I opened the door to Alatea’s office to find quite a sight. Alatea was healing Marissa as she said she would do, but my eyes were fixated on Marissa rather than the actual healing.

Marissa was looking at the wall, her back at Alatea and me. Her bare-naked back.

It was something simple, nothing sexual about it. We were in a clinic, and she was a patient. But there was something about Marissa’s blue back, spotless, smooth-looking, rejuvenated, and perfected by healing magic.

I felt a cold breeze, goosebumps rising all over my body.

It was sudden, no one in the room made a movement, yet several spells were hurled toward me. Eolic Lances, seven-star spell, five of them. It was obvious who was the spellcaster, and as I tried to dispel them, my reaction time was too slow. Four vanished from my manaweaving, but one impacted my torso. Thankfully my uniform’s enchantments tanked the spell without problems.

The next instant, Alatea blinked in realization, oblivious to the fast exchange.

“Don’t you know how to knock on the door?” Marissa shouted, her back still facing me. Three more lances came towards me.

I dispelled them easily as now I was aware of the danger, but backstepped out of the office and close the door in a swift movement.

For some reason, I found myself smiling as I laid my back on the wall in the healing ward’s corridor. That outburst of violence reminded me of the young Marissa. When she would attack without even thinking about the consequences. The fact that her hotheadedness returned meant she was back to her old self. Though let’s ignore what that hotheadedness had provoked in the first place.

But now I didn’t linger on the idea that she was still a child. No. I had fully accepted she was a woman. Only a woman could make me feel as Marissa did.

Mystic’s Dominion notified me of what was happening inside the room at least on the emotional side of things, as I couldn’t physically look there. Alatea was dumbfounded, her peaceful life as a healer meant her reflexes were rather slow and her fast thinking even more so. Marissa on the other hand, was blushing.

Which I found delightful.

A few seconds later, Alatea came outside of her office, closing the door behind her.

“You know that your act interrupted me mid-healing, right?” The healer scolded me. “She’s right. Is it so hard to knock on the door?”

“To be honest, my brain just omits it because I already know you are in there.”

“Edrie, knocking isn’t just for checking if someone is present, but to notify them of your presence.”

“You... you make a good point.” It was true, this whole fiesta had been none other than my fault. “I’ll take note of this event.”

“You better do.” Alatea scoffed. “Marissa would have killed you if she wasn’t sedated.”

“Sedated?” I added. “She shot me with seven seventh star spells, isn’t that already highly lethal?”

“Oh come on, crybaby.” She said jokingly. “Even with fifty of those spells, she wouldn’t have been able to kill you.”

“So you are telling me that if Marissa wasn’t sedated she would have thrown at me a minimum of fifty Eolic Lances.”

“Definitely.” The healer added with a smile. “I’d love to keep talking with you, but it’s getting late and I have things to do.”

It was, indeed, getting late. Through the greenhouse’s skylight, I could see the orange-tinged color of the sky. It was too late for my afternoon practice session with Alatea.

The mystic then opened her office door and talked to both of us.

“Having said so, come out.” She commanded in a joyful tone. “I’ll need to go away, and I want to close my office. You two do whatever couples do.”

“I...” Marissa started but Alatea interjected her before she could say anything else.

“Yes, yes. Come out and retort later.”

Marissa came out with us and before she could continue telling whatever she wanted to tell Alatea, the healer closed the door and vanished into a corner.

“Huh, she truly was in a hurry,” I commented.

Yet my quip fell on deaf ears as Marissa looked down at the ground, a hint of magenta on her face and ears.

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“For someone who confessed so aggressively, you got really embarrassed when someone called us ‘couple’,” I whispered in Marissa’s ear, getting a cute shiver out of her.

“You are malicious.” She finally told, looking at my eyes.

She hadn’t cried, but there was a small irritation in her icy blue eyes. Either way, they still were beautiful. As I kept looking straight at her eyes enchanted, bewitched, the coloration of her visage turned towards a pinker spectrum.

I move a hand to her cheeks, I didn’t know anymore if it was a conscious, or unconscious thought. But it felt appropriate.

“I like when you are aggressive, but I won’t deny a shy Marissa is cute.” Her face was warm and my hands cold.

Then she stepped hard on my foot.

My eyes shot wide in pain, but my body didn’t even flinch, having grown used to the pain. My soul automatically casted a Regeneration, vanishing the stomp as it didn’t even happen.

“What a way to ruin the moment,” I said removing my hand out of her face.

“You were getting too carried away.” Marissa’s tone contained a hint of anger, but also desire.

“Oh, you were enjoying it, don’t deny it.”

“Did your ten-star spell tell that to you?” She spat with venom.

“No.” I swayed my head. “I just know you that well.”

