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Fingers of dread had been twisting Lienna’s stomach ever since they were summoned to the Cathedral. Her nerves never [i]had[/i] calmed since that ill-fated conversation with the pegasus woman, and she swore that the feeling of being watched had only grown more intense since that day after training, but it only got worse as the eyes of staff and saints bore into her while they waited for the address to begin. She’d tried to remind herself that anyone watching her should be either the wall-top guards or her fiancé’s faceless chaperone and not to start seeing faces in the shadows, but nothing worked; there was nothing she could do to quell the deep-seated feeling of [i]wrongness[/i] that she now realized had been haunting her, in one way or another, since her first day here. 

And to make matters worse, the Archbishop validated her concerns. 

Lienna’s fingers twisted the heavy fabric of her skirt into knots to stop them shaking, holding on for dear life as though a storm were coming to blow her away. So it was true. As ready as she usually was to expect the worst, there’d been some small, silent part of her hoping that woman had been lying, hitting her with some tried-and-true ghost story to get troublesome students in line. But she wasn’t so lucky. It sickened her further to think that all this time, that creeping feeling of dread that always seemed to nag at her was actually right. She brushed it off as a remnant of a lifetime of looking in the shadows for raiders and wolves, overactive instincts from years of having to take care of herself. But she was wrong; maybe danger just seemed to follow her, all the way from the borders of Sreng to the peaks of Garreg Mach.

Was nowhere in this saints-forsaken country safe?

She wanted to stand up and leave, send a letter to her fiancé – surely he’d take her back to his fortress in a heartbeat if she forgave his end of their deal. Her time at the Monastery was supposed to make her [i]safer[/i], help her build a network of powerful friends to call upon if she needed to; no one would fault her for opting out if the very venture meant to ensure her safety was the thing putting her most at risk. 

But she stayed in her seat, glancing suspiciously around the Cathedral as her classmates filtered out. She’d need someone to write the letter for her, and to read the Count’s reply. Would Auberon do it? No, she didn’t need a lecture on cowardice from the likes of him in these circumstances. Kellen? He might be thinking of going home himself, unless whatever waited for him back there scared him more than the possibility of being snatched in the night, dragged away by dark-clad strangers, screaming into a gag as they recounted their horrible plans… 

[color=baa7c7]“Mmh.”[/color] Lienna squeezed her eyes shut, pressing a palm to her forehead as if to physically push the image from her mind. Maybe she shouldn’t bother her Housemates with this. Maybe… no, Professor Michail was out, he’d probably shrug off her concerns as silly under the supposedly watchful eye of the all-powerful Knights of Seiros. Professor Tomai would probably do his best to get her to stay, too, given their little “mystery”... Ugh, and that was another problem! Goddess above, didn’t she have enough to worry about?! At this rate she’d have been better off in Hima!

[i]That[/i] got her out of her seat, striding to the aisle with hopes of leaving that train of thought behind in the pew. Maybe Clarissa could help her; she seemed put-together enough to keep her judgements to herself, and by the looks of her grinning to her Housemates, she wasn’t too frightened – or at least, she was savvy enough not to show it. Lienna made a beeline to the redhead, but tripped on the way, having to catch herself on a nearby pew.

Glaring back to find whatever she tripped over, she found it was actually another student, that small red-eyed boy from target practice with the weird Adrestian magic. Weird, she hadn’t even noticed him. 

[color=baa7c7]“Sorry,”[/color] she murmured, looking eager to escape as she straightened her skirt.

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