Page 49 of Elemental Affections

Dae laughed again, the nervousness easing from her tone.

“You’re still young—don’t make that face at me, Miss Helm—stillplentyyoung and new to this. Take every sort of referral you can get. Nothing comes easy in this line of work.” Vaadt settled back in their chair. “Now, you’ve got the scope of your work defined for the rest of the year. How is the practical application coming along?”

By the time Dae left Vaadt’s office, her previous glow had been doused with reality. But any trepidation she felt was eased by the knowledge that she had all of winter to figure out how to do the things she’d so confidently stated in writing. They were in autumn’s late clutches; spring was forever away. What she’d lost in naivete was replaced with determination to face the coming winter head-on.

Which made it easy to slip away to Sylvan without guilt, even though a week had passed since her catalyzing moment with Ezzyn at the lake and she still couldn’t reliably cast an ice-targeting spell. She met Eunny at their customary table at the back of the Mighty Leaf, buzzing with nervous energy. Her agreement with Ezzyn called for discretion, but this wasEunny.Surely best friends didn’t count?

“I haven’t seen you in weeks,” Eunny said. “Why so quiet?”

“I—” Dae hesitated, fiddling with her scarf as she pulled it free of her neck. “I, um, something happened.”

“Something to do with the hickey on your neck?” Eunny smirked.

“What?” Dae’s hands flew up. “No. I don’t have— I covered—”

“I can recommend some concealment balm. Now, answer please. Whomst?”

Dae fought back the ridiculous grin that wanted to sprout across her face. “Ezzyn,” she whispered.

“It’s about time,” Eunny said.

Dae sputtered, half a dozen responses emerging as little more than wordless, indignant noise. Eunny merely gave her an expectant look.

“That’s what you have to say?”

Eunny’s smile was sly behind her teacup. “Do you want to go into detail? Vicarious living isn’t my thing, but for you, I’ll adjust.”

Heat flared in Dae’s cheeks. Her gaze dropped as she bit her lip. “No.”

“You sure? You were due for a fulfilling relationship. I’m a good listener.”

“It’s not a—arelationship,”Dae protested. “It’s just—”

“Sex, with a man you’ve ogled since we were teenagers.”

“I didn’t ogle. He was my tutor.”

“You say that like they’re mutually exclusive.” She waved away Dae’s protest. “You’re sleeping with someone you like.”

“Better than someone I hate, don’t you think?”

“I don’t have anything against casual.” Eunny leaned closer, her light manner giving way to concern. “This just sounds like the kind of thing that leads to feelings, and those can become problems if you don’t want a relationship.”

Dae wilted, her eyes on her hands and how they curled tight around her teacup. “I know. But I can’t— I’m not thinking about it like that.We’renot. It’s nothing. Just a bit of fun. The boundaries are set, and when it’s over, we can keep going on being reasonable humans after.”

“Then cheers.” Eunny raised her cup. “Just remember, I’ve got undisturbed wildlands and a shovel. I choose you.”

Dae nearly choked on her tea as she tried to laugh and swallow at the same time. “You’re too good to me.”

“I am. And I better still see you on occasion even though you have a not-relationship now.”

“Of course,” Dae exclaimed. “The sanctity of our meal dates remains. This—thisthingbetween Ezzyn and me, it’s not serious.”

Being an intuitive mage and the demands of multidisciplinary spellwork, especially ones needed to be reproduced at scale, threatened to break Dae’s brain. Vaadt had her practicing targeting drills in addition to continuing with her layering spellwork, requiring Dae to record the method and aim of her techniques. Activities that her intuitive skill failed at. Which was galling, considering that she’d done report work for Helm Naval before her engagement to Brint took her more into the societal realm. But trying to transcribe the feeling of wrapping her mind and magic around the kernels of poison, how she justknewthe way of injecting them with a level of ice she felt deep in her bones? It didn’t translate.

After months of floundering about, Dae abandoned her attempts at spellwriting. If her textbooks were anything to go by, magic didn’t conform well to precise instructions so much as general recipes anyway. One could list the materials they worked with, but in the end, it came down to gut feeling and ability, and maybe an affinity toward applying theory to practice. Zhenya was gifted at the latter, Dae was not.

She shifted her efforts to working on imbuing Ezzyn’s slow-release wards with her layering spells. He’d been right that ward usage was common enough practice, and one she’d practiced a little bit already. Except, she still didn’t have an ironclad grasp of either the layering technique or her targeting spell, and time became an increasingly sparse commodity as finals and the end of the semester began its slow approach. It was a good week for her if she managed to escape down to town to see Eunny for dinner. The majority of Dae’s social life became studying with Zhenya in the library. Helpful, to a point, for Zhenya believed the answer to everything existed in a book, and she’d heaped several upon Dae to help with her research. Not as helpful in that Dae was barely managing to skim the readings for her own classes, much less find time to do a deep dive on a new text. Her only morbid spot of relief came in seeing that her classmates seemed equally harried.

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