Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Come on Lux, what’s the worst that could happen?”

She glanced at Jinx, taking in her wide eyes and parted lips. “Outside of the obvious misuse of power—” she questioned, leaning across her desk to hiss at Jinx “—there’s the fact that we’re Star Guardians and that we’re supposed to be keeping our identities as such a secret. Bombarding Mayor Yunalai’s flower garden—directly after getting into a very public fight with her daughter—could not make our identities any more obvious.”

“Lighten up, Luxie,” Jinx groaned. “You’re the one she was insulting. You should totally be on board with this idea.”

“It was hardly an insult,” Lux huffed.

Besides, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t heard it before. Sure, Qiyana’s words were more cutting than the usual band of insults thrown her way, but Lux knew the girl didn’t have it out for her. She spoke that way to everyone.

Jinx ignored her response. “Can’t we just say it’s, like, cosmic punishment or something?” she asked. “Star Guardians can totally get away with that, right?”

Lux pinched the bridge of her nose and sucked in a breath, glancing at the clock on the wall. It was too early to be drawn into one of Jinx’s twisted arguments. School hadn’t even started yet.

She usually made it to first period before having to explain to Jinx that Star Guardians didn’t base their decisions on what they could get away with.

As if to reinforce that today would be more aggravating than usual, the bell marking the start of the school day sounded before Lux could begin reminding her best friend of what their actual duties as Star Guardians entailed. Shooting her an irritated glare from the corner of her eye, Lux leaned back into her seat before their teacher took notice.

“The answer is no, Jinx,” she added for good measure, knowing the ease with which Jinx took no answer to be equivalent to permission.

Jinx was still pouting by the time the school’s secretary had finished with the morning announcements. Lux mentally prepared herself for the effort it would take to reign the gremlin in before she could do something else to get her revenge.

“Janna Ahrem, Soraka Celeste, Luxanna Crownguard, Sarah Fortune, and… Jinx: please report to the principal’s office.”

Lux’s eyes fell on her friend with renewed suspicion. It seemed that she was already too late.

“What did you do?” she hissed as they both stood from their desks and walked towards the door. “More importantly, why are they calling me to the principal’s office? This better not be like—”

“I didn’t do anything!” Jinx interrupted. She paused. “Well, nothing that they could have caught, anyway.” Her confusion vanished, replaced with a wide smile. “Besides, you liked that one time I got you called to the principal’s office.”

“I most certainly did not enjoy explaining how I had no part in painting a mural of myself across the gymnasium wall!”

Alas, when someone went through the effort of forging your own signature at the bottom of the mural, along with the words ‘Jinx and Lux: Besties Forever,’ there was little room to convince the school faculty that she was not involved.

Lux’s eye twitched as she recalled the hours she and Jinx had to spend scrubbing the walls clean. Especially considering that whoever had created the painting had decided to use long-lasting, weather-resistant paint.

“You told me that you liked it!”

“I liked the painting.”

Jinx clutched a hand to her chest, though her eyes continued to dance with mirth. “Do my emotions mean nothing?”

Lux sighed, disguising the slight uptick of her lips. “I suppose it was a better use of your creative talents than usual.”

For as much effort that it took to scrape the paint off the walls, it was infinitely better than sorting through rubble.

The two of them walked through the doors of the office. Lux waved at the secretary as she passed. Lux was not unfamiliar with the layout of the building, not when she had to spend so much time waiting for Jinx to finish receiving her many lectures on proper decorum or the school’s countless attempts to make her admit to any one of the handful of pranks that she’d committed. Allegedly, of course. Nobody ever caught Jinx unless she wanted them to know that she was responsible. Her elusiveness had grown in the past year but, even before the First Star had chosen them, Jinx had always been insatiable in causing mayhem.

The secretary smiled brightly at her. “Good morning, Luxanna.”

Jinx snickered beside her. “It’s not funny,” Lux whined, slapping Jinx’s arm.

“If you don’t like it that much, why don’t you sneak into their system and change it yourself?”

Lux raised an eyebrow. “Why don’t you, considering your penchant for mischief?”

After all, it was proven that Jinx was capable of doing that. There was a reason her name was the same in every official document despite those who had grown up with her knowing that Jinx was not her original name.

“I can’t do everything for you, Lux!”

“It’s because you think it’s funny.”

Jinx released another snicker. “That too!”

She shook her head. It wasn’t like it would do much good. The faculty were already too set in their ways. Moreover, considering how often Jinx was in her orbit, their constant emphasis on her full name served, she presumed, as an osmatic method of trying to instill some streak of formality into the wild girl. Lux wondered why they hadn’t learned the futility of that yet.

Turning a corner, Lux saw the other three students that had been called to the principal’s office, as well as the principal herself, waiting for them.

Principal Morgana smiled at her and Lux when she noticed their arrival, turning away from her conversation with Janna. “You’re here. Perfect.” Pushing the door to her office open, she waved them through. “Come in, I have an important announcement for the five of you.”

Lux caught Janna’s gaze, hoping that she could clue her in to what this was all about. Janna shrugged apologetically before turning to follow the principal into the office.

With her older friend unable to help, she turned her attention to the other two students filing into the office. Both were transfer students who’d arrived at Valoran High after winter break. One of them, Soraka, was in a few of Lux’s classes, though she hardly knew anything about the girl. Soraka usually kept to herself, content to sit alone in the back and pass the time in silence.

The other, a vivacious redhead whose uniform fought to hold her curves in place, must have been Sarah Fortune. Lux watched her follow behind Soraka, her eyes glued to her cell phone and her mouth pulled into an angry frown as she beat her fingers against the phone’s surface, typing out what Lux could only imagine was a constant rant.

Lux pressed herself against the wall of the office next to Janna, shuffling awkwardly in the crowded space. Two chairs sat across from Morgana’s desk, but none of the earlier arrivals had claimed them. Soraka and Janna were content to stand to the side and Sarah, too caught up in her phone, had sauntered over to the nearest wall and leaned her back against it, never once considering the chairs in front of the principal.

With a whoop, Jinx jumped over the back of one of the chairs, landing hard enough on the seat to send up a puff of dust. Lux stifled her groan at the sight and looked helplessly at Janna, hoping that she’d be able to save Lux from dying of mortification.

Fortunately, Morgana appeared more amused by Jinx’s antics than anything else, raising an eyebrow at Jinx as she squirmed into a more comfortable position. “I trust everyone is having a good day,” the principal began.

“What’s this about?” Sarah asked, glancing up momentarily to look at Morgana before returning to her phone.

Morgana chuckled. “Don’t be too eager, darling. Your classes will still be there once we’re done.”

“But my free time won’t.”

“The school day has already started, Miss Fortune. I am not taking any of your free time from you.” Her eyes dipped to where Sarah was holding her phone, but if she took issue with it, she didn’t say anything.

Sarah blew a strand of hair out of her face. “Whatever.” Seemingly at the end of her conversation, she tucked her phone into her back pocket and crossed her arms underneath her chest as she met Morgana’s gaze. “You were saying something about an announcement?”

“Ah, yes.” Morgana nodded her head, ignoring Sarah’s disrespectful tone. “Thank you for reminding me.”

Morgana shuffled a few papers across her desk, and Lux was certain that she could hear Sarah grinding her teeth together across the room. “As I was saying,” the principal continued once she was satisfied with her desk’s arrangement. “Valoran High has received some very exciting news: we have been nominated to participate in a tri-school tournament, a tremendous honor considering the prestige it would bring our school should we perform well.”

“And you needed to tell this to us, specifically, because…” Sarah trailed off as she looked at Morgana.

“Why, because the five of you are who I’ve chosen to represent us in the tournament, of course!”

Sarah pushed herself off the wall. “I’ll pass, thanks.”

“You’re certain?” Morgana asked. “I haven’t even told you how the school intends to reward its nominees.”

Sarah was far from convinced. She shrugged her shoulders noncommittedly. “I’ve got a busy life.”

Morgana sighed. “A shame. I’ve already notified all your teachers of your acceptance.”

“What do you mean?” Janna asked. “Why would our teachers need any notification?”

Morgana turned towards her. “Participants in the tournament will receive a passing mark in all of their classes. Since the five of you will be spending your time preparing for the tournament, it would be unconscionable to burden you with additional stress.”

“No homework?” Jinx asked before a wide smile curved along her face. “Count me in!”

You don’t even do your own homework in the first place, Lux thought, staring at the back of her friend’s head. She shifted to look at Morgana. “That’s awfully gracious,” she said. “May I ask what this tournament entails to warrant such compensation?”

Morgana dipped her head in acknowledgment. “There will be four events, each focused on a particular discipline, spread across two weeks. One member of your team will participate in each event against contenders from the two other schools. At the end of the competition, the points are tallied and the school with the highest amount wins.”

Lux shared a look with Janna. Two weeks was a considerable amount of time. “Where is the tournament taking place?” she asked.

“The tournament has always proceeded from a designated plot of land in the middle of Valoran.” Morgana glanced at a sheet of paper on her desk. “I’m afraid that the exact location is confidential.”

Lux swallowed, the faces of Lulu and Poppy hovering in her mind. “Then, I’m sorry, but I also cannot participate. I have too many obligations within the city.”

Morgana was not deterred. “I am not exaggerating when I say that this is the single most prestigious thing to happen to Valoran High,” she said. “Whatever complications may arise from your participation, the school will work to alleviate them.”

Sarah scoffed, having decided to stay in the office. “If it’s such a big deal, why are we your five candidates.” Sarah looked pointedly across the room at her and Jinx. “Why didn’t you choose Ahri for this?”

Morgana laughed. “You overestimate Ahri’s ability. If you are worried about your peers, have no fear, Sarah. I have hand-picked every one of you. There are no better candidates in the entire school.”

“Well, that’s too bad,” Sarah responded harshly. “Because I don’t have time for this. Find someone else to take my place.”

For the first time since they’d stepped into her office, Morgana frowned. “I was hoping that you’d have been more conducive to your nomination.”

Sarah crossed her arms resolutely. “Sorry to disappoint.”

Morgana waved her arm. “No, if anything, I should be sorry.” She offered an apologetic smile. “You see, I was so enthused about our invitation that I’ve already registered all of you. I’m sorry, but you will not be having a choice, Sarah. For the good of this school, I am going to need you to partake in the tournament.”

“You can’t do that!” Sarah’s face burned almost as red as her hair, flaming along her cheeks with teenage wrath.

The only sign that the outburst affected Morgana was the slightest raise of her eyebrow. “Actually, I can,” she said calmly. “Not only do I have complete oversight on all of your academic decisions, the five of you are all legally minors without a recognized caretaker. As such, you are legally recognized as wards of the school.” Morgana paused to meet every one of their shocked expressions individually. “Unless you were lying about your legal status and have forged fraudulent certificates when you applied to my school. If that is the case, then we will be having a very different conversation later today.”

Lux swallowed. She’d always known it had been too good to be true, that after arriving in Valoran City with nothing but the clothes on her back and a backpack full of hastily scavenged goods, she would be able to fall into a normal life. When the authorities didn’t immediately knock on her door—even when she took Lulu and Poppy under her roof—she had let her worries melt away.

Staring into Morgana’s apathetic face, she realized that just because those problems hadn’t come to her attention didn’t mean that they failed to exist. Or that she would not end up paying a price for them.

Sarah snarled at Morgana but, before she could say anything horrible that was undoubtedly building inside her, Soraka reached over and gently laid a hand on her arm. She shook her head, seemingly able to calm Sarah with the gesture alone. “It’s alright,” she consoled. “Ahri will understand. It’s only two weeks.”

Morgana must have sensed Sarah’s drop in resistance. Rising to her feet, she clapped her hands together, proceeding with unwarranted candor. “Excellent. I’m glad that we’ve all been able to agree on this. The bus will leave tomorrow morning, so please have your belongings packed and be prepared to board—the trip alone will take all day.” She gave a breathy laugh as she glanced at Sarah. “Perhaps you’ll even make some new friends on the trip.”

“Yeah right,” Sarah scoffed, almost too low for Lux to pick up. She flushed in embarrassment and stared at her feet. She wasn’t that bad, was she?

Unfortunately, Lux realized that it may not have been her that was the concern. As she lifted her eyes from the floor, she caught sight of Jinx and had to hold back the sigh that threatened to escape her.

Really, she should have realized something was wrong simply because of how quiet Jinx had been. If she wasn’t going out of her way to be as obnoxious as possible, Jinx was working on something, and this was no different. Sat as she was in front of the principal’s desk, Morgana was unable to see the litany of doodles that were sprouting along the wood, each one growing progressively more obscene as Jinx went unreprimanded.

“Oh my,” Janna uttered from beside her, evidently as lax in her chaperoning of Jinx as Lux.

“We need to leave,” Lux agreed. She stomped over to her friend and placed a hand on her shoulder. In the most innocent voice she could muster, she said, “let’s go, Jinx. We’re already late for first period.”

“What’s it matter?” Jinx whined, feebly struggling against Lux’s grip. “You heard the principal. It’s not like our grades are actually important.”

“It’s the principle of the matter.”

Lux’s eye twitched at the same time that Jinx’s lit up with mirth. “Exactly! And the principal said it doesn’t matter.”

In lieu of a response, Lux shoved Jinx towards the door, all too cognizant of how Jinx’s cackling made her ears burn.

Once outside of the office, she turned to Janna, pouting at the indulgent smile on her lips. “It’s not funny,” she said.

Janna nodded politely. “Of course. Terribly dour.”

Lux glared at her, daring Janna to add anything else. Save for the air of amusement around her, Janna left the subject alone, too nice to prolong Lux’s irritation. That, or she pitied Lux enough not to add to her frustrations.

Lux glanced at the clock above the secretary’s desk as they walked into the hall and gestured to herself and Jinx. “We won’t see Poppy or Lulu until lunch. Do you want to wait until then to tell them that we’ll be out of town?”

Janna nodded her assent. “Very well.”

“We’ll also have to stop by the store after school and make sure we have enough groceries to last them the entire time that we’ll be gone,” Lux continued, already running through the items in her pantry as she put together a list of items to purchase.

“I look forward to it.” Janna smiled softly at Lux before splitting away from her and Jinx as she headed to her class.

Lux watched her go, grateful to have such a responsible friend to help her keep her team in order. She frowned when she thought of how much simpler it would be if Morgana hadn’t chosen both of them to compete. They were the only two mature enough to ensure that the rest of the Star Guardians didn’t gorge themselves on sweets or forget to do the laundry.

She cast a look at Jinx from the corner of her eye. At least we’ll be taking her with us, she thought with a small measure of relief. Jinx was a nexus of chaos that not even the combined efforts of her and Janna could stimmy. Leaving her unattended was worse. Leaving her with two impressionable kids like Lulu and Poppy would have Lux worrying that there wouldn’t be a Valoran City to return to.

Sarah stormed past her at that moment. She’d pulled her phone from her pocket again and was texting away at it with furious tempo. Lux, almost able to feel the irritation wafting off the girl, moved to catch up with her.

“Hey, Sarah,” she greeted with a wide smile as she self-consciously tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. It wasn’t often that she got the chance to make a first impression—Jinx typically beat her to the gun and left Lux with the much more awkward task of repairing others’ perceptions of her. Not to mention that Sarah was so obviously one of the queens of the school. It showed in everything she did: how she held herself, how she looked at others, even how she talked to the faculty.

Sarah had the entire school wrapped around her finger, and she knew it.

Lux tried not to let her nervousness show. “I know that you’re not the most excited—”

Sarah sighed loudly and looked at her exactly long enough for her lip to curl in distaste. “Save it,” she said. “And it’s Miss Fortune to you, Crownguard. Only my friends call me Sarah.”

“Oh,” Lux squeaked. Her step faltered at the hostility. “Sorry,” she managed to get out.

Sarah only grunted. She didn’t remove her eyes from her phone. When Lux looked past her to Soraka, the girl shrugged in apology but didn’t offer any defense for her friend’s rudeness.

Sar—Miss Fortune—abruptly stopped in front of a locker. She shifted her phone to one hand as she spun the combination lock and pulled the door open, extracting a leather jacket and a backpack from inside.

“Where are you going?” Lux asked, having stopped to watch. “Don’t you have class?”

“You heard the principal,” Fortune snapped. “The teachers are going to pass me regardless—not that I even care about that.”

“So you’re just going to leave?”

Fortune shrugged her jacket over her shoulders. “What’re they going to do, expel me? Put me on suspension? If Morgana’s going to make me compete in her stupid tournament, then the least she can do is give me a day off.” She glanced at Soraka. “You coming with?”

“I’ll stay,” Soraka said quietly, glancing between Lux and Fortune nervously.

“Suit yourself.”

With that, Fortune brushed past them, not looking back once.

“Damn,” Jinx said from beside her. “She is a total—”

“Don’t,” Lux interrupted, shooting an apologetic look at Soraka, who was still standing there. “There’s no reason to call her names behind her back, Jinx.”

“Itch!” Jinx continued unabated. “ I was going to call her a total itch—because she gets underneath your skin, you know?”

Lux turned more fully towards Soraka. “I’m sorry for my friend,” she apologized. “I’m sure Sa—Miss Fortune isn’t always like that.”

“It’s okay,” Soraka said. She looked over Lux’s shoulder. “I should probably get to class, though.” Offering a shy smile, she said, “I’ll see you tomorrow,” and gently pushed past them on her way toward her first class of the day.

“I mean she’s nothing like Qiyana,” Jinx continued, undeterred by Lux’s change in attention. “That chick’s like a rash. But Fortune?” Jinx’s eyes flashed gleefully as she smiled at Lux. “She’s only a level down. Like a B-tier itch.”

Too used to Jinx’s antics, Lux’s only response was to raise an eyebrow. “Are you proud of that?”

“Yup!”

Lux shook her head. “It’s better to make bridges than burn them, Jinx.”

“Boring!”

“We’re going to spend the next two weeks with her,” Lux tried. “I’d prefer if it didn’t end with the two of you trying to kill each other by the end of it.”

“Ha!” Jinx laughed. “As if she could last that long with me.”

She groaned. “That wasn’t the point.”

“Call me Miss Fortune,” Jinx parroted cartoonishly. “Geez, how big of a head do you have to have to say something like that—wait don’t answer that.” Jinx put her hands in front of her chest and slowly extended them. “Probably about this big, yeah? By then, I bet that you could get away with just about anything.” She smirked at Lux, obviously waiting for her applause.

“I will hit you,” Lux warned.

“Oh yeah?” Jinx’s smirk grew and she took a step closer. “What if I want you to hit on me?”

Lux’s face flushed. That’s not what I meant! she squealed internally—and, judging by the lines of Jinx’s face, the curve of her smirk, and the waggle of her eyebrows, Jinx knew that too.

She shoved Jinx away from her, ignoring the girl’s peals of laughter. “You’re not going to be making any bridges like that, Lux!”

Pushing her flush down, she grabbed Jinx around the arm and marshalled her toward their class. “Keep this up and I’ll find a bridge to throw you off.”

“Ooh!” Jinx perked up. “What if we make a bridge, then burn it?”

“That would be a waste,” Lux answered. Much like every time I try to stop you from causing trouble.

“Not if we built the bridge to burn it. Then, it would be on purpose.”

“On purpose doesn’t make it purposeful.”

“Of course not,” Jinx countered. “The only thing it would be full of is explosives! We’ve got to get the fire started somehow.”

The door to their class was in sight. Lux pulled harder on Jinx’s arm as they closed the distance. The sooner they were in the room, the sooner she could have a reprieve from Jinx’s madness.

She hoped the tournament would keep Jinx busy. Lux didn’t know if she could go a full two weeks with a bored Jinx. She’d thought that she still had a few months to prepare for Summer.

At least it won’t be on school grounds, she consoled herself. Whatever hole Jinx makes in the ground will be someone else’s issue. She told herself that, so long as none of her classmates ended up in that hole, everything would be fine. Catching the glimmer in Jinx’s eyes as she pushed the door open, Lux felt some of that resolve drizzle out of her.

Chapter Text

Lux sat awkwardly in the school’s office, waiting for the time that she and the rest of her classmates would board the bus and head to… wherever the tournament was taking place.

Jinx sat beside her, absently tinkering with whatever piece of scrap she’d found on their way to school that morning. Lux spent a moment staring at her, watching Jinx’s nimble fingers glide over the pieces of metal before lifting her gaze to look at the point where the tip of Jinx’s tongue poked out between her teeth.

When Jinx was focused like this, she actually looked, well, not innocent, but peaceful. Lux felt her lips begin to turn upwards the longer she watched her friend.

It was a good thing that they lived together. When she’d first proposed the idea, Lux had worried that Jinx would be too disruptive to her daily life, but, after a week of sharing the same space, Lux had realized that disruption was exactly what she needed most.

Lux tried not to think of what her life was like before she transferred to Valoran High. It was supposed to be a fresh start, where her name and her family didn’t mean anything, where she could reinvent herself to be the person she wanted to be. Yet, as she’d quickly discovered, living alone in an empty house left her thoughts too free to wander, and, with nothing to disrupt them, Lux found herself ineluctably drawn back to the very past she’d run from.

Even before they became Star Guardians, Jinx had a penchant for keeping Lux out of her own head, always drawing Lux into her antics, and forcing her to disentangle herself from whatever mess Jinx had created. The rest of the school probably thought that she was crazy for hanging around Jinx for so long. Lux hadn’t been in Valoran long enough to know for certain but, considering that no one else would sit within two seats of Jinx, she thought it was safe to say that her friend was something of a pariah.

Though it’s not completely undeserved, Lux told herself, thinking back to the many, many pranks that Jinx had pulled over the almost two years she’d known her.

Janna sat down next to her, her sweeping presence breaking Lux from her reminiscence. Lux smiled at the older girl. “Did Poppy and Lulu get to their homerooms alright?” she asked.

Janna reached over and grabbed Lux’s hand, squeezing it comfortingly. “They’re going to be fine,” she said by way of answer. “The two of them can manage themselves for a few weeks.”

Lux chewed her lip. “I know,” she said. “But is it wrong for me to worry? Poppy’s always been so brash and Lulu, well—” she smiled deprecatingly “—you know how she sees the world differently.”

“There’s nothing wrong with worrying,” Janna consoled her. “But you have to know when to let that worry go. You can’t let it dictate your actions.” Janna looked directly into her eyes. “You’re a wonderful leader, Lux. Trust in your team as much as we trust in you. We won’t disappoint you.”

Something like a laugh pulled out of Lux’s mouth and she looked away from Janna’s intense gaze. “None of you could ever disappoint me,” she said softly.

How could they? They’re all stronger than me. If anyone’s the disappointment, it’s me.

Janna stiffened from the corner of her eye. The change in posture prompted Lux to look out the window of the office to see what had caught her attention, wiping away any morosity before Janna could detect it in her expression.

Lux could identify Miss Fortune even as she faced away from them. Not having bothered to take off her jacket, the girl’s red hair spilled down her back, torchlike in its radiant glow. Unlike the last time Lux had seen her, Fortune didn’t have her phone in her hands—though Lux suspected that had more to do with the people she was talking to than anything else.

Lux didn’t know much about Ahri, but she’d heard people talk about her enough to put a face to the name. The senior nodded her head to something Fortune had said before frowning and giving a response. She looked about as happy as Miss Fortune had the day before.

If fact, the only person in the group that wasn’t showing some kind of displeasure was Soraka. Standing to one side of Ahri, she kept her gaze above their heads, focused on something entirely within her mind.

But it was the girl standing next to Ahri who stood out the most in the group. Not dressed in Valoran High’s school uniform and looking old enough to be a college student, the girl was just as stunning as Ahri or Miss Fortune. Her dark purple hair flowed past her shoulders silkily and her eyes seemed to glint in the light. The open look of boredom on her face made Lux want to keep staring at her. There was just something about her that sent shivers along Lux’s arms, a secret miasma that pulled at a sense she couldn’t identify.

