“Here,” Ryan said as he pressed the folded raincoat into his hands, “don’t lose it.”
“I’ll guard it with my life. No thief is going to get it.”
“No, I meant, don’t get yourself in a situation where you would have to sacrifice it in the first place, in the Tower, okay?”
“I wouldn’t do that?” Micah told him and tried to tuck it away.
Ryan didn’t let go. “Wouldn’t you? Let’s say you and Anne go chasing after one of the last surviving collectors and it beats you up and mugs you—”
Micah placed another hand on the jacket and pulled. “I won’t lose it, Ryan. I promise.”
With a sigh, he let go.
They had spoken to his parents about selling it after summer break. They hadn’t seemed happy about the prospect, of course, but they’d managed to convince them.
Then, his parents had told them to ask their principal and maybe Garen how best to go about it, and not to go below a certain price if it really was valuable.
“And give Lisa a hug from me?” Ryan lowered his voice and checked to make sure his parents hadn’t heard, but they were groggy after a long night out.
The dinner they had wanted to treat them to had become a lunch, to make time for a date night while Micah was still here so they wouldn’t leave Ryan alone, and bored, at home.
They’d spent the time showing off spells they were learning to Hannah, then played with her when she got cranky because … she couldn’t join? Or because they had kept her at a safe distance?
Micah was guessing anyway. She might as well have gotten worried her parents were gone for too long.
He brightened. “I can do that.” He loved to have an excuse to spring a hug on Lisa and say it came from Ryan.
“Are you sure you have everything?” Noelle asked as she came downstairs.
“I went down the list a gazillion times, but I’ll gladly do it again if it means I can stay for a few more minutes.”
She smiled. “Are you sure you have to leave, then?”
“I have to make it back in time for the final rehearsal, yeah.”
“Well, shoot. Have fun then. You’ll write and come visit soon?”
“As soon as I can,” he said and swung his backpack up, “when we have a holiday or something. Definitely next summer. Oh, and thanks for the packed lunch!”
“That’s nothing. Ryan and David will walk you to the harbor?” she looked at Ryan as she asked it.
He nodded.
“Have a nice trip then,” she said and stifled a yawn.
“Thank you.” He stepped outside and lingered in the sun as they waited for David to come down the stairs with Hannah.
The weather was holding up. There had been a heat storm on Wednesday that had quickly cleared. Today was clear skies.
He breathed it in, closed his eyes, and drew on that natural instinct everyone in the Five Cities had to guide his eyes south, staring straight in the direction of the Tower, out of sight.
Vacation’s over, I guess. Time to go home.
----------------------------------------
Joshua shoved his right shoe on as he rushed down the stairs. He tipped and nearly lost his balance, leaned against the railing to finish up, and hopped down the last few steps. He knelt to tie his shoelaces and shot toward the door.
“Ah, ah, ah! No, you don’t!” his dad yelled from the kitchen. “In here.”
He caught himself on the door frame and poked his head inside. His dad was making a sandwich for breakfast.
Breakfast did sound nice, but more importantly: “I really gotta go, dad,” he said, “I’m gonna’ be late.”
“Where are you headed so early?”
“Terry found this abandoned shack near a pond in the woods and me and the others want to go check it out.”
“The others and me,” he corrected him and bit some mustard off his thumb. “Did you brush your teeth?”
He rolled his eyes. “Yes.”
“Comb your hair? Wash up? Put on some old clothes, if you’re going trailblazing like some kind of [Traveler] through the bush?”
“Yes, yes, and yes?” Kyle groaned in annoyance but smiled at the thought of being a climber. Today could be an adventure.
“Wash your hands?”
He hesitated. “I washed them normally?”
“‘Normally’?” His lip quirked in amusement. “What’s ‘normally’?”
“You know … water and soap? I might have skimmed on the soap.”
He gave him a look. His expression turned into gentle disappointment. “Joshua. You know—”
“I know, I know,” he interrupted him, “but … It’s the weekend! It’s not a weekday, so do I have to?” He smiled, hoping it would convince him.
No such luck. His dad gave him a patient look. “You’re going out with your friends, are you not?”
“Yeah, but … it’s barely noticeable today.” Behind his back, he pressed his thumb into the palm of his hand.
“There’s lots of shade in the forest, and what will you say when your scrapes or cuts mysteriously vanish?”
“… I dunno. They probably won’t notice?”
The man nodded, put the knife away, and wiped his hand on a towel as he gestured for him to come closer. “C’mon. Let’s take a look together.”
He reluctantly stepped around the table and held his hand out. His father’s shadow loomed for a second when he stepped past the window, but then the man gently cupped his hand and tilted it to inspect his palm in the light.
Across the center, a faint pink line extended where other people would normally have a crease in their palm. It was barely visible despite his tan. Lots of people had pink creases where their skin had stretched or where they had scars. At least, Joshua thought so.
His dad shoved his hand back into the shadows and there was an ever-so-faint glow.
Joshua winced.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said and sighed with a heavy chest and said, “we’ll only do a little today.”
He looked up at him with wide eyes. “Really?”
His dad smiled. “Yeah. It’ll save you the first scrape or so.” He left and opened the drawer near the sink. His hand passed over the meat mallet and chopping knives to take a normal peeling knife out, like the one they used for cutting apples.
He stepped up to the sink. “Hand?”
Joshua was still reluctant but he joined him. He held his hand out, used to doing it on his own by now. He was supposed to be doing it on his own. It was actually kind of embarrassing if he thought about it with the right mindset.
He tried to think of it like other guys needing help from their parents in the bathroom, which would be mortifying.
His father took his hand, set the knife against one of the long white lines that already stood out, and dragged it only halfway across. Blood welled up. Joshua grit his teeth and tried not to wince as he tilted the blood flow away.
The first drops fell into the basin and the coppery taste filled his mouth. He took a deep breath and told himself, I’m too old to throw a tantrum.
His dad turned the faucet on and got a bar of soap for him. The cold water stung for a moment, but he could feel a tingling sensation rise up and began to scrub.
After a second, his hand was as clean as if nothing had happened, and the wound was gone. Like almost every other morning of his life.
He tilted his hand as if trying to catch the sheen of a mopped floor. The faint pink line was nearly gone. It didn’t even glow.
Joshua heaved out a sigh of relief.
“Better, right?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s always better after the fact. But you gotta’ do it,” his dad told him. “‘Gotta wash up. A little bit of pain will pay off in the end, same as any other work.”
“I know, dad. Thank you.”
He cleaned the knife with soap, wiped it off, and set it aside.
Joshua waited for him to turn back around before he asked, “Can I go, now?” His legs yelled at him to run, impatient to go running off in the forest no doubt. He was looking forward to the day he would have rather than this moment.
He ruffled his hair and smiled. “Sure. Have fun out there. And don’t get into too much trouble!”
After the second word, Joshua had already shot off through the door. He called back, “I won’t!”
“Love you, kiddo!”
“Love you, too!”
