Page 62 of Nidev and Lyric

Lyric couldn’t help but watch her, needing to know every detail of the truth while never wanting to learn it. “You’re always running. Teaching. Training. Not to mention...” Her eyes slid to Lyric with a slow, assessing look. “Handling whatever project this one is meant to be.”

Lyric’s jaw tightened and she lowered her gaze back to her pretend notes.

“She’s just here for the day. My usual help was sick.”

Panic rose in her body and she fought it back. So she wasn’t being trained to work with him, she was just standing in.

“I never know with you,” she said lightly, sitting next to him. “You’ve always been good at finding... untapped potential. Like when you had me adjusting the swimming facilities so you could test their stamina properly. If I recall, you were never satisfied until the pool was cold enough to ‘encourage perseverance.’”

The memory seemed to amuse him. “I remember. Some couldn’t last more than a few minutes.”

“Not her though, I assume?” Mireille’s words were aimed at her, but Lyric refused to look. “I hear you’ve been running the recruits ragged at the gym lately. And yet she looks... intact.”

“She Lore’s student.”

“Oh,” she said, barely impressed. “How is our lovely King Lore,” she wondered.

“He’s well.”

So that’s how you sound when you lie,Lyric wrote.Noted.

“What was your motto?” she muttered. “Training is only effective if you push beyond what’s comfortable?”

“You remembered.”

“Of course I did. I kept good notes. And our little darling here is stuck keeping your notes.”

“Only for a day.”

The woman laughed once. “A day with you is like a thousand. I should know. But that’s why you get results, isn’t it?”

“It’s why this place functions,” Nidev corrected. “And why you’re the best at what you do.”

That bit of praise clearly pleased her while making Lyric physically ill. She needed to leave, she needed a reason, one that didn’t seem childish or telling.

Lyric’s eyes stole a glance as she crossed one leg over the other with fluid grace. “Tell me how I can help you this time. I miss working with you,” she lamented.

“I’ll need all the help I can get.”

Lyric’s pen trembled over the notepad, fighting just to hold herself together while waiting. Waiting for an order, a demand to prove herself. That’s how it worked. She fought, she failed, she fought again. Every inch of approval had to be earned with him.

Mireille’s laughter came smooth, genuine. “Push until they break, then see if they can put themselves back together.”

“That’s how they learn,” Nidev said, his tone calm and controlled.

Lyric’s pulse stuttered getting louder in her ears.

“But it must be exhausting, Dev. Training them like that.”

Dev...

“It’s my job,” he said simply. “It’s not that complicated.”

“You make it sound so clinical,” she teased. “But we both know you enjoy the process.”

Enjoy the process.

The laughter went on like white noise as her pulse got louder in her ears. While he sipped tea with another woman. Switched off his cold, obsessive focus and replaced it with something she’d never seen.

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