Before Lux could look at the arrivals any longer—or before they realized that she was gawking at them—Morgana stepped out of her office. She frowned briefly as she glanced out the window, but the expression vanished so quickly that Lux thought she had imagined it.

Morgana smiled at her. “Are you ready to depart?” she asked politely, walking towards the door. “The bus should be waiting for us outside.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Lux answered politely. She hesitated. “Though, if you wouldn’t mind, could you tell us some more about the tournament? You didn’t really explain much yesterday.”

Morgana seemed amused by her hesitance. “I didn’t, did I?” She hummed for a moment. “Very well, but let’s wait until later when everyone’s in one place, okay? Then, if any of you have questions, there won’t be a need to repeat myself.”

“Of course,” Lux breathed. “Thank you.”

Morgana laughed cheerily. “It’s no problem, dear. I’m an educator. It’s my job to teach you.”

“Aw man,” Jinx moaned. “I thought you were my principal. But I can’t be friends with a teacher!”

Lux elbowed her in the side and offered Morgana a commiserating smile. “I’m sorry about Jinx,” she said. “It’s best to just ignore her.”

Morgana’s lips curled up. “Yes, I hear that worked splendidly for Ryze. Did you know this is the second consecutive year that he’s on sabbatical? When I inquired about his status at the beginning of the school year he said, and I do quote, that ‘so long as that red-haired hellspawn was at the school,’ he would not so much as step foot inside the building.” Morgana sighed. “It’s such a shame, too. I had wanted to work with him when I first took this position. Ryze is extremely well-regarded in his field, you know.”

“What can I say?” Jinx asked, throwing herself to her feet with undeserved pride. “He didn’t do a good enough job of ignoring me.”

“You destroyed his workshop,” Morgana rebutted. “And rigged the sprinkler lines to draw from a reservoir of paint which, need I remind you,” Morgana stared at Jinx imperiously, “not only ensured that Doctor Ryze’s entire classroom—and almost everything inside—burned to a crisp, but it also damaged the sprinkler system to the point that the school had to replace every nozzle in that section of the school.”

“Nope!” Jinx chirped happily.

Morgana’s smile grew wooden. “I assure you that it’s the truth. The expense that you’ve cost the school is quite unlike anything I’ve ever seen—and I’ve been in administration for a long time.”

Jinx laughed. “Oh, I’m sure you have. What I meant is that you don’t have to remind me. I remember what happened perfectly well.”

A beat of silence stretched through the office as Morgana stared at Jinx with a blank expression. “Like I said,” Lux offered. “It’s best to just ignore her.” She hastily added, “don’t worry about Jinx on the trip, though! Janna and I will keep an eye on her.”

Morgana heaved a breath, and pushed through the door, ending the conversation.

By the time Lux had caught up to her, Soraka and Miss Fortune’s friends were waving goodbye, with Ahri headed deeper into the school and the other girl haughtily looking around before turning on her heel and storming out of the building—though not, Lux noticed before she caught sight of something over her shoulder. Turning around to see what had caught her attention, Lux looked past Janna for anything out of the ordinary, but all she saw was the usual scene of students milling around before the bell rang.

Maybe she had a different type of school experience, Lux reasoned, turning back to watch the girl’s retreat. She certainly has the superiority of someone who’s never had to go to public school. Lux knew of more than one person that lauded their entrance into private schools as something worth bragging about—but that was in the past. She’d left that life and everyone that went with it.

The bus, though it was hardly large enough to be called such, was waiting for them at the curb. Morgana was the first one through its doors, followed quickly by Fortune and Soraka. By the time Lux had stowed her luggage in the vehicle’s underbelly and boarded, the back half of the bus had already filled up, with each person taking an entire row to stretch themselves out. Jinx waved at her wildly from the middle of the bus and shimmied next to the window so that she could pat the seat beside her in a clear invitation.

Lux shook her head fondly at her friend’s antics, taking the seat across the aisle from her and giggling at Jinx’s childish pout. “It’s a long ride,” she appeased. “You’re going to want the legroom, Jinx—and I’m not going to let you throw your legs on my lap, either.”

Jinx was not deterred. When Lux refused to sit beside her, the girl all but leapt from her seat, glomping onto Lux as she crashed into her and threw her arms around her. Lux laughed as her vision filled with crimson locks of hair and she even heard Janna give a slight chuckle from the seat in front of her.

Pulling back enough that her face wasn’t buried in a sea of red, Lux tried to school her features into something more serious, though it was doomed to failure the moment she met Jinx’s eyes.

“You’re unbearable,” she ended up saying, the closest thing she could get to an actual rebuke. She glanced out the window. “We aren’t even out of the city yet. Can’t you sit still for five minutes?”

Jinx kicked her feet against the back of the seat in front of them in answer, smiling wildly at Lux the whole time.

“Stop that,” she shushed, swatting at Jinx’s knee. “You’re going to disturb Janna.”

Her advisor was a literal heaven-send. The least Lux could do was keep Jinx from eating into all of her spare time, too. Only one person had to sacrifice themselves to her attention, after all, and Lux, knowing Jinx for the longest, had come to terms with being such a distraction to the girl. It would be unfair to ask anyone else.

“So,” Jinx chirped, scooting closer to her. “What are we going to do for the trip?”

“Have you tried being quiet,” an irritated voice sounded behind them. Lux flinched at the harshness in Fortune’s tone. She wasn’t getting any further into the girl’s good graces, it seemed.

Jinx wrapped an arm around her shoulder and leaned close enough for her breath to tickle Lux’s ear. “Should I call Boki,” she asked, waving her fingers down by their legs and sending trails of magic vapor twirling around. “I won’t even blow up the whole bus. Promise.”

Lux grabbed Jinx’s hand before she could manifest her familiar weapon, intertwining their fingers and placing it on her lap. Jinx made a choked sound at the forceful seizure but didn’t pull away from Lux. “That won’t be necessary,” she said, catching the faint redness of Jinx’s skin.

Fortune must really be rubbing her the wrong way, Lux thought in concern. Jinx can typically go a bit longer before showing how much the insults get to her.

She squeezed Jinx’s hand, hoping to calm the girl, and searched for anything to talk about that could distract Jinx from her emotions. “I know you said that you weren’t planning on trying in any of your courses now that you’re exempt…” Lux couldn’t keep the censure out of her voice as she began. She tried so hard to get Jinx to do her schoolwork. Seeing all that hard work go to waste would be a travesty. “But you’re still going to enter the science fair, right? You were telling me about how you wanted to build a robo—“

“An automaton,” Jinx corrected, forcing a smile on her face that was a little too bright to have forgotten her previous anger. Especially when the flush hadn’t yet vanished from her cheeks. “And he shoots lasers, too!”

“Yes, I do recall you telling me that.” Lux smiled encouragingly, and let Jinx take hold of the conversation, telling her all about the project she wanted to work on and going into such intricate detail that Lux hoped she wouldn’t be asked to remember. Robotics was not her best subject and, while she was always happy to listen to Jinx talk so passionately, she had little to add to the conversation.

Jinx didn’t seem to mind, though. Lux figured that she knew precisely how much sense Lux was able to make of the conversation, but she continued regardless, egged on only by the occasional squeeze of the hand or inquisitive question from Lux—and that was enough for Lux, too. All she wanted was for her friends to be happy and seeing the smile that never left Jinx’s face was well worth the embarrassment of admitting she had no idea what Jinx was talking about.

It was during a lull in the conversation, in which Jinx had expended verbalizing her detailed schematics for her unbuilt robot, and Lux was content to let the silence stretch between them as she looked out the window at the rolling landscape, that Fortune made an audible scoff before pounding her fingers across her phone screen, making the continued tap-tap-tap loud enough for both her and Jinx to hear.

Who is she even texting? Lux wondered, feeling a flash of sympathy for whoever was on the other side of Fortune’s phone. They must have been having as much of a conversation with the girl as Lux had yesterday. Which is to say, none at all. Fortune’s fingers didn’t stop typing for more than a handful of seconds at a time. Unless she was texting more than one person, there was no way that she was receiving as much as she sent.

Lux shook her head. It wasn’t her place to pry. Fortune could act however she wanted with her friends—a definition for which she had been abundantly clear did not apply to Lux.

The noise had been enough to pull her from her musings, however. Looking back at Jinx, she saw that the girl had decided to take a nap, leaning her shoulder against Lux, and tilting her head back so that the full length of her slender throat was on display, made more ethereally pale by the vibrant hair set against it. Jinx’s throat thrummed as soft snores spewed from her lips. As Lux watched, Jinx’s head slowly tumbled onto her shoulder, and Jinx subconsciously snuggled closer to her, nuzzling into the crook of Lux’s neck as she got more comfortable.

If it weren’t Jinx that was doing it, Lux would have flushed at the intimate posture—but she knew her friend. Jinx was always handsy; she had no concept of personal space. The show of intimacy didn’t mean anything to her. Lux pushed down the sting that accompanied Jinx’s unorthodox actions; she knew better than to read too deeply into what Jinx did. All she could do was support her and, as Lux shifted her posture to better accommodate Jinx’s lolling head, she vowed that she’d continue to be there for Jinx—and the rest of her team. She might not be the best leader, or even the most deserving, but she was all they had. She had to do everything she could not to let them down.

Looking over the seat at Janna and watching the serenity that seemed to manifest around her, Lux couldn’t help but feel inferior. Curled up with her legs tucked underneath her and book in hand, Janna looked like she knew what she was doing. She was never uncertain or doubtful of her capabilities. A small voice in the back of Lux’s mind told her that Janna was years, if not centuries, older than her, that experience came with age.

She answered that with the question of why the First Star had decided to make Lux the leader of the Star Guardians, especially when Janna was so obviously better suited for it. Stars above, Lux felt like Janna was the only one keeping the team together regardless of her firm denial of being its leader, a denial that only served to make Lux feel more worthless every time she had to go to the older guardian for advice.

Couldn’t anyone see how far out of her depth she was?

She jerked her eyes away from Janna before she could wallow in her pity any longer. Sitting around and crying about her inferiority never solved anything. Twisting to look over Jinx’s head at the other side of the bus, Lux saw that Soraka had taken out a notepad and was in the midst of filling the pages with drawings and sketches. Lux spent a moment watching the quiet girl at work before she felt like she was staring and turned her gaze forward before Soraka could notice and call her out on it.

With Jinx still occupying her shoulder, Lux reached into her bag and fumbled around for a book of her own to read. Her fingers wrapped around the spine of a book and, after pulling it free from her bag, she settled back into her seat and propped it open on her lap, absently raising her hand and nudging Jinx’s head into a more comfortable position, her hand idly stroking a stray bit of hair from Jinx’s eyes and tucking it behind her ear.

Maybe this contest will be worth it, she thought, taking a moment to push away the near-perpetual anxiety that gnawed at her. Two weeks without having to worry about how not to disappoint my team; I can be a normal student—just like I always wanted. The only expectation people will have of me is to perform well in the tournament. I can do that and, if not, it will all be over in a few weeks. Nothing matters. The world’s not going to end. I’m not going to let my team down.

Lux hadn’t quite grasped the level of prestige that came with the tournament until the bus pulled into the estate, a sprawling complex with nothing but open fields for miles, every inch of it perfectly cut and shining in the afternoon sun. The main attraction, however, was the towering building that the bus pulled up to. Lux didn’t even know that people still built castles—and it had to be new considering not a brick was out of place or showed any signs of wear, all of it gleaming perfectly in the sun.

It was not a place that a public school like Valoran High visited, much less where any halfway knowledgeable organization had the right inviting them.

“We’ve arrived,” Morgana stood from her seat and smiled at the students. Pulling a pocket watch from her purse, she checked the time before adding, “you should have time to take your belongings up to your room before dinner. The other teams won’t be arriving until much later tonight, I’m afraid, so you will have to wait until tomorrow to see them.”

Lux joined the rest of the girls in following Morgana off the bus. Stepping onto solid ground, she accepted her bag from Janna and slung it over her shoulder before turning her attention back to the building. Her mind hadn’t yet rationalized that this was where they would be staying for the next two weeks.

“It’s impressive, isn’t it?”

Lux nodded her head to Morgana’s question. “Are you sure this is the right place?”

Morgana chuckled. “Don’t be modest, Luxanna.”

Lux looked over her shoulder at where Jinx was pestering Janna, nearly hopping up and down. I knew I shouldn’t have let her nap, Lux bemoaned. She’s going to be up all night.

“It’s not me that I’m concerned about.”

If modesty were all, there wouldn’t be a need for her to mention anything. Lux could manage her anxiety on her own. In the case of Jinx, however… it was best to at least warn the authorities of the possibility of collateral damage. That way she’d have the benefit of telling them that she’d told them so when they threw her and Jinx out.

“I wouldn’t worry about that too much,” Morgana answered, smiling down at Lux. “I’m sure that the tournament organizers can find a way to accommodate your friend’s needs—as well as the rest of yours.”

Lux’s only response was to purse her lips.

“That’s enough waiting, I suppose,” Morgana said, content to end the conversation. She waved an arm at the bus driver, sending him on his way, and began walking towards the set of doors at the entrance to the building. “Let’s get everyone settled for the night. I imagine you’re all going to want to get straight into preparing for the tournament.”

“I actually have a question about that,” Janna said, easily striding to the front of the group to converse with Morgana. “You never actually told us what we’d be competing in.”

“Oh,” Morgana tittered. “I didn’t, did I? How forgetful of me!”

Morgana stopped in front of the heavy-set doors and grasped the knocker. She slammed it soundly against the wood. With her other hand, she reached into the purse at her elbow and pulled out a sheet of paper.

“It’s a good thing you reminded me,” she thanked Janna. “You all have to register for your event as well.”

The door swung open, held by a man in a tailored suit. He dipped his head as they walked through and kept it bowed until every one of them had passed. Lux meant to get a better look at him once she’d made it through the doors, but something much more important caught her attention.

She gasped at the lines of crests lining the hall. Dozens upon dozens of them, each placed in perfect symmetry. There were no more than five unique crests along the walls and, of those five, two of them were much more prominent than the others.

The worst part was that she recognized every single crest.

Amrita. Babylon. Sharur. Labrys. Durendal.

“It’s quite the sight, I agree.”

Lux turned her stricken eyes to Morgana and tried to gather the strength to speak. Her mind was in a frenzy, too caught up in the surrounding crests to form words. “This—these are—”

Morgana nodded, still smiling magnanimously. “We are among the greats, now. The five most vaunted academies in the entirety of Runeterra.”

“Who?” Jinx scrambled towards one of the plaques and peered at the crest. After a moment of investigation, she scoffed. “I’ve never heard of them.”

“They’re very exclusive,” Morgana answered. She turned to the rest of the group as she added, “only the best students in the world get an invitation to enroll at any of these schools. They only take a handful of students every year.”

She turned her attention to Lux. “But it seems I’m not the only one knowledgeable of the academies. I’m sure Luxanna can do a better job than me at answering any of your questions.”

Morgana handed the registration sheet to Janna, before turning and walking down the hall. “I believe your dormitory is on the second floor of the Eastern wing,” she said. Pulling a slip of paper from her purse and checking its contents, she handed it to Janna. “My office will be in the western tower. Please feel free to drop by if you need any assistance or just feel the need to talk with me.” Morgana gave a tiny laugh. “Us principals get lonely too, you know.”

With that, she glided down the hall and vanished around a corner, leaving the five of them in complete silence.

Janna looked at the paper she’d been given. “Shall we head to our room?” she asked. When nobody disagreed, she pointed in the opposite direction that Morgana had gone saying, “it’s this way. Here—in case any of you want to see where we’re going.” She handed the map of the building to Soraka before leading them down the hall and toward their room.

Lux was silent the entire walk to their room. Her worry must have been noticeable too because nobody said a word. Even Jinx spent the entire walk with unusual somberness.

In comparison to the rest of the building, their dormitory was paltry. It had a balcony, a dark stone construct jutting out from the rest of the building that gave them access to a view of grassy fields and nothing else. The closest door on their right led to the bedroom, which connected to the dormitory’s ensuite—the nicest part of the dormitory if only because of the shining fixtures and marbled countertop. It looped back to the common area, giving easy access to both rooms.

“So,” Fortune drawled, dropping her bag at the foot of the couch, and leaning against it after they’d made a round through the dormitory. Her eyebrow rose as she leveled Lux with an unimpressed look. “What’s the big deal with these schools?”

Lux tried not to let her voice waver. “They’re called the Battle Academies.”

“Quaint,” Fortune interrupted, raising an eyebrow in amusement. “Were they established by knights or something?”

Lux swallowed her angry outburst. Fortune was just a teenager. She didn’t understand. “They’re dedicated to forming the next generation of military leaders.”

“So, we’re up against some military brats?” Fortune scoffed. “Are they going to quiz us on famous battles? Maybe make us recite history lessons?”

“No.” Despite croaking from her throat, her voice was lined with steel. “They are much more hands-on than that.”

Janna must have sensed the rising tension in the room. Stepping up to Lux, she handed the registration sheet to her. “You know what events these are, then?”

Lux looked down at the paper and nodded grimly. “I do.”

“Why don’t you tell us a bit about them?”

Thank the gods that Janna was here. Lux released a breath through her nose and centered herself. She didn’t know what she’d do without someone like her to keep her focused. Lux was fully prepared to keep quibbling with Fortune, despite knowing that her pettiness would likely end up with the older girl hurt, or worse.

What kind of Star Guardian am I? She shook her head in disgust. She was supposed to be a shining light, an aid to everyone and anyone who needed guidance. She couldn’t pick and choose when to help people; she had to be the best person she could be at all times.

She cleared her throat and hoped that nobody noticed the emotions that flashed across her face. “Okay,” she began as her eyes landed on the first entry, abbreviated simply as Lu. “First is Luminary. It derives its name from the public speakers and rhetoricians of Ancient Shurima, who often perceived of their skills in relation to the stars that shone above them. In the present, those within the Luminary tract have taken the interpretation to mean a sort of interpretive acuity.”

“It’s related to the stars?” Jinx asked, an edge of a chuckle in her tone.

Lux had never been more grateful for Jinx’s quickness to speak. The Luminary tract was the least violent of all the fields. “Do you want to volun—”

“I will do it,” Soraka spoke up before Lux could assign Jinx to the task.

Lux blinked. She hardly knew Soraka, but she couldn’t help but feel that it was entirely unlike her to interrupt someone, especially for her own benefit.

Guilt quickly washed over her surprise. I just told myself that I can’t pick and choose. She wanted Jinx to be safe. She hadn’t even considered that there were two people here who were nothing more than normal teenagers. She’d been ready to sentence one of them to a painful fate without a second thought.

“Um—” she coughed when the words refused to come out. She tried to smile at Soraka, but her mouth felt too rigid. “Of course.”

Writing Soraka’s name down, she moved to the next entry.

At least this one should be easy, she thought. “Next is sorcery, which is pretty self-explanatory.” She looked around the group of students. “Now, unless any of you are mages in disguise…”

Janna opened her mouth to speak, but Lux cautioned her with her eyes. Nobody else answered. “I have some magical potential,” she told the group. To prove her point, she lifted her hand and conjured a ball of light. “It’s nothing special, but it’s better than nothing.”

She smothered the magic between her clenched fist and signed her name on the ballot.

“Next…” Lux lifted her eyes, darting them between Janna, Fortune, and Jinx, spending the least amount of time on Fortune. She wet her lips. “Next is assassination. Again, it’s pretty self-explanatory. It’s the study of assassination techniques.”

“Really,” Fortune scoffed. “What kind of school has a field for assassination?”

“Don’t care!” Jinx shouted, springing to her feet. “That sounds fun. Pick me!”

Lux bit her lip. “Are you sure?”

“I’ll blow them away!” Jinx smiled saucily at her, winking for good measure. “Just you watch.”

Lux brought the pen to write Jinx’s name. She hesitated before committing to it. Looking at her friend over the paper, she considered her options.

They were spectacularly limited.

Lux already knew that she couldn’t put Fortune in the Assassination event. The only way their contestant would survive was if they were a Star Guardian. She glanced at Janna. It might be better to have her take this one. She’ll take it more seriously than Jinx ever could.

The image of Jinx bleeding out in the middle of a field while two other students tried to kill each other strangled Lux’s heart. That could never happen. She’d make sure of it.

“What’s the wait?” Jinx reached over and plucked the paper from Lux’s hands. She scribbled her name into the entry, entirely ignorant of the despair bubbling in the pit of Lux’s stomach.

“What’s the last one?” Jinx looked at the sheet. When she couldn’t parse the abbreviation, she turned her attention to Lux, staring at her with wide, pleading eyes.

“Battle,” Lux croaked out, still unable to remove the band around her heart. “The last field is battle.”

“Cool.” Jinx nodded. She looked to Fortune. “You want to do that one?”

Before Fortune could answer, Jinx had already written her name down.

“Jinx!” Lux snatched the form out of her hands, but it was too late.

She turned to Fortune. “You don’t have to,” she said. “We still have Janna. You can sit on the sidelines—” and spend the entire two weeks texting your real friends—”it’s not a big deal, really.”

Fortune sighed. “It’s fine,” she answered heavily. “Besides, if I’m going to get dragged all the way out here, I might as well compete in something.”

From there, the conversation petered out. Fortune pushed off the couch and went over to the wall, leaning against it with as much friendliness as Lux had seen from her. Soraka joined her there, though it seemed more out of a sense of solidarity than any active desire to be near Fortune. That left the couch to Jinx, who wasted no time in leaping onto it and kicking her legs up.

She doesn’t know what she’s gotten herself into.

Lux nibbled on her lip. I should tell her. I should tell all of them.

But when she opened her mouth to speak, nothing came out. There will be time. Later.

Besides, nobody would believe her, anyway. It was absurd that their principal would have enrolled them in a death tournament; almost as absurd as them receiving an invitation in the first place.

She turned towards the bedroom before anyone could notice her indecision and left them to their blissful ignorance. Two bunkbeds lined either wall, with a single mattress set underneath the window opposite the door. Lux didn’t hesitate as she paced over to one of the bunkbeds, throwing her bag onto the lower mattress. Jinx loved being high up.

Now, get ahold of yourself.

Clenching the pillow between her fists, she tried to think of a way to get everyone through this. The Star Guardians would be fine, for the most part. She didn’t need to reveal herself to perform magic. Even if the First Star had altered her magic, the students at Durendal had already seen what she could do. They wouldn’t be able to identify her as a Star Guardian.

Janna would be safe, too, so long as she didn’t reveal herself while training. That just meant that Jinx had to make it through the tournament without drawing any suspicion.

Lux shivered. She’s going to fight actual assassins.

And, if Durendal was one of the schools chosen to compete, Lux knew that her worry was justified. Of all the cosmic monsters she’d fought, none of them had eyes that unnerved Lux more than her.

If she needs to reveal herself, I won’t stop her.

No matter the consequences, Lux would not lose her best friend. She didn’t care if it meant having to forfeit the power of the First Star itself if it meant that she still had Jinx.

Her team’s safety came above all else, even the security of the team. Lux could handle being a bad leader; she could accept being the reason why her team failed. But she would not let any harm come to her friends.

She just hoped that it didn’t come down to that.

Chapter Text

Lux took a moment to remember where she was as she opened her eyes to the underside of a mattress stationed above her. It didn’t take long for the memories to return, bringing with them a wave of anxiety.

We’re going to see the other schools today.

Lux swallowed heavily. She pushed down the dread that rose in the back of her throat. It was going to be real. She couldn’t delude herself into thinking that this was all a mistake, that she wasn’t about to find herself surrounded by people who’d been trained to kill since birth—that her team wouldn’t be surrounded by those killers.

She couldn’t let herself think about that. There was nothing she could do except lock her fear away in the back of her mind and face the world head-on. Glancing at the early rays of the sun beginning to shine through the window, Lux pushed herself out of bed and ventured into the common area.

She hadn’t been the first to rise. Stepping out of the bedroom, Lux realized that she was actually one of the last. Everyone but Jinx was already awake.

