Page 70 of Elemental Affections

They regarded each other from across the lab.

“You withdrew your application for the summer fellowship.”

Dae went to her desk. The stack of correspondence and other reports she’d put off in favor of the Rhell trip appeared to have grown. A surveying glance of the lab—except for where Ezzyn sat—revealed that she had plenty of records to check and update.

Seating herself, she began triaging the oldest paperwork.

Ezzyn sighed. “I can assure you that you won’t be assigned to my work area.”

“You can understand how your assurances don’t inspire confidence when it comes to my work.” Dae didn’t look up as she sorted correspondence into two piles. “Or you.”

“Gods fucking br— Anadae, you can’t think—”

“Stop,” she said, no trace of a waver in her voice. Nothing but ice. He’d made his choice, and so she had made hers. No Ezzyn, no Rhell. Any faith she’d had in herself and her work there was shattered. Foolish Ana, for believing that another had selfless intentions in steering her life. She should’ve known better. “I think we should return to written communication. There’s no reason for us to talk.” She finally met his eyes with a flat stare.

A muscle twitched along the side of his face as he clenched his jaw. “If that’s what you would prefer.”

“It is.”

They went back to work, a bitter silence falling over the lab.

Vaadt wasn’t pleased by Dae’s decision to abandon the Rhell fellowship, either. Dae was cagey with her answers, and her advisor reluctantly passed on information about other summer opportunities.

“I admit, I’m struggling to understand your reasoning,” Vaadt said, a few weeks after the spring trip, when Dae couldn’t avoid meeting with them any longer. “All of the reports I’ve seen say your research was received very well.”

“I made some strides, yes. I’ve been keeping my Den’olm consulting lead informed of my continuations here.”

“Are you planning to investigate a different field?”

“No, I’m happy with environmental restoration work.”

Vaadt waited, expectant. When Dae offered nothing more, they took a long, measured breath before saying, “Is there a problem with your assistantship?”

Dae’s shoulders hunched. “Why would— Has he, um, has Mr. Sor’vahl said—”

“Everflow drown me.” Vaadt rubbed their temples. “Listen, I generally don’t involve myself in my advisees’ personal lives, however—”

“Everything is fine,” Dae said quickly. “I just—it’s Adept One soon, and I’d like to consider all options once I can commit time to them.”

The look on Vaadt’s face said they didn’t believe Dae’s bullshit for an instant. They took another long inhale, as if summoning every scrap of patience they possessed for dealing with obnoxious graduate students. “A colleague in Grae Port maritime work is running a study on harbor degradation, and there’s a Magister Three grovetender putting a lab together for desertification in southern Graelynd. I’ll send along the application materials.”

Thanking the professor, Dae fled the office.

The Adept One exam was an excuse for Dae’s indecision. A flimsy shield behind which she hid her inability to focus. For all that the year was meant to have been built around it, for all that passing was supposed to be the only immediate goal in her life, Dae didn’t remember more than flashes of the day-long exam.

Everything reminded her of Ezzyn. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t spoken directly in months. Treated each other like antagonistic strangers during seminar or in the lab.

But the memory of him was inescapable. The way he’d described energy expenditure and the natural way the ley lines bled into the earth, how one could harvest it and stretch the magic further with relatively low effort. He’d been talking about Rhell’s wellspring, but the methodology sprang to mind as she scribbled exam answers on environmental efficiencies.

Or the way his mind picked apart experiment strategies, measured strengths and weaknesses of various disciplines and how they could be individually tested for maximum effectiveness within the same trial. He’d always been biased in favor of utilizing fire the most. Dae had finessed the work to include the other schools of magic to greater degrees, but she built off Ezzyn’s research and aims.

When answering the final question—which felt like a broader approach to the field, almost philosophical, asking how she would design an experiment to maximize varied talent and knowledge levels—she thought only of Ezzyn’s hands. Unmarred by stress cracks. His hands from before, the strong fingers that had laced through hers as they stood on the lakeshore. The invitation of his magic. Not simply to learn but to familiarize, to know him down to his core. She’d thought that she had, at least a little. Gotten a glimpse.

He’d called her a distraction. Said she didn’t know him at all. That they were nothing more than the bloodless terms of their arrangement. In this year of remaking herself, she’d done it all on the foundation of her old life. Perhaps a fresh start was hopeless unless she pared everything of Ana Helm away. Small thanks be to Ezzyn, then, for making her realize the truth.

She walked out of the exam hall in the Dome, making her way across the courtyard without a destination in mind. Somehow, hours had passed, yet she retained none of it, felt nothing about having just sat for the exam. The culmination of a year’s effort, the estrangement from her parents, uprooting her entire life. And yet all she felt was a vague numbness.

A hand on her arm jarred her from such thoughts. She stopped at the edge of the courtyard to find herself face-to-face with Brint.

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