The answer we would get from Athena Ragnar was totally different from what we expected. To avoid confusion let's go back to the beginning of it all.
2 weeks back.
Drake shouldered his cloak and moved like someone with a plan—measured, polite, and dangerous. He'd already decided he couldn't recruit Athena Ragna openly. Too many eyes, too many families watching, and the last thing he needed was to be seen building a faction that might topple a lord or two. If he moved too brazenly, he would be crippled before he'd even started. The risk of being caught was real; the Academy's corridors were arteries filled with gossip, petty nobility, and eyes that fed on scandal.
So he waited.
He watched her days, watched her walk with the confidence of someone who had been raised to rule, watched the way other students tilted toward her presence as if gravity itself leaned too. Athena wasn't merely pretty; she was composed, an elegant blade disguised as conversation. Recruiting her meant power and danger in equal measure. And yet he wanted her — not for prestige, but because something in her made him think of utility and amusement in equal measure. She'd be perfect.
Tomorrow he would not attempt any secret handshake, no private letters smeared with blood. He'd risk a public approach instead—the advantage being the audacity of surprise. If she refused, he'd move on. If she accepted, the reward would be enormous.
The following day, the sun had the lazy brightness of early morning. Students dispersed from the lecture halls, a river in uniform white flowing toward dorms. He saw her before he stepped forward—Athena Ragna, shoulder-holding a shoulder-bag, head turned as she spoke to a small knot of juniors. She laughed and her laugh flicked across the corridor like a small, dangerous breeze.
He stepped out, called her name loud enough to make heads swivel.
"Hey, Athena!" he shouted.
For a split second the chatter froze. A dozen conversations hiccupped, eyes pivoted, and the drama machine of the Academy revved up. Athena's face flushed almost imperceptibly—she hadn't expected that kind of direct attention—but still she smiled. Up close, she was all poise and cool light. Her cheeks had the faintest bloom.
"What do you want? Perhaps a confession?" she teased, blushing in a way that made corners of the surrounding crowd smile, guessing at romance. She was joking, but the blush made the joke plausible.
Drake's expression slid into something that could have been called deadpan, if deadpan ever wore leather and a sword. "It's not like that, not like that at all," he said flatly, but then, because the moment demanded it, he added a little jab of wit with a grin that didn't reach his eyes. "If it were a confession, I'd at least bring flowers. Right now I'm more 'urgent business' than 'romantic bouquet.'" He watched as Athena's mouth twitched into a laugh. The onlookers who read the exchange as flirtation relaxed and sipped their own gossip back into life.
They drifted together toward the café they'd been to before—Sweet Desire—an odd name for a place that sold coffee and pastries, but the Academy's international influence liked its little eccentricities. The sign read Douce Désirée in looping script, and the smell inside was sugar and warmth and the sound of teachers arguing about curriculum.
They settled at the same table as yesterday. The café was a soft refuge from the Academy's marble severity—sunlight pooling on wooden tables, pastries arranged with the kind of careless precision that suggested an artist had taken a day off. Drake unlatched his hood, which revealed his face enough for people to whisper and speculate. He still kept his expression measured; he'd not show too much.
For a little while they navigated the small talk of academy life. "How was your first day?" he asked, like an interviewer and a brother at once.
Athena leaned back, eyes amused. "Better than expected. I like the sparring hall. The instructors are brutal but honest." She named a few professors, speaking with an easy authority that made the juniors nearby nod as if they'd just taken notes for the syllabus of living well. "I met a few interesting people. A half-demon who can channel magma—he's irritatingly loud—and a quiet elf who can weave illusions so beautiful you'd think she was painting the sky."
Drake raised an eyebrow. "Good contacts. Keep the loud ones nearby; distraction is useful." He grinned and finally folded away the small conversational padding. He let the gravity of his actual purpose settle in like a stone.
Then he said it, direct and blunt, and suddenly the hum of the café receded around them.
"I need you."
Athena blinked. The blush had long faded from earlier, replaced with curiosity. "Please elaborate on that," she said, a practiced smile tugging at her mouth. Her tone had the slight edge of someone who knew that the world often said the words 'I need you' to recruit people and not to confess love.
Drake's shoulders dipped. For a moment his expression became almost urgent, begging in a way that made the air prick somewhere between sincerity and mischief. "I need you to join my organisation," he said. "I promise you—if you join, you will get what you've always wanted."
Athena's eyes softened with a shade of surprise, then sharpened in skepticism. "What I want?" she asked slowly. "You don't even know what I want."