Fortune glanced at her as she entered, surprisingly not on her phone. “Now that she’s up,” the girl muttered to Janna, “can we go down to breakfast?”

“Good morning, Lux.” Janna smiled at her as if she hadn’t heard Fortune’s words. “Did you sleep well?”

Lux glanced apologetically at Fortune before turning to Janna. “You didn’t have to wait for me.”

Janna frowned. “We’re a team—and it’s not like you were sleeping until noon.”

No, that would have been Jinx or Poppy. Lux had always risen around sunrise. Something inside her made it impossible to stay asleep while it was light outside.

“Do you want me to wake Jinx up?” she asked, already turning back to the bedroom. She looked at the three members of her team, just now realizing that she was still in her pajamas. Lux’s cheeks flushed in embarrassment.

They’re going to think I’m a child, dressed like this.

Janna wouldn’t judge her, of course. She was used to Lux’s little urges for such juvenile things. But Lux still should have known better to wear it here. Fortune already didn’t like her. There wasn’t any need to keep the older girl’s opinion of her in the dirt.

“I’ll get changed, too,” she squeaked out, closing the door behind her. Through the door, she said, “we’ll be ready to go in a few minutes.”

She woke Jinx first, reaching up to the second bunk and gently shaking her shoulder until the girl’s snores changed to soft moans.

“Jinx,” she coaxed, continuing to prod the girl. “It’s time to get up, Jinx.”

Jinx’s head flopped to the side and her eyes blearily cracked open. “Five more minutes,” she pleaded.

Lux shook her harder. “Now,” she compromised.

“Stop that,” Jinx grabbed Lux’s hand and dragged it off her shoulder, curling around it so that it wouldn’t bother her. “I want to sleep.”

“Well, the others want to eat.” She tugged half-heartedly on her hand. “Now stop playing, Jinx. We have to go. They’re waiting for us.”

In response, Jinx yawned in her face before putting her back to Lux as she rolled over.

“Jinx,” she warned before sighing. “I’m going to get changed. You better be up by the time I’m done—or else.”

She left it at that. Threats didn’t really work on Jinx, but she hoped that the promise of one would convey her displeasure well enough. The only way to get Jinx to do anything was to make her realize it was in her best interest, and an upset Lux boded worse for Jinx than any punishment ever could.

Kneeling beside her bed, Lux pulled her bag out from underneath it with one hand while the other grasped the hem of her shirt and pulled it over her head. Tossing the shirt onto the bed, she shimmied out of her loose pants before reaching into her bag and pulling out a set of her school uniform and slipping into it. Once dressed, she spent a moment trying to make her hair seem less like a nest of tangles before giving it up as a lost cause.

It's not like I can make a worse impression, anyway. Lux’s image had already cemented itself to the rest of her team. She could come out smelling like roses and trailing glitter and Fortune still wouldn’t give her the time of day.

Thankfully, Jinx had decided to stop being difficult and was peering over the bed’s railing at her by the time Lux had finished. She lifted Jinx’s bag up to her.

“Here,” she said. “Get dressed. The others are waiting for us.”

“Do I have to?” Jinx asked. She looked down at her with wide eyes. “It’s not like we’re actually at school.”

Lux pursed her lips and tried to be as stern as she could. “How we present ourselves matters, Jinx. While we’re here, we’re representing our school.”

They were already set to be ridiculed by the other schools. Lux would not give them more ammunition to throw at her and her team. If anything, they would look the part. She had enough pride in her to keep that avenue of taunts away from them.

“Ugh,” Jinx groaned theatrically. “Fine. But I’m not wearing the tie.”

“Okay.”

Lux knew better than to find a better compromise. If she insisted that Jinx wear the tie, it would be in exchange for her not wearing something else. Besides, she hadn’t seen Fortune wearing one either. And, while she could boss Jinx into eventually complying with her orders, Fortune was beyond her control. The truth of that statement became even more obvious as the group walked towards the cafeteria. Despite Janna’s effort to bring everyone into conversation, Fortune remained stalwartly diligent in being as grumbling as possible, only occasionally grinding out a response when she was directly spoken to.

Lux was thankful that the other teams weren’t in the cafeteria when they arrived. She knew that they’d be able to parse the team’s division within seconds. Though, that relief couldn’t last forever and, as she picked at the last scraps of food on her tray, Lux heard footsteps approaching from down the hall.

Lux hid her trembling hand in her lap and tried not to look too panicked. “Are you done with your tray?” she asked Jinx, scooping it up without waiting for a response. “I’ll go bus it for you.”

Jinx didn’t pay the action any mind—Lux had been cleaning up after her almost for as long as she knew her—but Janna had sensed that something was up and, as Lux got to her feet, she felt the girl’s concerned eyes on her. Lux smiled back, and gave a slight shake of the head, hoping that Janna wouldn’t press the subject, which, after a few almost imperceptible gestures, she did. Lux released a breath she didn’t know she was holding and turned to return the trays before the students coming from the other end of the hall noticed her.

You’re going to have to face them, sometime. Lux ducked her head in shame at her cowardice. What was she doing, running away from her problems like this?

It worked last time.

Maybe that was the true issue. Lux had run from her past life and never looked back—and it was the best thing she’d ever done. All of her worries, all of the expectations of living up to others’ beliefs of her, had slid off her shoulders. She hadn’t even realized how heavy that burden was until it was gone.

She hadn’t realized that others could make her feel even lighter, too. After what she’d experienced, she didn’t need to be a Star Guardian to know what it was like to fly. The friends she’d made in Valoran City had already given her wings.

“Oof!”

Lux stumbled back as she collided with something—or rather, someone.

“Sorry,” she said, looking down at the blonde boy she’d knocked to the ground. His tray of food had splattered all over his uniform. “I wasn’t watching where I was going! Here, let me help you up.”

The boy, still in somewhat of a stupor, took a moment to grab the hand Lux offered him, though, once he recovered, he didn’t seem too angry at her.

“Don’t worry about it,” he smiled with a boyish charm that might have made a pack of middle school girls giggle and swept his hair away from his blue eyes. “I should have been paying more attention, too.”

Lux smiled at him, relieved that she hadn’t ruined his mood. Looking at his face, something pulled at the back of her mind. “Do I know you?” she asked, squinting her eyes at him. “You look kind of familiar.”

A second person stepped up beside him, completely silent. Lux blinked in shock at their arrival. She’d been so focused on the boy that she hadn’t been paying attention to her surroundings.

“I wonder why that could be,” the newcomer said sarcastically. “Maybe you went to school with him or something.”

Lux gulped, all too aware of how the girl’s eyes tracked the bob of her throat with predatory intensity. “Katarina,” she said. “It’s nice to see you.”

She smirked. “I’d say the same, but I’m more surprised than anything. How did someone like you end up here?”

“Wait,” the boy looked between her and Katarina. “She went to our school? When?”

Katarina waved her hand dismissively. “She was only there for a few weeks before she decided to drop out.” She sneered at Lux. “Got too hard for you, didn’t it? Had to go running off to somewhere else when you realized your name couldn’t buy you everything, didn’t you?”

“Her name?” The boy’s head swiveled between them. “Is she famous or something?”

Katarina scoffed. “You haven’t introduced yourself to him, yet? Where’s the friendly little worker bee that I knew?” Her smirk returned, as sharp as the daggers Lux knew she kept hidden on her person. “Or is it that you can’t, anymore? I guess mommy and daddy weren’t too pleased to have their investment go running off the first chance it got.”

Lux grit her teeth. “Maybe they shouldn’t have been treating a child like an investment in the first place.”

“They’re Crownguards,” Katarina retorted. “They treat everything like that. The only thing special about you is how much of a failure you are.”

“You’re a Crownguard!” the boy exclaimed. “Like from the same Crownguards that sponsor Durendal—the famous scientists?”

“She was,” Katarina corrected smugly. “Now, she’s just a stray.”

Katarina looked past Lux’s shoulder. “Is that your team,” she asked and even Lux could hear the incredulity in her voice. “They look so pathetic.”

“At least they’re not murderers,” Lux snapped.

“Is that supposed to be an insult?” Katarina raised an eyebrow. “Because you’re just making them sound like even bigger losers.”

Her eyes drifted past Lux’s shoulder again. “Ugh, I should have known the other school would have been them.”

The boy peered over her shoulder, too. “That’s Labrys, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Ezreal,” Katarina drawled. “Good job.” She rolled her eyes. “Come on, kid. Let’s get to the table before people start thinking we want to talk to the traitor.”

Without another word, Katarina pushed past her, bumping shoulders, and nearly sending Lux toppling to the floor.

“Heh, sorry about her,” Ezreal said, reaching an arm out to steady her. “She’s like that with everyone.”

I know, she wanted to say. “You should get back to your team,” was what came out instead. “She’s right. They won’t have the best opinion of me.”

Ezreal chuckled and gestured to his stained shirt. “I should actually probably head back to my room and get changed.” He winked at her. “Let’s hope that next time we meet, it’s a bit less messy, yeah?”

She gave him a tiny smile. “Let’s hope,” she agreed.

Lux watched him retreat for a moment before shaking herself from her thoughts and depositing her and Jinx’s trays for cleaning.

“Who were they?” Jinx asked the moment Lux sat down, destroying any chance that Lux could act as if the encounter with Katarina hadn’t happened.

She tried to play it down, nonetheless. “They were just some students from one of the other schools. Durendal, I think.”

Jinx wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like them.”

“You don’t know them.”

“They look stupid.” Jinx huffed. “Especially the boy. Good job crashing into him, by the way.”

They saw that, too? Lux barely withheld a groan. Even if Jinx’s compliment had been genuine, it was still mortifying to think that everyone had paid witness to her clumsiness.

Janna placed a comforting hand on her forearm. “Did they tell you anything else?” she asked. “Did you get any information about them?”

Lux’s eyes involuntarily swept to the table occupied by Durendal students. She didn’t need Katarina to tell her anything; she recognized just about everyone sitting there.

I have to tell them, she realized, watching Katarina swipe a piece of toast from Akshan’s tray. Katarina’s not going to leave me alone. They’re going to learn my secret eventually.

“Actually, there’s something I have to tell you guys,” she said, turning her hand over and clenching Janna’s fingers between her own. She took a breath, then blurted the words before she lost her resolve. “I used to go to their school.”

Janna raised an eyebrow in curiosity. “So, you know all of their specialties?”

She shrugged. “I know most of them.” Raising her other hand, she pointed to the familiar faces. “That one is Jayce. He’ll be in the Luminary contest—he’s a renowned inventor. I think he even helped invent hextech.”

Her finger moved to Katarina before any of them could comment on that. “She’s their assassin, Katarina. Be careful around her.”

Fortune snorted, looking over at the table with an appraising eye. “Careful about what,” she asked.

About getting assassinated, murdered, eviscerated, cut to shreds. There were hundreds of things that you had to be careful about around Katarina, and only most of them involved sharp edges. Fortune wouldn’t take a warning like that seriously, though. She’d think that Lux was overreacting or, worse, mocking her.

“Just don’t get on her bad side,” she said. “You’ll regret it.”

She looked at the final student. “She’s new, I think,” she said, knitting her eyebrow as she struggled to come up with a name, or any real memory of the person.

The girl sat quietly half a seat away from the rest of the Durendal contingent, her pale-blonde hair held in place by a headband. But nobody could mistake her quietness for meekness. Not with the dark lines surrounding her eyes. The kohl made the silver hue of her pupils glow in the fluorescent lighting. That was the stare of a predator, of someone who was always watching, waiting for an opportunity to strike.

The girl’s eyes drifted towards Lux. She found herself locked in a staring contest that she was unable to pull away from. The girl’s eyes were like magnets—if magnets could make you feel like you were paralyzed.

As soon as it began, it was over. The girl’s gaze tracked over her, and Lux almost slumped as the tension faded. She didn’t have any doubts that the girl belonged at Durendal. She was a warrior. Nobody could mistake that. Nobody could doubt that she had been crafted into a weapon.

When she looked back to her team, Fortune was scowling at her. “Do you think that’s why we got invited?” she asked. “Because you have a history with these schools? I can’t imagine they get many dropouts if they’re as prestigious as everyone says.”

Was that what had happened? Lux felt a pit open in her stomach. Was she responsible for this? It made sense, after all. The Battle Academies were inclusive; they didn’t like sharing their secrets with people outside their group—and if they were forced to include an outsider, what better choice than one that already knew of them?

Fortune narrowed her eyes at her when Lux failed to answer, and Lux felt something snap within her at the blatant suspicion.

“I’m sure they chose their candidates based off of more than past allegiance,” Janna mediated calmly. “And even if they had decided that Lux’s past association with them merited an invitation, it is hardly her fault. She had as little say in this as the rest of us.”

Fortune was still scowling at her. Lux kept her head down, refusing to meet her eyes. All she wanted was to have a normal life. She left Durendal; she left her family. All to start over. Now, that decision had been pointless. Janna was right. She didn’t have any say in her life. She was bound to the whims of others.

“Who’s the other school?” Jinx spoke up. She pulled Lux’s arm and pointed across the cafeteria. “Do you know any of them, too?”

Lux cringed at her friend’s words. They were just another example of how she was defined by her past. Even if Jinx held no judgment, she still couldn’t avoid speaking about it.

“Well,” Jinx prodded, looking over at her. “Do you?”

Sighing, Lux followed Jinx’s pointing finger. “Labrys,” she said dully as her eyes landed on the girl sitting on the edge of the table, straight-backed and authoritarian. “They’re the most… disciplined of the Battle Academies and famous for their battle club.”

Her eyes dragged past the first girl to land on the girl sitting next to her, taking in the broad shoulders and glowing blonde hair. “Leona,” she said, dipping her head in the girl’s direction. “Everyone in the Battle Academies knows her; before I left, she’d been undefeated in the dueling circuits. Rumor has it that she’s never lost a single match—and I don’t think that would have changed since I left.”

The next figure was unknown to her. Short, hairy, and wearing a mischievous smirk, she could only assume that he was an underclassman. His inattention to the growing irritation on Leona’s face as his tail drifted close to her lent credence to that thought.

Moving back to the end of the table, she stared at the back of the boy sitting across from Caitlyn. Long cherry blossom hair spooled down his back, stopping just at his waist, where two scabbards were fitted. Her eyes traced over the sheathes, imagining the razor-sharp edges held within. She glanced at Leona again. There was no way this boy had taken the Battle position from her. Another bucket of worry dropped into her stomach. Whoever he was, he was dangerous. She could feel the weight his presence carried. It made everything around him appear to move in slow motion.

“What about the brooder?” Jinx asked, nudging Lux with a shoulder.

Lux shook herself out of her trance and forced her eyes away from the pink-haired boy.

“Oh,” she said dumbly, because her mouth had dropped open at the sight of the last contestant. He was unmistakable.

As he should be, her mind mocked. He is your brother, after all.

With effort, she clamped her jaw shut as she appraised Garen. He’d put on more muscle and his already hulking frame was even broader. But Jinx was right, he was brooding. His shoulders were tensed and raised to his ears and he huddled over his tray as if to keep anyone from snatching from it. Everything about him was rigid, from the curve of his back to the muscle of his cheek that she could see pressing against his skin.

“That’s Garen.” She wondered if her voice sounded shaky to the others. It felt too far away from her ears to tell. “He’s my brother.”

“Of course, he is,” Fortune muttered. “It’s just one big family reunion here, isn’t it?”

The weight that had been building within her finally grew too heavy at Fortune’s caustic tone. “He hates me,” she snapped, blinking away the tears that started to sting her eyes. They wouldn’t stop coming.

And now she’s really going to think I’m a baby.

Lux slammed her hands on the table and rose to her feet. Fine. Let her. It’s not like she was ever going to like me in the first place.

“Lux, wait.” Janna reached out to grab her arm, but she jerked away from her. She couldn’t be around them, right now. She’d thought she could handle seeing the students from Durendal, but she was wrong. She wasn’t ready. She’d never been ready.

“She can’t be that fragile.” Fortune’s stinging words struck her retreating back. Lux quickened her pace.

She heard Jinx growl behind her, but the actual words—if there were any—were too low for Lux to understand. A distant part of her told her that she should be concerned about Jinx’s anger, but it was drowned out by the rest of her that was screaming to find somewhere dark and quiet to curl up and die in.

Chapter Text

When Lux heard the door open, she pushed herself against the bathroom stall and lifted her legs off the floor.

“Lux?” Janna called. “Are you in here?”

She swallowed her sniffles and remained silent.

“Why are we even doing this?” Fortune’s voice groaned. “If she wants to be a baby and cry somewhere, let her. We’re wasting our time walking around the school.”

“Like you’d spend it any better tapping away on your phone,” Jinx said. “It’s your fault, anyway.”

“Yeah, it’s my fault that Lux can’t take a question.” Fortune huffed. “Whatever, I’m going back to the room. One of you can text me if you need me.”

“We should stay together,” Janna said. “We’re a team.”

“Give it up,” Jinx answered. “Fortune’s a shitty teammate, anyway. We’d do better without her.”

“Like I even wanted to be on this team.” Lux could hear the tone shift in her voice. “Maybe if Lux thinks it’s too hard for her, we can convince Morgana to let us quit. We could be back in Valoran City before the weekend.”

“That’s enough.” Soraka’s voice cut through the noise of conversation. “Sarah, stop being mean. We are supposed to be a team.”

Fortune scoffed. “Whatever. It’s not like they’d listen to me, anyway.”

The room fell into silence. “Let’s go,” Janna said after a moment. She paused. “If Lux went to our room, you’ll text us, right?”

“Sure,” Fortune answered blandly. “I’ll let you guys know.”

“Okay. We’ll meet up there once Lux is found.”

Another tremble ran up her as the door closed. She was useless. All she did was make everyone else’s life worse. They didn’t even need her to lead them. Janna was more than capable of that. She could actually work with Fortune, too. With no one left in the room, Lux stopped holding back her sobs, choking on them as the tears streaked down her cheeks and dripped onto her lap, each one leaving a mark on her skin to show the world how pathetic she was.

“You okay, Lux?”

It wasn’t even the words that made her flinch. It was the person who said them.

“Jinx?” She lifted her head to look at where the girl had perched on top of the stall. “What are you doing here?”

“Uh… comforting you?” Jinx tilted her head. “I’m doing it right, aren’t I?”

Something escaped her throat. Whether it was a laugh or another sob, she didn’t know. “I meant, what are you doing here? How did you find me?”

Lux had done more than lock herself in a bathroom. She’d cast an entire ward to keep herself hidden. People were supposed to skip over this stall, not even realizing that it was there. Even the bathroom itself had a slight aversion charm on it. That the rest of her team had even been able to enter was a feat.

She stretched her senses to check that the ward hadn’t failed. It was still there, healthy and pushing out its intended magic.

“I mean, you were totally obvious,” Jinx answered, still hesitant. She blinked. “You didn’t think I couldn’t find you, did you?”

Lux felt her somberness return. “I want to be alone, Jinx.”

She hopped into the stall. “No, you don’t.”

“Jinx,” she warned when the girl showed no signs of leaving.

“I’ll be quiet,” Jinx promised. She leaned against the wall beside her. “Just pretend I’m not here.”

That was easier said than done. What did Jinx expect, that she’d go back to bawling her eyes out now that she had an audience? Lux already felt pitiful enough doing it in the first place. Going back to the action was too ludicrous to warrant consideration.

Instead, she just lowered her head and stared at her feet. It was easy enough to lose herself in her misery like that. All she had to do was close her eyes and let the memories play in her mind. She hadn’t expected Garen to be here—and especially not for Labrys. The Crownguards were one of the largest beneficiaries of Durendal academy, allowed direct research into the god-weapons. If Garen was going to enroll in one of the academies, there shouldn’t have been a choice. He’d have gotten into Durendal with ease.

But he hadn’t. He’d chosen something else. Just like she had—except, when Lux chose to leave the academy, it was for herself and her happiness. She didn’t regret that choice for an instant. It was what led her to Jinx and the rest of the Star Guardians. But Garen. He wasn’t happy. The single look she had of him was all it took to realize that. He’d always been embittered about the favoritism their parents had shown her. Yet, despite her absence, he’d only grown more of a chip on his shoulder. It broke her heart. There was a time, years ago, when Garen could smile at the world with real joy on his face. She hadn’t seen that for years, though—and that was the worst realization she had when she saw Garen that morning.

Despite her decision to run away, he still wasn’t happy. If anything, she seemed to have made his life worse.

Jinx’s hand abruptly ran along her spine, thumbing over each vertebra comfortingly. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked quietly, leaning close enough to Lux that Jinx’s breath tingled against the shell of her ear.

Jinx’s hand cupped the base of her neck and her thumb ghosted along the sensitive skin until it lifted and brushed some of her hair away. “Come on, Lux,” she whispered. “Talk to me.”

Am I really this pathetic? she thought. Jinx didn’t do comfort. She wasn’t tender or gentle. It frightened Lux to see her acting like this. It made her hate herself for being the one to cause it.

The hate sparked something inside her. “I was never a regular girl,” she said. A bitter chuckle escaped her. “I’m not even Garen’s real sister—I was a lab rat, some stray that caught enough of his parents’ attention to take me in.”

Jinx’s hand returned to her back as Lux heaved a breath. She continued, “I don’t expect you to be able to understand, but there was this constant pressure that I had to perform well, that I had to return the effort they’d put into me.”

Effort, not care. The Crownguards never cared about her, not in the conventional sense. They cared that she wasn’t damaged or that she didn’t have anything that would complicate her potential. They didn’t care about her feelings.

“It’s dehumanizing,” she said. “To be treated like a tool, constantly trying to stack up against the expectations of the people generous enough to share their home with you. I—I couldn’t take it.”

Her first day at Durendal flashed through her mind. The uncertainty of a new adventure. The hope of finding someone she could call a friend. The anxiety of knowing that she couldn’t let herself get distracted.

The horror at realizing what the rest of her life would be like if she continued living like this. At realizing that she was fundamentally flawed, too weak to execute the purpose that she had been born and raised to accomplish. At realizing that she was an utter failure—and that everyone else would realize the same thing, too.

“The Crownguard name is famous in Durendal, you know.” Lux glanced at Jinx. “People knew who I was before I’d even stepped foot in the academy. The moment I did—” she snapped her fingers “—it was like being in a display case, surrounded by hordes of people who knew of me, but didn’t actually know me. And they didn’t want to try, either. Lux didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that I was a Crownguard.”

She ran her tongue over her cracked lips. “It was too much for me,” Lux confessed. “After the first week, I was already falling apart. Once the second ended, I’d packed everything I could and boarded a bus straight for Valoran City—the farthest place that I could get to with the allowance the Crownguards gave me.”

Looking back on it, she had acted recklessly. She didn’t have anywhere to go. She didn’t know anyone that would take her in. All she had was the knowledge that she couldn’t keep pretending that life in Durendal wasn’t killing her.

“I didn’t even think I’d get into Valoran High,” Lux forced herself to continue her story. Jinx had never heard it before, and Lux didn’t think she’d ever feel vulnerable enough to repeat it. “My transcripts were all forged. I magicked the entire form, just so they wouldn’t ask questions.”

“And you still called yourself Luxanna,” Jinx interrupted, pulling lightly on her hair.

Despite herself, Lux felt a smile twitch onto her face. “I didn’t know you, then,” she said. “I thought they’d ask questions if I put in a nickname. I didn’t know that they accepted Jinx.”

Jinx smiled back at her. “Who said they had the right to accept anything? It’s my name, Lux.”

She must have seen the shadow that flickered over Lux’s expression because her smile lost its candor. Jinx leaned close enough for their foreheads to touch. “It’s the name I chose,” she murmured. “The name I wanted.”

Jinx stared into her eyes, and Lux couldn’t think about anything except how her iris seemed to twist and move like a rushing current. Jinx blinked and her eyes flicked away, breaking their connection. Her tongue ran over her lips.

“You’re not the only one,” Jinx whispered, keeping her eyes away from Lux’s own. “Who’s had someone try to take their future from them.”