He shielded his eyes against the glaring sun. The sounds of crickets and critters filled his ears, and the overgrown lawn scraped by his calf—he’d have to cut it soon.
Ugh. Chores.
His skin balked at the heat, and he knew he would itch and sweat in a moment, but he couldn’t wait to enjoy the sun.
A few steps down the tiled path to their house, he grimaced and stopped.
The heat hadn’t stopped rising. He was already beginning to sweat. His skin felt like it was baking and blistering. His lungs burned and the smell of smoke filled his nose.
He stumbled and slowed, coughing. The day darkened as thick clouds crawled over the sky.
But when he looked up, it was early morning. Dew clung to the freshly-cut lawn. A bit of mist hung in the air. The sun hadn’t even risen yet, and there were no clouds, but a rich glow rose from his hand like a growing disease.
It didn’t matter. The orange light flickering on his skin drowned the pink light out as thick waves of smoke flowed up into the sky.
He turned and saw his house in flames.
Kyle woke up in a cold sweat, heaving. He needed a second to remember where he was and sat up, checking to make sure nobody had noticed.
A fucking nightmare? He hadn’t even had a dream in months. If someone made a comment—
He turned to look, but there was no one around. All his roommates were gone for the summer or at least, this weekend. He was alone.
He relaxed, hunched forward, and took deep breaths. His eyes roamed until they found his hand, his glove he wore even when he slept—who knew who would barge in at any moment? Nobody fucking respected peoples’ privacy around here.
He pressed a thumb into the material until it hurt, but that was fine. He needed something to hurt right now; to break.
Anger welled up, always a step away. Anger at himself. Because while his dad was a piece of shit, worst of all, it was the ending that was the nightmare, not the beginning.
He kicked his desk chair over with a curse.
Why the fuck did he miss those days?
He stared at the door in the dark and knew he would have to get up sooner or later but wasn’t sure why. Summer break. He wanted to sleep in like he’d used to.
Slowly, it came back to him. What he had to do today. What he’d signed up for.
“Why the fuck did I say yes?”
----------------------------------------
Sharp stone shards pressed into his flesh, bruised and scraped. Not sharp enough to cut his skin, but they pressed down on him from all sides incessantly. The weight of a mountain on his head. It compressed the sweaty air and his lungs, too, as he took in searing hot gasps.
He blinked the pain out of his eyes and forged onward, arm length by arm length, to drag himself forward in the dark.
The shards broke against him. The ground scraped against his torso. The fear in his chest was worse as he followed the only thing in sight: a dim red glow.
It grew hotter and hotter until it felt like he was crawling through fire. Until it felt like he was on fire.
No. That thought didn’t ring true, and the dissonance made him blink. He woke up a little. This is a dream.
The feeling was familiar. The fear. Any moment now, he would wake up. He’d done it a hundred times before:
A Teacup Salamander would drag itself out of the rubble, dead or alive. With nowhere to run, it would sink its teeth into his neck and tear out his throat.
The roof would cave in and crush him, or trap him in here for what felt like an eternity.
He would crawl around a corner and find his own dead body, burnt-out eye sockets staring back at him.
He shut his eyes as tightly as he could and reached an arm out again, hoping to find the cool comfort of his pillow.
Instead, he hit rubble. The broken essences rushed to fill his husk. He pushed through, the floor collapsed, and he tumbled down in a shower of stones … and something else that smeared and crumbled.
He opened his eyes and found ash and smoke all around him, stretching as far as his eyes could see. It hung thick in the air like smoke.
He coughed and looked around. He was … on a cliff? The rubble sloped toward a field of ash. A straight column of dark stone loomed above like …
The Tower?
Seared? That couldn’t be true. The Towers were indestructible. Nothing could bring them down.
He looked ahead and beyond the layers upon layers of grey smoke, a dark shadow loomed on the horizon like a mangled mountain.
… Anevos?
No.
That thought didn’t ring true either, it wasn’t a straight column like the Tower above him, and his heart began to pound faster and faster inside his chest like a panicked scream.
The mountain moved—
Micah shot up in a cold sweat and let it out. A scream. One heartbeat, before his hands clamped over his mouth, following habit. He heaved through his nose and the stale air essence that had gathered overnight filled him.
He grimaced and huffed it out, looked around, checking to make sure he hadn’t disturbed anyone again, but—
Nobody was around. His roommates were gone for the summer or at least, this weekend. He was alone.
He sighed in relief and let himself relax.
That was new.
It was probably an errant thing, like the time the rubble had flooded and drowned him, or the time he’d found Ryan dead instead.
It didn’t matter. It was just another nightmare, a regular thing. He pushed it aside, guiding it on his way like a leaf down the river. The scenes fled his memory as most dreams did.
That’s behind me now, he told himself. There’s nothing left for me there anymore. I’m whole.
Much rather, he would look ahead. He had to get up, go about his day. Today, he had to—
Today.
Today was the day.
A smile welled up from inside him and he jumped up on his bed with an arm out. “The party!”
He almost fell off when he tried to kick his thin blanket off, ran out of his room, and came back a moment later. Pants. He needed pants. And shoes.
Jogging. A tip from the other guys. He had to go jogging, work out so he would look his best, brush his teeth, shower, breakfast and a quick lunch—
So much to do. He grabbed his running shoes, his dancing shoes right next to them at the bottom of his closet. An excited cheer welled out of him.
He couldn’t wait.
“Oh no, oh no, oh no.” Micah stared at his face in the mirror. A red pimple stood out on his cheek.
He ran out of the bathroom and down the hall to his room. There was somebody on the walkway, but he didn’t have time. He was going to be late.
He grabbed a bottle from his room with a bit of leftover liquid sloshing around inside, got his sleeping dagger, and ran back into the bathroom.
“Are you not ready yet?” Shala demanded.
“Gimme’ a minute! Almost done.”
“I genuinely hope for your sake that one minute means one minute when you say it,” he raised his voice to keep up.
It didn’t sound like he was going to come inside, but many guys weren’t bashful about hanging out inside the bathroom, himself included. Micah’s gaze lingered on the door for a moment to make sure before he turned back. Good. He didn’t want to get any weird looks.
He unsheathed the dagger and lifted it to this face. His hand froze, metal pressed to brown skin.
What are you doing? His own preservation was secondary to most objectives, but it did not mean it was negligible.
He took a deep breath and remembered his blood healing potions. A stupid thing he should never have done but … still useful. This was at the same time different and similar, he told himself.
I’m not harming myself. I will heal. I have some healing potion here. It will go bad in a day anyway. Better to use it rather than get into the habit of being wasteful.
His hand still didn’t move, and he tried to think of other things, like working out. That was literally tearing your muscles apart to grow them anew, better and stronger.
I will heal, and I’ll look better afterward. More confident. I’ll enjoy myself more tonight. Just for tonight? It will help preserve me in more ways than just my physical self.
With a reluctant sigh, he cut the pimple off, washed his face, and dabbed the healing potion on. When he lifted his finger away, the flesh had healed. It felt tight, like a clothes peg was holding it together, but that was a good thing. A constant reminder that he didn’t have to worry.
