Callum’s Study

The Next Day

The building that housed Callum D’Aramitz’s private study was not listed on the official academy map. It did not need to be.

Everyone at Lady Blackwell’s knew of it—an old

observatory turned exclusive sanctuary tucked behind a grove of silver-leafed birch trees,

cordoned off with iron gates and trimmed hedges that whispered you do not belong here. It was a legacy from the D’Aramitz family, a silent monument to wealth and bloodline—a physical reminder that some boys were not born equal, but above.

Inside, the ceilings were tall and domed, trimmed with gold-leaf molding and frescoes of Greco-Roman gods—because of course the D’Aramitz heir would sit beneath the faces of immortals. There was a fireplace carved from obsidian, its flames burning low and steady, casting long shadows across the velvet drapes and polished blackwood shelves.

Everything smelled faintly of leather and cedar and

something colder, more ancient—like ambition passed down through generations.

Callum sat behind an enormous desk of dark oak, its surface a neat landscape of books and stationery, an ink well carved from a single piece of jet. He wore his uniform loosely, his coat slung over the back of his chair, his collar undone. He looked regal without trying—shoulders relaxed, fingers drumming softly against the page of the book he wasn’t reading. His eyes, dark and focused, were not on the text. They were somewhere else

entirely.

Across from him, lounging on tufted leather armchairs with the kind of ease only inherited wealth could afford, were Maxwell and

Fernando—his two closest friends, though that word hardly captured what they were.

Companions in legacy. Sons of men who ran entire sectors of the kingdom. Boys born with silver not just in their mouths but their marrow.

Maxwell was handsome in a golden,

disheveled way—his tie loosened, his watch gleaming under the firelight. Fernando was sharper, colder—his features sculpted like he had been designed, not born. They sat like young gods, effortlessly aloof, untouchable, while girls in the academy whispered about them in corners and hallways like fairy tales come alive.

“Did you hear about the hallway incident?” Maxwell asked suddenly, breaking the silence with the tone of someone who pretended to gossip but delighted in it. “Cassidy and Suzana. Whole school’s still buzzing.

Apparently Suzana tried to buy her way into the Rozzit Ball. And Cassidy’s little friend—Lydia, I think?—absolutely obliterated her.”

Fernando snorted, folding his arms. “You think every girl is cute, Maxwell.”

“She is cute,” Maxwell defended with a shrug. “But that’s not the point. The point is, she burned Suzana. In public. That’s… rare.”

Fernando chuckled, flipping through the

newspaper he’d brought. “Suzana deserved it. Arrogance without class is just noise.” He paused, his eyes catching something. “Oh, look. It made the print.”

He handed the folded paper to Callum.

Callum did not move immediately. He was still, leaning lazily into his chair, pretending to read his book, though his eyes had not moved across the same paragraph in fifteen minutes. His mind had been circling only one thing—her.

Lydia.

That moment in the hallway, though he had been watching from a distance, had lodged itself in his memory like a splinter.

Her voice—low, unwavering. Her gaze—fierce but elegant. She stood there not like someone performing confidence but embodying it.

And she had done it not for applause, not for show, but for Cassidy. There was something about that kind of loyalty, that kind of quiet fire, that disrupted the carefully composed

architecture of his thoughts.

“Callum,” Maxwell said again, louder this time, shaking him from the spiral. “Are you good? You’ve been holding that book for ages. Is it that good?”

Callum blinked once. Slowly. Then closed the book with a deliberate hand, placing it down with care.

His posture straightened.

The usual veil of boredom lifted from his face, just slightly, revealing a glimmer of something else—interest. Calculation. Amusement.

“Pass me that,” he said, gesturing to the paper.

Fernando handed it over without a word.

Callum scanned the article quickly. And there it was. An illustration from a student sketch—crude, but unmistakable. Lydia standing firm, Suzana turned away in a huff. The caption read: “Tension in the Halls: D’Aramitz Heiress Targeted.”

He stared at the image. At Lydia.

The flame of a smirk touched the edge of his mouth, small but deliberate.

“I’m fine,” he said quietly. “In fact… I’m more than fine.”

Maxwell and Fernando exchanged glances, wary now.

Fernando leaned forward. “What’s gotten into you?”

Callum didn’t answer right away. He closed the paper, stood, and adjusted his coat with an

elegance that bordered on ceremonial. His voice was composed, but there was something coiled beneath it. Something restless.

“I need to find someone,” he murmured,

already moving toward the door.

“Wait—what? Who?” Maxwell asked,

half-laughing.

But Callum didn’t answer. He was already gone.

