Orok gags again.
I grin again.
“Good boy, Sten,” I say in a cutesy voice.
Something sharp digs into my calf and I yelp, only to look down and see a top hat bobbing away.
Orok cackles. “Someone’s jealous of your new pet.”
I rub my leg—damn, that does hurt.
“The Nec Lab doesn’t expect the corpse back, do they?” Orok asks, head cocked as he watches Sten wobble to the window, bump into it, back up, walk forward, bump into it, back up, and stare impassively at it.
“Technically they’re supposed to dispose of Sten through proper channels, but I worked out a trade of services with the guy there.”
Orok catches me with an accusatory stare. “A trade ofwhatservices?”
“I volunteered in the Nec Lab.” They infamously can’t get studentsto volunteer in their experiments no matter how well they pay. Shockingly, few people are cool with being test dummies for protection spells against decomp attacks, let alone more advanced shit. There was a rumor that a student’s leg fully decayed once.
My own experience was hardly a danger to my person; a couple of sophomores resurrected a guy, and I had to talk to four people and give my guess who the resurrected corpse was. Something about believability, how well they healed the decomp, and so on.
But Orok’s implication clicks and I tip my chin down, vaulting my eyebrows seductively. “Did you think I was tradingsexual favorsfor adead body?”
“Like you haven’t done shit more reckless than that.” His accusation holds. Intensifies. “You’ve been more… unhinged lately.”
I sober, feeling an immediate kick to match up with his energy. “I have not.”
Orok looks pointedly over my shoulder.
Sten is scratching his bony finger down the dry-erase board, pulling lines through the writing. Meanwhile, pieces of… something… are falling off his pelvis and down around his feet.
This is harmless.
Tomorrow will be fine.
Despite that, my stomach turns to lead.
All I see is the grant committee. How desperately I need that money to finish my degree and keep the job offer with Clawstar.
Doing spells in an experimentation capacity adds up, especially once you factor in the need for component purity and consistency. And here Elethior Tourael’s family paid for a whole lab refurbishment while he was still in undergrad.
Which sector of the Tourael fortune paid for it—their magical weapons manufacturing? The patents they hoard for spell developments? The Arcane Forces training camp they run?
I breathe out so deep my sides ache.
“I’m not going too far,” I tell Orok. Which sounds, like, so convincing. “Elethior deserves this. Don’t do the war crime if you can’t do the time.”
“I don’t think Elethior has committed any actual war crimes.”
“How would you know? And if he hasn’t, his family has.”
Orok’s chuckle is humorless. “And we should be held responsible for what our families do?”
Even in this hazy moonlight, I know the red flush heating my pale face is visible. Not embarrassment, not quite; just the shame of being called out.
“Don’t bring logic into my feud,” I mutter and throw another preservation spell at Sten so the poor guy has a hope of lasting the night.
Orok wrestles me into a headlock, nearly dislodging my glasses, and plants a kiss on the blond mess I call a hairstyle.