Jinx pulled back and absently rubbed her forearm. When her hand moved, Lux noticed the faintest bit of discoloration, no larger than a coin, on Jinx’s bicep. When she tore her eyes away from it, Jinx was watching her.

She grabbed Lux’s hand and brought it to the spot. Smiling crookedly at Lux, she said. “You’re not as special as you think, Luxie. I’m a science experiment, too.”

Her thumb traced over the skin, feeling the tiny hairs on her arm and, beneath them, the goosebumps that were starting to rise to the surface.

“What happened,” she asked, too entranced by the feel of Jinx’s warm flesh under her thumb to take her eyes away.

“You know blood donations?” Jinx asked, her voice uncharacteristically raspy. “Think that, but the opposite.” Her hand folded over Lux’s, and Jinx grimaced. “I’m a street kid. I’ve been like that for as long as I know.” She chuckled. “Well, until you swept me up, that is.”

Lux smiled, even as she saw the façade for what it was. She squeezed Jinx’s arm in encouragement.

Jinx’s throat bobbed as she swallowed. “It was rough,” she said. “We were out of money and dad was sick.” Jinx’s hand clenched over Lux’s as she paused to take a breath and steady her breathing. Lux could almost feel the blood racing underneath Jinx’s flesh. She could just about imagine the girl’s heart pounding.

“There was this one guy at the end of the street.” Jinx didn’t have to give too much information. Her tone conveyed everything it needed to Lux. “Everyone knew to stay away from him, but he was a scientist—and no one had ever seen him doing jobs anywhere. He had to have money.”

Jinx shuddered. “Me and...someone else...were getting desperate. She was ready to just take what we needed and worry about the consequences later. But I knew better. Dad had always told us that crime always catches up. So, I went to the doctor.”

Jinx’s skin paled the longer she continued to speak. Her eyes grew distant, the light inside of them falling into shadow at every word.

“You don’t have to continue,” Lux said. “Don’t feel like you have to share this if you’re not—”

“I want to.”

Jinx met her gaze, and, for a moment, she looked like herself again. “Don’t think you can get away with telling your sob story and not let me get mine in, too.”

Jinx exhaled, visibly gathering herself, and continued. “I went to the doctor,” she repeated. “He—I don’t know what he did. He said that he was testing something. That if I helped him, he might be able to cure my dad. So, I let him strap me to his table and I watched as he stuck a needle in me.”

“What happened next?”

Jinx hesitated. When she looked at Lux, her eyes were glossy. “I don’t know. The last thing I remember, he injected me. I felt the serum take—” Jinx shivered against her, the action at a complete contrast to the burning heat of her skin “—it burned, Lux. And that’s the only thing I remember.

“When I woke up,” Jinx’s voice struggled to stay even. “He was gone. His entire house, empty. And when I got back outside and back to my house, it was too late. Dad was gone, too.”

“Jinx,” Lux murmured, throwing her arms around her, and pulling her close. She’d never seen Jinx look so fragile. She didn’t even know Jinx could be fragile. “I’m so sorry.”

Jinx shrugged against her. “It’s in the past,” was all she said. “I’m over it.”

She wasn’t. That much was obvious. But, as Lux pulled away to look her friend in the face, she saw that the lie was the only thing keeping Jinx from falling apart. So, instead of telling her it was okay to be vulnerable, that everyone had their moments of weakness, she said, “thank you,” and pressed Jinx back against her, nestling her chin into the crook of Jinx’s neck and holding her.

It took strength to open yourself up like that. Old wounds never fully closed—and their pain never went away. When Lux told her story, she had to have it dragged out of her, like a dentist pulling a tooth. Jinx gave her story without hesitation. She sliced herself open just so Lux wouldn’t be the only one bleeding.

Lux didn’t know how long they stayed like that, their arms wrapped around each other and their tears drying in the other’s hair. It could have been for five minutes; it could have been for hours. Lux didn’t care. All that mattered was holding Jinx close and letting her know that she was there for her. Just like she knew that Jinx was there for her. The moment couldn’t last forever. Eventually, Jinx’s need to move got to her and she began to fidget against Lux. First, it was little things, like rubbing her nose deeper into Lux’s neck. Then it was shifting her body until she was almost sitting in Lux’s lap. By the time her fingers began to dance across Lux’s back, tapping and prodding down her spine at random, Lux decided that the embrace was over.

She chewed on her lip and said, “We should probably get back to the others.”

“Only if you want to,” Jinx answered. “Don’t let that bi—Fortune’s words get to you. You don’t need to prove anything to us, Lux.”

Lux smiled softly at her. “I’m glad you think so,” she said. “But you’re just one part of the team, Jinx. We need everyone to, at the very least, be able to have a conversation with one another without issue.”

“Or,” Jinx said with such a familiar tone that Lux already knew her idea wouldn’t be practical, “we could get rid of the spare part altogether.” She grinned winningly at Lux. “Baki and Boki are just a call away, you know.”

To emphasize her point, the two familiars materialized on either of her shoulders and, after a gesture from Jinx, they transformed into the familiar shark-toothed launcher that Lux knew Jinx preferred.

She placed her hand sternly on the muzzle and pushed it to the floor. “We don’t shoot our teammates,” she lectured. “No matter how much they deserve it.”

“Aw,” Jinx groaned theatrically. “You’re no fun!”

Lux giggled, idly scratching the top of Jinx’s gun, and feeling it rumble against her palm. Baki had always liked it when she scratched him there.

Jinx’s smile widened. “Well,” she said, pushing herself to her feet. “If you’re not going to let me blow up Fortune, I’m going to go unload on one of the courtyards—and if you want to stop me, you’ll have to leave this stall!”

Jinx cackled and, instead of going through the stall door like a normal person, she leapt back to the stall’s partition and crawled through the overhead space. Lux spent a moment staring at the place she’d slipped through, wondering why Jinx could never do something as normal as walking through doors.

Then, she realized that Jinx was probably serious and scrambled to her feet before throwing herself at the door. They would not be known as the crazy school! Not on the first day, at the very least.

Jinx would earn them that reputation eventually, but Lux would be damned if she didn’t delay that for as long as she could.

Chapter Text

The courtyard was, thankfully, not a smoldering mess of burning shrubs and crumbled statues by the time she’d arrived. It was, however, where the rest of her team had decided to convene that afternoon to go over the first competition and the types of things that Soraka could expect to face. If any of her teammates noticed Lux’s puffy eyes, they didn’t say anything, all of them pretending that everything was normal as she sat on one of the stone benches beside Jinx while Janna and Soraka took the one opposite them. Fortune hovered a little way off to the side, scrolling through her phone but, Lux hoped, listening to what she had to say all the same.

Clearing her throat, Lux pushed that thought out of her mind and turned to address Soraka, who met her gaze with rapt attention.

“Luminary competitions primarily revolve around strategy and planning,” she explained. “Particularly, they favor the use of foresight and the ability to rapidly adapt to your surroundings.”

Soraka nodded. “So, there is no directly applicable body of knowledge? The other contestants won’t have an unfair advantage due to their education?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Lux answered with a frown. None of these trials were ever truly fair to all contestants. Their school least of all. “Your competitors, Jayce and Caitlyn, have experience, if nothing else. They’ll know what to look for; their instincts have been honed for these types of tasks for years. In contrast, you’ll be going in blind.”

Soraka’s lips turned up in a placid smile. “You said that the Luminaries of the past looked to the stars for guidance; so long as we all have the same object, I will be no less blind than the others.”

Lux’s lips twisted, the girl’s words sitting oddly in her ears. “Morgana said that she picked the best possible team for this,” she ventured. “And you volunteered yourself for the Luminary portion of the tournament. Is there any reason for that?”

Do you know something that you’re not telling me? Lux’s fingers tapped against her knee as she waited for an answer. She didn’t know much about Soraka, but from what she’d seen so far, the girl’s assertiveness in claiming the Luminary position was out of character.

Soraka’s gaze slid from her as she glanced at Fortune. Lux caught the other girl staring back at Soraka over the top of her phone, the two of them appeared to have a silent conversation with their eyes.

So, she doesn’t hate everyone here, Lux deduced, watching the slight tics displayed on Fortune’s face. It’s just me that she can’t stand.

“I have a unique gift,” Soraka said, breaking away from Fortune’s gaze and returning to Lux. “If I focus enough on the stars, I can glimpse certain possibilities.”

“You’re a seer,” Lux concluded.

She wasn’t sure that was a unique gift, per se. An uncommon one for sure, but it wasn’t unheard of. Or perhaps Lux was just desensitized to innate magical talents. Growing up with the Crownguards as her parents had exposed her to a litany of interesting permutations, some natural, most synthetically created.

Soraka dipped her head demurely. “Yes, in a sense.”

“Okay,” Lux breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s good. You can use that to get an advantage over your competition.”

“Is it allowed?” Soraka asked. “There aren’t any rules against something like that?”

Lux shook her head. “Luminary competitions are all about one’s ability to make the most of what’s given to them. That includes their own bodies and any resources they have access to. Unlike the other competitions, the Luminary portion does not pit its candidates against one another directly, instead preferring to measure their ability to successfully complete challenges with the greatest success.” Lux looked intently at Soraka. “Though I would caution against letting anyone know about your talents. While you are not trying to overcome the other competitors, they will take every advantage they can to benefit themselves, even hampering the progression of other competitors.”

“That sounds like cheating,” Jinx spoke up, her grin shining with manic pleasure. “You didn’t tell me that we were allowed to cheat in these competitions!”

“The Battle Academies prize success over everything,” Lux answered. “Each event has a set of rules to ensure that the nature of the competition is not diluted. Anything not expressly forbidden is implicitly allowed.”

“Sabotaging your competitors does not go against Luminary ideals?” Janna asked with a frown.

Lux waved a hand. “Having the foresight to weaken your opponents, or the lack of foresight in defending from such attacks, is precisely the real-world application of Luminary practice. When everything is a logic puzzle, morality, and sensibility become liabilities.”

Janna pursed her lips. “They teach that line of thought to teenagers?”

“They’re Battle Academies,” Lux answered. “Their entire ethos revolves around how to best their opponents.”

“How draconian.”

Lux felt a bitter smirk twist her face. “Why do you think I left?” she asked.

“So!” Jinx clapped her hands together. “What can you tell us about the other two contestants?”

Jinx smiled widely at Soraka. “Don’t hold back on us, Lux! If cheating’s totally allowed, then you’ve got to spill the beans on these guys.”

Lux shook her head fondly at Jinx’s exuberance. Why did it seem that she was more focused on Lux cheating than the competition itself?

Still, she called forth what she knew about the other participants. “Durendal’s Luminary will be Jayce,” she said. “He’s an inventor and, while you’re only allowed to take what you can carry into the competition, there’s usually resources inside that contestants can choose to utilize if they wish. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jayce ended the competition with a creation of his own making.”

“He doesn’t sound like too much of a problem,” Janna said.

Lux shrugged. “He’ll be resourceful if nothing else. But you’re right. Jayce tends to keep his focus on himself. Unless something particularly unfortunate happens, we shouldn’t have to worry about him targeting Soraka.”

Jayce was a good guy, or at least that’s what Lux thought from the scant amount of time she’d shared a school with him. He was a natural leader, both charismatic and personable.

But Lux knew that you didn’t become Durendal’s school president without having a fair amount of steel within you. Jayce commanded respect from every one of his classmates, without exception. Something had to keep them in line, and Lux doubted it was a pretty smile and friendly words.

He was still a preferable opponent to the other contestant, though. “Caitlyn will be Labrys’s representative,” Lux said. She raised her eyes to stare at Soraka. “I don’t know her personally, but her name is recognizable to everyone enrolled in the Battle Academies—rumor has it that Swain, Labrys’s headmaster and head of the Noxian army, has personally promised her an officer position upon graduation.”

“Noxus?” Fortune asked, raising an eyebrow. “The imperialistic nation that’s been fighting wars for the past hundred years?”

Lux nodded, surprised that Fortune knew about the distant nation. Most people chose to ignore what happened outside of Valoran. “Be careful with her,” she warned Soraka. “I don’t think she’s cruel, per se. But she’s opportunistic. If she sees a way to benefit from your misfortune, she’ll take it without hesitation.”

“How do we help Soraka prepare?” Fortune asked, again shocking Lux with her willingness to participate in a conversation.

Unfortunately, she would have to again prove herself a disappointment in the older girl’s eyes. “We can’t, really,” she answered truthfully. “Nobody will know what the actual competition is until the moment it starts. Usually, it takes the form of an obstacle course or some other such time trial, but the exact details are always hidden.”

She cringed as Fortune huffed an irritated breath. “So, we’re useless,” she said.

“We can help Soraka with other things,” Lux suggested. “The Luminary competition doesn’t typically include battle, but you can never discount it completely—” they are called Battle Academies for a reason “—do you have any way of defending yourself?”

Lux hoped the question didn’t sound too patronizing. She didn’t know what activities normal people did while growing up, or whether the amount of training she was put through was ordinary. She assumed not, considering that she’d planned to drop her training completely once arriving in Valoran, but even that was skewed by the First Star’s decision to bless her with its powers.

Lux had never been a normal person; she never would be a normal person.

“Oh.” Soraka tilted her head as if the question merited consideration. “I don’t like violence.”

That didn’t answer the question. “I don’t either,” Lux responded. “But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen or that it can’t happen to us.”

“You make it sound like she’s an actual danger,” Fortune snorted. “This is a school competition, Lux.”

“No,” she shook her head. “The Battle Academies aren’t like any school you’ve heard of before.” She made sure to keep her eyes locked on Fortune. “Soraka is the least likely to get hurt simply because the primary objective for the Luminaries is to complete the task as quickly as possible. For the rest of us, though? Our competitions won’t end until there’s only one person left standing.”

“That’s absurd.”

“It is,” she agreed. “But that doesn’t mean I’m lying.”

“It’s exciting is what it is!” Jinx was visibly shaking in her seat. She turned to Lux with wide eyes. “So, when I go into my competition, it’ll be just like the real deal?”

Lux swallowed the lump in her throat and tried to hide her flinch. “Yes,” she muttered, reaching out to grip Jinx’s hands with her own. “You have to be careful Jinx. Don’t play with your opponents, because the assassination portion is the most dangerous one in the entire tournament.”

Jinx couldn’t approach it with her usual candor. One misstep and she’d be dead, sliced open by Katarina’s blades in the blink of an eye.

Lux blinked her eyes, pushing the blurriness away. “Promise me, Jinx,” she urged, squeezing her fingers. “No goofing around.”

“You make it sound like she’s going to die,” Fortune moaned. “It can’t be as bad as you’re making it out to be.”

Lux rigidly turned to face Fortune’s apathetic expression. “Students enrolled in the assassination tract have free reign to hone their skills on the rest of the student populace in whatever capacity they want. Do you think they’ll be at all lenient to opponents who don’t even share a school allegiance with them?”

Fortune flinched and feral satisfaction roiled inside of Lux at the sudden change of Fortune’s expression. She’d finally gotten the girl to react with something other than dismissal. Guilt swallowed the satisfaction near instantly. This wasn’t something that she should be happy about. Lux grimaced. Just another piece of evidence to show how terrible a person I am.

“You didn’t tell me that!” Jinx exclaimed beside her, wrapping an arm around Lux’s shoulder. “It sounds so much more exciting now!”

Her outburst was enough to bring Fortune back to reality. She furrowed her eyebrows as she stared at Jinx. “You are deranged if you think that is exciting.”

Jinx laughed. Each peal sent shivers of terror down Lux’s spine. “Guess it’s a good thing I’m the one doing the assassinating, then.”

“I’m not having this conversation.” Fortune stood from her seat. Her eyes roved across the faces of the rest of the team, coming to rest on Soraka. “In fact, I don’t want anything to do with any of this.”

Fortune turned on her heel and stalked away from them, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. Lux watched her go, concern warring with relief. The concern won. Even if Fortune had been nothing but bothersome, she didn’t deserve to suffer. Lux had to help her. She had to prove that she wasn’t a total failure.

“Let her go,” Soraka said as Lux made to rise to her feet. “She just needs space.”

Lux hesitated. Fortune didn’t look like she needed space.

“Good riddance, I say,” Jinx added. She grabbed Lux’s hand and pulled her back to her seat. “If she doesn’t want to take your advice, then that’s her loss, Lux.”

Lux looked to the final member of their team. Janna pursed her lips. After a moment, she nodded. “You can’t save everyone. Especially if they don’t want to be saved.”

“Sarah doesn’t need saving,” Soraka corrected. “She’ll come around. Just give her time.”

Time. If that was what she needed, Lux hoped that she didn’t need too much of it. Fortune had the benefit of going last, but the tournament would finish in two weeks. The more time she spent refusing to acknowledge what was to come, the less time she’d have to prepare for it.

Fortune had been nothing but antagonistic towards her, but Lux didn’t hate the girl. She didn’t hate anyone, really. How could she, when she knew that she was worse than them? When she held more disgust at her own weakness than anyone else’s? She wanted to help Fortune, but if the girl wouldn’t take her help—and Soraka seemed to believe that she wouldn’t—Lux wouldn’t force the issue.

After all, their team only had so much time and Fortune wasn’t the only one unprepared for the trials to come.

She turned her attention back to Soraka and swallowed her doubts. “Okay, let’s get back to some of the things you might face in the competition…”

Chapter Text

Fortune hadn’t returned to their group by the time they headed to the cafeteria for dinner. Lux had suggested that they wait for her in their room, but Jinx refused and Soraka, not wanting to cause tension, had agreed with Jinx that Fortune could make her way to the cafeteria on her own. Lux was beginning to feel bad for Soraka. The girl was so polite that Lux felt that she was taking advantage of her every time they spoke. Soraka agreed to everything. She always chose the option that would result in the least amount of friction. And yet, she wasn’t their friend. Soraka didn’t go out of her way to talk to any of them. She humored their attempts at conversation, but the girl’s answers always ended with the feeling that she was speaking for their benefit more than her own. Watching her and Janna try to have a conversation with one another, both of them accommodating to the point of bashfulness, was one of the most awkward things Lux had experienced—and she’d only been a bystander. She even preferred Jinx’s attempt at getting a rise out of Soraka to that, regardless that it had ended with Soraka flushing to her ears and Jinx rolling along the floor in hysterics.

The other schools were already eating by the time Lux and her team arrived. She glanced around the room as she sat down at their table and took in the sights of easy comradery found at the other tables. Even the Labrys students, straight-backed and stoic, talked to one another between bites of food. None of them looked like they didn’t belong; none of them looked like an outsider within their own school.

Lux was certain that the students didn’t all like one another. The little time she’d spent in Durendal showed more than enough evidence that the students’ actions were a façade. That didn’t make the stark difference between their schools any easier to swallow.

Her eyes landed on a familiar head of red hair sitting at the Durendal table. The sixth person sitting at the table.

Fortune’s mouth turned upward as she leaned closer to Akshan, clearly interested in what he had to say. The boy grinned back at her, waving his arms in front of him as he told his story, and Fortune laughed as he smiled at her.

“What’s she doing over there?” Jinx asked, following Lux’s gaze.

“Making friends, it looks like,” she bit out.

Fortune laughed again and the sound was loud enough to carry over to their table. Lux clenched her fork between her fingers, aware that it was beginning to tremble.

“Eh, who needs her?” Jinx shrugged before shoveling a bite of food into her mouth. Without swallowing, she continued, “I told you, she’s a total itch. Better that she’s off infecting everyone else instead of us.”

Lux kicked Jinx’s shin under the table as she cast a quick look at Soraka, judging her reaction. “Don’t say that,” she scolded.

“It’s true,” Jinx defended. “And, ow!” She prodded Lux’s calf with her own foot.

Lux sniffed. “You deserved it.”

When she looked over to the Durendal table again, Fortune was chatting away with Katarina. Both of their mouths moved so quickly she could hardly believe they were having a conversation with one another, but the flashes of smiles and the crinkling around their eyes, the slight swaying of their bodies as they leaned toward and away from one another in sync dissolved any doubt she had.

Katarina turned away from Fortune just long enough to catch Lux’s eye. The scar over her eye twisted as she winked at Lux and turned one corner of her mouth up in a vicious smirk. Lux winced. When she’d regained her composure, Katarina had gone back to giving Fortune her complete attention. It had happened so quickly that Lux could almost believe that she’d imagined it.

She knew better than to give herself that much hope. Everything Katarina did happened within the blink of an eye.

Katarina was right, Lux realized as she looked at her teammates. Jinx, having finished her food, had taken her spoon, and was beating it across the table like a drumstick. Soraka continued to nibble her food as daintily as possible and Janna, having nothing else to do with herself, simply sat in silence with her arms folded over her lap, staring blankly away from them. They weren’t a team. They were a collection of individuals haphazardly thrown together. So haphazard that they couldn’t even keep a member of their team from falling away.

Lux pinched herself when she felt her gaze creeping back to the Durendal table.

But, if she wasn’t looking at the Durendal table, then she was forced to stare into the faces of her teammates, and see the youthful innocence and ignorance contrasted against the ferocity of the tournament they’d found themselves in. She didn’t think that even Janna would be prepared for the upcoming events.

Lux gnawed on her lip as she glanced at the older star guardian surreptitiously. She should have taken one of the positions. Preferably the battle portion. Lux didn’t want to see Janna hurt—and she would get hurt if she tried to partake in the battle portion without revealing her identity as a Star Guardian—but it was better than the alternative. It was better than having a normal teenager like Fortune get broken by the callous hands of students who’d trained in blood sport for so long that Lux couldn’t call them children anymore.

A dash of movement caught her eye. The girl with steely eyes and silver hair placed herself at their table with all the grace of a panther stalking its prey. Lux’s eyes traced the sleek movement of the girl as she sat, paying close attention to the way her uniform pulled on her muscles and revealed the hard strength underneath.

The girl did not seem to want to be at their table. Her expression hadn’t changed a fraction and, as she dipped her head in acknowledgment, Lux couldn’t help but feel that her presence poised over them like a sharpened blade.

Not in the same way Katarina made her feel, however. Katarina made her prey feel vulnerable; she made you feel like you had to constantly pat yourself down to ensure you hadn’t been stabbed, that you had to be constantly watching Katarina whenever she was close because you knew that the girl would take advantage of the slightest lapse in focus.

This girl was not like that. Whereas Katarina was someone to watch out for lest she drive a blade between your ribs. The newcomer was a weapon. Cold, impersonal, unwavering.

“Hello,” Lux said. “You’re from Durendal, aren’t you?”

The girl raised a frigid eyebrow. Lux’s eyes darted to the crest on her uniform’s lapels. She flushed. What a stupid question.

She tried again, smiling through her awkwardness. “What’s your name? I don’t think we’ve met before.”

“Diana.”

Diana’s eyes tracked Lux’s hand as she extended it in greeting. Slowly, so slow that Lux considered pulling her hand away, Diana grasped it. Calloused fingers curled over the back of her hand and applied a firm squeeze before pulling away.

A stretch of silence passed. Lux, belatedly withdrawing her hand, racked her mind for something to say.

Come on, girl, she berated herself. Use your social skills, dammit. Even Jinx can do a better job than this!

Case in point, Jinx decided that Lux’s failure to continue the conversation was permission for her to try leading it.

“You’re a quiet one, aren’t you?” she asked, placing her elbows on the table, and leaning across it as she peered at Diana. “Like granite. You know how to make granite talk? You stuff it full of—”

Diana’s stare hadn’t wavered from Lux. Now, she spoke as if Jinx didn’t exist. “Do they know what they’ve entered themselves into?” she asked bluntly.

“Hey!” Jinx complained. “I was talking, you know!”

Diana waited for Lux’s response.

“Alright, that’s it,” Jinx growled and, before Lux could stop her, she grabbed her fork and threw it across the table at Diana.

“Jinx!”

Lux grabbed the arm that Jinx had kept extended and forcibly pressed it to her side.

