Page 35 of The Scent of the Ideal

“Look at me.” Viau was firm, so Rafi scowled but looked up. Viau spoke with care. “You’re powerful, more than the academy first realized, I think, which was why you weren’t trained harder when you were younger. You really ought to have been a mage, but that wouldn’t suit you and I refuse to let them have you.” Rafi assumed that was a joke. Viau carried on, only pausing when he asked a question to wait for Rafi’s response. “To you, it feels like you’re taking aer? Do you know what I feel when you do it?”

Rafi shook his head.

“Reaching. That’s what I feel. You reaching out. And some things, plants, animals, your friends, reach back without thinking. Naturally, the animals and trees and such wouldn’t think. Your friends ought to know better, but they care for you, so they answer. And you really are shockingly strong. I think this happened because Instructor Alaman retired before you must have arrived here.” Viau clucked his tongue. “He’s strong too. He would have seen you and addressed this. The current instructors are talented, but were hardly going to notice your use of aer.”

Rafi didn’t understand. “Reaching?”

“You might be reaching all the time.” Viau softened his voice and leaned in though no one else was close enough to hear him. “Not intentionally.” He softened even more to say that. “But then something slips through and you falter, and for the span of a heartbeat, everything and everyone around you can hear a question they want to answer.”

Rafi was aware of his dry mouth and lips that felt chapped. He took a breath and made sure his aer was tamped down inside him and Viau was safe, and then asked, “Question?”

“Perhaps more of a statement. Or maybe that is what is in my heart and I’m placing it in yours to make myself feel better.” Viau’s smile changed, becoming slightly mocking. “That’s what poets do, although they’ll sometimes pretend otherwise. And you, much like a poet, will insist that you are not that powerful, and that what you do has nothing to do with your heart. But allow me to remind you—your aer touched mine, and in the midst of a heat, no less. Mine.” A growl. “No one but a strong mage might do that, because I’m powerful too. Yet you managed it.”

“I did?” Rafi should have caught his breath by now. Viau inclined his head, watching Rafi in that intent way of his. “Did it worry you?”

Viau exhaled a small, contented sound. “How could it, already so familiar to me?”

Rafi was too close and growing closer, pulled in by the light in Viau’s eyes. “What was? What was familiar?” Viau stared at him. Rafi pressed forward. “The question?” He’d had a question to ask Viau, although he couldn’t bring it to mind now.

Viau’s brows came together, but then he was smiling again. “They trained you not to reach, didn’t they? They never quite trained it out of me, although they did try.” He lightly tapped the end of Rafi’s nose, and when Rafi scowled, tapped his lips too, though there, his touch lingered. “But when you forget, there it is, insistent and aching.”

“Flowers again,” Rafi snapped, surprised with himself for the show of temper.

Viau removed his fingers and leaned in to press a soft kiss to Rafi’s mouth. He spoke against Rafi’s parted lips, “Reach for me, Rafeli Tizzan, and I will answer.”

He left Rafi standing there, cheeks hot, thoughts spinning, to go retrieve their swords. Then he tossed Rafi’s at him and struck out without a word, destroying any attempt Rafi could have made to parry, or argue, or even think for the rest of the morning.

Chapter Twelve

Rafi knocked quietly on Viau’s door that evening, a flutter within him that had nothing to do with aedis, although it wasn’t entirely new. Nerves, perhaps. Anticipation, though he did not know for certain what Viau’s answer would be.

He should have discussed the matter with Katoh, but she might have tried to give him seduction advice. Laure was more of a romantic, or so Rafi suspected. Cambray, always eager for a chance to bed one of his friends or find a new soulmate, had the kind of practicality Rafi appreciated.

“Just ask him,” Cambray had advised while shaving and grooming himself for his evening, while Rafi had washed up at a sink near him. “He might say no, but it’s convenient, fun, and he already likes you, so I doubt he will.”

No poetry, but also no advice on what to do if the answer was no. If that turned out to be the case, Cambray would probably try to set him up with one of his miné friends.

Viau opened the door as Rafi was shuddering at the thought. Viau was somewhat dressed in pants and an untucked shirt, though barefoot. His hair was loose, and he gave Rafi a brief moment of confused study, probably because Rafi was in one of his nicer shirts and had his hair in order because he’d come straight from his room.

“All is well? Did you need something?” Viau sniffed the air. “It couldn’t possibly be your time again so soon.”

Not a promising beginning. But Viau stepped back to wave him into the room before Rafi could summon an answer, and then gestured for Rafi to take the chair, as if Viau hadn’t clearly been at his desk again and needed it.

Rafi sat on the edge of the bed instead, only to then worry that his choice was rude, and then about how the launderers must have had to work hard to get all his slick and seed from the sheets.

His cheeks began to heat almost immediately.

Viau turned the chair slightly so he could face Rafi as he sat. He had two candles on the desk and some light still coming in through the windows and had clearly been answering letters or jotting in the bound book.

“I’m interrupting you.”

Viau sighed, but in a way that suggested exhaustion more than exasperation with Rafi. “Yes. But that doesn’t bother me nearly as much you think. I am far more interested in why you’ve come to my room.” As he said it, he impatiently brushed his curls back. They didn’t even tangle.

Rafi nearly sighed too. His would been the kind best done on a moonlit balcony by a yearning youth in a play.

“You like being here,” he said instead of commenting on Viau’s hair. “The academy, I mean. More than the capital.”

He got a small frown, then a nod. “And the king prefers the countryside. But we all have our responsibilities.”