Lira found him between classes.
Leo was sitting at the edge of the east courtyard, his back against a pillar, his notebook open to a half-finished diagram of mana resonance theory. The afternoon light was pale and thin, the kind of light that made everything look slightly drained of color. He had been staring at the same page for ten minutes, his cognitive sense idly tracking the flow of students between buildings, when Lira's presence registered at the edge of his awareness.
She did not usually leave the garden during teaching hours. The fact that she was here now, standing at the edge of the courtyard with her hands folded into the sleeves of her dress, told Leo most of what he needed to know before she spoke. Her fluffy ears were flattened against her hair, and there was something in her expression he had never seen before. It was fear, carefully contained but visible in the tightness around her eyes, the way her voice came out lower than usual.
