Page 30 of The Lost Art of Seducing a Mage Warrior

And it turned out he truly didn’t need to be either when he was target practice for a bunch of novices to lob water, earth, and air at.

It was a little bit humiliating but actually kind of fun to run around the room and use every tool he came across to try to dodge the elements that he couldn’t always see coming. Sometimes, they dropped out of the air above him as though the sky had just opened up and decided it was time to rain dirt—but he was fine if he was holding a chair over his head as a shield.

Sometimes, the elements came swirling at him from across the room, more like Brannal had done yesterday when he’d pulled the earth to him and then returned it. In that case, he could try to run around it.

Sometimes, balls of earth, water, or air were conjured in the person’s hands and then lobbed across the room. Perian had the best chance of actually dodging those, or batting them away with anything that came to hand, but that wasn’t to say he had agreatchance.

He was dirty, soaked,andrather ruffled when he lurched to a sudden stop as he was encased by something that was neither fire, water, earth, nor air. It shimmered, and a glance up showed him it had covered him in an entire dome of… protection? Because a howling wind whipped around the rest of the room, making everyone suddenly stop and try to protect themselves.

“Whatis going on here?”

Perian had never heard Brannal take that tone of voice before, and belatedly, it occurred to him that it probably looked like he had been under attack.

Likeactualattack.

“Perian is aguest,” Brannal gritted out. “Howdareyou—!”

Molun tried to explain, “We were just—”

The wind whipped louder.

“Um, excuse me.” But there was no way anyone could hear that over the whistling wind. So Perian yelled at the top of his lungs instead: “Hey!”

The wind cut off abruptly.

“You’re messing with the scoring,” Perian told him.

Brannal blinked, and Perian felt like he could actuallyseethe man’s thoughts be diverted.

“The scoring,” he repeated blankly.

Perian gestured at the board on the wall, where Molun, Delana, and Tinnadal had been marking hits and blocks.

“The scoring,” Perian confirmed. “No one was planning on you storming in here and blocking everything, and I really wasn’t planning on being trapped in whatever this is, so could you please take it down and stop overreacting.”

Molun wheezed something that was trying not to be a laugh.

Brannal continued to stare at Perian for another moment, and then with a wave of his hand, whatever it was Perian had been encased in dissolved from the top down until it disappeared as though it had never been.

Perian crossed the room.

“So, that was different. Do you always use it to interrupt training?”

Brannal’s eyes fluttered shut and then opened again, and some of the tension drained out of his shoulders.

“Not every day, no.”

Perian grinned at him. “I guess that makes me special. We should probably go talk about that. Bye, everyone. Thanks for the entertaining afternoon.”

There was a chorus of goodbyes, though most people still looked kind of shocked. Perian slipped an arm through Brannal’s and towed him in the direction of the door until they were both moving willingly.

“Thank you for defending me,” Perian said once they were out in the corridor, the door to the room closed behind them. “I wasn’t actually in any danger.”

Brannal blew out a breath. “It looked like you were being attacked.”

“I can see that now. We were playing.”

Finally laughing, Brannal conceded, “I can seethatnow.”

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