Best not to get into the habit of doing this either, or he might grow warts on his face but …
He checked for any other spots, washed his face again to get rid of the leftover potion essences—Anne could see them—and gathered his toiletries before he ducked back out.
“You’re not even wearing shoes yet!” Shala urged him as he ran by on socks through the hall. “What have you been doing all day? Hurry!”
“I am! I am! Just a minute!”
“Stranya.”
He dumped everything on his bed, sorted his things out, and grabbed the gym bag he’d prepared yesterday. He ruffled through to make sure he had everything, went down the list in his head, and put his running shoes on.
Ms. Denner had outfits prepared for them at the venue. They weren’t allowed to bring weapons … The knives stayed. He trusted her.
As long as they wore school colors, she could easily arm and armor them anyway.
Keys, door locked, duffel in hand, he smiled. “Ready.”
“Then let’s go.”
The Constance Hall lay on the eastern side of the Tower, slightly north of one of the six main roads that stretched away from its portals, near the Great River in a ‘nicer’ part of town.
It was named in honor of King Lee’s first daughter, Princess Constance, from his first marriage in his old world, who had been invited here separately. They had found each other again after a few years apparently.
She’d been a socialite—as much as anyone could be when they lived in tents—and focused on communities and quality of life, trying to get things like running water, hospitals, mail between different camps, daycares, and also entertainment going.
It had been far from her focus, but she’d apparently done more for the ‘arts’, directly, than anyone else in the royal family.
… Barring things like her father keeping them safe, or her half-brother focusing on infrastructure and terraforming to make them prosper enough to have time for entertainment, of course.
Micah knew all of this and more because Ms. Denner and Mr. Campbell had drilled it into them in case it came up in polite conversation.
Apparently, people liked to know fun facts about the concert halls they danced in.
Although, some of that was unreliable anyway. They knew very little about the Good Prince since his … first cousin once removed?
He still wasn’t so sure about family designations. He was trying to learn for Anne but for him, they were all just ‘cousins’.
The cousin of the Good Prince’s niece, the Lost Queen Anne, who would become the Third King, the Tyrant, after he’d allegedly had her disappeared either during a trip into the Tower, forced her into exile, or had her disappeared, exiled, or murdered after a bloody night of hunting her and her staff down at her forest estate … had apparently despised the Second King.
That was a mouth-full, but it sounded about right.
The stories varied. Their greatest historians were still trying to find reliable ways to separate fact from slander.
They did know, the Third King had put a lot of resources into besmirching his uncle once removed’s name, to the point where there was reason to believe he had a personal vendetta against the man.
Some of that, as best as they could tell, was deserved: the Good Prince had focused on city planning, infrastructure, schools, roads, sewers, even terraforming the country—he’d done unmeasurable good for their nation, but he had been very good at spending money.
His teacher often said he must have been bad at saying no.
But that money had to come from somewhere, and he’d had troubles balancing the wants of the different factions.
Once, the Five Cities had threatened to fall apart into different city-states. Ironically, it had been a common enemy, the Tyrant who’d hated the Good Prince, who had united them again.
Common enemies all the way down, now that Micah thought about it, with wars after wars uniting them …
Even now, there were people who said Lighthouse was going to secede and join the Overseas Forts, or be their own neutral party.
But the Good Prince had also failed to produce an heir. He hadn’t married, even with pressure from all sides, and the Tyrant had funded lots of nasty rumors explaining why.
That he slept around a lot, that he had some sort of transmitted disease because of it, that he couldn’t have children, that he had a secret wife, or even a secret husband.
That one had been a mind-scratcher. Sure, his classmates and he called each other names that technically implied that sort of stuff, but they were just names. They didn’t mean anything.
Micah had never even considered that a guy might actually marry another guy. Why would …? Why wouldn’t …? How …?
Hm.
Anyway, his worst failure had been that he’d died. An untimely death caused by—and he always remembered this—complications from a life full of using alchemicals, and then all of his support, Skills, and projects were gone.
No more efficient terraforming.
People hadn’t known how unhealthy alchemicals could be at the time, and after their King had died from drinking a potion for every problem, it had caused widespread distrust, of course, but it had also fast-tracked funding on an academic level to understand what they were putting into their bodies.
That had improved the quality of potions drastically and eventually, led to alchemists needing a license to sell their wares, which had restored trust over time … mostly.
So in a way, the Dead Prince was the patron of Alchemy, similar to how the Princess Abdicant was the patron of the Arts, or the Lost Queen was the patron of Rangers, because of the LQSAR, or Housekeepers—in some versions of the story, she died by their side, tried to bargain for their lives, or shielded her staff with her body.
Being a patron was something ascribed to them, not something they had sought out themselves.
“Stranya.”
Shala snapped his fingers in front of his face, and even his snap sounded crisp and practiced.
“Huh?”
“Are you with us?”
They had grouped up with Thomas and two of the girls on the way, but it was a bit of a trip to get to the venue.
He must have missed a bit of the conversation. “Sorry. Just brushing up on small talk ammo.”
“You prepared for that?” one of Thomas’ friends asked. “God, I hope there won’t be much of it. I bet they’ll just humor us with a question or two about school and then ignore us, right?”
She sounded worried as if she hadn’t studied enough for an exam.
“Same,” Micah said, “but still, just in case.” They were supposed to seem interesting, and that meant having things to talk about.
“I assume we’ll have a little more freedom in choosing who we speak to,” Shala said, “I doubt adults will want to seek out children at a party for long.”
“This way,” Thomas said, guiding them. He turned around for two steps to add, “And speak for yourself. You’re the only children here.”
“Ha-ha.”
They bought tickets for the Roundabout—that was the reason Shala had tried to get his attention apparently—and hopped off the tram after only a few stops.
Along the way, the city seemed to embellish itself before their eyes. The streets looked cleaner, the manhole covers had pictures, names, and dates worked into the metal, the street lamps grew like polished trees, and they even walked down a few streets with electric ones.
Just looking at them, there were little to no soot essences around, and Micah knew they were either rigorously cleaned, or they would shine a clean white light that produced none, or both.
One street had colorful sails hung over it, and when the sun shone through, it turned the pavement into a stained glass painting.
There were actual stained glass windows in some houses, and he wondered if those were made of spark dust, the indestructible magic glass they imported from Lin.
Its ingredients had to be mined from a mountain that was holy to three different nations, so it was hard to get not just because of price and shipping concerns, but he wanted to buy a shard to poke at it someday.
From afar, it didn’t look all that different from normal glass essence.
Anne’s parents lived nearby, he knew. Her family didn’t all live together, but they had a building that offered them a private entrance into the Tower plaza.
Navid also lived nearby, and his family had a much larger mansion, he was told. They didn’t need a private entrance. They could use the supply entrances at any time.
Micah looked at the storefronts, plazas, fountains, statues, and government buildings and wondered what rent was like here, or how much it would cost to buy a house.