He closed his eyes for a second and in the silence thought, I know what you want. Then he opened them, and said aloud what he could have kept hidden: "You want romance. A life other than the way of the sword."
She nearly choked on a sip of tea. For a beat she stared at him, mouth parted. Then she laughed—half offended, half delighted. "That's… not what I expected you to guess."
"You think I don't think you're beautiful?" Drake asked, amusement threading the edge of his voice. He let his smile warm in a way that was almost disarming. "To me? You're actually cute."
Athena's flush returned, a fiercer and quicker bloom this time. She stammered, "Wh—what are you talking about? That's not it—" and then, as if embarrassed she'd said too much, she clamped down and straightened. "Let's not get distracted from the point."
Drake leaned forward, earnest now, shifting the tone into something softer. "You said you wanted to me join your organisation" Athena said with a curious tone but face saying otherwise. "I want you to join. But I'm not asking as a commander; I'm asking as someone who knows the risks. If you join, I make you a promise: I'll give you what you want—freedom to live, to choose—except, well, I expect loyalty."
Athena studied him for a long breath. Her eyes flicked to his hands, then to his face, as if measuring truth in micro-movements. She could have walked away. She could have said no. But something in Drake's voice—the rawness of it, the faint break of an admission—tipped the scales.
"Fine," she said after a moment, folding her hands in her lap. "I'll join. But on one condition."
Drake's mouth quirked. He already had a guess. "What is it?" he asked, though his tone was playful, as if he hoped he might be wrong.
She looked him square in the eye. She spoke with the kind of quiet authority that didn't need a crowd to be effective. "Go out with me," she said. "Date me. It's okay if you don't want to, but it's a condition. Once we're together, I'll join and obey you. I won't question why you created the organisation. I'll follow—if you'll go out with me first."
The café fell into a different kind of silence: not exactly quiet, but a gravity that made whispers curl into corners. Drake blinked once, then twice. The audacity of the request should have made him scoff; instead his heart, whatever mechanisms had been gnawed away by past lives, went a little light. For one split second he imagined something else—not the sword and the blood and the system notifications—but being publicly connected to someone like Athena. The thought made an almost human smile tug at his lips.
He saw the truth: he knew her condition had an obvious benefit—publicly linked to Athena Ragna would give his organisation legitimacy and a shield against suspicion. But he did not name that calculation. He simply felt pleasure in agreement.
"Okay," he said. It was one syllable, but it had the ring of sincerity. "I will."
Athena's face unfroze into a grin that lit the café brighter than the morning sun. She laughed, and then without a second's hesitation she stood and shouted at the top of her lungs, "YES!"—a deliberate public declaration that made heads turn, made teachers glance over, and made more than a few students stare in wonder.
The shout was theatrically loud, genuine in a way that made the applause ripple around them. Drake felt both mortified and elated. Athena then sat back down, her cheeks pink and eyes gleaming with the kind of mischief that belonged in stories about nobles who managed to trick the world.
They ordered cake. They drank coffee. They made conversation about superficial Academy things—who was annoying, who had overreached first-semester arrogance—but beneath the small talk, a pact had been formed. Drake felt it in the way Athena's hand briefly brushed his across the table and neither recoiled nor flinched.
They left the café arm-in-arm, carefully casual, letting the public see their new connection. It was a performance, but an honest one as well. For Drake it was busines strategy and something that tasted like a forbidden shard of something human.
Back at the dorm, he dropped onto his narrow bed, the white uniform folded beside him. He let out a long, satisfied breath. He reached into his inner pocket and pulled out a slip of parchment where he'd jotted names and symbols for recruits. Then, smiling like a man who'd just won something small and satisfying, he said aloud to himself in the quiet of his room:
"Poppy has been recruited."
And he imagined the poppy—vivid scarlet, its petals soft yet defiant—blooming into the nascent emblem of the Crimson Flowers. The color would be bright and unmistakable: poppy-red, a promise written in blood and beauty.
He lay back, closed his eyes, and for a brief moment the roar of the Academy, the echo of the arena, and the spin of conspiracies outside his windows—all of it—fell away. He had a recruit. He had a plan. And he had a new kind of weapon: a bond that would confuse friends and enemies alike.
Tomorrow, the real work would begin. But tonight, with the taste of cake still sweet on his tongue and the outline of Athena's grin still behind his eyes, he allowed himself the smallest indulgence: the quiet satisfaction of a plan that had just found its first true piece.