EVAN. BETWEEN SECOND AND THIRD.

PE was fine. Great, even. The closest thing the instructor, Coach Vitalarii, did to going over a syllabus was when, after a short speech about Beast attack statistics, told them they’d practice evasion every Monday for the rest of the year, which was largely reacted to with dismay. Evan supposed his classmates must be suicidal or so foolish they didn’t really believe they might ever meet a Beast. Evan was thrilled about getting dedicated practice time on the reg.

The closest to an ice breaker they got was when, after telling them about the evasion practice, she had them split off into pairs and cycle through standard evasions so she could watch and evaluate who needed work on what.

Evan was in luck, and one of the two scaredokids from his first class was also in this one. He intentionally teamed up with that kid, who seemed terrified the whole time, allowing Evan to practice in blessed silence, except when he corrected the fool. Vitalarii complimented Evan’s form and speed several times, which was nice.

The rest of the class largely focused on themselves and not him, though a few kids from Asphodel eyed him curiously. Also a blonde girl who hadn’t gone to Asphodel, but seemed sort of familiar. She probably stood nearly as tall as him. She didn’t get close enough for him to figure out why she seemed familiar, which was fine by him.

When he got to the locker room after the period ended, another group of boys was already getting dressed—from the look of them, a tourney class. And among them was that boy. The new Light Bearer, Chris Gramyre.

That guy was half way through dressing by the time Evan got in, and before Evan could escape, he had positioned himself at the exit and started exchanging a few words with everyone who left. Evan couldn’t bear to face this with a big crowd who knew about the Exile behind him, so he dawdled, and tried to hit the exit while the dude was busy with someone else. But Gramyre stuck his hand out with one finger up and went, “One moment, guy.”

Gramyre wrapped up with the other guy way too soon, and then turned toward Evan and stuck out his hand. “Hey there, I’m Chris Gramyre! Nice to meet you!” His green and grey eyes were fucking ridiculous. And he was too good looking. It wasn’t fair. Evan had never seen someone so handsome in person. It was disconcerting.

Evan regarded him silently for a moment, then bowed, not very deeply. “I know who you are, Gramyre,” he said. It came out rather cold, and Evan reminded himself that being annoyed by Ryan being right was a terrible and stupid thing to take out on Gramyre. Ryan was right. Evan should try and broach the subject of hunting.

Appearing slightly taken aback, Gramyre said, “Ah, okay. I mean, I guess everyone basically does, I guess, know that, but not—most people are a little less direct.” He quickly sketched a bow.

Ryan was right. Ryan was right, Ryan was right, Evan should ask this kid about hunting. He should. He should at the very least be politer.

“Sorry,” Evan said. “I’m Evan Cadell. I’ve just had kinda a morning.”

“Hmm,” Chris said, a touch pensively. “Seems like that’s going around today.” Then he brightened. “That’s a nice looking gunbelt, guy, very stylish. And the butt of that pistol looks well loved. Is that a combat sidearm?”

Someone actually noticed the gunbelt! “Oh, uh, thank you!” Evan said, feeling wrong-footed. “And yes.”

“Aaaand we’ve exhausted my knowledge of firearms,” Gramyre replied with a grin. “My sister would probably be able to guess the caliber—she’s the one who likes guns. I feel like I have enough to deal with handling a sword.”

“Sure,” Evan said. “You probably know a lot about swords. It’s a 10.8mm. Hey, I’ve gotta ask: are you a fae prince in a shitty disguise or what?”

To his mild surprise, Gramyre laughed for many seconds at that. “That’s basically the same thing a girl asked me this morning!” he said.

Huh. Maybe he met Angie.

“So, according to the family legend,” he said with a grin, “The progenitor of our line went missing on the night of his nineteenth birthday. He was gone for a year and a day, then appeared at the village gates as the full moon rose with a baby boy swaddled in his arms. He said he’d had a dream, that he’d been taken as a lover of the queen of the Tylwyth Teg, and when he’d woken up he was lying in a circle of mushrooms in the woods, with the child he’d dreamed they’d had together lying beside him.

“The legend says he could never remember more than bits and flashes of his dream, which presumably was a kindness so that he could live a normal life after. But the child went on to be a Light Bearer, and every first born son of our line has been one ever since.”

Evan considered that. “You really got that spiel down pat, don’t you?” he replied.

Gramyre laughed again. Who would have expected Evan to turn out to be so funny? Certainly not Evan. Or maybe Gramyre was just easily amused. “Yeah, I suppose I do,” he replied. He glanced at a watch so nice looking it might as well have been an artifact from Atlantis, and said, “Well, this has been fun, but I think we must be off right now. Class waits for no Light Bearer.” He turned and started moving, but with an eye on Evan.

“No, I suppose not,” Evan replied, following, as there wasn’t really another option.

