Page 11 of Reluctant Wizard

Yes, right. This was not the appropriate moment for less than formal conversation. “I was beginning to be concerned,” he offered, waving a hand at the ticking clock, as if that explained anything. “It’s quite late. I’d expected you much earlier.” He didn’t exactly trail off, but his voice faded with uncertainty at the end of his sentence, in the face of her chilly expression. He very nearly asked if something was wrong.

“I apologize, Wizard Harahel,” she said coldly, not sounding in the least apologetic. “I received your missive regarding my independent study, but I was unaware that you expected me at a set hour.”

“Oh, well, no,” he babbled on, clearly unable to stop or rescue himself. “I didn’t set a time, it’s true. It’s only that, in the past, you know, you were usually, um, here… earlier.” Cillian briefly considered using the tiny fire elemental in the pastry basket to set his hair on fire. He might have, if fire wasn’t such anathema to an archivist like himself. Even bringing the tiny creature into the library had been a violation of several rules, personal and professional.

Alise continued to watch him blather on, head still slightly tilted, her full lips pressed tightly together, lines of strain bracketing her mouth. She always seemed to be locking words behind compressed lips with ruthless determination.

“Still,” he said finally. Think about work, not kissing those lips until they softened and opened, he sternly instructed himself. She is not for you. “You’re here now. Shall we discuss our research strategy?”

She gave him an odd look, one he couldn’t quite interpret. Well, even more so than usual. “About that…” she began, then slid her eyes to the side.

Oh! He was such an idiot. The library was mostly deserted, but not entirely. “Allow me,” he said. He couldn’t match Alise for wizardly ability, but what he could do, he did very well. With a flick of magic, he installed a silencing shield around them. He performed that exercise tens, sometimes hundreds of times every day, primarily to ensure the requisite silence for study and to set a good example. The reference desk needed to be able to hear and answer questions, so the silencing shields came in handy. “We’re private now,” he told her, though she would obviously sense that. “How are you really? I brought you something.”

“I’m fine, Wizard Harahel,” she said frostily, arresting him as he brought out the basket from his lower desk drawer. “But I have a great deal of work to do and very little time to do it in. That’s what I came to tell you. I’m going to have to temporarily table the independent study.”

“What?” His mind had gone blank. As void as the expression she turned on him, one that said she barely knew him. Or, worse, was somewhat familiar with him and didn’t think much of him. “Alise. You can’t back-burner that project. We need to—”

“I need to focus on my primary coursework if I have any hope of graduating,” she interrupted. “I can’t afford to be distracted by side projects.” Her night-dark gaze lingered on the basket of pastries he foolishly still held aloft, halfway between here and there, accusation in her eyes, the distaste with which she pronounced the word “distracted” lingering in the air like a bad odor.

“Provost Uriel assigned you that independent study,” he said, grasping for sense. “She appointed me your supervisor and—”

“Yes,” she said, cutting him off again. “I received your missive,” she added, pointedly reminding him that she’d said so already. “I’ll devote what attention I can, when I can, and will speak with the provost, if necessary, but I don’t think I’ll need much supervision. Or assistance. Much as I appreciate the offer,” she added, a light flush on her high cheekbones, as if she only then became aware of her rudeness. “I won’t take up more of your time than I already have.”

“What about our excursion to House Harahel?” he asked, disappointment already settling into his stomach. “I have good news there, you see. The provost approved the trip again and—”

“I can’t possibly afford the time away,” she interrupted dismissively.

“But…” Realizing he still held the basket of kolaches, Cillian set it down midway between them, as a barrier or an offering, he wasn’t sure. He’d been so looking forward to showing Alise the house of his birth—the endless archives and shelves and reading nooks. The lake, which would be frozen this time of year, but where he’d thought they might go ice-skating. He’d planned to teach her to skate, if she didn’t know how already, and imagined her surprise and delight at seeing his skill at the spins and leaps. And his parents… he’d imagined introducing her to them, how they’d take to her sweet reserve and dazzling intelligence. How he’d talk to them privately and say how he knew she wasn’t for him, but they’d say, well, stranger matches had been made and—

“It simply won’t be possible,” Alise said firmly, putting paid to all of his admittedly foolish romantic imaginings.

“But, the petition…” he said weakly into her stony resolve.

“House Phel can handle that. If they even decide to pursue it. Likely they won’t. Who has any use for musty old records anyway?”

Her scorn seemed directly aimed at his heart and it thudded home with painful accuracy. Who has any use for musty old you? she might have said.

“Alise, have I… done something?” She had always placed a certain distance between them, always so careful of herself, maintaining a cloak of protection like an enchantment to ward off the slings and arrows of the world. Always so deliberately alone. But she’d never treated him with this chilly disdain. “Did I say or do something to offend you? To hurt you in some way?”

She laughed, softly, without humor, cutting mockery in it. “Don’t be absurd, Wizard Harahel,” she answered, making it clear a low-level nonentity like himself could hardly harm someone as lofty as she. “I realize our recent… adventures may have invited a certain level of familiarity, but I’m simply a student and you are faculty. It’s not as if we are friends.”

The remark sliced across his heart, deftly delivered to wound. “No,” he replied faintly, feeling the blood loss from his face, a chill contraction of skin tightening over his cheekbones. “I suppose we are not friends, and never were.”

“I do, ah, appreciate all of your help,” she offered, her cold poise thawing for the first time and looking away, as if unable to meet his gaze any longer. “In the past. You were… kind to me, when you didn’t have to be. I won’t forget that.” Her voice wavered, just a tiny bit.

That small crack in her composure told him everything. Alise was deeply upset and trying to hide it. Trying to push him away. He’d seen her do it to others, isolating herself in a pillar of solitary independence. And she was crumbling under the pressure of whatever was going on. He refused to abandon her to it.

“I take it back. I was and am your friend, Alise,” he said with firm intensity, hoping to reach her in whatever cave of self-reliance she’d retreated into. Something had happened, he was sure of it, and whatever it was, she shouldn’t have to face it alone. “I will always be your friend, no matter what you say or do to try to push me away.”

Her startled gaze flew up to his and, for a brief moment, a hint of vulnerability flickered there. Then she caught and composed herself, shifting her gaze to stare a thousand leagues into the distance past his ear. “A very kind offer,” she said, as if he’d invited her to tea some day. “If you should ever need a favor, I owe you one.”

He nearly spat that he didn’t need her favors. Fortunately, his better judgement took over before he could open his foolish mouth. She’d offered him a more than gracious gift. If Alise did end up as the head of House Elal someday, having Lady Elal owe him a favor could be priceless. He’d be a fool to refuse. Besides which, a favor owed left a door open between them through which he could still be attached to her, if only in the smallest way. He might need that leverage.

“I am grateful,” he said, pinning a square of Calliope paper with his index finger and sliding it to her, nodding at a cup of styluses. “If you would be so kind as to write that down?”

He’d startled her with that, enough so that she met his eyes, hers full of honest emotion for the first time since she’d walked into his library, and she flushed—in anger at his effrontery or embarrassment at her heartless treatment of him, he wasn’t sure. But Alise was a class act and she barely hesitated before plucking up a stylus and scribbling the promise. He claimed the square of paper before she could change her mind, sealed it indelibly with his archivist magic, then tucked it into his shirt pocket where it felt as if it would burn through the thin material.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t care for a kolache?” he asked, making sure he sounded cheerfully solicitous, dipping his chin at the basket. “They’re still warm and you look as if you haven’t eaten, quite thin and pale.” He added that last with the smallest bit of malicious pleasure, knowing how it annoyed her when people commented on her frail appearance. He was only human, after all.

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