She turned to Diana. “I’m so sorry about that,” she apologized, all but blurting the words out in her panic. “She didn’t mean—”

“I would not recommend doing that again,” Diana said curtly, fork held delicately between her thumb and forefinger. “Or else I will respond in kind.”

The threat carried the most emotion Lux had heard from the girl. She couldn’t hide her gulp at the definitiveness in her voice. “It won’t,” Lux agreed. “I’ll make sure of it.”

“If you don’t, I will.”

Lux nodded, eager to move to a different subject. “Why are you here?” Then, because she didn’t want Diana to misinterpret the question she added, “at this table, I mean. Why are you at this table?”

Diana set the fork on the table and returned her hand to her lap. “Jayce is… curious about you.”

The tone was so dry that it left Lux with no doubt as to Diana’s opinion on the matter.

“What’s there to be curious about?” she asked. She glanced at her teammates. “We seem pretty transparent, I think.”

“That’s precisely the reason,” Diana answered. Her eyes tracked Lux’s every movement. “There must be a reason for your invitation to the tournament.”

“You think we’re hiding something.”

She tried not to sound defensive. It was reasonable for the other schools to be suspicious of them. Lux should have been prepared for their scrutiny. “You’re here to spy on us.”

Diana grunted. “Spying implies subterfuge. I am here to get answers.”

Jinx laughed from beside her. “You’re pretty blunt, aren’t you?”

Diana turned her eyes to Jinx, sizing her up. “The fastest blade cuts the quickest.”

“That’s not blunt at all!”

Lux sighed. At least I can count on Jinx to offer a distraction, she consoled herself.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” she said before Jinx inevitably prodded the girl into an outburst. Diana may have seemed aloof, but Lux didn’t want to see what would happen should she lose her temper. “I’m the only one with any knowledge of the Battle Academies. The rest of my team are just normal high school students.”

Diana’s hard eyes shone in the light. The skin around them pulled tightly to her bones with such severity that she seemed older than she actually was. Lux knew immediately that Diana doubted the veracity of her words.

“It is unlikely that the tournament organizers would have seen fit to invite your school without reason.”

Lux was well aware of that. She’d been thinking about it ever since she realized what kind of tournament Morgana had enrolled them in. She deflected the accusation.

“Our principal claimed to have known the organizers.” She shrugged. “Perhaps she pulled some strings.”

Morgana’s association with the mysterious group was another thing that had been lurking at the back of Lux’s mind. It was possible, she supposed. Not everyone aware of the Battle Academies stayed within the circle. Branching out wasn’t unheard of. But to personally know a group relevant enough to command the attention of two of the most prestigious schools indicated a certain notoriety on Morgana’s part. Certainly more than would be expected from someone who took a position as a high school principal.

Gods and aspects, Lux didn’t even know the organization that hosted the tournament, and she was a Crownguard! Patrons did like to keep their identities hidden—it was all the better to keep their allegiances away from the partisan schools—but Lux had been around her parents enough to have a grasp of who held power in their world. Right now, she didn’t have a clue as to who could be responsible for the tournament.

She smiled as genuinely as she could. “You’re free to stay here if you wish. I’m sure the rest of my team would enjoy having someone new to talk to.”

After a stretch of silence in which Diana’s eyes pierced into her own, the girl rose to her feet, flowing out of her seat with such languid grace that Lux almost didn’t register the movement.

“We will see how true your words are tomorrow night,” Diana said. She tilted her head, considering whether to say more. Coming to a decision, Diana turned to Soraka. “If what Luxanna says is true, I recommend that you seriously consider forfeiting.” She cast her eyes to the rest of the group. “All of you. This is no place for uninitiated students.”

“Lux has already warned us of the potential threat,” Janna answered. Her mouth was turned into a soft frown. “Though, I have trouble believing that it is as harsh as the two of you claim.”

Diana looked away from their table for a moment, turning her head to survey the cafeteria. “I had trained my entire life for the opportunity of joining a Battle Academy. Before I could walk, my caretakers had placed a blade in my hands and urged me to demonstrate my ability.”

She turned back to Janna. “Two years ago, I finished third in the most prestigious combat tournament in Runeterra.” Her lips curled. “I was not offered admittance to any of the academies.”

Lux frowned. She wracked her brain for the tournament that Diana alluded to. The biggest, of course, was the Targon Invitational, in which sixteen fighters are placed into an elimination bracket and fight daily for five consecutive days until a victor is crowned. But that was far from the only event that the Battle Academies scouted. House Laurent offered a dueling circuit in Demacia; Iona was a hotbed of martial arts competitions. While third place at the Targon Invitational was nothing to scoff at, there were only five Battle Academies, and each only admitted a handful of students every year. Diana hadn’t even made the final, either.

And not to mention…

“What changed?” Janna asked. “You’ve obviously been accepted to Durendal, now.”

Diana nodded and tilted her head towards Lux as she crossed her arms. “Durendal had an opening,” she answered.

“What about the person that came second in your tournament?”

Perhaps they’d been drafted into another school, but Durendal had a reputation as being the best of the Battle Academies, challenged only by Labrys. Lux didn’t doubt that they’d attempt to coerce another student into transferring schools had a better candidate been available.

Diana met her gaze unflinchingly. “I came third because I lost to Leona in the semi-finals.” Her voice dripped so much venom at Leona’s name, that Lux found herself flinching at the rancor. Diana continued, “her opponent for the final dealt with her considerably worse than I. By the end of the bout, she had broken both his legs and cracked his cranium. He will never fight again.”

Soraka gasped at the words, turning incredulous eyes to Diana. Before she could speak, Diana answered the unspoken question.

“That is what to expect in this tournament. If you truly have nothing to hide, if you do not believe yourself capable of competing with our schools, then forfeit. Save yourself the pain.”

Her warning given, Diana left their table, stalking across the cafeteria and back to her place among the Durendal students. Without her presence, Lux felt as if she could breathe more easily, as if a spotlight had finally left her face, casting Lux back into obscurity.

Though, even with Diana’s departure, Durendal’s suspicion remained. It hung heavily on her shoulders. She’d spent the last day worrying about the safety of her team, completely forgetting that, on top of that, they’d have to conceal the true scope of their abilities. Lux almost wished that they were normal.

“Man,” Jinx groused theatrically. “She’s really got that whole intimidation shtick down.”

“I don’t think it’s intimidation,” Janna ventured. She looked at Lux for confirmation.

Lux forced herself to meet Janna’s stare. “You’re right. That wasn’t an attempt at intimidation. That’s the reality of what we’ve gotten ourselves involved in.”

She swallowed a breath of air and continued, “Jayce sent her here to get information, but they aren’t worried about us beating them. Not really.”

The only reason he’d even sent Diana over here was because there was absolutely nothing of note about them. That meant two things. Either they were hiding something, or Lux and her team really were as unsuited to this as they appeared.

They couldn’t know that half the team was comprised of Star Guardians, and Lux didn’t intend to reveal that secret any time soon. She and her team would have to deal with the scrutiny.

If only we really were just a normal group of high school students. Life would have been so easy, had that been the case. Lux wouldn’t have to pretend that she was innocent. She could have had the life that she’d always wanted. Just her and her team doing… whatever it was that normal teenagers did. No cosmic conflicts. No existential crises. Just her and her friends living their lives.

Unbidden, her eyes swept along the Durendal table in search of Fortune. The girl may have been antagonistic, but she, at least, had nothing to hide. Fortune could be as forthcoming as she wished, able to give answers to whoever asked.

She wasn’t at the Durendal table. Neither was Katarina.

All of the worst possibilities sprang to life in Lux’s head. Katarina was not someone that you wanted to take an interest in you. She didn’t have friends; she had targets. And Fortune, despite her dislike of Lux, was a perfect opportunity for the assassin to strike at her.

Lux’s eyes darted around the cafeteria in search of Fortune, roaming down the halls and flicking toward the bathroom doors. She was just about ready to jump from her seat and go searching for her by the time she glanced at the Labrys table.

What she saw there froze her muscles in place.

Fortune sat at the table, chatting amicably with a younger boy. That wasn’t what made Lux react so violently. It was what Katarina was doing, because the girl, sitting with Fortune on one side of her, had turned fully away from the Valoran student to devote all of her attention to Garen.

She was like a spider weaving her trap. Every movement accentuated her body. Lux saw how the sweep of her arm drew Garen’s eye, how the twist of her body highlighted her curves, how she tilted her head up at him, giving him a clear line of sight from the open expanse of her throat all the way down to her cleavage.

And Garen, the poor boy, was none the wiser. He let Katarina ensnare him with her charm, watching her every motion with rapt attention. His face pulled out of its perpetual scowl, loosening into dumbness as he nodded his head to Katarina’s words, each dip of his head fighting valiantly to return to its original position without lingering too long.

Lux had never felt more sickened.

Of all the people Katarina had to choose as her new toys, why did it have to be Fortune and Garen? One would have been enough to get her message across. Taking both of them for herself made Lux want to—

She pinched herself and forced the build-up of magic down. She couldn’t lose control. Not in front of everyone.

As if sensing how close she’d come to being eradicated, Katarina looked away from Garen. She flipped her hair behind her head as she glanced at Lux. Their eyes met across the room, and Katarina’s smile turned up in a full grin. She winked at Lux before turning her attention back to Garen, placing a hand on his forearm and leaning in. Lux saw her shoulders shake from giggles and knew that it had just as much to do with talking to Garen as it did with her.

“Is that him?” Jinx asked, leaning onto her shoulder. Lux didn’t need her to clarify. After their conversation in the bathroom, she knew exactly what Jinx was asking about.

Lux nodded, watching as Garen’s face twisted in response to Katarina’s words.

“And the tramp?”

“That’s Katarina. She’s Durendal’s assassin.”

Jinx blinked, her eyes gaining a new focus as she peered across the room. A smile sprouted over her face. “She’s who I get to blow up?”

Lux’s mouth turned upward. “Hopefully.”

Jinx glanced at her, and her smile dulled into something softer. “We’re not going to forfeit, are we?”

Lux tilted her head at the question. “It would be the smart thing to do.”

She appraised her team, tapping her hands along the table. “It’s just about certain that we won’t win any of the competitions. If any of you would like to save yourself the possible embarrassment of a loss, I won’t hold it against you.”

Lux hated that she even had to voice the reality. She hated that everyone looked down on her friends. If she could, she’d tell them to throw caution to the wind and put their full might on display for all to see. She wanted people like Katarina to realize how much they’d underestimated Lux, to make them understand the depth of their errors.

But she was a Star Guardian. She had more important things to concern herself with than a bunch of teenagers’ perceptions of her and her friends. She would not stoop to their level. The First Star chose to bestow its blessing to her. That was all the evidence she needed of her superiority. She was not insecure enough to risk the world discovering her and her team’s identities. Lux had made a lot of bad choices in her life. She’d ruined it more than once. Maybe if it were just her, she’d be okay throwing away everything she had to get back at Katarina. But it wasn’t. She had her team to think about. She couldn’t do anything that would endanger their lives. Her team was infinitely more important than her.

Jinx grinned. “When have we ever been called smart?”

Lux flicked her on the head. “You’re plenty smart, Jinx. You just have to apply yourself.”

“I do!” she countered enthusiastically. “I apply myself all over the school. Haven’t you seen my handiwork?”

“That is a… different application than Lux meant,” Janna said, chuckling at Jinx’s antics. She sobered as she turned towards Lux. “Do you think,” she began, glancing cautiously at Soraka, “that perhaps there was a specific reason that Morgana chose us for this tournament? What are the odds that, of the entire school, three of us would—”

“I don’t know,” Lux interrupted. She shook her head and gestured at Soraka as discreetly as she could. She turned her head openly towards the Labrys table. “Though, I’m sure that Morgana had plenty of more… capable candidates than those she chose.”

If the principal had picked all five of the Star Guardians from the student body, then Lux’s concern would have been much higher. As it was, she’d left Poppy and Lulu out.

I was an obvious choice. She glanced at Jinx. If Morgana had to select a candidate based on their potential, Jinx was as promising as anyone else. Her selection made sense. But what about the other three? Lux supposed that Morgana could have known about Soraka’s divinatory talents, but that still left Janna and Fortune as outliers.

“Oh,” Soraka drew a little intake of breath, following Lux’s gaze to the Labrys table. Frowning slightly, she turned back to the group, all of them startled by her action.

“Soraka,” Janna asked.

She sighed, fidgeting underneath their combined attention. “You don’t have to keep it a secret.”

Lux felt something tighten inside her. “What?”

“You’re Star Guardians.”

The three of them stilled, all caught off-guard by Soraka’s directness.

“Pfft. No, we’re not.” Jinx laughed for good measure. “Know your place, Soraka. I’m the crazy one on this team.”

Lux giggled nervously. She glanced at Janna, praying that the older girl had a way to resolve the situation because, as resolute as Jinx might be in trying to convince Soraka, she was not someone who had success at getting people to take her at face value.

Janna tilted her head. “Why would you say that?”

“Don’t worry.” Soraka smiled placidly. “I’m a Star Guardian, too. The First Star shines brightly in all of you.”

“…”

“Well shit,” Jinx surmised. “Talk about a plot twist.”

Lux locked eyes with Janna and saw the growing comprehension in her eyes. If Soraka was a Star Guardian…

“Fortune’s one, too?”

Soraka nodded. “She’s not usually so… abrasive. I think it’s because she’s been separated from Ahri—our leader.” She frowned. “Those two were on a team before I joined, even though they’re still both young. I think something bad happened to their last team.”

“When did you join?” Janna asked.

“About eight months ago.” Soraka shifted in her seat. “We still haven’t found a fifth member for our team, though.”

“That must make the separation even harder. Teammates always seem more valuable when there are less of them.”

“Like bullets!”

Janna leveled an unimpressed look at Jinx. “Your guns are manifestations of the First Star’s power, Jinx. You don’t use bullets.”

Jinx scoffed. “That’s what you think.”

Lux watched the back and forth silently as her mind turned the new information over in her head. If all five of them were Star Guardians… that meant that Morgana had picked them out from the student body, albeit not perfectly. She couldn’t know who belonged to either team; she must have identified them in a different way.

Did they emit a unique type of energy? Was there a way to trace the First Star’s connection to them? Lux worried her lip as she tried to understand how Morgana had discovered their identities. Maybe she didn’t know that they were Star Guardians, just that they weren’t normal.

It’s not important, she decided. How Morgana did it meant little now that she’d done it. Lux could spend time considering the implications of their blessing being perceptible to others later. Right now, she had to worry about her and her team making it to later.

“Do you think we should use our powers?” Lux looked between Soraka and Janna.

Janna frowned. “Is it worth it?” she countered. “Our identities are more important than winning a high school competition.”

Lux shook her head. “It’s not about winning. You heard what Diana said. We might need to use our powers if we want to make it through the tournament.”

“Then we will,” Janna answered with calm confidence.

Lux felt her eyebrow raise at Janna’s easy response. She’d thought that the elder Star Guardian would have had more reservations. “Just like that?”

Janna’s lips quirked in amusement. “We’re Star Guardians,” she said. “We were never going to stay here for too long. Sooner or later, the First Star will call us elsewhere. Our identities can be lost and gained with little difficulty.”

“Oh.”

Why am I so stupid? When Janna said it like that, she made it sound so obvious. Lux had spent the past year obsessively worrying about drawing suspicion to herself and her team—and it didn’t even matter. Of course their names weren’t important. They didn’t have normal lives. If the entire world found out about who they were underneath their uniforms, it wouldn’t matter. Living a regular life as a high school student had only ever been a fantasy, one that Lux had cherished for every moment, but a fantasy nonetheless.

“Still,” Janna continued, rubbing the underside of her chin. “Perhaps the secret is one best kept hidden.”

“Why do you say that?”

Janna searched her face. “If this tournament truly is as dangerous as we’ve been encouraged to believe, it may benefit us to keep our true potential hidden. Once the other schools learn of our abilities, they will handle us much more seriously.”

Lux swallowed. Janna was right. As they were, the Durendal and Labrys contingents would be fine batting them around like playthings. They didn’t consider her and her team as actual contestants. If that changed… Lux shivered. She’d seen what some of these students could do if they felt threatened.

“Okay.” She nodded her assent and turned to Soraka. “Will that be a problem?” she asked. “Can you still perform without revealing your connection to the First Star?”

“I will be fine,” Soraka answered softly. “The First Star guides all of us, even when we do not seek it out for direction.”

“Aw, you guys are no fun,” Jinx whined from beside her. “I was looking forward to blowing everyone up…”

Lux patted her friend on the back, even as she knew how absurd it was to comfort the girl for something like this. “You don’t need your powers to do that, Jinx.”

“But I could have made it so much bigger!”

Her consoling became a little more wooden. “Yes, well, I think your explosions are already plenty big, Jinx.”

Jinx turned her head and smirked at Lux. “You would say that, wouldn’t you?”

“I am the one that always has to clean up after you,” Lux huffed.

Jinx waggled her eyebrows. “Maybe if you made the mess, I’d do the cleaning.”

“We both know that’s not true,” Lux laughed, giving Jinx’s shoulder a shove. “You’ve never cleaned a thing in your life.”

Sometimes, it felt like Jinx wouldn’t even clean herself if Lux didn’t make her. Her eyes traced her friend’s braided lengths of hair, imagining how dull it would be if Jinx didn’t have someone to remind her to care for herself.

“That’s not true,” Jinx protested. “I clean Baki and Boki all the time!”

“Baki and Boki are sentient familiars,” Lux countered. “And I’ve seen you ‘clean’ them. Don’t pretend that it’s anything other than dunking them into a tub of water.”

To say nothing of the anxiety that Lux experienced every time Jinx decided it was time to wash her familiars. She very much did not like having two entities capable of leveling buildings being forcibly doused in water like a pair of irascible cats. Lux could have sworn that she felt the house shake the last time Jinx decided to wash them.

“What else am I supposed to do?” Jinx asked, still smirking at her. “You won’t ever join me when I ask you to help.”

“Because the last—” and only “—time I did, your familiars turned the bath into a shower. For me!”

Jinx shrugged. “They wanted to see you get wet.”

“They’re as bad as you.”

Which made sense, considering they were bonded to Jinx’s soul—but still! One Jinx was almost more than Lux could handle. She didn’t need more of them in her life.

“What are you trying to say, that I wanted to get you wet?”

Lux crossed her arms and tried to look imposing. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

Jinx didn’t answer verbally, but her smirk grew into a full-blown grin and her eyes danced with unknown mischief. For whatever reason, Lux felt like she’d walked into a trap, but she couldn’t for the life of her understand what it could be.

“Ahem,” Janna coughed into her hand, her face strangely tinged. “As endearing as the two of you… bickering is, I fear that we a more pressing issue.”

“What could be more important than getting Lux wet?”

Lux slapped Jinx on the back of the head, though it did nothing to stop her sniggers. She turned to Janna. “Continue, please.”

Janna shifted in her seat. “While we previously could have attributed Morgana’s choice of candidates as a fluke, now that we are aware that she has, in fact, drafted a team entirely comprised of Star Guardians, I believe that we must contemplate the possibility that our principal is more than she seems.”

Lux dipped her head in acknowledgment, all the levity she’d built through Jinx’s antics fading away. “It is suspicious. Do you think she has any malicious intent?”

Janna took a moment to contemplate the thought, though by the time she spoke, she hadn’t come to a decision. “I am uncertain,” she said. “I am wary to suggest the worst from someone who has yet to display any ill-will towards us, but, if she truly chose us because she had knowledge of our allegiance to the First Star, the only reason that she would not speak to us directly about it would be if she had an ulterior motive.”

Lux glanced around the cafeteria, almost thinking that Morgana would have heard their conversation and was waiting to emerge from the shadows. “Do you think there’s a possibility that she doesn’t know?” Lux asked. “Or maybe that she detected something about us without recognizing what it was exactly?”

“A possibility,” Janna shrugged. “Especially considering the likelihood that the rest of Valoran High is mundane.” Her lips twisted in thought. “If she were able to perceive some sort of cosmic influence around us, we’d likely stand out like—”

“—Stars!” Jinx interrupted.

“Yes,” Janna drawled, rolling her eyes. “Thank you, Jinx.”

Jinx offered a jaunty salute, eliciting a shy giggle from Soraka. “No problem!”

Lux forced her smile down. “Do you think I should talk to her?” she asked Janna.

Janna chewed her lip, showing all the weight of choice that Lux felt inside herself. “She hasn’t proven hostile yet,” Janna ventured.

“Which isn’t to say that she won’t in the future.”

Janna tilted her head in acknowledgment. “Or she could genuinely be ignorant of our status.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Lux decided. “If for nothing else than to know why she chose the five of us.”

Lux wouldn’t go into the conversation revealing that they were Star Guardians. She’d leave Morgana to make that move; she’d let her principal give her explanation before casting judgment. Her reaction would depend on how Morgana answered.

Lux cast another look around the cafeteria. She hoped that Morgana wasn’t out to get them. She didn’t need to give the Battle Academies any more reason to hate her—and leveling the tournament grounds while dealing with a cosmic threat would undoubtedly garner undue attention to her and her team.

Chapter Text

Lux didn’t give herself time to reconsider. Rising from the table, she grabbed her empty tray and walked away from her team.

“You guys head back to the room,” she said before tossing a look over to where Fortune was still sitting among the Labrys students. She frowned. “And tell Fortune where I went… if she asks.”

There. That was polite enough, wasn’t it? She could stop worrying about the girl, now that she knew that Fortune could handle herself. Whoever Fortune chose to associate herself with was up to her. Just like it was her choice to leave the rest of the team.

“Do you want us to come with you?” Janna asked. She breezed beside her as they made to deposit their trays.

Lux shook her head. “Thanks, but it won’t be necessary. If Morgana is a threat, it would be better if we weren’t all in one place.”

Specifically, it would be best if they weren’t in the heart of her domain. Lux might not have been a specialist in runes, but she knew enough that she recognized the advantage Morgana would hold if they fought on her terms. Just as she knew that, if Morgana were expecting a confrontation, she would plan for a united attack. Teamwork was a trademark of the Star Guardians. Together, they were stronger. But being together also meant that they shared the danger. Lux wouldn’t lead her team into a trap.

Lux forced herself to remember that she didn’t have any evidence against Morgana. All she had was speculation. She pursed her lips in disapproval. I’m not going to judge someone just because I’m paranoid. Morgana’s been nothing but nice to us. She doesn’t deserve our suspicion.

Unless she really was a threat…

Lux shook her head. She had to stop thinking of everyone so negatively. It wasn’t how a Star Guardian was supposed to see the world.

“Don’t feel that you have to do this alone,” Janna cautioned, placing a hand on her shoulder. “We’re here for you. All of us.”

Lux didn’t have the heart to correct her. She smiled gratefully. “If I need you, you’ll know.”

“That isn’t as comforting as you presume.”

She supposed it wasn’t. Janna sighed. “Very well. If you feel that it would be best to talk to Morgana alone, then I will accept your decision.” Janna smiled coyly at her. “You haven’t led us astray yet, Lux.”

Lux knew that it was only a matter of time and, as she stared up at Janna, she wondered how her friend could be so ignorant to how far out of her depth Lux was. Frankly, it was a miracle they’d lasted this long without her getting someone on her team hurt. Janna squeezed her shoulder a final time before she turned and made her way back to where Jinx and Soraka were sitting. Lux watched her go. She wished that she could be a fraction as competent as Janna looked.

She released a breath and forced her feet to take her toward the section of the castle reserved for each school’s administrators. The dark brick of the walls, covered only scantly by plaques and banners of previous tournament winners, made the corridor seem darker than it should have been, the dying evening light failing to pierce the shadowed alcoves and ridges. Lux shuddered and pressed forward, her every step sending echoes down the vacant halls. Her mind was playing tricks on her. Nothing was wrong here.

So what if it’s dark? she asked herself. I’m a Star Guardian. I was meant to be surrounded by darkness. Without darkness, there is no light.

