The third day of what she was beginning to think of as the countdown to the end of her life, Raina Serin rose from her restless slumber to find Jair had already woken and left.

The blanket was folded neatly on the end of the sofa. She wasn’t sure if that was comforting or concerning. Jair had always been more a ‘throw in the general direction of’ than ‘perfectly tidy away’ sort of guy. That he’d taken the effort on her behalf was warming, but that it was him doing it only added one more note of something’s very wrong to what had been an already strange pile of wrong.

For a few blissful minutes as she ate breakfast and prepared for the day, she dared to imagine that things were beginning to settle down. That he’d gone off early to class, or to the library, and that the fervor around his unexpectedly flashy exhibition performance would die down.

She was wrong on both counts.

The moment she stepped out onto their front step, the distant form of someone up on a ladder by the wall drew her eye. “And I’d hoped you would forget about the whole carving the walls thing,” she bemoaned aloud.

If he’d been treating things even a tiny bit more casually, she could have done a much better job of convincing herself that he was mistaken. That the dragon wasn’t real.

Instead, he was in full obsession mode, attacking the problem with every available tool at his disposal.

Raina desperately wanted to go about the day, pretend none of it was her problem, and try to salvage what little sanity she had remaining after so many days without sufficient sleep. Alas, even the thought brought guilt surging up in her chest, an unpleasant weight she’d much rather avoid.

“You weren’t joking about changing the wards, huh.”

Jair glanced down at her. “You can help if you want. It’ll go faster with two.”

Raina glanced at the distant sun, rising low, then at the school buildings away behind the student village. “We haven’t even started studying for the exams tomorrow.”

“We’ve got a much more important exam coming up.” He tossed down a chisel construct—three curved bands to hold it to the palm, connected by thick silver cables to the control box, complete with a mana crystal big enough to run Serin Manor for a month. “I’ve marked out the lower sections. Two-thirds depth setting.”

She caught it effortlessly, years of training good for something at least, and glanced up at where he was using his own similar construct, control box strapped to his upper arm and crystal already notably dimmer. “How long have you been at this?”

“About four hours.”

And he’d already used that much power. Raina glanced down at the construct in her hands. “You bought two of these?”

“I had a feeling you might be motivated to help out.”

Raina felt a chill go down her back, and let out a nervous laugh. “You’re sure there’s going to be a dragon?”

“Absolutely certain.”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you, but there hasn’t been any sighting of a dragon outside the mountains in centuries.”

“Ryenzo isn’t checking the calendar to see if now’s a good time to visit. Whatever rage is driving her, it doesn’t care about precedents.” He finished with the current section of wall and laid in the metallic inlay, fitting the pieces together with swift efficiency.

Raina was still trying to figure out how best to hold the chiseler to make straight lines. “How are you so good at everything? I’d swear you’ve never held one of these before now.”

“I have.” There was a note of humor in his voice, as he moved smoothly into the next section. “You forget I grew up in a rural village. I’m used to doing the worker things.”

Raina raised her eyebrows and looked pointedly at the mana crystal as big as two fists. “A rural village… with power to spare for this kind of construct?”

Jair shrugged nonchalantly. “I’ve spent a lot of time tinkering with things. Not everything has to be used for its intended purpose.”

“Like slaying a dragon.”

“Exactly.” He docked the handpiece and started filling over the grooves with sandstone-colored putty to conceal what they’d done. “How long you willing to stay with this project for?”

“How much more is there to it? If you’ve been doing it for hours, you must be close to done.”

Jair laughed mirthlessly. “I’ve finished three sections out of twenty. If we work all day, we might be able to finish before midnight.”

Raina’s heart sped up. That was way tighter of a timeline than she’d imagined. “And this will help stop the dragon?”

“It’ll slow it down. If there’s anything that’ll actually stop a dragon, I haven’t found it yet.”

“So all this…”

“It’ll help. Don’t worry. I’m going to figure this out.”

“The walls?”

“The walls are easy. The dragon is hard.” Jair’s voice was curt and brooked no disagreement.

Raina didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing. They fell into companionable rhythm and spent the rest of the morning carving, placing, and concealing runes on the walls. They might have continued all day, except Jair saw one of the supervisors heading their direction and called down for her to finish up and vacate.

That left the project a little under half completed, but Jair insisted they had plenty of time.

“You go on ahead to class, I’ll be assembling some things until it’s safe to work on the walls again.” He flashed a smile, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ll take care of everything. Just be at Veshin Oasis tomorrow afternoon to pick up your armor, and meet me on the southern wall before sunset.”

They stopped at the apartment long enough to trade out Raina’s books from the morning classes she’d skipped and collect those for the afternoon, then Jair sat down at the kitchen table and spread out his construct pieces.

