Chapter 17: Terms of Tutoring

The final bell rang through St. Alder, and Owen turned around before Cyrus had even finished sliding his books into his bag.

"Cyrus, if you were asking a girl out to dinner, where would you take her?"

Cyrus looked at him with the mild resignation of someone who had already been dragged into Owen’s romantic disasters more than once.

"That depends on who controls the choice."

Owen blinked. "What does that mean?"

"If you tell her you are taking her out, then ask her to guess where you are going, you have already given her part of the choice," Cyrus said. "If you want her to decide, take her wherever she guesses."

Owen leaned closer, suddenly serious. "And if I do not want her to decide?"

"Then keep making her guess until she says the place you wanted."

Owen absorbed that with the face of someone receiving a life lesson. "What place would you want?"

"Grilled fish."

"Why grilled fish?"

"Because I would be the one paying."

Owen laughed, then nodded as if this was perfectly reasonable. "That actually makes sense."

Cyrus did not ask what part had made sense to him. Owen’s conclusions about romance always had a way of drifting somewhere strange once they left the original conversation.

Still, Cyrus gave him a small look of encouragement. "Control matters."

Owen froze for a beat, then pointed at him. "That one feels important."

"It usually is."

Owen grabbed his bag, still nodding to himself, and left the classroom before Cyrus could accidentally become responsible for the next stage of his plan.

The room emptied in pieces after that.

Students dragged chairs back into place, shouted across desks, checked phones, compared answers, and made plans for dinner, practice, or the walk home. Their noise thinned down the hall until only the leftover scrape of furniture and the soft tapping of the window blinds remained.

Cyrus stayed at his desk.

Faye Larkin, who sat in front of him, was still packing her folder. She had always been quiet in a way that did not demand attention. She checked her papers, tucked her phone away, and left with a simple goodbye that did not turn into a conversation.

Cyrus appreciated people who knew how to leave a room cleanly.

The classroom settled around him.

Outside, late sunlight covered the desks in a warm gold wash. The open window let in a breeze that carried the faint smell of grass from the athletic field. It was the kind of school scene that would have looked peaceful to anyone who belonged here.

Cyrus pulled out his homework and started with what he could handle.

English was fine. Reading was fine. Anything that depended on memory, language, or patience usually gave him a way through. Math was different. Math had the nasty habit of expecting him to know ten missing things before it explained the eleventh.

He finished the written assignment first. Then he checked the room again.

Empty.

He leaned back in his chair and let the breeze touch the hair hanging over his forehead. For once, the day had not been bad. He had gotten through classes, tried badminton, cooled himself down before his body caused trouble, and finished homework that would not make a teacher stop him tomorrow.

That counted as a successful day.

Then he remembered Audra.

He still had not answered her tutoring offer.

That was not completely his fault. Audra Sloane was not the kind of person someone approached casually. She moved through school with a polished distance around her, the kind that made people look, hesitate, and decide not to bother her after all. She had friends, admirers, and plenty of people trying to guess what she thought, but she did not invite random classmates into her space.

If Cyrus walked over to her in the middle of class, people would notice.

People always noticed the wrong things.

He was still deciding how to answer without creating more attention than necessary when a cool voice came from the doorway.

"I thought you would still be here."

Cyrus looked up.

Audra stood at the classroom entrance with her bag over one shoulder. She had already left earlier, yet she had somehow returned at the exact moment the room belonged to him alone.

Maybe that was coincidence.

Cyrus had never found coincidences especially trustworthy.

Their eyes met across the room. Audra stepped inside and went straight to the point.

"Have you thought about my offer?"

Cyrus set his pencil down. "My math score is bad because I missed too much foundation work. If you want tutoring to count as your apology, it will probably be more work than you expect."

Audra stopped beside his desk. "That is fine." 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

"You should think about it first."

"I already did."

Cyrus studied her expression. She was calm, but there was a kind of stubbornness under the calm that had not been there when she first apologized in the athletic storage room. This was not a casual favor anymore. She had decided she was doing it, and now she was waiting for him to stop making the answer difficult.

That was not exactly comforting.

It was useful, though.

Audra glanced at the chair in front of him. "We can do it after school. Does that work?"

"That is when I have time."

"Good."

She pulled the front chair back, turned it around, and sat facing his desk.

The movement was natural, smooth, and far too easy for someone who was supposedly only repaying an old inconvenience. The late sunlight fell across her hair and shoulders, catching the clean line of her blouse and the delicate shadows under her lashes when she looked down.

Audra was beautiful in a way that changed how people behaved around her. Cyrus had seen it happen often enough. Boys lost track of their words. Girls measured themselves without meaning to. Teachers trusted her before she had to prove anything.

Cyrus had seen beautiful women in the human world. Some were almost comparable to Frostborn women at first glance. If he had not seen Audra nearly collapse from heat in the athletic storage room, he might have wondered whether she came from another rare-blood line.

But she was human.

That made her less complicated.

Not safe, just less complicated.

Cyrus was not worried about her discovering too much from sitting across from him. Owen had sat near him for ages and only learned anything because of an accident outside school. Audra was sharper than Owen, but a tutoring session would not magically tear apart his disguise. His hair, posture, and dull school presence had worked well enough so far.

Besides, he wanted to know how much patience she really had.

With that settled, Cyrus pulled out the math test with the red fourteen at the top.

Audra’s expression stayed composed when she saw the score.

That composure lasted until she began reading his answers.