Nonetheless, Lux was grateful to turn the corner and see her principal’s office come into view, a band of light slipping out from underneath the door. The final steps to the door passed by in a rush so quick that Lux blinked, suddenly finding herself in front of the door. She froze.

Should I really be doing this?

Glancing over her shoulder, she considered retreating back to her room. The others would understand—and they were a team, anyway. Lux shifted her feet with indecision.

She told Janna that she had this handled. Why was she suddenly so nervous?

Because you’re a coward, a voice whispered in her head. Because the only thing you’re good at is running away—at leaving others to clean up your messes.

“I’m not,” Lux mumbled. She clenched her jaw and glared at the door. “I’m not a coward.”

She couldn’t afford to be a weakling. Her team needed her. They had to rely on her. She could not let them down. Because, if she did, if her team realized how useless she was, they’d leave her. They’d realize that she was dragging them down and, once they cut her free, Lux knew that she’d never stop falling. Her friends were the only things keeping her aloft.

Lux knocked on the door.

For an impossibly long minute, she waited for a response, almost hoping that none would come, that Morgana had forgotten to turn the light off, or that she simply decided not to answer her door.

The door swung open just as her nerve was about to abandon her. Morgana peered down at her curiously.

“Luxanna,” she greeted, putting a smile on her face. “What do I owe the pleasure?”

Lux swallowed. “May I come in?”

“Of course.”

Morgana stepped aside and waved Lux into the room, closing the door behind her. Lux stiffened as the door clicked shut. She tried not to let Morgana see the sudden tenseness in her shoulders, hastily pacing towards one of the chairs across from her desk. She felt that the deception was futile. Morgana’s eyes burned into her back, and Lux felt that she was a mouse scurrying for cover.

Morgana glided around the desk and gracefully seated herself on her chair with such stark contrast to Lux that the girl had to duck her head to hide her blush.

Papers were strewn across Morgana’s desk, and it was obvious that Lux had interrupted her work. Her eyes scanned the pages, wondering what could take up so much of her principal’s time. She’d forgotten that, while she and the rest of her team were exempt from schoolwork, Morgana had no such reprieve. She didn’t get to drop her other duties in favor of focusing on the tournament. Morgana must have noticed that she was prying because the principal swept the papers to the side and placed her elbows on her desk, resting her chin in her hands as she looked at Lux.

“Is something wrong?” Morgana asked with a note of concern.

Lux shook her head and forced herself to meet Morgana’s gaze. “No, everything’s fine,” she answered.

Morgana waited for her to continue. Lux opened her mouth to speak, but the words wouldn’t come out. She didn’t know what to say. Everything suddenly felt so real, now that she was staring into Morgana’s bright eyes.

The principal’s lips quirked upward. “I take it that this is not a social visit,” she said. “Because, as much as I would enjoy your presence, I’m sure that you’ve better things to do than sit alone in my office.” She leaned closer to whisper conspiratorially. “Most people would call that detention, you know.”

Lux tried to smile at the jibe, and she did feel an ounce of tension leave her. It was only a drop of the ocean still hanging from her, but she felt it regardless. “I, uhm, I have a few questions,” Lux said, stuttering as she tried to decide what to say. “About why we were chosen for this tournament.”

Morgana’s eyes flashed with amusement. “And it took you this long to ask?”

Lux shrugged. “We weren’t quite thinking about it at the beginning. The shock of realizing what the tournament entailed took most of our attention.”

“I imagine it would.” Morgana nodded in understanding. “Yes, it must have been quite a shock when the rest of your team discovered the existence of the Battle Academies.”

“You’re familiar with them.”

Morgana hummed. “I’ve encountered them before.” She winked at Lux. “You might not be able to tell, but I am quite experienced.”

She was right. As Lux looked at her, she wondered just how old the principal was. Despite the white hair and glasses, she appeared young. Her suit jacket fit her frame well, displaying the woman’s curves for everyone to see. Her face didn’t have any stress lines or creases. It was an expanse of smooth, unblemished skin. The only thing that indicated Morgana’s true age were her eyes, two lively orbs that pooled with mature experience.

Lux swallowed, pulling her thoughts away from her principal’s eyes. “Did you graduate from one of them?”

She almost would have had to, Lux thought. The Battle Academies were exclusionary to a fault. They almost never let people from outside their ranks associate with them.

Morgana’s laugh shattered her conviction. “Heaven’s no,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “I didn’t have anywhere near as exciting of an adolescence.”

Alarm bells were sounding in Lux’s head. First, because it meant that Morgana had something else—something valuable enough to be worth the Battle Academies’ attention—and second because she called a high school experience based around violence exciting.

She swallowed thickly. “Why did you choose us?”

Morgana raised an eyebrow. “I thought I already told you when Sarah asked. You were the most qualified candidates.”

“What makes us qualified?” Lux pressed, leaning forward to hide how her hands were clenching her skirt. It would take an instant to summon her staff. Between two blinks of an eye, she could erect a barrier between herself and Morgana.

If Morgana noticed her sudden stiffness, she didn’t comment on it. Waving a hand airily in front of her, she said, “the five of you all possess great talent. I’ve seen it inside each and every one of you.” Morgana smiled warmly at her. “In fact, I think that, if the five of you apply yourselves, Valoran High could win the entire tournament.”

Lux nearly summoned her staff at that instant. “That’s absurd. The Battle Academies have been training for this their entire lives. How can we compete against that?”

“Doesn’t that mean that you’ve also been training for this your entire life?”

“I dropped out of my Battle Academy,” Lux returned. “I was never good at these kinds of competitions.”

Morgana was unconvinced. “You underestimate your ability.”

“You overestimate it.”

“No, I don’t think I do,” Morgana answered, firmly meeting Lux’s gaze. “You have more potential than almost anyone I’ve ever seen, Luxanna. Nothing is too high for you to reach.”

Lux cast her eyes to the desk, unable to keep staring into Morgana’s eyes as she asserted her estimation of Lux’s skills. “What do you know about my potential?” she mumbled, taking a hand from her skirt to rub it along her arm.

“You’d be amazed at what others can perceive when they want you to succeed, Luxanna.”

Lux heard the words, but she wasn’t listening to them. As she stared at the desk, her eye traced over an errant slip of paper as it searched for any reason not to turn back towards Morgana and the confidence in her face.

At first, the lines were only something to keep her eyes occupied. Yet, as they slid along the ink, her mind began to recognize the familiarity.

Morgana noticed what was distracting Lux. “Oh dear,” she said, sweeping the paper off the desk and laughing slightly. “How did that get there, I wonder.”

Lux slowly lifted her eyes from the desk. “That was a runic array.”

Morgana knew magic or, at the very least, she could understand it. Lux shuttered her expression, abruptly aware that she’d let herself get distracted. She hadn’t come here to get motivation from Morgana. She came because she needed answers.

Being capable of magic wasn’t too uncommon in itself. The real issue came with honing that ability and building its strength to the point that it could actually achieve what you wanted from it. If it were completely innate and unique to each individual, the Battle Academies would have never created a course designed to weaponize the use of magic. But most people never realized their magical potential and, in neglecting to nurture it, let their bodies forget that it was capable of magic in the first place. Those who did recognize the power they held at their fingertips were not usually content to let the magic rest within them. All too often, they wielded it to help them achieve their goals in life. Goals that seldom considered others and their well-being.

Morgana didn’t appear to notice the change in Lux’s demeanor. Still laughing, she waved a hand in the air—and this time, Lux watched it carefully, looking for any sign that Morgana was about to cast something. She didn’t, continuing to talk as if nothing had changed.

“I’ve always been interested in magic,” Morgana said.

“What kind?” Lux heard herself ask, distantly aware that she was continuing the conversation.

“Whatever catches my interest.” Morgana shrugged and braced her cheek over her hand, the picture of casual indifference. “Though I admit to being particularly drawn to rituals and runes.” The smile she gave Lux rose the hairs along the back of her neck. “There’s something so very addicting about manipulating reality to suit your needs, isn’t there?”

“That is certainly a way to describe it.” Not one that Lux would ever use.

Morgana laughed her statement away, clearly amused by Lux’s deadpan.

Lux would have felt patronized if not for the adrenaline pumping through her. Something was definitely off about Morgana, lurking behind her words, just out of her reach. Lux almost would have preferred for Morgana to be a villain if only so she could throw off her anticipation over if her principal was a threat to her and her team.

Morgana’s completely carefree attitude was the only thing that kept Lux from firing the first shot.

Lux leaned forward in her seat. “May I ask you a question?”

She could see the delight in Morgana’s eyes as the older woman copied her posture, leaning forward so they were both bent over the desk. “I’ll make you a deal,” Morgana posed, smirking. “I’ll answer a question of yours if you answer one of mine.”

Lux blinked. “Is that appropriate?”

It didn’t seem like her principal should be acting like this. She was an educator, Lux’s superior. The two of them weren’t friends. They weren’t supposed to share personal details with one another.

Except, that’s exactly what you want to know from her.

Lux grit her teeth, careful not to let Morgana see the action. That was different. She’s doing this because she’s a Star Guardian, not a student.

Lux ignored the voice, sounding suspiciously like Jinx, that told her she couldn’t pick and choose when to make that distinction whenever it favored her.

Morgana winked at her. “It’ll be off the record.”

That did nothing to boost her confidence.

Morgana finally noticed her discomfort. “Why don’t you go first?” she asked, leaning back in her chair, and resuming a more professional posture. “Would that be better?”

Lux bit her lip. It still felt like a trap, even if only a social one. But still, Morgana was offering to be forthcoming with information. Lux couldn’t turn that down.

“Did you use magic to choose us for this tournament?”

She watched Morgana’s face for anything that might indicate a reaction. The principal only smiled gently at her. “I did,” she confirmed.

Lux’s brows pressed together. She opened her mouth to ask for more information—but Morgana raised a hand in front of her and, with a snap of her fingers, a vortex of magic blossomed into being over the palm of her hand.

The words died in Lux’s throat. She stared at the display of magic, watching the millions of specks sparkle like an evening sky as they revolved in circles. The magic was innately familiar, its feel unmistakable to someone who’d felt something so similar running through their own veins.

“You’re a Star Guardian, too.”

Morgana raised an eyebrow. “Too?”

Lux cringed, her face flushing in embarrassment. All the effort to keep her identity hidden and she threw it away with a slip of the tongue.

It could be worse, she consoled herself, glancing back to the magic dancing in Morgana’s palm. At least it was another Star Guardian.

That was twice now that she’d been caught off-guard by the appearance of a Star Guardian. Objectively, Lux knew that there were hundreds of Star Guardians across the cosmos, but she’d never considered that she’d meet them outside of battle. Much less that she’d find a handful of them within the same school as her.

Morgana clenched her hand, and the nebula of glittering magic dissolved into obscurity. The rest of the spectral magic faded as she blew a breath over it, snuffing the cloud out as if it were nothing but a wisp of smoke.

“I suppose I don’t need to ask my question, now,” she said, crossing her arms and smirking at Lux. “Shall I do it for posterity, anyways?”

“What?”

“My question, dear.” Morgana repeated slowly. “I was going to ask if you were a Star Guardian, yourself. But it seems that your reaction’s ruined my fun.”

“You already knew I was a Star Guardian.”

“I suspected it,” Morgana corrected.

Lux felt that Morgana was more knowledgeable than she let on. Maybe if she’d only managed to select one or two Star Guardians for this tournament, Lux would have believed her. That wasn’t the case. She couldn’t have drafted an entire team without having a concrete way of identifying them.

She frowned. “Why didn’t you tell us earlier? Why keep yourself hidden if you knew—”

“—suspected—”

“—that we were Star Guardians?”

Morgana tapped her fingers against her desk. “You’re asking the wrong question, I think,” she said, tilting her head to study Lux. “Instead of asking why I hadn’t revealed myself, ask yourself why I should have.”

Her reply was instinctive. “We’re Star Guardians. We help each other.”

Morgana raised an eyebrow. “You think my presence would have helped you and your team? You don’t need my help, Luxanna. You’re already perfectly capable of leading your team to success.”

She wasn’t. Lux knew that, even if nobody else did. She didn’t know why the First Star had decided to crown her as the team’s leader, or why nobody else felt the same uneasiness she felt whenever she had to take charge. Only Janna knew about her struggle to meet expectations and, even then, Lux had always kept the worst of it from her. It was too embarrassing to confess to the older girl how inadequate Lux felt. She didn’t need Janna to see her as a baby, utterly incapable of handling herself.

But if Morgana had stepped in… if she had chosen to organize the Star Guardians and provide the leadership that Lux abundantly lacked, everything would have been so much easier. She wouldn’t have to worry about messing everything up. She could just follow orders, like everyone else.

“You don’t need an old hand like me interfering with your team,” Morgana continued. “Too many cooks in the kitchen, and all that.”

“My team needs an experienced leader,” Lux countered. “Janna’s great, but the rest of us are still learning the ropes.”

“An experience you would never fully appreciate if you had someone do the work for you.” Morgana angled her head so that she was peering over the bridge of her glasses at Lux. “Growth doesn’t happen without a little adversity, Luxanna. You have to learn that adaptation is a cornerstone to prosperity. Every generation of Star Guardians is unique, and relying on past examples would only lead to stagnation and atrophy.”

Better stagnation than regression, Lux thought. All it took was one failure to protect the galaxy to lose a part of it forever. Lux wasn’t prepared to wager something like that on the competence of her team—not because she didn’t trust them, but because she didn’t trust herself.

She eyed Morgana, wondering how old she had to be, how much she had to have seen throughout her life. The blessing of the First Star extended its guardians’ lifespans dramatically. Even Janna, who was at least a century old, could still pass for a high school student, if only barely. Morgana was a fully matured adult. Unless she received the First Star’s blessing later in life, it could only mean that she had centuries, maybe even millennia, more experience than Lux.

“Why a principal?” Lux blurted before she could stop herself. Her cheeks flushed immediately as she registered the incredulity in her own tone.

Morgana chuckled. “When you reach a certain age,” she began, “it becomes more fun to watch the antics than partake in them.” When she smiled, Lux felt that the amusement was directed at her as much as the question. “Feeling silly and naïve is a blessing that fades with time, Luxanna. Once you lose it, the only way you can see it again is in the faces of others.”

Despite the levity, Lux heard the edge in Morgana’s words. She lived vicariously through others because she’d lost the ability to appreciate her own experiences. A column of shame shot through her for having considered it better for Morgana to step in and guide Lux and her team. The woman had done her duty; she’d made her sacrifices in the name of the First Star. It didn’t escape Lux’s attention that Morgana never mentioned any teammates of her own.

“Does the First Star still call to you?” she asked. Janna had mentioned once when she’d first arrived to guide Lux that the First Star had led her to Valoran High, that it had sent her to complete Lux’s team. Once Lux had gotten to know the girl better, she’d also learned that, before receiving the call, Janna had been drifting through the galaxy, aimless and without direction. She didn’t say that the First Star had abandoned her, but the way Janna’s face had darkened told Lux that not everything during that time had been pleasant.

Morgana sighed, her entire posture seeming to bend. “The First Star never stops whispering to you,” she answered wearily. “At times, it may quiet itself, but it is always there, watching you. We can never escape its judgment.”

Lux took in her principal’s form, for once not holding any of the levity she’d come to associate with Morgana. “Is that why you chose us?” she asked. “Because the First Star told you to?”

She couldn’t understand why that would be the case. The Battle Academies weren’t cosmic threats. Even if they did promote violence and, generally, were bad for Runeterra, they were localized to a single world. The First Star didn’t worry about terrestrial threats; the Star Guardians defended the galaxy from cosmic terrors.

As she spoke, Lux already thought that she knew the answer, especially considering the team’s composition. If the First Star had wanted a team to participate in this tournament, it wouldn’t have split the teams in half. Either her team or Fortune’s would have been chosen. And they would have known it, too. Morgana had said it herself; the First Star was always whispering to its guardians. They wouldn’t have gone into this tournament without an indication of what the First Star wanted them to do.

A glimpse of humor returned to Morgana’s eyes. “Maybe I wanted to try my hand at team-making for once. I’ve certainly got the experience to know what to look for.”

Lux disagreed with that, and Morgana would have too, if she’d been paying attention to the team she’d made. Perhaps if she’d only chosen Soraka from the other team—or if she’d kept Fortune and Ahri together—the Star Guardians would have been able to act as a cohesive unit. But she hadn’t. Not only that, she’d left the two youngest members of Lux’s team alone in Valoran, with only the First Star to guide them. She didn’t know about Fortune’s team, but for Lux, it was a recipe for disaster.

“Is this all a whim?” Lux asked as anger began to bubble inside her. “Did you tear our teams apart just so you could satisfy your own amusement?”

Didn’t Morgana know how much this could hurt their teams? What if something happened in Valoran City? What if Lulu or Poppy got hurt? Did Morgana even know what she was exposing the team she chose for the tournament to? Did she know what she was making Lux confront?

Did Morgana take any of this seriously, or did she just see a game to amuse herself with?

Morgana frowned. “I’d have thought that you’d appreciate being able to vindicate yourself in front of your former school.”

“It’s not about me,” Lux seethed. “When we swear ourselves to the First Star, we give up our own wants for the betterment of the galaxy. We don’t abuse our power by shoving it in other’s faces.”

A puff of air escaped Morgana, somewhere between a sigh and a chuckle. “You’re so proper,” she mused. “The First Star blessed you for a reason, Luxanna. If it thought you were going to abuse its power, it wouldn’t have chosen you in the first place.”

Lux was beginning to realize why Morgana might have needed to take matters into her own hands when dealing with other Star Guardians. There may have been a valid reason the First Star hadn’t seen fit to send her to another team.

“Why did you even want us to compete in this tournament?” Lux huffed as she crossed her arms over her chest. She was done feeling anxious that Morgana might attack her. All that remained was anger at being pulled into this mess.

“To test you, of course.” Morgana’s smirk returned. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a newly formed team of Star Guardians, much less two. I want to see what the newest generation is capable of. A challenge like the Battle Academies was too perfect an opportunity to pass up.”

Lux grit her teeth. “Our identities are supposed to be secret. What do you think would happen if the people in charge of the Battle Academies learned who we were?”

Lux could only imagine the lengths they’d go to take that power for themselves. The Battle Academies were always looking for an advantage against their competitors. Her parents had been obsessed with the fabled God-Weapons that each of the schools derived their names from. If an even greater power came into their sights… Lux shuddered. Nowhere on Runeterra would be safe.

“You seem to think that they’re still unaware of the fact that Star Guardians exist,” Morgana answered. Her eyes dipped away from Lux as she examined her nails. “We’ve become so popular that there’s a comic series dedicated to our exploits, for Heaven’s sake. Do truly believe that not a single Star Guardian’s fallen under their radar throughout the centuries?” She looked up at Lux. “Or that they don’t have access to other forms of magic already—forms that aren’t bound by an unreachable cosmic entity?”

Lux’s hands clenched the fabric of her skirt as she squeezed them into her lap. “That’s no reason to flaunt ourselves in front of them. And for what? Just so we can prove that we’re more powerful than them?” She shook her head. “I don’t need to prove anything to them.”

“What about the prize?” Morgana asked slyly, her eyes glued to Lux’s face. “Do you even know what the victors of the tournament get?”

“I don’t care,” Lux huffed, crossing her arms over her chest. “Money, fame, inventions. None of that matters to me. It shouldn’t matter to any of us.”

“Oh, Lux,” Morgana cooed, a soft chuckle purring at the back of her throat. “The Battle Academies aren’t supplying the prize—there’d be no incentive for them to compete against one another if that were the case. No, what’s offered to the victors is so much more than what you’re thinking.”

Morgana placed her hand on the desk, palm up and fingers splayed as inky wreaths of magic twisted into shape. “One wish,” she murmured, watching the magic twist and writhe like flames in a breeze. “Anything you want, Luxanna. All you need to do is take it.”

“You expect me to believe that?” Lux scoffed. “Power like that doesn’t exist. It’s a thing for fables and legends.”

Despite herself, she felt a stab of disappointment for Morgana. She couldn’t have been gullible enough to have been tricked into the promise of untold power. She had to have lived for long enough to realize a blatant hoax like that, had to have served under the First Star’s auspice for long enough to realize the absurdity that such a thing could exist.

That Morgana didn’t grow defensive worried Lux. Steepling her fingers together, Morgana stared at her, blatantly patronizing Lux with her silence. “Fables and legends,” Morgana whispered as if she were musing over the veracity of the words. “Yes, that would describe them quite well.”

Lux could almost feel the sharpness of Morgana’s smile along her skin as her teeth pulled back. “Tell me Luxanna, are you familiar with the myth of the Coven?”

Chapter Text

Lux reared back as if the words had physically struck her.

“You are,” Morgana confirmed, watching her carefully. “I’d hoped so—though it appears that you’re perhaps too knowledgeable about them.”

Lux forced herself to recover. “There’s no such thing,” she denied.

Morgana raised an eyebrow. “No such thing as the Coven or thinking you know more than you do about them?”

Whether it was true or not, Lux wanted the answer to be both. The Coven was, according to legend, an ancient group of immortal witches whose seances were so powerful that they became akin to gods. In particular myths, they were more than gods, capable of harnessing deific power as they appropriated it for their own uses. The only thing that kept them as a myth was that nobody had found evidence of their existence outside of the stories people told. Nobody knew the identities of anyone belonging to the Coven, or even who they may have been. Even the purported sightings of coven witches varied their descriptions drastically.

The stories, though. They offered possibilities of what happened to the ruined structures dotting the countryside, of moments in history where fate appeared to frown on the losers—or when the victors inexplicably overcame the odds to claim success.

Lux didn’t know a single happy myth about the Coven. There were dozens. Enough to fill entire books, even. The worst of the stories described how a group of purists sought to quell rumors of witches living inside their forest. The hunters had proclaimed to their entire village that they would oust the witches from their home and return the community to its prior glory.

The morning after they began their expedition, the rest of their village found their bodies swaying from the trees as the forest’s wildlife ate from their corpses. The men hadn’t made it fifty feet into the forest before their footsteps stopped. The same forest that everyone in the village had spent their lives navigating became impenetrable, changing overnight to such an extent that the village had to relearn where they were situated in the broader world.

Not all their myths were as horrifying as that. Though, of the Coven’s more positive stories, the ones that tell of ambitious explorers in search of untold power and the adventurers received the power they’d sought, the price of their glory always hung around their necks, waiting to wrench the foolish aspirants below. The Coven always demanded its due. It required a sacrifice.

“The Coven cannot be associated with this tournament,” Lux said. It went against everything she knew about the mysterious group. They did not bother themselves with mortal activities. They did not invest into the inventions of mankind. The Coven belonged to myth. To hear Morgana claim their existence so openly was anathema to the concept of the Coven itself. Lux watched the principal with wary eyes. Not even a millennia-year-old Star Guardian should be able to speak about the Coven so casually. Not if she knew as much of their history as Morgana implied.

Lux continued, “The Battle Academies would never sanction it. They might crave the power offered by the Coven—if they even exist—but the Battle Academies don’t rely on those types of relationships. They would never be satisfied if someone else had access to that power.”

The Battle Academies were structured, they wanted tangible roads to success. The Coven did not follow that example—and the Academies knew that. They knew that they could never replicate the power of the Coven. The talents bestowed by the mythical witches were just that: bestowed. It wasn’t something that could be integrated into an academic setting or taught to future generations.

“Desires are powerful things,” Morgana countered easily. “You’d be amazed at what people would offer to attain those.”

Lux scowled.

Morgana laughed. “It’s a competition, dear. The entire purpose of it revolves around the prize being worth the effort—if the Battle Academies could come anywhere close to the feats of magic available to the Coven, they’d have no reason to dedicate as much effort as they do in their attempts to win.”

Lux rose from her seat. She kept her eyes on Morgana. The woman genuinely believed that the Coven was behind this. Worse, she didn’t appear at all bothered by that fact. Lux refused to believe that Morgana was ignorant to the myths.

