“He isn’t exactly feeling forthcoming with me right now, but I could guess.”
Wilder had likely snuck off to conduct his business as soon as Desmond had shown up to distract their parents.
“And that one?” Martyn leaned against the back of the bench and nodded subtly toward a student meandering through the quadrangle with an older couple who were clearly his parents.
“He’s an underclassman. Fundamentals year. I only know him because he’s in Professor Robards’s Intro class.”
“Where you’re a teaching assistant?” he said, and when I nodded, he went on. “I see. What about that girl? She seems to have quite a bit of attention on campus.”
I stifled a groan. “That’s Keryth Malcom. She does not care for me.”
He gave me a quiet smile. “Meaning that you are competition for her?”
“We are all competition for one another.” But surely that didn’t mean we couldn’t be friends.
“And those two?”
I followed his gaze. “Petyr Lorena and Adria…something or other. They’re in my cohort. They don’t seem to care much for me either.”
Martyn and I had broken our fast together on a bench in the Dormitory courtyard, looking out over the quadrangle, and afterward he’d seemed content to sit and ask about my classmates rather than drag me through the festival, as the Gregorys were currently engaged with both of their reluctant sons.
Annora was particularly enamored of the booth where people could fire arrows at a volunteer from the research staff, who stood against a wooden backdrop in only his trousers, his skin shining thickly with an embrocation that temporarily rendered his flesh impermeable to the projectiles.
She’d paid for four rounds so far and seemed to thrill at aiming directly at the poor man’s bare chest. He maintained a good- natured smile, his arms propped on his narrow hips, and indulged her recreational bloodlust. As well as her repeated insistence that her son Desmond had helped develop the miracle elixir that made it possible.
She was not wrong.
Wilder would clearly rather have been drawn and quartered than hear the story again.
“And the azure-toned young man over there?” Martyn glanced pointedly at Pryce Wishart. “Is that something to do with the festival? Is there a booth for tinting skin?”
“In fact, there is.” And that was likely what Pryce had told the elegant but dour-looking man and woman who were accompanying him across the quadrangle with their noses in the air. “But that boy’s blue cast has nothing to do with the festival and everything to do with Wilder Gregory.”
“Oh?”Martyn turned to me, brows raised. “Do tell.”
“The story doesn’t bear repeating,” I insisted, well aware that if my father thought I was in any specific danger, especially from an influential family, he would redouble his efforts to bring me home. “Except to say that Wilder is thelaststudent on campus with whom one ought to—”
“Interfere?” Martyn suggested, saving me the utterance of a particular profanity.
“Precisely.”
“So, which of these students are your friends, Amber dear?” Martyn slid his arm around mine and squeezed. “With whom do you share your secrets?”
“Well…” There’s never any good way to tell a parent you have no real friends. “With Wilder, I guess.”
“So that’s unchanged, since you were children?”
“I suppose.”
“And yet yesterday it certainly looked…changed.” His grip tightened on my arm, and I turned to see him eyeing me with one brow raised. “Would you say that your relationship has…matured?”
“Wouldyousay you’re gathering intelligence for my father?”
Martyn laughed and let go of my arm so he could retrieve the teacup sitting on the bench to his left. “At this moment? I am simply asking, as an interested parental figure.”
“My relationship with Wilder certainly has changed. But at the moment, it is both difficult for me to understand and difficult for me to define.”
“Because of your memory loss?”