The Constance Hall somehow stood out from the rest. It rose like a citadel protecting a towering dome, and that dome housed one of the largest stages and stadiums in the city, but their destination lay in one of the citadel’s outer corners, which were owned by or rented to different organizations—in this case, the Guild—and offered spaces for smaller events.
Workshops, smaller theatre productions, dance lessons, or recitals, all for schools … and also parties.
Micah spotted some familiar faces in the crowd, classmates who were on their way or waiting in the shade of the colonnade.
The entrance of the hall was a glass front two stories high, and it was surrounded by constant traffic. To the side of the building, a few carriages were already parked and he felt a pang of longing for Cairn and the horses there.
There were two particular faces that stood out to him, near a column with their own bags, and Micah left the others behind to run at them.
Lisa saw him and took a step back. He slowed down in disappointment. “Lisa! I won’t tackle you again … today. And that was because of Ryan!”
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“Yeah, right!”
“Hi,” Anne said to him and stepped to the side to wave at the others behind him.
“Hi.”
They must have come here straight from home. Lisa had spent the night with Anne’s family since they had wanted to have— “Oh! How was dinner?”
“The food was great,” Lisa said. “They knew what I liked. The company was … stiff.”
“Not true,” Anne said next to her. “You were awkward.”
“Unexpectedly formal, then. I’ve spent too much time around Garen and you people. I wasn’t used to that kind of dinner anymore.”
“‘You people’,” Micah scoffed. “Sounds like it was good practice for tonight, though?”
“That was a happy accident,” Anne told him.
“Did we arrive on time?” Shala asked as he caught up.
Most of them checked, and they still had a good twenty minutes to spare. They filled it with small talk of their own.
Myra joined them. Yasin, Frederick, Lachlan, and two other girls stood with Gian in their own group—the latter was friendly with Jason, Micah knew, and had refined the Kobold bone into a wand for him.
A third group consisted entirely of girls, Cathy among them. Nina, the last of the grade skippers, glanced over at their group where Shala, Anne, and he were.
A handful of their classmates would also be at the party tonight, not because of their school but because they had been invited elsehow.
Raphael, Alexander’s cousin, was coming. Micah had had a physical exercise course with him. Alexander himself was absent on vacation.
Brian was stuck looking unhappy with two adults who might have been his parents … and Hugh, the fire spirit, stood off in the distance in the glare of the sun—where it had baked the stone and the day was warmest.
It— He wore a tailored red suit and glowered at the couple like an animal waiting for the right moment to strike … or a dog forced to sleep in the rain.
Why? If those were Brian’s parents, was he not allowed to join? Had they asked for privacy? Did they know the fire spirit existed?
Did it matter?
Not really, but Micah’s mood soured like he’d woken up thirsty in the night and drunk curdled milk.
When he glanced at Anne and imagined the evening ahead, his chest felt light and his heart raced …
Yeah, he was going to have to deal with the spirit.
Some of their classmates spotted Ms. Denner through the glass before she left the building, and she was dressed for the evening, with most of her hair tied back, wearing a gradient red blazer over a white dress shirt, black pants, and an amber gem on a necklace instead of a tie.
The outfit looked warmer than it actually was—Micah knew, he could see how warm it was.
It also looked casual, matching her intense expression not one bit.
She whistled and herded them closer, launching into a headcount before she greeted them.
“ … All there.” She sighed. “Alright, students. It’s a relief to see you’re punctual. We have some time left until our appointment, but you can wait inside.”
She rushed them through the entrance, and a couple of their classmates split off to say goodbye to family members who had been waiting on the sidelines.
His family knew about the party. They didn’t necessarily have the full picture. If they did, they didn’t have time to walk him to the entrance. He wasn’t a baby, like Hannah.
… He still wished Ryan were here.
The foyer of the squat, outer building was spacious. There were benches few and far between, stands full of flyers, ticket counters, coat checks, and one large hallway which led deeper in with a few smaller ones spaced out. It reminded him a bit of the guild.
Four large staircases were spaced out across the distance, and both their steps and the upper floors were visible from the front half of the bottom floor.
He slowed down as he looked around, then hurried to catch up with muted steps. Sound had an odd echoing quality to it here.
Ms. Denner met up with Mr. Walker, who wore a slightly nicer suit than usual and did greet them.
“Your dressing rooms are ready,” he informed them. “We will be heading to those in a moment. There, you will have the option of stowing your belongings. You have the option of using the coat check if you wish, although either way, your belongings will be accounted for.”
“You will get dressed separately,” Ms. Denner went on, “and afterward, you will get your make-up done separately—”
“Make-up?” Lachlan asked.
Ms. Denner blinked and paused for a moment. “One,” she held a finger up, “it is rude to interrupt your betters. And two, we speak in full sentences, Mr. O’Lear.”
To his credit, he fixed his mistake. “Excuse me, ma’am. I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I assume you mentioned make-up for the girls?”
“We do not assume things, either. No, we have hired stylists to prepare your hair and make-up for the event.”
Myra raised her hand, and Ms. Denner glanced at her. “Apologies, Ms. Denner, but what of us those of us who have already done their own make-up?”
“It will be redone.”
Half of their group seemed mildly frustrated by that, the other half didn’t care, Micah included.
He even heard Hugh mumble, “I don’t see the issue? You wear it for performances. Is this event not another stage?”
“I’m not complaining,” Brian mumbled back, and he made it sound like a comment he was offering to the others.
It seemed annoying, having to listen to a spirit prattling in your ear all day without being able to respond. Why not just come out and tell people about Hugh?
“Yes, but your friends are. Your other friend wears make-up sometimes.”
The group began to move as their principal led them into one of the hallways. In the chaos, it was easier to gossip, and Micah glanced over.
Brian mouthed something.
“No, not the girl. The other one. The zappy one.”
Brian gave him a bewildered look, and the fire spirit said, “Well, he puts something on his skin sometimes that’s more flammable than the rest of him is.”
He stepped closer to keep an ear on the conversation. If the spirit was measuring things in how easy it was to burn his classmates …
“Please, tell me you don’t mean machine grease, or healing potions, or acne cream or something—that’s not make-up.”
“Iunno. You tell me how your weird skin organ works.”
Hugh noticed him looking through the crowd and flipped him the bird with both hands.
Micah flipped one back, and Ms. Denner immediately snapped, “Mr. Stranya!”
He shot upright and looked ahead. “Sorry!”
People chuckled, Hugh no doubt one of them … Not that it was a person.
Lisa and Anne glanced past him when he joined them, and he wasn’t surprised they could see it, though it was embarrassing Anne had to see his behavior.
“Will you offer him advice, or should I?”
“I don’t see why he would need it,” Lisa said, and looked vaguely uncomfortable, “you seem like you have it handled, Micah.”
“I do,” Micah said and hesitated. “I think. If it tries something, you can help me rip it to shreds, right?”
“See!”
See what?
Oh, Lisa mouthed. “You’re free to dislike it, Micah—that’s understandable, really—but that doesn’t make it an enemy.”