“I’m going to leave,” she announced, stepping away from the desk. “Thank you for the conversation, principal.”

Morgana’s eyes followed her as she turned and stepped towards the door. Lux could feel their heat burning into the back of her head and she knew that, if she turned around, Morgana’s lips would be curled in amusement. She didn’t give Morgana the satisfaction, even as her spine stiffened under her gaze. She forced her steps not to falter or break into a sprint. Grabbing the handle to the door, Lux turned the knob and—

“One more thing, before you go,” Morgana spoke up, stilling Lux’s hand. She continued as if there was never any doubt that Lux was going to leave. “You’re more than a Star Guardian, Lux. I’ve seen the magic swirling inside you. If you need help with anything, either as a Star Guardian, a student, or a mage, my door is always open for you.”

Lux squeezed her fingers around the doorknob, hoping that Morgana couldn’t see the tremors running down her arm. “Thank you,” she managed to say. “I’ll… I’ll keep that in mind.”

She jerked the door open and stumbled into the corridor. At this point, she didn’t care if she broke it, so long as she could get out of the room. Nobody was supposed to know about that magic. Durendal didn’t even know. If they did, they never would have let Lux leave, not when she’d been mutated by a God-Weapon. She was an asset, the result of her parents’ experiments.

They’d never wanted a daughter; they wanted a project. Lux knew that ever since she’d been old enough to recognize the emotion in her adoptive parents’ eyes. They didn’t want a daughter, and they didn’t treat her like one.

She still remembered the looks on their faces when she asked what the power inside of her was. When she was young, they’d devoted their studies to transplanting a fragment of the God-Weapon into her. Lux always knew that her magic wasn’t entirely her own and, even as the separation between her magic and the fragment began to merge, she never forgot what she carried inside her.

Her parents hadn’t cared for the pains that came from inserting a mythic artifact into a little girl. They were immune to her tears or her pleas for a break. She wasn’t their daughter; she was their project. A little discomfort was to be expected, they had assuaged. Lux was still young. She’d be able to integrate the fragment into her body before reaching maturation. And, if there was some pain, it hardly mattered. Lux was going to be the next weapon in Durendal’s arsenal, the literal sword in its sheath. So long as she wasn’t inhibited from wielding the magic of the God-Weapon, the pain was negligible, not even worth noting.

Lux wondered if they’d ever told Durendal of their success or if they were waiting for a guaranteed success. They couldn’t have told Durendal, Lux told herself. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to leave, much less stay in Valoran City for as long as I had.

If nothing else, Durendal would have wanted her back just so they could rip the fragment out of her. Lux shuddered and quickened her steps through the corridor. It hadn’t been easy adapting to life in Valoran City. Constantly looking over her shoulder or scanning the faces of everyone who walked past her in paranoia had worn on her. Some days, she couldn’t even sit still in her classes, constantly looking out the rooms’ windows with the belief that airships would begin to crest the horizon at any moment, that Durendal was coming for her.

Lux’s step faltered.

Morgana was a Star Guardian. She would have seen through Lux’s attempts at forging her documents. Yet, she’d accepted Lux’s enrolment regardless.

She knew, Lux realized. She always knew exactly who and what I was.

Morgana had been watching her before Lux had even received the First Star’s blessing. She’d been on the older woman’s radar ever since her enrollment papers passed over her desk.

I never should have used my real last name. Lux kicked herself. But why would she suspect that anyone in Valoran City would have known her parents’ name? The Crownguards weren’t public figures. They—and their patrons—made every effort to keep their names out of the public’s eye.

A girlish giggle brought Lux out of her thoughts. Turning the final corner en route to her room, Lux almost ran into two figures who’d been leaning against the wall.

Fortune’s eyes flicked over the boy’s shoulder as Lux came into view, darting back without missing a beat. “That’s funny, Wukong,” she smiled at him and leaned closer. “Labrys sounds like so much fun.”

Wukong shrugged abashedly. “I don’t know about that. It’s got its ups and downs, just like any other school.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Fortune simpered. She reached her arm out and squeezed Wukong’s bicep. “Look at you! I wish they made boys like you over at Valoran.”

He preened under her attention, smiling, and shuffling his feet. “Heh, well, I guess being part of the Battle Club does have some benefits.”

Fortune’s eyes danced with glee, though Lux doubted that Wukong was paying attention to that. Not when Fortune had left the top few buttons of her uniform undone.

“You’re in the Battle Club?” she asked. She tilted her body forward. “You must be really good then if Labrys chose you to represent them for the tournament.”

Wukong blushed to the tips of his ears. “I’m not actually participating in the tournament—I mean, I did make the traveling team, but I’m just a sub. Leona’s the school’s real representative.”

Fortune stroked her fingers along Wukong’s arm, easily ignoring how the flustered boy had begun to stammer. “That still makes you the second-best in the whole school though, right?”

“I wish,” Wukong answered. With effort, he inclined his head to look at Fortune’s face. “Labrys is pretty famous for its fighters. Swain, our headmaster, didn’t even bring anyone from the Sorcery club because he thought we’d be better off without them. Or that’s what Leona said, at least.”

“I’ve heard a lot about Leona,” Fortune mused. Her full lips pulled into a perfect smile. “Though, I think that you’re much more interesting.”

Lux had heard enough. Scowling, she stomped past the two of them, ignoring the way that Wukong startled at her sudden appearance. If Fortune wanted to spend her time flirting with the other teams, Lux wouldn’t stop her. Fortune could handle herself. She could make her own decisions and, if she didn’t want to be a part of their team, she was free to leave.

It’s better like this, anyway, Lux seethed. If Fortune’s off gossiping with whoever will listen, I’d just as soon not tell her anything important. Who knows what she’ll slip to the others?

Having seen Fortune talking with Katarina earlier that day, she already knew that Fortune wouldn’t mind a little viciousness in her conversation. She wouldn’t hesitate to demean Lux, nor would she object to Katarina doing the same. Lux didn’t care about that. What she cared about was that, if Fortune felt it was acceptable to ridicule her, it meant that she wouldn’t have any issue doing it to the rest of her team.

“Lux,” Janna greeted her as she closed the door behind her. “You’re back.” Janna’s brow furrowed as she noticed the scowl on her face. “Is everything alright?” she asked. “What happened?”

“It’s nothing,” Lux shook her head and forced her expression into something more neutral. She wouldn’t be like Fortune, complaining to others about her own teammates.

“Are you sure?”

Jinx slung an arm around her as she fell into the seat of the couch beside her. “Tell us what happened,” she urged, almost crawling onto Lux’s body in her eagerness. “What did the principal tell you?”

Oh, right. There was that, as well.

Of course they’d be interested in that, Lux scolded herself. Nobody cares if your feelings got a little hurt. Stop throwing a tantrum and grow up.

“Actually, yeah. There is something I have to tell you guys,” she breathed, banishing all thoughts of Fortune from her mind. She looked at Janna. “Our principal is a Star Guardian.”

Janna glanced at Soraka, who shook her head in the negative. “Truly?”

Lux nodded, also looking at Soraka. “You couldn’t tell?” she asked.

“No.” Soraka frowned and closed her eyes in concentration. “Even now, the stars refuse to speak of her.”

Lux nibbled her lip. “Is that usual?”

“Perhaps Morgana has learned a better way to conceal her identity,” Janna offered.

Lux was unconvinced. “From the First Star itself?”

“What’s the big deal?” Jinx asked, grabbing Lux’s lower lip, and pulling it from between her teeth. “Everyone wants a bit of privacy every now and then.”

Lux pried Jinx’s fingers off her lip and glared at the girl, not that it affected Jinx in any manner. If anything, her smile grew under Lux’s glower. “Privacy from the First Star?”

Jinx shrugged. “Why not? I wouldn’t want anybody watching me all the time. Can you imagine how awkward that would be? A girl needs to have a break every once in a while.”

That was not at all comforting to Lux. Whenever Jinx went on break, she inevitably returned with a new creation capable of leveling city blocks—something that could have been taken care of if someone had been paying attention to her actions.

“At the very least,” Janna imposed herself before Lux could descend into a squabble with Jinx. “We can put aside our concern of Morgana knowing our identities. If she shares in the First Star’s embrace, then we have nothing to worry about from her.”

Janna must have seen the discomfort on her face because her pursed lips pulled into a frown. “You believe that is not the case?”

“It’s just…” Lux thought of how to phrase what she wanted to say. “Something seems off about her.”

Janna’s eyes flashed with an unknown emotion. “But you saw her magic, correct? She is a Star Guardian?”

“I saw her magic,” Lux confirmed. “It felt just like our own.”

“It wasn’t tainted?”

“Tainted?” Lux asked. “What do you mean?”

“Did it feel natural?” Janna supplied. “Or was it corrosive? Did her magic seem abnormal or contorted?”

“No,” she answered, thinking back to the way Morgana had weaved the magic between her fingers. “It wasn’t as iridescent as ours, but I never felt that it was unusual.”

Lux’s real concern was Morgana herself. She knew that it wasn’t the magic that was the issue, but the person wielding it. Yet, considering that the First Star personally chose its guardians, Lux knew that, despite her anxiety, Morgana had to be a decent person. She’d have never received the First Star’s blessing if she didn’t deserve it. Nor would the First Star have allowed her to continue using its power if Morgana ever abused it.

Janna’s shoulders rose with her next breath, and her entire face appeared to loosen, losing the tiny marks of concern that had begun to appear in her expression. “That is fine,” she said. “Do not worry about the hue that the First Star’s magic takes. I was once, a long time ago, on a team with another guardian whose magic was such a dark shade of violet that it bordered on black.”

“What I’m hearing,” Jinx said, again inserting herself into the conversation. “Is that, since our principal can go about using her magic, we’re totally allowed to use our own, too!”

“Morgana used her magic to conceal herself,” Lux firmly reminded her.

Jinx, unfortunately, did not take that as an indication to stop. “So, as long as I don’t get caught, everything’s fine?”

Gods and Aspects help her. Lux pinched her nose between her fingers. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Did she say we couldn’t use our powers?”

No. She’d said the opposite, actually. Morgana wanted them to win the tournament.

“Aha!” Jinx exclaimed, smirking at Lux. “See? There aren’t any rules against it.”

“It’s dangerous,” Lux cautioned. She had to stop Jinx before she got too much momentum. Looking at Janna, she tried to get the older girl to help. “We’d be better off if we keep our identities a secret. Not only for after the tournament but so that the other schools can’t prepare for us ahead of time.”

“Bah!” Jinx waved a hand in front of her as if to physically swat away Lux’s words. “What’s the point of having the power to blow something up if we can’t use it?”

“Would you rather show off your magical power or actually hit them with it?” Lux countered, hoping to utilize some of Jinx’s own twisted logic against her. “Because, if they know what you’re capable of, they’ll never let you pull the trigger.”

Especially the assassins. Lux pressed her lips together and forced her expression solid. She didn’t know how Jinx would be able to compete in that event without revealing her powers—and even then, it might not be enough. When Lux had last seen Katarina in action, she’d moved too fast for Lux to track. That was before she became a Star Guardian, but it was also over a year ago, now. Katarina wouldn’t have slowed down since then and neither could Lux hope that the Labrys assassin be much slower. In contrast, Jinx relied on Baki and Boki to fire missiles at her opponents. She played a dangerous game where, if her target got too close, Jinx risked blowing herself up with her own rockets. That made the assassination event a race on two fronts. Jinx would have to be the first one to strike and she’d have to manage it before either of her opponents could pull her into the blast zone.

Either of her opponents. Jinx would be fighting two assassins. She’d have to make two shots. The only way Jinx would be able to pull that off would be if they attacked each other first and the only way they’d do that was if they knew that Jinx didn’t pose a threat to them. Neither of them would want to target Jinx first. It would leave them open to their true competition’s attack. But if they knew what Jinx was capable of… Lux didn’t doubt that either of them would make an error in prioritizing their threats.

“You think I need triggers to make things explode?” Jinx asked though she seemed to sense Lux’s nervousness because her smile softened and she pulled Lux further into her, squeezing the outside of her shoulder. “But you’re right,” she said. “It is always more fun when we can take people by surprise. Their reactions are always worth it.”

That wasn’t exactly the point that Lux was trying to make, but it was as good as she’d get when dealing with Jinx. “Thank you,” she said, returning Jinx’s smile. Reaching over, she grabbed Jinx’s free hand and intertwined their fingers. “I promise, you can make the biggest explosion you want when your turn comes, Jinx. Just make it out safely. That’s all I want.”

“I won’t let you down.” Jinx winked. “I won’t be the only star you’ll see once I’m finished.”

“You’re the only one I want to see,” Lux returned, enjoying the way her words stopped Jinx in her tracks. Jinx could talk about explosions until the sky came down, but whenever Lux turned the conversation to her, Jinx always lost her ability to continue teasing Lux.

It must have had something to do with Jinx’s lack of self-importance. Explosions were easy for her to talk about; she was an expert with them. But, before Lux had met her, nobody had spent time telling Jinx how great she was. She never seemed to know how to respond to genuine praise. Lux might have felt bad about pulling apart Jinx’s shields, except for the fact that there was a beautiful person underneath those defenses. She’d never regret telling Jinx how important she was. Someone had to remind Jinx that she was a person, too.

The next morning, Wukong slid into the seat they’d reserved for Fortune. Lux thought that Soraka’s expression flickered slightly, but the girl was too polite to say anything. Besides, it was obvious that Fortune wouldn’t be taking the seat anytime soon. Not when she’d thoroughly entrenched herself next to Katarina at the Durendal table.

“You’re Lux, right?”

Wukong extended his hand. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Wukong.”

“I heard,” Lux responded, shaking his hand once before releasing it. “It looked like you and Fortune were really getting to know each other last night.”

Either that or Fortune had found something else to entertain herself. By the time she’d returned to the room, Lux and the rest of the team had been preparing themselves for bed. Fortune hadn’t said more than a handful of words to them, breezing into the bathroom before she exited in her own set of nightclothes. The same had happened when they’d woken up. Fortune, not wanting to wait for the rest of them to get ready, had gone down to breakfast on her own. It had only been Soraka’s insistence that she’d be back that Lux had even labeled the space that Wukong had filled as Fortune’s.

“Fortune?” the boy asked. “You mean Sarah?”

“Oh, you must be really close to her,” Jinx said, shamelessly peering at the tail swinging behind Wukong. Vastaya were rare in Valoran City, and those who moved to the region often took measures to conceal their outstanding features to better fit in with the rest of the public. It was probably the first time that Jinx had ever seen one with such blatant physiology. “Only her friends get to call her Sarah, you know.”

“I hope that’s not the case,” Wukong laughed, turning to face Jinx. “It’s never a good sign when the ladies start calling you their friend.”

“Is that why you’re here?” Jinx asked. “Cuz let me tell you, monkey boy if you’re going to stick around, I’ve got all sorts of friends you can meet.”

His brow furrowed. He has some awareness, then, Lux realized. That’s good. He doesn’t seem like too bad of a person. I’d hate for him to wander into the minefield that is Jinx.

“I didn’t catch your name,” he said.

“I’m Jinx. Stands for Jinx.” Jinx stared at his proffered hand. She made no effort to grab it.

“Cool,” Wukong managed, dropping his hand onto the table, and drumming his fingers against the wood once it became clear that Jinx wasn’t going to say anything else.

“I’m Janna,” the oldest member of the team intervened. Lux recognized the sympathetic smile pulling at her face. She waved a hand to the final member of the group. “And this is Soraka.”

“My pleasure,” Wukong grinned, shedding the tension that had grown from his interaction with Jinx as if it hadn’t existed.

Jinx instantly reminded him that it did. “Are you here to spy on us?”

Lux groaned. “Jinx, that’s rude.”

“So is spying!”

Lux turned to Wukong. “I’m sorry about her,” she apologized.

“Eh,” Wukong shrugged. “She’s not really wrong, per se.” Despite his words, Wukong smiled at her with genuine warmth. “I would like to hang out here if that’s okay, though. The Labrys table can get kind of stuffy.”

“Really?” Janna asked. “I’d have imagined that life in a Battle Academy would keep you busy.”

“Oh, it does,” Wukong agreed. “That’s the issue. All we ever do is train, or plan how to improve our training, or talk about our training.”

Lux understood the feeling. “You want a break.”

He winked at her. “Oh no, I’m very busy doing some surveillance, right now. No breaks for me.”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Jinx said. She reached across the table and took Wukong’s hand into her own, shaking it vigorously. “I like you. We’re going to be great friends.”

Wukong swallowed, glancing sideways at Lux. “Why do I feel more threatened than before?”

She patted him on the back. “Good luck.”

His brow creased. “With what?”

“You’ve got Jinx’s attention,” Lux answered. “I hope you’re prepared to entertain her.”

Chapter Text

Despite her initial worry, Wukong handled Jinx’s antics well, taking to her chaotic nature with all the poise of a fellow trickster. Lux worried about what that spelled for the future. Jinx on her own was a menace to society. Jinx with an accomplice was something that the world had yet to see.

“Shouldn’t you be heading back to your team?” she asked as the five of them left the cafeteria. She glanced briefly at where Fortune continued to chatter with the Durendal students but didn’t bother signaling to the other girl. She’d already walked out on one of their training sessions. There wasn’t any reason for the second to be any different. Lux hoped that Fortune would at least sit with their team during the event later that night. It was one thing to abandon them when they were preparing; it was another entirely to place yourself among the opposing team during the competition itself.

Lux watched Wukong glance over his shoulder toward where his classmates were sitting. “Can I stay with you guys?” he asked, turning a pleading expression onto her.

She blinked. After the time he’d spent talking to them during breakfast, she’d grown confident that his friendliness wasn’t an act to get close to them. But, still, it was peculiar that he’d not want to return to his own team. “I suppose. Is there any reason why?”

Wukong scratched the back of his head. “Leona was acting a bit antsy this morning. I don’t want to be around when she decides that it’s time for us to start sparring.”

Lux frowned. “Wouldn’t your team want you to participate in their training?”

His attitude hit too close to home for Lux. Wukong didn’t seem to have the same disdain for his team that Fortune did, but she still felt an ache inside her at the reminder.

“They’ve got Garen for her to toss around.” Wukong shrugged. “Hell, half the reason Swain brought three Battle students was to make sure that Leona didn’t run out of training partners.”

“Why would he allow such an imbalance in his team?” Janna asked. “Your headmaster must have known the tournament format. It seems unwise that he’d deliberately handicap himself.”

“Labrys isn’t known for its sorcery,” Wukong answered. “And the ones that do join that club are only there because none of the other clubs accepted their applications. They’re the laughingstock of the school and everyone knows it.”

“Your headmaster knew that he’d never win that segment of the tournament.”

Wukong smirked. “I wouldn’t be too sure of that. Labrys might not have the best sorcerers, but we’re the best fighting school out of all the Academies. We can take down a mage just as easily as anyone else.”

“How do you plan on doing that?” Lux asked. If someone thought that they could best a mage with nothing but a sword and shield, they were sorely mistaken. Lux could flick their bodies aside without breaking a sweat.

Wukong winked at her. “Hey now, I’m the spy here! Stop trying to get information out of me.”

“But you’re a bad one,” Jinx interjected. “So you might as well just tell us.”

“I’m not that bad,” Wukong laughed, and, despite the lightness of his tone, Lux saw that he wouldn’t budge on the issue. Wukong may have been affable, but he wasn’t prepared to risk the actual ire of his team.

“Maybe Fortune will find something out,” Soraka suggested quietly, glancing over her shoulder.

Following her gaze, Lux saw their teammate, accompanied by Katarina, as they caught Garen on his way to depositing his tray, each of them sliding onto either side of him with natural grace. Lux couldn’t believe it. Fortune almost had to be deliberately finding ways to annoy her, no doubt urged on by her new friend. She glowered at them from a distance, watching as the two women guided Garen unwittingly down the hall and out of view, giggling to one another from either side of her brother as they drew Garen’s gaze between them like he was nothing more than a toy.

“Dammit,” Wukong groaned, watching the girls make off with his teammate. “Caitlyn’s going to chew our asses out tonight. She’d already warned us about getting too comfortable with the competition.”

“Isn’t that exactly what you’re doing?” Janna asked.

Wukong waved a hand in dismissal. “I was sent over here to investigate,” he defended. “Caitlyn knows I won’t let anything slip—but Garen on the other hand.” He shook his head. “The guy’s not very sociable, real nose-to-the-grindstone type of attitude. I bet those two girls could have him wrapped around their fingers within a day if nobody stepped in.”

Lux frowned. She hoped that Wukong was wrong. It’s not like he’s as immune as he thinks, either. She’d seen him last night, completely enamored with Fortune, or Sarah as she’d let him call her. Even from the time he’d spent with them this morning, Wukong had let more slip than he knew. Yet, Lux couldn’t dismiss his thoughts just because of that, not when she shared the same worry over Garen’s naivete.

At least he’s got Caitlyn to keep him focused. Wukong might lament the lecture she’d give them, but the complaint told Lux that Caitlyn had the authority to keep her team in line. That was more than she could do. The only reason the rest of the team are together is because they have nowhere else to go.

Lux was certain that Jinx would vanish when she got bored. She didn’t know about Soraka—the girl seemed too shy to venture out too far—but by that same notion, Lux didn’t know if the girl even wanted to stick around them or if she was secretly chafing at the proximity. The only person she could count on to stay close was Janna, and that was more because Janna felt it was her duty to be available to Lux. She probably complains to herself all the time about how useless I am or how much of a burden I am on her.

Wukong came to a stop. “I should probably head back before Caitlyn sends someone to get me.” He gave a strained laugh. “Maybe if I give myself up, she’ll have some mercy and make Yone spar Leona after a few rounds.”

“Good luck, then,” Lux said, smiling at him. She was surprised at how natural it felt. “And feel free to come over whenever you want. It’d be nice to meet some new friends while we’re here.”

Jinx stepped between them and prodded a finger into Wukong’s chest. “But just friends, monkey boy. Remember that.”

“Don’t worry,” Wukong chuckled, raising his hands in surrender. “I’ll keep my devilish charm to myself.”

“You better.”

Wukong chuckled and, if his eyes flicked to Lux uncertainly, then it was better than how most people dealt with Jinx. Lux smiled at him again encouragingly and watched as he turned around and began ambling back to his table.

“Do you think he’d feel if I lit his tail on fire?”

Lux sighed. “You’re not going to do that, Jinx.”

“It kind of looks like a fuse if you tilt your head.”

“Jinx,” Lux growled.

“Joking,” she laughed. Jinx glanced at Lux from the corner of her eye. “It was a joke.”

Lux raised an unimpressed eyebrow.

“I mean, I am curious,” Jinx said. “But I wouldn’t do that. He’d smell the burnt hair way too easily.”

“Let’s just go to the training field,” Lux sighed. “We’ve got the rest of the day to prepare Soraka for her competition tonight.”

Lux was aware enough to realize how out of place her team looked. There was nothing they could do about it, unfortunately. While the other two teams had taken to practicing for their chosen events, she and her team sat in a circle and passed the time with all the laziness one imagined a group of regular teenagers would possess.

Luminary competitions inherently inhibited the ability to prepare. They were about adaptation and the ability to improvise. However, that was not to say that preparation was impossible. If Lux looked over to the Durendal contingent, she could see Jayce tinkering with some invention of his, organizing them and contemplating which one would be the most useful to him during the competition. No, the difference between Valoran High and the other two schools wasn’t due to how that evening’s competitors acted. It had to do with the rest of the team.

If Lux had any reason to doubt Wukong’s words about Caitlyn’s ability to discipline her team, it had vanished upon seeing the students in action. All five of them were a buzz of controlled activity. One of them had set up a sparring ring on the ground, and, inside, Leona clashed blades with Garen, pushing him around the ring and striking at him mercilessly. Lux winced at the heavy impacts as they reached her from across the field. The two of them might have been using practice blades, but Garen would be feeling those bruises for days.

