her lips and winked.

"Missed you, wife of mine."

"We’re not married."

"Not yet. You’ll have to remember to give your spouse the same speech on sharing you gave me," Serilla glanced sideways at Sylceris and her grin widened. "Oh. Who’s this?"

Aegis turned to look at Sylceris.

The girl was frozen. Not in a threatening way, not in a combat-ready way. She was just standing there with her mouth slightly open, staring at the two of them like she’d just watched someone perform surgery on a live animal.

[Oh, that’s precious. You were ready to put a knife in my neck yesterday, but you can’t handle a little bit of smooching?]

"Sylceris Wynne," Aegis said. "New transfer student. She’s in all my classes now."

"Lucky her." Serilla looked Sylceris up and down with zero subtlety. "Cute enough."

Sylceris’s mouth closed. Her expression reset back to that flat, guarded look, but the tips of her ears were darker than before.

"I’ll see you later," Serilla said to Aegis, giving her ass one more squeeze before walking off into the crowd.

Aegis watched her go, then turned back to Sylceris with the most innocent smile she could manage.

"Anyway. Class?"

Sylceris didn’t respond. She just started walking.

---

Hours later, back in the married student quarters, Aegis was lying on the bed with her arms behind her head while Talia paced back and forth across the room.

Aegis had just told her about pretty much everything that happened recently. She saw no reason to leave anything out, after all.

"Just let me kill them."

"No."

"I could freeze every single one of them before they—" 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

"Talia."

"One ice spike per shadow mage. Clean, efficient, done."

"Talia." Aegis sat up. "We don’t even know who all of ’them’ are yet. Sylceris is the only one I’ve confirmed, and if we take her out now, the rest scatter and we lose our only lead."

Talia stopped pacing. Her yellow eyes were sharp, her jaw set. She looked like she was physically restraining herself from going on a rampage, which, knowing Talia, she probably was.

"I don’t like this," Talia said. "Shadow mages in the academy, the church breathing down our necks, and you’re telling me to wait."

"I’m telling you to let me work."

"Work how?"

Aegis swung her legs off the bed and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees.

"I think the shadow mages might try to recruit me. They think I’m sympathetic to their cause because I’m a shadow mage also, AND a commoner on top. I can use that."

Talia’s eyes narrowed.

"You want to pretend to join them."

"I want to make them think I’m open to it. Let Sylceris report back that I’m warming up. Get invited to their meetings, figure out who’s involved, what they’re planning, and then..."

Aegis held up a finger.

"Once we know who they all are, and two..."

She held up a second.

"Once we know what they’re planning, we deal with all in one fell swoop."

"And if they figure out you’re playing them?"

"They won’t."

"Aegis."

"They won’t." She stood up and walked over to Talia, putting both hands on her shoulders. "I’ve spent an entire lifetime talking my way out of shit. If anyone has the training for a task like this, it’s me. This is literally what I’m built for."

Talia stared at her for a long moment, her expression hard. Then she exhaled through her nose and some of the tension left her shoulders.

"If anything goes wrong," Talia said, "I’m freezing every last one of them."

"Deal."