“It’s a being of destruction.”
“So?”
Anne glanced back and dismissed his comment, “It’s practically a child.”
“Even if it is a ‘being of destruction’, destruction can be necessary. You need to destroy your food to digest it, you need heat to battle disease, to keep your body working, you need fire to cook your food—”
“Yeah, yeah. I get all of that, but—”
“Do you? How about this then: you need fire for alchemy.”
“Ehh …”
He wasn’t so sure about that. He had [Kinetic Alchemy]. His peers had other options. They had even started using electricity and in some of their lessons, mostly for electrolysis.
“Sure, you can use electricity, kinetic energy, biological or chemical reactions, magic, spirits, but most recipes use fire. Without it, alchemy wouldn’t have gotten to the point it is at now.”
“Fine. Pedantic, tangential side-point conceded. I don’t see what that has to do with it.”
Their group approached a tiny staircase that looped around itself, with an open metal railing to offer more room, and slowed. They couldn’t all fit up the steps.
“It’s a lesson my parents taught me, long ago. If you meet something that seems strange or even anathema to yourself, it’s useful to consider what you have in common, to build a bridge. Maybe you will see that they’re people. Maybe you’ll find they’re monsters. Consider blue essence: it’s near both fire, as the warmest part of the candle is blue, and water, or rather space, as light struggles to climb through layers upon layers of water or air. Those things have at least one thing to bridge them where others would see none. Fire can be a tool for preservation. It depends on how you use it … Or how it uses itself in this case.”
“Mm.” Micah pushed his lips to the side. He didn’t want to dismiss a lesson from her parents but …
“Your parents sound very wise,” he said diplomatically.
The things she said … he wondered if she’d ever struggled with getting used to living with her Myconid family members. That had to be weird, being around an entirely different species, right?
Anne, at least, was smiling. “Please, promise me you won’t start a fight tonight.”
“ … I won’t be the one to start it,” Micah promised.
“Good enough!”
The crowd moved and they climbed up the stairs two at a time.
“Do I need to understand what that conversation was about?” Shala asked ahead of them.
“One of our classmates is friends with a fire spirit,” Anne said, “and Micah doesn’t like it—which is perfectly understandable! Just inconvenient.”
“Oh?”
She said it with more humor than condescension, and Micah took the comment as intended. He rolled his eyes.
They stepped out of what looked like a service door at the top and into … a lavish hallway.
The carpet was plain but spotless, the walls made of smooth stone. Paintings and metal decorations in starburst designs adorned the walls every few meters.
The paintings depicted ships at war with one another, at war with storms, at war with deepsea horrors that melted and reformed like primordial soup. Some of them moved.
In one, the Lighthouse Tower stood in the sea, waves crashing against the red bricks of its overgrown base, as well as the argent walkway that connected it to the mainland. It had two entrances instead of their six, one opened toward the shore, the other into the sea.
Wooden seashell cones hung between the paintings and housed pearl-styled light potions that flowed like globes of glowing oil in water.
Even their patterns looked elegant and orderly, though Micah knew most alchemists smacked stones together in the dark, hoping for a spark.
He wished he could take his journal out and take notes.
To their left, the hallway ended at another railing with a gap to the wall, which was a large window that overlooked the city Towerward.
It was still early in the afternoon and bright out, and Ms. Denner led them down the right further into the building and shade.
He still mumbled, “Wow,” before he followed the group.
“This is part of the Lighthouse exhibit,” Anne whispered to him, “they have a different one to honor each of the other four Towers.”
“Not our own?”
“The idea was that our city honors our own … but there are paintings and statues of the Gardens along the path to the main concert hall.”
“Ah.” Micah smiled in relief. There was such a thing as hometown pride.
Ms. Denner split them up into dressing rooms, and they were told to freshen up and wait for someone to come get them, but not get changed.
Their jackets were kept under black protective sheets on hangers, and they peeked to see what they would be wearing:
Red suits similar to their school uniforms, obviously cleaner—since the students had to keep theirs clean—made of better material, with a short tailcoat that split down the middle, and small embellishments like cufflinks, silver stitchings, and pocket squares with a logo on them.
They were tailored to them. Someone had come to take their measurements before one of the dance lessons a few weeks ago.
“Cool,” he whispered, and he wasn’t the only one.
In five short minutes, the somewhat fancy and freshly-cleaned dressing room looked like a boys’ locker room after they settled in, and Mr. Walker rushed them out.
He directed them into a room like a backroom barber shop lined on both sides with dressing counters which had mirrors, sinks, chairs, and carts full of supplies.
Many odd knick-knacks, boxes, and mannequins were stacked against the walls, and metal bars connected the walls in places for no reason he could see. They made the room feel cramped, but there were a few open windows close to the ceiling.
After a brief introduction, a small team tended to them, men and women with barber’s belts who tied protective capes around their necks.
Micah had gotten his hair cut two weeks ago, before his vacation, and put more effort into combing it this morning. Apparently, that wasn’t enough.
His stylist, a woman in her late twenties, wetted his hair and used a comb to drag the knots out, then got a pair of scissors.
“Uhm?” Micah mumbled.
“Let them work,” Mr. Walker told them before he left. “They know what they’re doing.”
So he sat still, grimaced as she cut his hair without his input, and stared at nothing in particular.
Most of the other guys didn’t seem to have it as bad, and they chatted about nothing in particular instead.
Make-up, the suits, other suits they owned, someone joked about wearing a birthday suit.
He would have joined in but the stylist asked, “Were you hurt and healed yourself recently?”
She indicated the side of his face in-between cuts. He thought she might have meant the pimple this morning but she was gesturing at the wrong side.
“Lots?” he asked. “I’m a climber so I heal myself sometimes. Scrapes, bruises, stuff.”
“Nothing serious then? Do you maybe spend large amounts of time with the sun on one side, studying outside?”
“Uhm … I don’t think so. I do meditative exercises outside, but I move around a lot. Why?”
“Your skin tone is just a shade off, like you sunned yourself unevenly.” She indicated the side of his face and parts of his neck again. “It looked like a large wound at first, but I suppose it could have come from sleeping halfway under a canopy or something. I have a friend who had that happen to him. He’s pale, not at all like you, so he was spotted red all over.”
She smiled.
Micah squinted in the mirror and couldn’t see it. He supposed she would be sensitive to that sort of thing in her line of work, but …
He wasn’t sure what to say? He didn’t want to be rude, so he gave her a smile and shrugged on the inside.
She cut above his ear, and he held still. The cold metal slid along his skin and made him tingle.
When she held the tweezers close to his face, breathing steadily with a focused look on her face, the tingles got worse. Then they turned into a series of precise, quick stings as she kept one hand on his temple to rotate his head and plucked his eyebrows.
Micah had used to keep his hair somewhat long. It had been curly at times, but only because it was thick, he hadn’t combed it often, and because he’d run off into the wilderness or swum in the channels to forage for ingredients.
Untamed, put diplomatically.