The door shut with a soft but final click.

Fernando stared after him, stunned. “Have you ever seen him like that?”

Maxwell exhaled. “No. And that’s what’s

terrifying.”

They sat back, the paper still resting between them, Lydia’s bold stance frozen in ink.

Something had shifted. Something had begun. And neither of them knew how to name it yet—but they both felt it.

Callum D’Aramitz, who was never moved by anything, had finally seen something he couldn’t unsee.

And her name was Lydia.

...****************...

The Encounter

The afternoon sun draped itself over the old courtyard like silk—warm, golden, and

indifferent to the small dramas of adolescence and legacy. The trees whispered with early spring, their branches dotted with pale

blossoms that seemed to hover midair. In the distance, a bell tolled faintly, announcing the change of classes, but in this quieter part of campus—the West Garden, mostly deserted except for artists and those pretending not to seek solitude—everything remained still.

Lydia sat alone on the stone bench, her

sketchbook open in her lap. Her fingers moved with the kind of practiced calm that comes from years of quiet self-reliance, drawing quick lines with deliberate grace. She wasn’t trying to make anything beautiful—beauty wasn’t the point. She was trying to capture a feeling, something abstract and elusive, something like what she had felt when she looked into

Cassidy’s eyes after the hallway confrontation: the soft, startled gratitude of someone not used to being protected.

She hadn’t expected to find a friend in Cassidy. Not in this place where everyone’s smile had a price tag, and every friendship was a

performance. But Cassidy—awkward,

soft-voiced, full of hope—had proven herself real in ways that surprised Lydia. And now, as she sketched the faint outline of a girl’s

shoulders—narrow but upright—she felt a

protective instinct bloom again in her chest.

The sound of approaching footsteps broke her focus. Slow. Measured. Too confident to

belong to a teacher, too intentional to be

accidental.

She didn’t look up at first. She had no interest in interruptions.

But the footsteps stopped directly in front of her.

“Do you always draw with that expression?” came the voice. Low, smooth. Carried with the ease of someone who had never once

questioned whether they would be listened to.

Lydia looked up, her pencil pausing mid-stroke.

Callum D’Aramitz stood there, the late light catching the sharp angles of his face, casting one side in gold and the other in shadow. His uniform looked slightly undone, but somehow more deliberate than careless. His hair fell over his brow in a way that made him look both princely and slightly untamed.

She blinked once, but didn’t smile.

“I wasn’t aware I had an expression,” she replied.

He tilted his head, intrigued. “It’s intense. Like you’re trying to carve the world into

submission.”

Lydia raised a brow. “Maybe I am.”

He smiled. Not the smug, practiced kind he

often used in public, but something

subtler—genuine, if slightly amused.

“May I sit?” he asked.

She hesitated. It would have been easy to say no. But something in his tone—curious,

unguarded—made her nod.

He sat beside her, leaving a respectable

distance between them. Not too close, not

presumptuous. Just enough to make the

moment feel deliberate.

They sat in silence for a few seconds.

“I heard what happened,” Callum said finally.

Lydia said nothing, just flipped to the next page of her sketchbook.

“She’s been a problem for a while,” he added. “Suzana.”

“I don’t care what she is,” Lydia replied, not looking at him. “What matters is what she tried to do to Cassidy.”

He studied her. The way she spoke—without performance or self-consciousness. As if her words didn’t need to be made pretty to have power.

“I don’t think anyone’s ever spoken to Suzana that way before,” he said quietly. “Not here.”

Lydia looked at him now, her gaze clear and even. “Then maybe that’s the problem.”

Their eyes locked. A brief moment—but charged. Not with flirtation, not yet. But with something rarer: mutual recognition.

The acknowledgment of two people who

understood something about how the world worked, and how they intended to live in it anyway.

“I saw you watching,” she said softly. “In the hallway.”

Callum didn’t deny it.

“I was curious,” he said. “You’re not like the others.”

“And what are the others like?” she asked, tone laced with challenge.

“They want something. From me. From this place. From each other. You don’t.”

“I already have what I need,” she replied.

He considered that.

“I believe you.”

Silence again. But this one was different—settled, like a quiet agreement had been made between them.

Finally, he stood.

“I’ll see you around, Lydia.”

She didn’t answer. Just returned to her sketch, as if the interruption had never happened.

But long after he left, the lines she drew were softer. Less guarded. And Callum, as he walked back toward the heart of the school, realized that no amount of money, privilege, or planning had prepared him for her.

She was an unexpected variable.

And he was no longer sure if he wanted to solve her—or simply watch her unfold.

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***