When her brother’s stamina failed him and he couldn’t maintain his defense against Leona, the girl kicked him out of the ring and, before she’d even planted her foot back on the ground, pointed her blade at Wukong in a clear gesture that, while her opponent may be finished, she was not.

Lux tore her eyes away from the sight before her anxiety could become sickening. Leona was everything that she hated about the Battle Academies. She didn’t have any sympathy for her classmates, treating them with the same callous disregard that one would give a practice dummy. Leona didn’t see them as people; she saw them as targets, as objects whose only purpose was to sharpen her own ability.

The other Labrys member was a little way off from the ring. Unlike the battlers, he moved with slow, precise steps, guiding his body into a flowing set of postures. His muscles never trembled, and he never made a wasted movement. Everything transitioned so naturally from one position to another that Lux knew the boy must have spent years rehearsing the steps. It was mesmerizing. Lux shuddered to know what it would look like at full speed, when the crimson edge of his blade was nothing more than a blur of movement.

Caitlyn watched her team through all of this. Hands behind her back, she stood ramrod straight, taking in every action of her team, to the exclusion of everything else around her. When Garen had been thrown out of the ring, she was waiting for him, grabbing him by the arm and hauling him to his feet as she whispered into his ear. Garen nodded at the words and didn’t offer any of his own. The interaction clearly wasn’t a conversation. It was a superior relaying orders to their subordinate.

On the other side of the field, Durendal had set up a firing range, and two of their members, Ezreal, and Akshan, were firing their respective weapons at the targets. Ezreal took careful aim with one hand as he used the other to steady himself, biting his lip in concentration while Akshan displayed almost the complete opposite, firing from all sorts of positions as he leapt and rolled around, clearly envisioning himself in some sort of battle. A distance away, Diana most resembled Lux and her group as she sat beneath a tree with her hands in her lap. However, unlike them, she was unerringly still, a monolith to anyone who glanced in her direction. She hadn’t even brought a weapon to the field, leaving Lux completely clueless as to what kind of fighter she was—or if she was a fighter at all. Despite what Diana said, Lux couldn’t exclude the possibility that she was Durendal’s sorcerer. It would make sense, too. Lux had left at the start of the semester. When Durendal found her replacement, they’d want someone who could replace her. Lux turned to the rest of her former school’s students and tried to match them to their roles. The only roles she knew for certain were Jayce and Katarina’s. That left the other three to fill the Sorcery and Battle roles.

Lux squinted at the two boys practicing their aim. One of them would have to be a substitute as well and, once Lux realized that, it didn’t take much more thought to determine who it would be. Ezreal was both the youngest member of the team and the least proficient. For every shot that he took, Akshan took three. Nor did the time between shots increase Ezreal’s accuracy.

He’s here to learn, Lux concluded, watching another shot of golden energy soar over the target and fade into the horizon. Whatever his potential, he’s clearly not reached it.

“Do you think we should practice?” Janna asked, bringing Lux’s attention back to her team. “I feel a little out of place just sitting here.”

“What would we practice?” Lux countered. She frowned. “If we’re not going to reveal our powers, then what can we do? The only one of us that could get away with anything is Jinx.”

Lux raised a hand and stared at Jinx, catching her before she could leap at the opportunity. “And we want the field to stay intact, so even that option is off the table.”

Jinx blew a raspberry at her. “Boring.”

Lux tilted her head. “We could try to meditate, I suppose.” She glanced at Janna. “That shouldn’t alert the other schools to our identities, should it?”

“Ugh,” Jinx groaned. “That’s even more boring!”

Despite her antics, Jinx went along with the idea, scooting close to Lux and placing her hand over the top of her own. Lux reached over and joined her other hand with Soraka’s, completing the circle.

“Stop fidgeting,” she said, opening one eye to glare at Jinx.

“I can’t help it,” she whined. “I don’t like sitting still.”

Lux sighed. This wasn’t going to work.

“Man, you guys really do look pathetic as Kat says.”

Fortune dropped down between Soraka and Janna, noticeably taking a seat outside of their joined hands. “You know,” she continued, disregarding Lux’s growing frown. “I was talking to the kids at Durendal for a bit, and they don’t think we’ll actually make it to the end of the tournament before we drop out.” She smiled as if she was sharing something of importance. “I didn’t even know we could drop out.”

“That must have been great news,” Lux bit out through clenched teeth.

Fortune swept her hair behind her. “I mean, it’s something to consider. We don’t actually want to be here, anyways.”

Lux wondered if she truly believed that or if by we, she meant her.

It’s not like she’d know what we want anyway, Lux seethed. Considering that she doesn’t talk to any of us.

“Who said we didn’t want to be here?” Jinx asked. “I can’t wait to be able to blow people up—especially that pink-haired tramp!”

“She’s not a tramp,” Fortune frowned. “Kat’s fun.”

Lux rose to her feet, disentangling herself from the rest of the group. “If she’s so much fun, why even bother coming back to our team?” she asked. “It’s not like you offer anything, yourself.”

She waved in the direction of the Durendal team. “Why don’t you head over there and spend your time like you actually want before we get sent home. We won’t miss you!”

Lux turned away from them before they could see the tears pricking at her eyes. Fortune’s behavior was just too much. Lux tried. She tried so hard to be accommodating, but Fortune kept throwing everything back in her face.

It was obvious. Lux was the problem. She couldn’t control her team. It would be better to just let them go off and do their own thing. She wouldn’t hold them back. They didn’t want her to be their leader and she didn’t want to lead them.

“She’s doing this again,” Fortune sighed.

Lux heard the words Fortune didn’t say. What a baby, throwing another tantrum. Fine! If Fortune wanted to believe that, then let her. Lux didn’t care. All she cared about was getting away from everyone before she exploded. Stomping out of the field through tear-blurred vision, she clenched her hands together until her hands went numb.

She didn’t see anything else except for the clear path in front of her. She didn’t hear the arguing that took place behind her, the snapped insults, or the disbelieving scoffs. Lux’s entire mind was focused on one thing and one thing only: she was done. She was done caring about what others thought of her. She was done trying to make her team act like it actually worked. She was done wasting her time trying to achieve a dream that would never come true.

Chapter Text

Nobody went searching for her the second time and, after hours of storming through the empty castle, Lux was still too ashamed of herself to return to her team. She just knew that she wouldn’t be able to contain herself if someone said the wrong thing. Lux didn’t want her team to walk on eggshells around her, especially not when Soraka had her competition that night.

Shit. The competition was tonight. Lux pulled out her phone. No. The competition was about to begin. Lux cursed and pushed herself into a jog. She’d been moping around for hours—being a stupid little baby for hours. Lux would be damned if she let herself miss that because she was wallowing in self-pity. She pressed her fingertips to her eyes as she ran, hoping that they wouldn’t look as puffy as they felt.

As she climbed the stairs to the observation deck the tournament organizers had erected, Lux saw that the field where Soraka and the other contestants would compete was portioned into three separate lanes, all of them identical and marked by a set of checkpoints along their lengths. Her eyes slid along the course, taking in its almost five hundred meters of length. It hadn’t been here this morning. Lux frowned as she appraised the work. She looked for any indication of what kind of mage had erected the structures—and a mage had to have done this. A regular person, even by the standards of the Battle Academies, would never have been incapable of creating such a behemoth of a course without the aid of magic.

The three contestants were standing at the beginning of their respective lanes, waiting for the event to get underway. To Lux’s surprise, Soraka didn’t look too out of place. She didn’t have the iron-straight posture of either Jayce or Caitlyn, but she held herself with confidence, seemingly untouched by nerves or anxiety. It was remarkable, really. Lux could hardly sit with her team without worrying her lip or biting her nails, but Soraka was completely placid standing among her competitors.

Doubt nibbled at the back of her mind. Does she know what’s going to happen? Did I do a good enough job explaining everything to her? Lux’s eyes roved between the three students. It was difficult, but she could see the faint marks of stress hidden in the other two students’ expressions. The way the skin around Caitlyn’s eyes pulled just enough to form creases. The subtle movement of Jayce’s jaw as he forced it to unclench. Those two were taking the event seriously. They knew that they were about to be tested, and they realized that everything would depend on their ability to adapt.

Lux forced her gaze away before someone caught her staring—or before her traitorous mind poisoned her resolve enough to send her back to her room, too fearful of watching Soraka fail to watch.

Katarina smirked at her as she walked towards her team “Bit late, aren’t you?” she called, laughing at Lux’s back. “Too busy to support your team? Or were you packing your bags?”

Lux hunched her shoulders and kept walking. By the time she reached her team, her jaw felt like it would break from her clenching it so hard.

Nobody said anything as she arrived. Fortune didn’t even look up from her phone as she sulked at the end of the bench, perceptibly distant from Janna and Jinx. Taking her seat beside Jinx, Lux stared ahead. She didn’t know what to say, so instead, she turned to where Soraka and the other two competitors were gathered and kept her gaze fixed on them, resolute in not letting her eyes wander over to her team.

What would I see in their faces? she wondered to herself. Do they pity me? Do they think I’m a little girl throwing a fit? Lux clamped her teeth around her lower lip. Or would they tell me that I was right?

She didn’t want to be right. If she was right, it meant that her team had never been what she’d thought, that it never had and never would exist. Lux would just as soon not know. It was better that way. She didn’t have to face the problem if she didn’t know it existed.

A tall form stepped to the edge of the headmasters’ balcony just as the sun began to set, the final rays glinting off the gold epaulets on his broad shoulders. When he spoke, his voice carried across the field, amplified by some unknown means.

“For the Luminary competition, the three of you will partake in a Janus maze,” Swain began, his voice low and graveled. Each word felt like a blade being scraped from its sheath. Lux wished that she’d brought a heavier jacket as the air around her chilled. Swain continued, “for those that are not aware, A Janus maze is comprised of a series of choices, each leading to a different outcome. Once chosen, the competitors must progress through their selected door. As they progress, they may accumulate resources provided by the maze that can aid them in future tests.”

Swain turned his attention directly onto the contestants. “The first to reach the end of the maze is the victor, and their team will be awarded two points. The next closest in proximity receives one point. The school that has progressed the least by the time that the maze is completed receives zero points.” He paused, ostensibly waiting to see if there were any objections. When none of the competitors spoke, he raised his hand.

“Begin,” he said, swinging his hand down in time with the doors’ opening.

Jayce and Caitlyn wasted no time and sprinted into their respective tunnels without hesitation. Lux watched them enter their first corridor, where they read an inscription placed between the first two doors. Jayce, after a momentary glance, chose the right door. Caitlyn, a moment later, went through the left.

Jayce’s path led him into a flooded corridor, the grey stone floor barely visible under the sheen of brackish water and illuminated only by the torches lining the halls. His feet splashed in the water, pooling to his ankles, as he darted through the passage. Caitlyn’s hallway was shorter. Composed of the same grey stone, it lacked both the water and the torchlight. As the door swung closed behind her, the only source of light came from the door at the end of the tunnel. Not even the light that fell over the roof of the tunnel, which allowed Lux and the rest of the audience to witness the event, was strong enough to pierce into the darkened tunnel.

Caitlyn took the lack of vision in stride, jogging down the tunnel with barely a falter. On occasion, she’d reach her left hand to the wall at her side, tracing her fingers against the rigid stone, but that was the only indication that she was at all hampered by her surroundings. By the time she cleared the first checkpoint, Caitlyn had already gained a lead on Jayce. Soraka, meanwhile—

“What she’s doing?” Jinx asked, peering at their teammate.

The girl hadn’t moved a step, staring over the constructed pathways into the darkened sky. Her face was completely smoothed over and absent of any emotion. To an outsider observer, she looked lost, paralyzed by fear or uncertainty.

“I’m not sure,” Lux answered, searching Soraka’s face. She glanced to her side, where Fortune continued to recline in her seat, unbothered by the fact that their teammate had yet to actually begin the task.

Soraka took her first step as Jayce dashed through the third door. By then, Caitlyn had taken a noticeable lead, breaching the fifth door, which officially marked the halfway point of the course. Each option got progressively harder the deeper the contestants ventured. Whereas the wrong decision in one of the earlier doorways may have cost the contestant half a minute, now the delays were exponential, making a hasty decision terrible enough to wipe away any ground Caitlyn could have gained between her and Jayce.

But time wasn’t the only resource available to the contestants, even if it was what Caitlyn undoubtedly prioritized. Even now, well in the lead, she chose a harrowing obstacle course composed of sheer drops and slick surfaces over the alternative path of hanging trees filled with tangled vines and gnarled roots. Lux couldn’t begrudge her. Not when Jayce was beginning to pick up speed. His path had taken him through an armory, allowing him access to a handful of raw materials that, even as he sprinted to catch up with Caitlyn, were continually being integrated into some sort of invention.

Soraka’s first step turned into a steady jog. Coming to the beginning entrance, she didn’t stop to read the inscription and continued through the left door without hesitation. Nor did she show any sign of surprise at the darkness. Soraka didn’t even take the precautionary measure that Caitlyn had in using the wall to guide her. She simply ran straight through the darkness, as if it were clear as day.

The same happened for the next five doors. Soraka would approach the choice, choose one without bothering to weigh her options and progress through the challenges without faltering. Lux only belatedly felt herself loosen her jaw as it hung open, watching her teammate make a fool out of the other two contestants. A little ability my ass, she thought. Soraka’s a full-on prophet.

Not even Lulu moved with such confidence. Granted, she was young and still learning how to interpret the First Star, but Lux could never have imagined that so much could be communicated to a person. We never had a chance of hiding our identity from her, she realized. Soraka probably knew their names before they’d ever met. The only person who could possibly deny Soraka learning about them through the First Star was Morgana.

Lux’s eyes drifted away from the competition to glance at the area where Morgana was sitting. She took in the pleased grin on her face as she said something to Swain. Judging by the man’s severe frown, and Morgana’s amused tittering, it had something to do with Soraka’s sudden display and the fact that, if it continued, she’d win the competition with ease, despite the handicap she gave herself at the beginning.

She turned away before either of the teachers could notice her, but her mind didn’t stop thinking about Morgana and the number of oddities that surrounded her. Who are you, really? Lux felt hypocritical even thinking that. What right did she have to demand others reveal their secrets to her? She was layered with secret identities. A Star Guardian. A mage. A weapon. Lux didn’t have the right to judge someone because they valued their privacy.

But that didn’t mean she could let the issue go.

Not even Janna could hide herself from Soraka. Maybe she’d never wanted to. Lux turned the idea over in her head. Perhaps it didn’t have anything to do with power or experience but want. Janna had no reason to obscure herself. She was a beacon for Lux and her team, a shining light meant to guide them. Her entire purpose was to be seen.

But what does that say about Morgana? Lux shifted in her seat. What kind of person looks for ways to hide themselves? Why would they want to hide from their fellow Star Guardians in the first place?

Lux turned the question over in her head as she watched Soraka overtake Caitlyn at the seventh door. Labrys’s student president couldn’t see what had happened directly, but the roar of the crowd spurred her on. Yet, unlike Soraka, who’d breezed through every challenge without issue, Caitlyn was noticeably fatigued. She’d lost her jacket somewhere along the way, and her shirt clung to her skin, damp with sweat. If Lux paid close enough attention, she could see the slight catch in Caitlyn’s step. The course was getting to her.

Still, the girl’s face was flinty with determination, and the cries of her team only hardened the expression as she pressed forward, her rifle held in one hand in case she needed to use it.

Caitlyn would have been smart enough to know that Jayce would eventually catch up to her. The boy might not have been as athletic or judicious, but he was a famed inventor despite his young age and humble background. Caitlyn would be a fool to disregard the threat he represented—and Lux knew that, of all the things she’d heard people call the girl, a fool was not one of them.

By the time Caitlyn reached the eighth door, Jayce had pulled level with her. For a handful of seconds, all three of the competitors were on the same stage until Soraka reached the exit, slipping through the archway and entering the threshold for the ninth set of doors.

“She’s actually going to win,” Janna muttered, watching Soraka with rapt attention. “After her poor start, I never imagined she’d be able to compensate for so much lost time.”

Fortune scoffed, flicking her eyes towards them. “Soraka’s good,” she said. “I don’t know why any of you were ever worried about her.” Her face pulled into something resembling a sneer. “She’s been fighting cosmic threats for years. Why did any of you think that she’d struggle with a bunch of schoolchildren?”

Lux flushed. Put like that, it really did seem ridiculous that she’d been so worried. They were Star Guardians!

Maybe Fortune had a point, she thought, slouching her shoulders. While all of us had been sitting around in a self-imposed exile, she’d been off meeting new friends and making the best out of the situation.

The final set of doors were placed, not next to each other, but one above the other. The higher option saw all three contestants’ routes converge on an open field fifty meters in length. The bottom kept her separate from her competition, but it also meant that she’d have no idea how close the finish was—or her competition. For the first time since she’d begun moving, Soraka wavered at the threshold, glancing between the steps that would take her into open space and the cellar door set into the ground.

Nodding to herself, Soraka took the steps up and chose the open field.

Lux was already off her feet, along with the rest of her team. They pressed to the railing, cheering Soraka on. She couldn’t believe it. Glancing at the other teams, Lux saw similar marks of surprise etched into every one of their faces. Each and every one of them, humiliated by someone they’d immediately dismissed.

She caught Wukong’s eye. He was no less startled by the outcome of the event, but still managed a small smile when he noticed her. They’re going to pay much more attention to us, she realized, her joy dampening somewhat. They’re going to be careful not to make the same mistake twice.

Lux and her team would have to fight even harder to keep the other schools from discovering their secret. They couldn’t hide behind their anonymity anymore. Durendal and Labrys wouldn’t let them stay hidden.

Bang!

“Soraka!”

Lux whipped her head back to the field, brought out of her reverie both by the noise and Fortune’s shout.

Soraka had collapsed to the floor, one hand on her leg while the other scrabbled against the ground to push herself upright. Lux checked where the other contestants were.

She gasped at the sight of Caitlyn kneeling at a window, smoke still rising from the end of her rifle. The image lasted only an instant—Caitlyn wasted no time surging to her feet, intent on making the most of her advantage—but the memory stayed in Lux’s head as if imprinted into her brain. Caitlyn’s pursed lips. Her hardened eyes. The tight muscles of her neck as she held herself steady. Lux could not look at the girl without seeing what she had done.

“What the hell was that!” Fortune exclaimed. Her hands gripped the railing with whitened knuckles. She turned furious eyes onto Lux. “I thought you said that they couldn’t hurt each other!”

“I said they didn’t usually bother,” Lux snapped. Who was Fortune to suddenly be angry? She hadn’t taken any of Lux’s warnings seriously. She had no right to accuse her of anything. “What? Didn’t any of your friends tell you what they were training for? Or were you having too much fun teasing them?”

“Lux,” Janna warned, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Calm yourself.” She turned to Fortune. “Lux didn’t know this would happen,” she said. “The only one to blame is Caitlyn.”

Fortune huffed. “Whatever,” she said, turning her attention back to Soraka.

It was a petulant display. Lux almost wanted to press the issue, but she knew that her emotions weren’t what were important right now. Lux followed Fortune’s example and brought her gaze to Soraka.

The girl had managed to get to her feet, using the staff she’d collected earlier as a crutch to keep most of the weight off her injured leg. Even from a distance, Lux felt her blood drain at the gruesome sight of Soraka’s wound. Blood dripped down her calf in flowing rivers and the muscle itself hung around her shin like a deflated balloon.

There was no surprise when Jayce overtook her, sprinting by without a second look, his face set in grim determination as he neared the finish. It became obvious to Lux what the outcome of the event would be. Glancing to where Caitlyn was making up ground, she wondered how the other schools would view her actions. Well, how Durendal would view it, Lux revised. Labrys will always support their own. They’ll call the decision pragmatic.

And, if they took a measure of vindictive glee for putting the outsider in her place, then that would be an added bonus. Soraka had never deserved to win the competition, they’d reason. Finishing last was exactly where she was supposed to be. Perhaps if she were a student at one of the Battle Academies she would have known to look out for the threat. That she didn’t only showed how much of a fluke her earlier success was.

“We’ve got to help her,” Fortune said, her body tensed and fully prepared to vault over the railing.

Lux grabbed her arm. “We can’t interfere,” she said.

Fortune jerked her arm free, turning blazing eyes onto Lux. “I don’t care about the rules,” she spat. “Soraka’s hurt. I’m not going to sit by and let her suffer if I can help it.”

“So now you want to help?” Jinx snarked as she joined the conversation. She waved an uncaring hand towards the field. “What could you even do? Kiss it better?” Jinx scoffed. “If Soraka really wanted to, she could fix that wound in a heartbeat.”

All it would take was shifting into her Star Guardian form. Lux grimaced. If she hadn’t been so insistent on urging her team to keep their identities a secret, Soraka might never have gotten injured. She certainly wouldn’t be forced to endure the agony of the injury in front of an audience.

Fortune growled, but she didn’t say anything. Jinx had a point, and everyone knew it. Unless Fortune displayed her own powers, she was useless—though Lux thought that her decision not to rested more on Soraka’s inaction than Lux’s cautioning. She didn’t envision any scenario in which Fortune let Lux’s words dictate her actions. In fact, Lux was fairly certain she’d do everything she could to go against her authority just to make her displeasure known. That’s what she’d been doing when she’d decided to befriend Katarina and join in on her teasing the rest of the students, after all.

“What?” Jinx taunted savagely. “Don’t have a comeback? Maybe you should text your friend, and see if she’s got any snappy words for you to use.”

“Jinx,” Janna warned, moving to interpose herself between the two arguing teens. She sent a pleading look to Lux. “Now is not the time.”

Lux didn’t know what Janna wanted from her. Does she think I can control Jinx? I can’t even make the girl brush her teeth in the morning.

Nevertheless, she grabbed her friend around the shoulder and twisted her away so that the two of them were facing the field. She watched Jayce as he approached the trophy, not ten yards away. Further back, Caitlyn had barreled past Soraka without sparing her a second glance. Even as she realized the futility of reaching the finish before Jayce—or of shooting him in time, her mind supplied—and lessened her sprint to a brisk job, Caitlyn didn’t spend an instant looking apologetic or guilty at her action.

“The moment it’s over, we’re going down there,” she told her team. “We’ll get Soraka to our rooms as quickly as possible.”

“There’s no infirmary?” Janna asked.

She shook her head. “The teams are expected to care for their own wellbeing and any injuries they receive throughout the tournament.”

The Battle Academies themselves would have infirmaries. Students were still learning while they were at school. But once they left their school? It was them against the world. And every one of the academies followed the doctrine that the world was a battle of the fittest. Nobody would help you, and you were wasting your time if you went looking for someone who would.

Lux could feel the glower radiating from Fortune’s eyes as they dug into the side of her head.

“We wouldn’t even use the infirmary,” she said, trying not to sound too callous. “Even if there were one, all we’d be doing by bringing Soraka there would be extending her pain.”

“How will we continue pretending to be normal people if Soraka heals from something like that overnight?”

Lux tilted her head and looked at Fortune. “We’ll lie,” she said. “Or we’ll figure something else out.”

Fortune blinked in shock, and Lux couldn’t help but feel offended at her confusion. “You didn’t think I’d actually want to keep Soraka injured, did you?”

Fortune opened her mouth, but Lux didn’t need to hear what she had to say. Her eyes, absent their prior fury, told her everything she needed to know.

“Come on,” she said, turning away from Fortune as she pulled Jinx along with her. “Let’s get down to the floor. The event’s going to end any second.”

Jinx went with her willingly, not even trying to fight Lux’s hold over her and, for that, she was grateful. She didn’t know if she’d be able to walk as confidently as she did if she didn’t have Jinx’s comforting heat pressed against her side. It stabilized her. Jinx’s presence, so close that she could smell the distinctive scent of her, a mix of sulfur and oil brought on from a life of tinkering, gave her the grounding that she needed, sharpening Lux’s mind and ensuring that she didn’t let herself get distracted by her own turmoil.