Page 34 of The Alchemists

Seb raked his free hand through his hair as he considered. Cantrèa came so naturally to him that he wasn’t entirely sure where to begin.

“I guess let’s just go through some footwork and basic blade-play? The movements of Cantrèa are circular in nature, so try to match my path. Step heel-toe.”

He began to move clockwise, and Lily matched him immediately, keeping her foil at a good height, watching him and not her feet. The leaves whispered beneath them, and he was suddenly reminded that she was a dancer. Even on dry leaves, her steps were quiet.

“Let’s try some parries and lunges. To lunge, extend from the elbow. Don’t worry about technique, just feel it out and try to block.”

She nodded, perfectly serious, and it was hard not to laugh at her concentration, tongue poking through her lips. He lunged, gently, telegraphing his intention before his attack, and she knocked it aside with something approaching form.

“Nice, go ahead and try a lunge yourself, when you’re ready.”

He watched her arm, looking for the cues and bad habits she’d need to unlearn over time. When she lunged, it was balanced, and he blocked it softly, with just enough force to send it outside.

“How’s it feel?” he asked after a few repetitions.

Lily nodded, not taking her eyes off his foil arm.

“Let’s try some back and forth.”

They shuffled in their circle, and Seb made the first attack. Lily parried neatly and tried for a riposte. He wondered, guiltily, if he should have let her hit him, but he wasn’t wearing pads, and she didn’t seem like the type of person who wanted someone to let her win. Together, they fell into a rhythm against a backdrop of crunching twigs, rattling leaves, and the occasional birdsong. The cloud cover cleared, and golden light slanted through the trees, dissipating Lily’s curse aura and warming her hair to a luminous copper.

Lily feinted. He wasn’t expecting it, lulled by the forest sound and the sun. As he fell for it, rushing to parry, she came around, lunging for real. Seb forgot that they were merely sparring and spun in a twisting evasion. Lily’s weight, though, expecting to meet resistance, met none, and her momentum hurtled her forward. Instinctively, Seb’s foil arm shot out.

He caught her around the middle, diverting her linear force into his circular one. They spun together, one of Seb’s feet dragging a loop on the ground to slow them. When they stopped, his heart was pounding, and Lily was half in a dip, her hand clutched around his shoulder to keep from falling. They stared at each other for a handful of heartbeats, both of them breathless, before Seb came to his senses and hauled her to her feet.

“Sorry,” she said, blinking.

“No,” he said quickly. “It was good. You’re good. I wasn’t expecting a feint.”

She sheathed her foil, as if she’d done it a million times, and managed to unfasten it on her own, even with trembling hands.

“Thank you.” He wasn’t sure if she was thanking him for the session or the compliment, but he didn’t care. Her lips pursed, and her brow furrowed, as it always seemed to do. What Gemma took for rudeness, he thought might be caution—a silent battle playing out on her face.

“This was nice,” she admitted. He waited, to give her time to decide whether she wanted to say what she was thinking. No wonder she hung out with Daphne, who wouldn’t talk over her, and Gemma, who always would. “You’re not what I expected.”

It caught him off guard, and he grinned once he realized it was a compliment. “You’re not what I expected either.”

Neither of them asked what it was they had expected, but they didn’t need to. So many people thought they knew the both of them.

“I have to go home, but we could look at what you found…later, if you wanted?”

He did, badly. “Yes. Yeah.” Seb felt like he’d slipped sideways into someone else’s life. “How’s eight? Metaphysics library?”

“That works.”

They packed their things and walked out of the woods together in something approaching companionable silence. Seb walked with her to her bike, parked near the lake.

“Which dorm are you headed to?”

“I live off campus.” He cocked his head at her. Oh. “I grew up here.”

“No wonder you know all the best places on campus.”

Her cheeks pinked as she ducked her head and smiled, and he smiled back, one for feeling seen, the other for seeing.

“Something like that. Eight?”

He nodded and watched her pedal off, realizing that he couldn’t see her curse aura at all.