Ryan had said he’d liked it, but Ryan was nice and also a liar. He said things to make Micah feel better about himself.
Then Garen had gotten a say in how his hair was cut and it’d been super short as if he were a recruit spoiling for a fight.
The woman combed through his hair one last time, wiped his face with a washcloth, and smeared some clear goop on her hands. She ran it through his hair to bend it this way and that.
He tried not to tilt his head with the movements.
He had bounced between the two haircuts ever since—getting his hair cut almost as short when he went to the barber, because it was easier to take care of, but going less often because he was busy and had to pay for it himself.
He didn’t style his hair—helmets ruined any efforts in that regard. He did treat his acne, like some of their classmates, so he didn’t have to worry about that as much, barring exceptions like this morning. He had never plucked his eyebrows himself before.
Now, his hair was just long enough to style, and it looked like every strand of hair had placed where it was by design. She’d curled his hair to the side over his forehead, and toward his ear on one side, a thin parting line along the other, and cleaned the outline of his neck, ears, and the stray tips that stuck out.
“That’s a good look for you,” Shala said, who had finished up ages ago.
“Thanks.”
“You should thank her, rather, don’t you think?” He indicated his stylist.
“Thank you,” he repeated and smiled. He was ready to hop off the chair and pay, figuratively speaking, but she wiped her hands with a cloth and came back with a box and a sponge.
“We’re not quite done yet.”
Uhm … but he already looked nice?
“Do I have to?”
“Your principal ordered it,” she said as she dabbed a flat sponge onto some brown stuff. “At this point, it’s more for my sake than yours. That shade difference is going to bug me …”
So Micah leaned his head back with a grimace while she dabbed his neck and chin, and he couldn’t see the results except that it made his skin feel clammy.
More and more of the guys finished up, and they left their chairs for the next person. They didn’t know if they could leave and clustered around the corners, and the conversation moved onto who was showing up today, and who probably wished they could have shown up.
Not everyone who had signed up for the dance lessons had wanted to attend—some just wanted to have fun with their friends, or genuinely wanted to learn—but not everyone who had wanted to attend was here today. They hadn’t made the invitation for one reason or another.
“I mean, but that’s understandable, right?” Micah threw a comment out. “I don’t know if I would have made the cut if the Spring Knight hadn’t asked for me.”
Principal Denner wasn’t here, but they’d already gossiped about these things in the past weeks.
“I would have,” Brian said. “I’m good enough, either way.”
“So much for humility.”
Some people chuckled at that.
“Can I at least try to set his hair on fire?” Hugh’s disembodied voice said. “With all the stuff in it now, it might work …”
“Apropos humility,” Thomas said, “where is your good friend Ryan tonight? You would assume someone as cocky as he would want to attend an event like this.”
“He’s staying with his family in Cairn,” Micah said with a sad frown. “He had to decide between the two.”
Of course, Ryan would have been awesome enough to make the list … had he come to the lessons. Micah preferred him with his family.
“Yeah, right!” Thomas laughed.
Huh?
“I heard he failed his final exam,” Frederick said, the guy who’d gotten the number two spot on the entrance exam behind Micah.
He knew he paid attention to rumors. He’d asked Saga, Ryan, him, and a few others to form a team for the exams because they had all gotten stuck in the Tower during the fall.
It hadn’t worked out for various reasons, but he was similar to Eliot or Jason in his enthusiasm. Micah hadn’t had much to do with him this last year. Different courses, different circles.
“Failed entirely?” Gian asked, “As in zero? Or failed as in his score didn’t make the cut?”
“Why do you care?”
“Hey, just making conversation.”
“It doesn’t matter if he failed his exam or not,” Brian spoke up. Unlike his companion, or when he talked about himself, he sounded disinterested.
Relieved, Micah was about to thank him for the support. Maybe they’d get through this evening after all?
Then Brian said, “From what I hear, he wouldn’t have been chosen to attend, either way.”
“Yeah, he would have!”
“No.”
“Come on, Micah,” Thomas said, “I like Ryan, too. He is a great sparring partner, as are you, and I know you look up to him—“
“Not hard, with him so far up on his high horse,“ someone else said.
“What?” How in the hell was Ryan supposed to be up on any kind of high horse?
“—but the guy has some issues,” Thomas finished.
“Ryan is competent,” Shala joined like a voice of reason, and Micah still felt like he was stabbing him in the back, “but he has a temper. I’m not sure if it would have been wise to invite him to an event like this.”
“Shala, Thomas,” Micah said as he glared at them through the mirror, “I like you, I do, but if you keep on talking about Ryan behind his back, I won’t anymore.”
Shala looked back. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“No need to get that defensive,” Thomas said, “I’m just saying.”
“No,” Micah rejected that. “Why would Ryan have a temper?” It wasn’t like he was an asshole who attacked people for no reason. He couldn’t hurt a fly.
“Aren’t you supposed to be his best friend or something?” Brian asked. “You tell us.”
Micah hesitated.
“I don’t know this Ryan guy,” Yasin said, “but it sounds like he needs to get laid.”
They laughed, and he stewed in his seat, unable to defend his friend because some woman was poking his cheek with a make-up sponge.
That was, until Ms. Denner spoke up, “Yasin, Brian, Sion, Micah, and Thomas. Is this the kind of conversation you will have with the other guests this evening?”
They went still in their seats. She stood in the doorway, and he didn’t know how long she had been listening in, but she’d called them all out and they had her full attention.
“I meant, uh,” Yasin said, “he needs to find a lovely lady to court?”
“Mhm. If I hear anything like what I just heard from the five of you, or so much as a single cuss word from any of your mouths this evening, I will not hesitate to send you home. Don’t think because the time to switch in your replacements has passed, you’re in the green. I will make simulacra of you all if I must. Am I understood?”
“Yes, ma’am,” they said, and Micah joined though he didn’t think he’d done anything wrong. The others had gossiped about a classmate behind his back.
Ryan was awesome. Sure, he could get frustrated sometimes—more and more recently—but that was because they hadn’t pulled their weight in and around the exam and he’d been missing his family.
Now that he was with them, he could heal and be happy … right?
He thought of their goodbye, how quiet he’d been, the way he’d shoved the raincoat at him.
He hadn’t looked especially happy then, and Micah wasn’t so conceited to think it was because Ryan would miss him.
He had been distant throughout the trip. Every morning, he would go running on his own and leave Micah behind.
Was it because he would miss Lisa, then?
The other guys seemed to think he needed to get laid—nevermind that Micah bet the raincoat against a marble none of them were [Lovers] yet—but he flipped back and forth on whether or not there was ‘something’ between Ryan and Lisa, whether or not he had a crush on her.
Noelle seemed to think so. Or she wanted her son to get together with her.
When Micah thought about it, Ryan had never really seemed that interested in girls or romance at all. Sure, he could miss Lisa as a friend—Micah knew he would when she was gone.
Was that the answer then?
He kept on starting fights with Kyle. Did he have a temper? Kyle could be kind of an annoying prick, though …
Some best friend he was. Micah didn’t know.
