As she took her seat, staring ahead so she didn’t look too closely at the crowds taking notice again of her appearance in the royal box, Nikias sat next to her, closer even than yesterday.
He pulled out their notes from his bag and began going through what they’d discussed about their novices, leaning in again and speaking in a quiet murmur. She tried to listen in order to respond, but the whole thing struck her as rather… intimate.
In a domestic sort of way.
While rare, this wasn’t the first time she’d worked with Nikias, and she wasn’t counting when he used her to try to injure Marcella. She had once, out of her immense devotion to Gavril, gone to Nikias’ study, and asked for his help to at least try to improve Gavril’s chances of placing highly in the graduation tournament and avoiding their father’s wrath. It had involved a meeting, bent over lists of commanders she had compiled and her outlining to Nikias why he should select them as judges. Then he’d trained with them, and the two of them had occasionally, while Gavril caught his breath or drank some water, discussed behind their hands how best to teach Gavril to improve his technique, or what weaknesses they had spotted.
Oh.
She’d been wrong the night of Nikias’ proposal. They had had civil conversations before.
“Aimilia?” Nikias’ hand brushing her shoulder and his voice startled her back to their current conversation. He didn’t pull his hand away.
“Sorry, what was the question?” Aimilia took a deep breath, pushing down the realization that was slowly starting to crawlup her spine. She didn’t want to realize anything, especially not when he was so close.
Nikias shifted the page he was holding out to catch her attention. “We have the academic track up first; five of them are ours. This one has shown a great aptitude for the academic track as well as healing.”
Aimilia reached for the paper, and Nikias let her pull it in front of her, but he didn’t remove his hand from her shoulder nor did he shift back.
Aimilia tried to focus on the notes Nikias had taken the day before, but his looming presence was maddening in its distraction.
“We’ll have to see how he does. If we’re short on healing students, we may have to assign him there. With the number of students aiming for the command track, I imagine most of the ones who don’t make it will be best suited for combat or the academic track.”
She couldn’t come up with anything more insightful with him still hovering over her, looking at her expectantly. Each second his eyes were on her, that terrible realization kept crawling up closer and closer until she could not ignore it anymore.
Why was Nikias so determined to have her good opinion? Why did it matter what objections she had?
Nikias was saying something else, taking the paper back, but she was looking back out at the crowd, too many of them watching her and Nikias.
Nikias was going to try to overcome them.
He hadn’t given up. He wasn’t doing all of this as a way to get back at her.
He was doing all of it to get a second chance.
Before Aimilia could decide what to do with this knowledge, the sound of footsteps had both her and Nikias turning around to see Queen Clelia in the doorway of the box. Aimilia’s breathcaught in her throat as Nikias’ eyes widened. He shot up from his seat and gave a short bow, and when he started to rise his shock had vanished beneath his marble façade. Aimilia hurried to follow his example as Nikias said, “Mother, I didn’t think you would be attending until tomorrow.”
Aimilia murmured, “Your Majesty.”
“Your father is well attended and doing well today, so I decided to come and see exactly what kind of caliber of mages will one day be Imperia’s future.” Queen Clelia made her way to her seat, directly behind Aimilia’s.
“Of course,” Nikias said right as the crowd spotted the queen and the dull roar picked up anew. “I’m sure everyone below is glad to see you.”
Aimilia shot Nikias a pointed look. She’d only acquiesced yesterday because it had just been the two of them. She certainly wasn’t going to spend the whole day in the box stuck with his mother who could only hate Aimilia now as much as Aimilia hated the horrid, cruel woman.
“They certainly seem to be. Well, don’t let me disturb the two of you. I know you have much to discuss…” Queen Clelia nodded toward their notes. “Judging the novices and all.”
Aimilia glanced back out at the crowd and the other boxes. Was there another empty one that?—
She locked eyes with her uncle in a lower box, his gaze fixed squarely on her, Nikias, and the queen. He’d throw a fit if she disrespected the queen by leaving now. She really didn’t want to provoke him so he renewed his attempts to convince her to start groveling, no matter how much she assured him it was too late.
Or…
As Aimilia took her seat again beside Nikias, it might not be too late if Nikias was going to be so foolish as to keep trying to marry her.
There was no time to deal with either as Commander Livus stepped out onto the arena floor, signaling it was time to start. At least it also gave Aimilia something to focus on that wasn’t the queen glaring daggers into her back or the man who was delusional enough not only to think he had a chance the first time he proposed but that she would accept a second attempt.
Maybe she would have been better off not figuring out anything.