She wanted to say something, but nothing came to mind beyond a feeble, “Aelir guide you.”

Jair barely nodded in acknowledgement, already fitting things together and bending pieces to match a design he must have memorized since she saw no instructions anywhere.

The hours of connection working together on the wall, everything smooth and effortless, seemed to fade all at once, leaving her once again feeling alienated and disconnected. She wasn’t used to walking alone. She missed Jair’s unrestrained enthusiasm as they talked about anything and everything.

She paused, staring back at the house, frowning. He hadn’t gone anywhere, and was pushing himself harder than she’d imagined possible to try to save her. Why would that make her feel abandoned?

“It’s silly.” She shook her head and hefted her back and walked briskly toward the lecture halls. “You’re being silly, Raina, there’s nothing to worry about.” Except maybe a dragon. But apart from that, everything would be fine. A dragon would mess up anyone’s week.

Nothing to worry about.

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“Where’s Jair?” Calisi Hasti smirked at Raina with malicious eagerness when she walked in alone at lunch. “Finally ditched you now that he doesn’t need you?”

“That’s not how it is.”

“Oh? Even if I give you the benefit of the doubt and assume building some nobody into a spectacle was your endgame all along, I can’t help but notice he was always clingy clingy riiiiiight up until he got famous, and now… here you are on your own.”

Raina’s cheeks felt hot. “My friends are none of your business.”

“Suuure, deny it all you want. You’re old news, Serin.”

“What, are you supposed to be the upgraded model?” Raina snapped, her temper getting the better of her. If not for the past day, she’d have been able to brush it off without a second thought, but Calisi’s words hit harder than she’d ever admit. She fired back instead. “I saw what you said to him. But you don’t know him. Everything you’re offering, he doesn’t care about.”

“I suppose you know better?” Calisi held up one hand as though holding a large fruit. “And yet, after all those years spent playing at friendship, it’s taken him how long to move on? Admit it. You only wanted someone around to be your placid little pet, and now that he’s found his fangs…” she closed her fingers down into a slow fist, then flicked her wrist as though tossing the crushed remnants away. “You’ve wasted too much time on a failed project, and now you’ll be stuck years behind the curve.”

“It’s not like that at all,” Raina hissed. “I had nothing to do with his fighting skills.” Which pained her to contemplate, but she wasn’t going to let Calisi’s lies go unchallenged. Too many people were watching them. “Everything he’s doing, he learned with his own efforts.”

But I would have helped, if you’d let me know what you were doing. Why, if he was going to put this much effort into training, why wouldn’t he have invited her along? This was exactly the sort of thing they should have been doing together.

It made her want to punch something. But as satisfying as it would be to knock Calisi Hasti on her back, that would be an impolitic thing to do. They may snipe at one another here, but their families were officially allies and thus couldn’t do anything too embarrassing to each other.

There were more things said, as she grew progressively angrier at everyone and everything—and the lack of sleep only made everything hit so much harder.

She did manage to get through lunch without starting any house wars, though, so it could have been worse.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

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There was only one afternoon lecture, the rest of the day was dedicated to practical exercises. In her case, that meant a half hour of focused soul meditation for anyone whose soulspell hadn’t officially manifested itself yet, an hour and a half of directed sparring, then another hour of manabody strengthening exercises in the cool basement under the dome.

But even that brought her mind back to Jair, rushing ahead to imprint his spells without even a day to think it over. And the frequency with which he was tracing them had to be damaging.

With that in mind, she approached the supervisor after their practice session. “It’s recommended we trace imprints at least once every other day and no more than twice a day, right?”

“Indeed, that is the official recommendation.” He didn’t sound like he was paying much attention, glancing down at his papers frequently.

“Do you have a different recommendation?”

“No, nothing like that. I’ve found once every three days works best for me, but everyone is different. There’s no ‘right’ way to balance repetition and imprint depth. Start with once a day, and adjust from there.”

“What about more frequently than that? Say, every hour or so?”

He shook his head, frowning, and focused on her properly for the first time. “The manabody takes time to adjust to the changes you’re trying to push into it. Trying to rush it, you’d be more likely to cause a rupture than speed up the imprinting. If your tracing is even a little bit off between repetitions, you’ll imbalance the whole thing.”

That’s what she’d thought. Jair acted with such confidence now it made her question her own memory.

Raina thanked the supervisor and hurried back to the apartment. There were optional evening activities for people who wanted to fast-track themselves through their progression, but this was not the week for such ordinary things.

It wasn’t quite a storm today, but there was enough wind that a steady haze of sand and dust filled the air and gathered outside the protected pathways. Raina could see the outlines of buildings for a good distance. People were harder to make out, unless they were in a straight line along the same path she was on.