Ms. Denner invited another stylist with a large briefcase into the room. She set it off on the counter and undid the clasps.
As she stood nearby, Micah thought, She might know. Their principal could sense emotion essences.
She could only sense those near her if she didn’t reach out, and she only taught one course. Most of the time, she was in her office or off-campus but … still.
He wasn’t far enough along to see more than the occasional shadow or flash himself. Even if he could, or if he used the glasses without Ryan’s permission, Micah thought if he had to use Skills to understand what his best friend felt, he must have majorly fucked up.
“Does Ryan have a temper, ma’am?” The question slipped out of him. He’d screwed up enough; he might as well ask.
The others had gone back to their conversations or settled down so the stylists could work. Micah asked it quietly enough that only his neighbor could hear, and for a moment, the stress eased up on Ms. Denner’s face. She looked more like her usual blasé self.
That blasé self sighed. “I tell you this because I know you care: he does have a lot of anger inside of him.”
“But … why?”
Ms. Denner walked up behind his chair and inspected him in the mirror as if judging the work the stylists had done.
She didn’t answer for a moment. When she did, she spoke as if she were giving him some sad piece of wisdom.
“Some people are simply angry, Micah.”
That was her answer? That wasn’t satisfying.
“Often, that can damn them. It does not have to.”
“If you know that, then can’t you … I don’t know, help him?”
“I don’t believe I have to. When I was a little older than you are, I grew up during the Decade of [Lovers]. Do you know what kind of a time that was?”
Uhm. Awkward.
“Yes? Uhm, there was a trend for a little while … people leveled the [Lover] Class in a … non-professional way …?”
“I forget how taboo the topic has become for kids nowadays. The Class is more than you think it is. People my age leveled from helping their communities, families, friends, from practicing art, having … revelries, shall we say, volunteering, and more. You touched on the consequences of the movement in your history course, I believe? Or was that the advanced course?”
“I know some. The older generation— Employers didn’t want to hire them anymore or offer training because they, uhm, ‘wasted’ so many of their levels on being [Lovers]. It caused unemployment to rise. There were protests. Some got out of hand. Some groups got really out of hand. It ended with a law being passed that employers can’t ask about the Class anymore?”
“Yes. That definitely left a bit of a sour note in people’s memories, and the Class has become more of a private topic for your generation, I suppose. My point is, before things escalated, even as I was surrounded by all those good intentions, I was a [Pyromancer] who let her anger out on monsters in the Tower with no source to name for that anger. I had more than a bit of a temper at that age.”
His eyes went wide and he twisted his head to look at her. Wait, did she mean like an illness?
Ryan wasn’t like that, was he?
“I wasn’t even good at what I did. I was violent. It was only when I found a way of dealing with my anger, giving it an outlet in the form of a new interpretation of magic for myself, that it set me on the path that led me here today.
“I was in my twenties at the time. Ryan is sixteen. He is by far not as bad as I was, but as far as I can tell from what I see during school hours, he’s already found that outlet in the form of his studies and meditation exercises. Even after his final exam, he has given me little reason to doubt him. The rest of his grades are splendid. Everyone makes mistakes.”
“Oh.” When she put it like that, it did sound impressive … but still worrying. If Ryan was supposed to have figured it out already, then why was he so unhappy?
“You have doubts,” she said. “I understand. How about this, I promise to keep an eye on him, as I do for all of my students, in the next school year if that will ease your worries.”
He nodded eagerly.
“In the meantime, as you said, he can enjoy the summer with his family, and you can enjoy this evening.”
She was right. Short of dropping everything to buy a last-minute ticket back to Cairn, there as nothing he could do about it either. Even then, it wasn’t as though he could shake the answers out of him. He had to trust in Ryan and his family.
He sighed as the stylist lifted the protective cape.
“Now,” Ms. Denner said and held a dark bottle out, almost like the perfume bottle he’d brought with him today, “rinse your mouth with this.”
The liquid looked murky purple behind the glass, and Micah caught glimpses of its pattern and essences.
“Uhm …What is that?”
“Mouthwash. I just said. Ms. Mearls here can walk you through it. Mearls, this is Micah, one of my students. He is an [Alchemist].”
She looked to the new stylist, and he belated realized she must have been a dentist.
“It’s nice to meet you, ma’am.”
“Likewise. Can you show me your teeth for a moment? Open wide, as you would at the dentist. ‘Aah’—”
He did, and she inspected his teeth with a glove on. She made him rinse, rubbed a cotton swab with something against his teeth, made him rinse again, and rubbed a different substance on the cap of his chipped tooth.
“For you, I would say roughly eighty seconds. Swish thoroughly, do not gurgle, and spit.”
With how much effort they were putting into dressing and styling them, it didn’t come as much of a surprise that they would want them to … brush their teeth?
He had brushed this morning, though, and all this treatment was beginning to feel insulting, though he wasn’t sure why.
He still accepted the bottle and eyed the multi-layered potion. He wasn’t entirely sure what it was supposed to do.
Vaguely, the purple fluid looked like bleach. Something you shouldn’t drink, but Micah trusted their expertise and took care not to spill any on his shirt when he knocked it back.
It stung.
As though he’d poured hot liquid needles in his mouth, the feeling soaked into his gums, his teeth, his chipped tooth least of all, but it still made them feel oddly warm and soft.
Almost his entire being balked at the idea of having this inside of him, and Micah had put literal poison in his mouth to breathe at enemies, had drunk healing potions to shove it around inside his spirit by force of will—stupid things.
When people talked about unhealthy alchemicals nowadays, they meant long-term. A few decades down the line, an imperceptible threat that many ignored until it was too late …
This was the other sort, the kind of potion that had gotten their Second King killed, the original unhealthy alchemical.
The only reasons he didn’t spit it out were one, because he was curious—he could analyze the potion better in some ways when it was working inside of him, and he thought he could piece together some of its ingredients—and two, because he stared with wide eyes at Miss Denner, who gave him an encouraging nod with equally large eyes back. He trusted her.
“Swish, swish, swish …” she instructed.
Mhm, he thought, almost a whimper. He looked at who he hoped was a real dentist with a valid license to make the potion, and tried to ask her a question with his expression alone.
Had it been eighty seconds yet?
She stared at her watch for an arduously long time … and finally told him to spit.
He was pretty sure the potion used actual ‘bleach essence’ to fuel one of its patterns.
He made sure to get it all out, turned to say something, regretted it, sucked in a deep breath, and regretted that even more.
“Hasafawahasafahah,” Micah gasped like a fish out of water. The air was cold.
The dentist checked again, held a concentrated daylight potion over his mouth, then made him rinse before he could ask the question he had wanted to ask, “Is that safe?”
“In moderation,” she said. “It’s guild-approved if that is what you are asking.”
“What kind of moderation?”
“Depending on the individual, you can use it once every two to three years. Ideally, you would never need to use it at all or only once in a lifetime, if you take proper care of your teeth.”