“Nope,” Gramyre replied. “You’d think they would, but you’d be surprised at how many teachers don’t seem to care that one is a Light Bearer, at least as far as being nice about tardiness goes.”

“A real shame,” Evan said dryly as they approached the exit.

“Don’t like jokes about the benefits of being a Light Bearer, eh? Noted,” Gramyre said. If that was his idea of a joke, then Gramyre was just easily amused. Gramyre opened the door and held it long enough for Evan to get through. Evan did so, and then the boy continued, “Actually, I’ll be honest, I probably won’t retain that fact. I’m really good at names and faces, but I don’t tend to remember a lot else. I’m meeting a lot of people, in my defense.”

Evan shrugged. “I don’t remember anything about anyone.” A little more dourly, “Which is going to be rough this year.”

“Oh?” Gramyre stopped walking and gave Evan his attention. Evan stopped too, as much as part of him just wanted to walk away from this. He should ask about hunting. He should. Gramyre asked, “Why’s that?”

Evan didn’t want to go into it. “I mean, we’re starting high school, so I’ll probably have to meet a lot of new people, especially since I’m friends with a really popular girl now.” More or less. They’d see how that went.

“Oh yeah? The Bakilis threw us a welcoming party a couple of weeks ago, and I met a lot of people from our class, and I assume they were all popular if they were getting an invite to that. Maybe I’ve met her?”

“I don’t think she was there,” Evan said, hoping that was true. “She was out of town. Her name’s Megan.”

“Ah, no, no Megans at that party,” Gramyre said. “Maybe the next one.”

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Evan doubted it, but he really didn’t want to get into that. “If you’re taking the time to introduce yourself to me, you’ll certainly catch her sooner rather than later. She’s hard to miss. We should get to class,” he said, which was not asking about hunting. Oh well.

“Oh sure,” Gramyre said, smiling. “Nice talking to you! I’ll see you around.”

“Probably,” Evan said. “At least occasionally.” He started heading toward the science building.

After a moment, he heard footsteps and Gramyre appeared next to him. With a laugh, he said, “We’re both going to the same building!”

“Looks like,” Evan said. Gramyre gave him a weird look, so he said, “I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be rude, but I really did have a real heck of a morning.”

“You wanna talk about it?” Gramyre asked.

“Absolutely not, and even if I did, we don’t have anywhere close to the time to get into it right now,” Evan replied. Why the fuck did he want to talk about the problems of a boy he just met?

“Oh, yeah,” Gramyre said. “Anyway, not to worry. I didn’t think you were being rude. Actually, I like you Evan.[1] Something about you…” He shook his head, right before they reached the doors. “Not sure! But I’m serious when I say I’ll catch you later, promise. We’ll hang out with your popular friend.”

[1] Evan felt a small glow of satisfaction and happiness, despite himself. He was doing so good—he’d only been kinda weird so far, probably. Chris seemed doofily nice though, so it didn’t seem like a huge achievement.

“Possible,” Evan said, taken aback at the idea of hanging out with a rich Light Bearer. “Oh, there's my—”

“Hey, it’s Angie!” Chris said, and waved with enthusiasm. Angie, holding Ryan’s hand and looking a little alarmed, gave them a wave. Chris checked his watch again. “Damn, don’t have time to ask her about stuff.”

“So you did meet Angie,” Evan said, satisfied, as he raised a hand back at her. Wouldn’t do for anyone else to be out there stealing their dumb jokes. (Later, Evan realized it would have actually been rad as hell if some cute girl out there already had their same bad sense of humor.)

“Yeah, had quite the encounter. She also—you know her?” Chris asked.

“Yeah, she’s one of my best friends,” Evan said. “See you.”

“Did you have the same morning?” Gramyre asked. “She had a rough one—”

“Yeah,” Evan said. “We did.”

“She wouldn’t go into it either,” Gramyre replied.

“It’s complicated as hell, man. We’d need a lunch period at least. And I don’t really want to talk about it, to be honest. Anyway, you’ll hear about it soon enough I imagine,” Evan said, a little dourly.

“I will, huh?” Chris said, considering that. “Okay. I already pushed Angie too much, though not about that, and I don’t really need to know if you don’t want to talk about it. Why would I hear about it?”

Evan shrugged. “I don’t want to get into it. It’s mostly bavardage anyway.”

“Ah. Whatever that is,” Chris said.

“A fun way of saying bullshit gossip,” Evan said. “Bavardage,” he said, elongating the first a and the dage. Fun.

Chris snickered. “O-kay. I’m sorry to hear that. Hopefully it’ll pass soon. Honestly you’re really making me curious though.”

Evan rolled his eyes. “Well you should be able to get your fill elsewhere.”