The table was covered in constructs in various states of assembly.

No Jair, though.

She looked out the back window toward the wall. The sand obscured the view too much to tell the wall was even there, let alone whether he was out working in it.

She’d like to imagine that he was doing something normal, like reading in the library, or taking a nap. The fact that he was out in the heat of the day driving himself past endurance trying to save her only made her feel even more guilty over… everything.

It felt wrong to just sit around, so Raina set out in search of her missing friend.

It took her a surprising amount of time to find him. The section of wall they’d been working on, down behind the student housing village, bore the vague signs of him having been here but if she hadn’t known what she was looking for she’d never have noticed.

She followed the wall southward, behind the recreation halls, past the twin library towers, and nearly to the eastern watchtower before she finally saw him through the dusty haze. He had the ladder out again, moving up and down as he carved with a practiced rhythm that left Raina once again questioning everything she thought she knew about him.

"Hey," she said as she walked over.

"Greetings." Jair didn't look down from what he was doing on the wall, but he sounded surprised and pleased. "What brings you out on this rather dusty day, dearest Raina?"

Raina was completely flustered by the way he spoke and immediately forgot everything she'd been running through her head. "I'm just concerned about the wall project," she said, eventually, somewhat limply. "Anything more I can do to help?"

He tossed her down the second chisel construct and pointed to the bottom section of unfinished diagrams. "Help yourself."

"Thanks."

For several minutes they worked silently, then she got up the energy to ask, "How did you learn all this?"

"Hm? The wall? It's a pretty common construction over in Reskas, but since it's primarily used to keep seascourge back from their polder by pushing the water away, it's not something Veor really had a use for."

"Wait, you're spending this much time and effort on a water-repelling ward... in the middle of the biggest desert in Almas?" Raina paused, staring up at him. "What aren't you telling me?"

Jair grinned down at her, mischief in his eyes. "It doesn't only repel water. It's an active wind barrier. It'll push back against anything approaching the walls at speed, and in a way that a dragon's antimagic aura can't cut through."

"Oh. Wow. And they can't use this for...?" she gestured up at the perpetual haze of dust surrounding them.

Jair laughed. "The amount of power it'll take to push away that much air is going to run Astralla City dry in under an hour. It’s bad enough the amount they use to keep the walkways clear.”

“That sounds like it’ll attract a lot of attention, which is the last thing we need right now.”

“That's why we'll only connect the last few pieces to the grid at the very last minute. Otherwise, it'll burn out so fast we get nothing out of it, and you can bet there'll be an investigation when the grid goes empty in the middle of the evening rush."

Raina looked down at the chisel construct wrapped around her palm and wrist, then up at the wall back the way she’d come. She could barely make out the lines where Jair had already embedded the spell pieces, a faint discoloration that ran the entire way around the southern half of the school's guard wall. "You're sure this is necessary?" Her voice came out faint, hopeful and worried in equal measure. "You haven't been listening to Oliss and getting worried over nothing?"

Jair continued moving through the carving without pause. "I haven't spoken to Oliss recently. What's she predicting this time?"

"Nothing specific. A lot about you though."

Jair laughed, sounding genuinely surprised for the first time in days. "Really? She's finally noticed I exist, has she? And at the same time as the rest of the world too. What an incredible coincidence."

"Jair, don't be unkind."

"I'm not saying she's an illegitimate seer, I can personally attest to her visions having at least some validity on occasion."

Raina blushed at how freely he was discussing someone else's soulspell and turned away, returning her eyes to the wall as she resumed carving. Even if Oliss did all but admit it by her behavior, it wasn't the sort of thing you talked about.

"But the problem isn't with her power," Jair continued, not even looking at her. "The problem is that she filters it all through her own beliefs about what people want to hear, and then she goes around saying 'Voric and Nize are destined for strife,' when all she really saw was them sitting on opposite ends of a bench without any of the context around it. Then they break up when all she'd seen was a training exercise."

"That's such an oversimplification."

"I know, but it's an actual example and extreme enough to make my point. She says whatever will get her the most attention, however loosely it's related to reality or what she actually saw."

"Well, she thinks you are destined for strife," Raina said, somewhat defiantly.

Jair chuckled. "Of course I am. We're about to fight a dragon, remember?"

"But if she saw a dragon, wouldn't she have told everyone?" Raina hated how desperate she sounded, how pleading. This week was really getting the better of her. "It's not something she could misconstrue or misrepresent."

"Sure she could. Just the other day she described it as 'a giant monster to eat the institute whole,' when in reality all it did was snatch you up, crush a few buildings, and leave."

Raina blinked, pausing in her work to frown up at him again. "So you have been listening to her."

"No. I've been paying attention to what she says, not taking it as anything but her own interpretation of events."