Micah grimaced. His teeth were still smarting, and he walked back to the mirrors to check on them. “What does it even do—ooh?!”
Some of the other guys were paying attention by now.
“What?” he asked and leaned closer. “What?”
His teeth were white. Not white-white, too white, like some people—even some of his classmates—had, but a number of shades brighter. Even his chipped tooth. And it wasn’t as if they had been yellow before.
Any dentist would probably have been proud to say they looked healthy … ish. Less so if they knew the method but … Still!
He spun around. “How long will this last?”
“The change itself is permanent,” the dentist explained, “how long your teeth stay this way depends on you.”
Permanent. That was the kind of alchemy he was striving for, though in some ways, healing potions were already that. The flesh they restored was permanent too, ‘depending on you’.
His gums looked good. Not ‘bleached’, despite the feeling of the potion sinking into them. He did brush his teeth thoroughly twice a day.
And there was still a thin … film. A texture of something over his mouth. He could feel it with his spirit as well as his tongue. A protective layer?
“If I could have your attention, students,” Ms. Denner addressed the others and held another one of the dark bottles up.
She had more and offered them to anyone who wanted to use the potion, who could gain a visible benefit, and who hadn’t used something similar at the dentist recently.
Ms. Mearls could check.
That cut out four of them; people like Shala had great dental care. Of those who remained, many weren’t certain. Especially when she told them the treatment was painful for a minute or two.
“However,” she gestured at him, “the results speak for themselves.”
Micah smiled like a guinea pig and belatedly realized, “Wait, why wasn’t it optional for me?”
There was no way his teeth were worse than some of the guys who chugged coffee and focus potions all day during exam season, or who smuggled drinks into their rooms. He hadn’t used his poison breath in ages, either.
He really did feel like they were insulting him. Sure, he didn’t look as good as some of the other guys, but he wasn’t ugly …
Right?
“It was optional,” Ms. Denner told him, “but I needed a volunteer, and you have the highest affinity for alchemicals and the greatest pain tolerance of those who could benefit.”
“I didn’t know you had fortitude, Stranya,” Shala said.
Oh. So it was because he was tougher than the others?
“I have [Lesser Resilience] …?”
Fortitude and vitality, though it mostly helped him bounce back from hard impacts, for example to prevent concussions or other injuries from falls.
Somehow, the expressions of the others shifted as if they had been challenged when she said that, and three people volunteered.
Ms. Denner smiled. “Great. For those of you who are finished, you can return to your dressing rooms and either wait or get changed. If you do change into your outfits, do not do anything that would ruin them for the evening. Don’t touch your hair. Don’t run up and down the halls. Do not scrub off your make-up.
“I planned your schedule with delays and complications in mind and there have been blessedly none—so far—so you will have to wait a little while before the event can begin.”
Micah was glad to leave the cramped room, but she added as he left, “And don’t bother the girls! They’ll need a bit longer to get finished.”
Aw.
He still enjoyed the newfound freedom to move his legs, went to the dressing room, tidied up his things, and put some of his homebrew perfume on his wrists and neck.
Other guys had finished before him, but they’d stayed for the teeth whitening or hung back with friends.
He was alone. Almost.
“Stranya,” Hugh said. He sat in one of the couches and was halfway to that bratty kid form Micah had met him in. Mid-twenties, scraggly beard, a matching suit, and a face like he wanted to start a fight.
“Hugh.”
“It’s a sad thing, your being here. You didn’t die in the Tower these last few weeks.”
“Go die in a ditch.”
He scoffed, “Weak.”
“Really? A flame dying from exposure?”
“Sooner you than me. My kind saves yours from exposure.”
“Mm. Lanterns and torches, hearths and campfires, burning out in hours.”
“Hours like a lifetime, though I’m not burning out any time soon … and neither are you. So maybe I’ll have to take a more hands-on approach in making sure some beast kills you.”
“Try it. I’ll gladly have an excuse to throw you in a ditch myself, dump something over you to cut off your air supply. The best way to put out a flame is to suffocate it.”
They glared at each other. For a moment. Then, they both eased up and broke eye contact like a sigh.
“Not today, sadly.”
“Rules,” Micah said … and smiled.
Hugh smirked.
Lisa was right. They did have something in common: they both wanted to kill each other.
“It feels good to get that off my chest,” he said.
“Does it? I wouldn’t understand how your weird brains work. I suppose it’s better to say what we mean, now I can focus on ‘being good’ for Brian.”
“Hey, are you excited to talk to another spirit again?” He wondered what it was like. Were all spirits friends with each other?
“It’s not as though I’ve been starved for company.”
“Really? Do you think—”
“Stranya?” Shala asked, and Micah jumped. His friend stood in the open door and stared. “Are you … talking to yourself?”
Micah looked back. Hugh was gone. Fucking of course. He could almost hear him chuckling at his expense.
He groaned, “Annoying fire spirit.”
“Ah. That seems … disconcerting. I would prefer to have some way of detecting it. Seems like a security risk.”
“Right!? Right!?”
He smiled. “We should get dressed.”
He knew how to wear a suit, but it was still nice to have an expert at his side. The others joined them and soon enough, Micah righted his sleeves in front of a mirror and felt like a million gold coins.
“The branding is a bit jarring, I have to admit,” Shala said, “but the cut is nice. You look good in a suit.”
“Right back at you.” They matched, standing next to each other. He still hesitated when he looked down at the sole of his shoe and ground it into the floor …
“It’s barely noticeable,” Shala said, “especially because you don’t let it affect your gait. Just relax, keep your back straight, shoulders back, chin up, breathe. Remember what we learned and you’ll make it look easy.”
He breathed and smiled. “Thanks. Really. I’d offer you the same advice but … You don’t need that. You probably have more experience with events like this?”
“Some.”
“Looking forward to it?”
“They can be nice, in moderation. At least this event exists for a good reason.”
They still had time to waste, so they hung out inside the dressing room, drunk water, or used the bathroom one last time. After twenty minutes, they waited near the make-up room.
Micah would have been fine with bedhead and his nicest shirt today—none of this special treatment was necessary, though it was nice. Reassuring.
Ryan was with his family, the fire spirit was mostly dealt with, his potential sponsor would only matter later, he looked better than ever, had friends by his side, and though his chest fluttered like a hummingbird, he felt steady.
Anne was the only person who mattered now.
She walked into the hallway in the distance along with the other girls, and two guys who hadn’t listened, and they wore the same red dress with silver patterns stitched into the fabric, but their hair had been styled differently.
Hers was styled back and looked almost uncomfortably straight on top, but opened up into a waterfall of curls and phantom flowers over her neck.
There were no fuzzy hairs that stuck out to give her that halo glow in the light which she usually had, but she still seemed to glow and stood out from the crowd.
She was beautiful.
Micah leaned over to his friend and whispered, “I’m going to ask her out today.”
“Huh?” Shala asked. “Who?”
“Anne. I’m going to ask her out.”
Shala blinked and lost his smile. “What?”