And that got me a blush out of her. Oh, Lady. I was falling more and more for her with every reaction.

Winds gathered around Marissa, a slight breeze, yet it was so concentrated that it packed quite a power. As I readied for the upcoming attack, I was left unprotected from the true attack.

Marissa levitated away from the ground, raising up to my height and she stole my lips once more, locking me into her sweet grasp. Unfortunately, it was an ethereal moment. Her lips quickly latched away, leaving me in a stupor.

“Two can play that game.” The aeromancer added with a giggle and floated out of the healing ward.

I shook my head, recovering my senses, and followed her. Marissa’s flight was carefully executed even in her current sedated state, she gracefully flew inside a building, an action that should be incredibly difficult for other aeromancers, yet she pulled without breaking a sweat.

Even more surprising, her mastery of the wind was so prodigious, a finesse beyond normal mages, that nothing was displaced by her Flight spell. She managed to concentrate the winds only on her, and not even small leaves were affected by her fast flight.

I, on the other hand, had to suffice with an Ungravity spell and force cantrips to keep up with her speed. I was wasting incredible amounts of mana and yet our distance was growing more and more.

I was so concentrated on keeping up with her, that I didn’t even notice we weren’t on the healing ward anymore and we were somewhere on the campus forest.

Marissa’s maneuvers were getting more complex by the second, zig-zagging across the trees —or even into them if the separation between the coils of the trunks of the ter’nar was big enough — making my pursuit even harder.

Tree!

My soul alerted me as I almost impacted at high speeds against the ter’nar. I sidestepped, but my momentum was so big I rag-dolled across the ground. At least the dark blue grass lightened the impact a bit.

Where’s Marissa?

I thought as I realized I had lost sight of her, in my shock forgetting to check with Soul Sight. And before I could do such a thing, an ellari-sized projectile lunged at me.

Marissa descended from the skies before I could get up, locking my hands with her own on the ground, her face plastered with a vicious smile, like that of a predator that had captured its prey but instead of eating it, it would play with it. Though I guess in this subject eating and playing were synonymous.

I expected her to assault my lips again, but once more, I was tricked by her feint.

She directed to my ears.

In a soft bite, she gnawed on my long ears, sending shivers down my spine. My brain short-circuited, overwhelmed by confusion. Too many mixed feelings. Air left my lungs.

“Marissa...” I said in a low whisper. “Please, those are sensitive.”

Then I recognized my mistake as I said those words because that only made Marissa’s attack even more frenetic. I was locked in a frenzied state, trying to force myself out of her grip, but mentally debating if I should use my magic to do so. I was only partially averse to this, but I didn’t want to hurt her.

Fighting my struggle, Marissa intertwined her legs with mine, now strengthening her lock over me even more.

“I certainly like more the cute Edrie~” Marissa’s voice was sweet and seductive. It took me a few moments to realize she was talking about my previous comment.

From the corner of my eye, I could see her face, her eyes closed, totally lost to herself. I felt her warm breath traveling down from the tip of my ears down to the earlobe.

Then she got more confident, slowly descending from the tip to down the root of the ear, but the moment I couldn’t take it anymore was when she decided that her soft kisses weren’t enough and used her tongue.

I spasmed.

I moved violently by reflex, shaking her out of the grip and into the ground. Her posture had weakened as she became distracted, but also my strength was a surprise. I had dislocated my right shoulder and popped my left arm from the elbow with the sudden move. Nothing that Regeneration couldn’t handle.

I stood there on the ground for a hot minute, panting.

When I relaxed, I looked at Marissa, which was sitting at my side with an expression of worry engraved on her visage.

“I... I’m sorry.” She apologized, her head looking down ashamed. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“Don’t be sorry, Marissa.” My hand was led to her face again, yet this time she gracefully accepted the caress. “You are still healing and your mental state is not the best. And either way, this only happened because I allowed you to.”

“Oh.” The surprise of her voice was substituted by a hint of realization.

I dislodged my hand from her cheeks and moved it up to her head, stroking her silky light blue hair. Slowly and carefully, I pushed her head into my chest.

“I only want to know that you are safe, that no more dark thoughts plague your mind.” I soothed her with my words and touches, but not with my magic. I couldn’t do that to her.

“Perhaps, I still have those thoughts from time to time...” She confessed. “But when I’m with you, my mind can’t focus on such things.”

She was truthful, no need for soul reading to know that. Her head wobbled a bit up and down, like a cat nuzzling on its owner.

“So...” Marissa’s voice was low, fainter than a whisper. Yet my ears were there for her. “Can you stay with me a bit longer?” Her eyes shone with desire.

“I can,” I whispered in her ear, my hand heaving up and down, strands of hair between my fingers.

That night, I didn’t return to my dormitory on Lan’el.