“Eeh,” Chris said. “Seems skeezy. I’ll see if your small blond friend will talk about it, I bet he knows. He appears to be her boyfriend.”

“Good deduction, Columbo,” Evan said, before realizing that might not go over great.

But Chris just laughed.[1] “That’s what I like about you! You’re not acting like my footsteps turn the ground to silver. Neither did Angie. Well, I won’t get in her face right now. I’ll catch you both later.” With that, he was striding off through the mostly empty hallway.

[1] When did Evan start thinking of him as Chris instead of Gramyre, anyway? Felt presumptuous.

Ryan grinned as they walked up. “I was going to berate you for taking so long because Angie has something to tell us, but I see why and I approve. How’d it go?”

“I didn’t ask him, but I guess it was a good convo,” Evan said without a lot of emoting. He shrugged. “He seemed to enjoy it. He’s a lot to deal with, though.

“Tell me about it,” Angie said.

“We don’t have time for anyone to tell anything,” Evan said, and opened the Algebra Door. Where the algebra lived.

They barely stepped in before the bell rang.

“Please take some seats,” the instructor said. He was a real teacher’s teacher. He probably taught shop too, with that mustache.

They had to split up, though Angie and Ryan of course grabbed two seats next to each other in the front. Evan sat in the middle on the nearest row to the door, because that was what was available.

Evan glanced around the room as he took his seat and got his stuff out of his backpack. Two people jumped out at him immediately, for the same obvious reason: bright hair. The first was Mst. Ma the Turquoise Girl. His father had known a Ma, right? She saw him look at her and raised an eyebrow. Evan quickly glanced away, his cheeks and ears feeling warm.

The other was a girl who couldn’t have been more than sixteen and a half decimeters, but even sitting seemed to have two meters worth of presence. She had long, bone white hair up in a high ponytail, and dark brown skin of approximately the color of the walnut wood rocking chair his mother’s mother had gifted them with when Virginia was born. She had on what was probably a fashionable white top (Evan couldn’t really tell), and was adorned with what looked like many genuine magic charms.

She was also both beautiful and really quite distinctive. Her features didn’t seem to be recognizable as any of the many ethnicities occupying Seattle, seeming almost unearthly. Given that the fae didn’t send their kids to high school in Seattle, no matter how notable the high school, her ethnicity had to be something Lemuric.[1] From roll call, he learned that her name was Wintre Ion Callerui, which sounded Lemuric, too.

[1] Someone from the One Hundred Thousand Isles of Lemuria. Though uncommon, nobles of various Lemuric polities occasionally immigrate to the World Between, bringing much of their wealth and prestige with them. They are usually mages, for though Lemuria, too, fears the Beasts Below, the Powers Above do not or cannot grant their favor to Lemuria, and thus they must turn to magic to defend themselves.

MEGAN. BETWEEN SECOND AND THIRD.

Megan headed right back north, back to the Performance building for Phys Ed. Not her favorite, but better to stay in shape than get an even bigger—

Every other thought fled Megan’s head when she saw Lauren and Katie Kay up ahead, walking into the Performance building. She picked up the pace, but it didn’t matter. She got into the atrium just in time to see them disappear up the stairs to the music floor. Megan sighed. Curse their long legs, and her own short ones too. She headed to PE, vowing to double time it through showering and changing.

EVAN. THIRD PERIOD.

The first day of Algebra was just like a first day of Algebra. A long time on the syllabus, no icebreaking, getting right into it with a worksheet to test their current knowledge.

As class progressed, Evan continued looking around the room at his fellow students, if more subtly than before class. About five minutes in, he realized he’d been wrong about Wintre Ion’s hair. It wasn’t white, it was tinted with a barely there ice blue. He’d spent a bit of time looking at her already. He didn't know how he'd thought it was white. This was the most interesting thing to happen in the first ten minutes of class.

About fifteen minutes in, Evan realized that her hair was… bluer than he’d thought. It was still light, but it was more of a sky blue, and it was definitely blue. There was no way he could have mistaken that for white.

At this point he focused his attention more on her. As class went on, he realized that her hair was changing color, turning a deepening blue. It was imperceptible, so gradual you didn’t notice it happening if you watched. Looking away for a while was the best way to notice the change.

Two-thirds of the way through class, Wintre Ion’s hair was a midnight blue, but still clearly blue. Evan expected a fade to black. Instead, when he next looked back, it was a deep, dark shade of purple. It gradually turned lighter, reaching a striking royal purple by the end of class.

Watching Wintre Ion’s hair change color very slowly was the most interesting thing to happen the whole period. Evan didn’t hate math—he was good enough to get As, and he understood everything—but it wasn’t his favorite, either. Evan understood that it was good to know the things that school taught, and he learned them all easily enough, but they weren’t, by and large, interesting to him.

He was going to be a hunter, after all.