For several minutes, she said nothing. She went through the test, pulled a clean sheet from her folder, and wrote several problems by hand. Her numbers were neat, each one placed with the controlled precision of someone who believed a problem could be forced into order if she wrote it carefully enough.

Cyrus answered the first problem slowly.

Audra looked at his work.

She wrote another one.

Cyrus tried a different method, then watched her mouth press into a thinner line.

She made the next question easier.

He stared at it for a while and chose an answer that felt possible.

Audra rested her pen against the paper and looked at him.

Twenty minutes later, she finally leaned back and pressed her fingers to her forehead. "You really did not understand the class material at all, did you?"

"I understood some of the words."

"That does not count as understanding math."

"I was not claiming that it did."

Audra lowered her hand and looked at the test again. The fourteen made more sense now. The few correct answers were mostly guesses, and the rest of the paper showed gaps large enough to swallow an entire semester.

Cyrus sat across from her with his usual lazy stillness. He did not look embarrassed enough. He did not become nervous because she was close. He did not even seem properly affected by the fact that she was helping him.

That irritated Audra more than the score.

Most boys would have agreed the second she offered. A few would have tried to act calm and failed. Some would have turned the tutoring session into an excuse to stare at her instead of the paper.

Cyrus treated her like a difficult but potentially useful solution to a practical problem.

Audra tapped her pen lightly against the worksheet. "We will stop here today. Tomorrow I will make you a small diagnostic quiz so I can see where your gaps actually start."

"That works for me."

"You sound very calm for someone who may need to relearn more than expected."

"I warned you this would be tiring."

"I remember."

Cyrus put the test back into his folder. He did feel a little helpless. No one liked being seen through a failed exam, especially by someone who could probably destroy that same exam without trying. He also did not enjoy being looked at like he was stupid.

Audra had not mocked him, though.

She had measured the damage and adjusted the plan.

That counted in her favor.

She stood beside his desk. For a moment, she seemed to wait.

Cyrus looked up at her.

Audra looked back.

Neither of them spoke.

At last, she turned and walked toward the door.

In the hallway, Audra glanced over her shoulder. Cyrus was still sitting in his seat. He was not getting up, not offering to walk her out, and not even pretending the thought had occurred to him.

Her fingers tightened on the strap of her bag before she relaxed them again.

Maybe walking beside her through the nearly empty school felt like too much pressure for him. Maybe he did not want anyone seeing them together. Maybe he was still guarding that gloomy, self-contained space around himself because he did not know what to do when someone crossed it.

That explanation was kinder to him.

It was also kinder to her pride, so Audra accepted it for the moment.

The campus had quieted by the time she reached the front entrance. The sun stretched across the steps, softening the old brick and dark windows of St. Alder. She waited near the curb until a black car pulled up for her.

She got in without looking back.

Upstairs, Cyrus did not stay much longer. He packed his bag, checked the desk to make sure he had not left anything behind, and headed toward The Full Moon Lounge before the building became too empty.

By early evening, the remaining teachers began their floor checks.

Daphne Whitlock had drawn that duty tonight. It was simple enough. Walk the assigned floor, make sure no students were lingering where they should not be, close any open windows, and leave the rooms ready for morning.

Most classrooms were already empty.

Her shoes tapped along the hallway as she moved from door to door. St. Alder after hours had a different mood. Without students, the building lost its polish and became a long stretch of humming lights, locked doors, dry-erase dust, and cooling air.

Her phone vibrated in her hand.

Daphne checked the screen and answered when she saw her mother’s name. "Hi, Mom."

"You texted me about staying at that apartment building," her mother said. There was traffic in the background, along with the rustle of movement. "What made you decide that?"

Daphne stopped beside a classroom door and glanced through the narrow window. No students, no bags, one chair left slightly crooked.

"I wanted a change of scenery."

Her mother made a sound that suggested she did not believe that was the whole answer. "Fine. If you are living closer, I will send you the tenant information. You can help with repairs, rent issues, and whatever else comes up."

"That is fine."

"I mean it. Do not move in and then pretend you are not involved with the building."

"I heard you. Send me the files when you have time."

The call ended after a few more practical details.

Daphne lowered the phone and continued down the hall until she reached the classroom she taught most often. The room was empty. One window had been left open, and the curtains shifted in the evening breeze.

She walked in and let her gaze move across the rows of desks.

During the day, this room belonged to lessons, worksheets, student questions, and the version of herself everyone expected. She knew how to stand at the front. She knew how to keep her voice steady. She knew how to make grammar and reading comprehension sound clean enough to survive a class period.

None of that had anything to do with the white-haired child behind the apartment door.

That image had followed her all day.

The feverish face. The oversized clothes. The suspicious eyes watching her from the bed. The way he had tried to protect himself even when he barely had the strength to sit upright.

Daphne had parked near the building that morning under the excuse of checking the property. She had waited longer than she should have. No child had appeared. No older brother had come out with him. The hallway had stayed ordinary, which made her waiting feel more obvious by the minute.

A sensible person would have let it go.

Daphne closed the classroom window and locked it.

If she moved into the building, waiting would not look like waiting. She could check maintenance complaints. She could review tenant files. She could walk the halls without seeming out of place. If that child visited his brother again, she would know.

The curtain settled after the window shut.

Daphne stood there for another moment, phone still in hand, and let herself smile behind the empty classroom door.

As long as she lived nearby, meeting him again would stop being a matter of luck.