"Then how—"

"I could give you any number of answers to that. There could be a letter from your mother, forgotten in a vault, which describes the turning of the moons and the alignment where her fated enemy will come for her daughter. Or there might be a whisper overheard in the night, between two dragon scholars as they tried to interpret the mysterious, 'Kill the child, break the mother' that the mad draconis has been muttering over and over. But whatever the interpretation, the reality remains. Tamma Serin has made an implacable enemy in Ryenzo Draconis, and you are the one who's on the hook to pay the price."

Raina couldn't let it go. "Might? Could? There's a lot of uncertainty there. Is that really worth burning out the entire city mana grid for?"

"Yes."

She blinked again, taken aback all over again by how absolutely confident he sounded. For a little, there, she could forget that her friend had changed so much in the past days, just discussing and debating as usual. But then it was gone, and the distant coldness she'd been trying to shake began to seep back in.

They worked again in silence for a time, and it was less companionable now. The lack of words between them felt heavy and loud, taking up too much space in her heart. She couldn't keep letting it grow.

"Jair..."

"Hm?"

She didn't know what to say, just that she had to say something. "I'm scared."

She immediately cursed herself for a fool. That was not something she'd wanted to let slip. Until now she hadn't even let herself acknowledge it fully.

Her arm fell, the construct and wall forgotten, as she hugged her chest and tried to keep from falling apart.

"I know." Jair's voice was gentle and understanding. He turned off his own chisel and climbed down the ladder to stand beside her. "I'm scared too, Rai. I'm doing everything I know to, everything I can possibly think of, and I don't know if it'll be enough."

They didn't quite look at each other, both staring up at the wall, but standing so close it'd take only the tiniest movement to grab his hand.

Raina swallowed instead. "You're not very reassuring."

"What use is reassurance if it's a lie? I don't ever want to lie to you. I've lied too much to too many people, there has to be some line left I don't cross."

That made her chuckle, a weak and uneasy thing, but genuine nonetheless. "You wouldn't know how to lie your way out of a hole in the sand."

"Remind me to prove otherwise when we do the nobility intrigue thing."

She suddenly remembered how smoothly he'd shifted everything about his carriage and presentation as he walked from person to person at the initiation, how quickly he'd become connected with so many of the wealthiest people in Veor at the exhibition. Perhaps he really did know how to lie.

Tears gathered in her eyes unbidden. "How long have you been hiding?" The question burst out of her, tired of being held in. "How long did you spend planning all this, learning what you needed to know, and keeping me in the dark?"

Jair turned, then, and took hold of her hand in both of his. "No. Don't think that. I'll explain everything once the dragon is dealt with, but I never wanted to hide anything from you. The only things I can't tell you are things it would hurt you to know."

"So you'll keep hiding, just feel bad about it." She tugged her hand away from his, not abruptly, but he released her immediately. "Good to know."

"Only for another day," he said, voice empty and dull. "As soon as the dragon is dealt with, I'll tell you anything you ask."

"Why wait? Why not now?"

Jair gestured up at the wall. "You think we can focus on getting things ready while we're dissecting everything about life and magic? You'd rather demand answers about my soulspell than work on saving your life?"

Raina blushed and squeaked. "I didn't know— that's not— you know I would never—"

"And yet you have." Jair sighed. "I'll tell you. I want to tell you. I want nothing more than to sit down and talk and not have to worry about anyone or anything for as long as it takes for you to be satisfied that you know everything I do about all of this. But we don't have the luxury of that time." He snorted wryly, as though that were incredibly amusing. "As soon as the dragon is dead, we'll have all the time in the world. So for now, work on finishing this if you want to, or go and study if you have better things to prepare, and I'll do my best to save your life."

If she said another word, she was going to break down crying again—and she wasn't even sure why. Was she sad, or angry, or touched and overwhelmed, or happy, or...?

She didn't even know herself. And she'd done enough of being a weepy mess. That wasn't her. Why did it take so little to shatter her stable worldview so thoroughly?

Jair climbed back up the ladder without another word, leaving her to her thoughts. She blinked, allowing the unshed tears to slip silently down her face, and turned her attention back to the wall. If this was really the most important thing to do, then she'd get it done. Jair's determination was nothing to her own. They'd always worked well together for that reason, each pushing the other to heights neither could reach alone.

She couldn't fully silence the nagging worry at the back of her head, the questions about his motives and all the secrets he was apparently holding on to...

But. Dragon.

So she swallowed her fears and held her head high and spent the rest of the evening and late into the night illegally modifying the academy's wards until the entire wall was set up with a high power wind shield that would burn out the city's mana grid entirely.

And right now, she couldn't think of anything she'd rather do.

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