Academy Life as an Archmage (Ardenth Academy #2)

1. Chapter 1 A New Day

Liora's hand was in his.

They'd picked each other up at the dormitory junction without discussing it, the arrangement already settled into something that didn't need a plan.

She'd been waiting at the east-wing landing, leaning against the banister in a dark top with the sleeves at her wrists, silver hair pulled over one shoulder.

She held out her hand when he turned the corner, and he took it.

Corvath walked three paces ahead, tail high, the posture of a cat who'd arrived at opinions about this new development and was keeping them in reserve.

The dining hall doors were propped open. The smell hit them from ten feet out: bread, coffee, something with onions again. It was always something with onions. Lucien had eaten in institutional kitchens across centuries, and the onion was a scent he had become very familiar with.

He and Liora walked in holding hands and the room took notice.

A girl at the closest table glanced up, saw their hands, and looked back at her plate. Two boys at the end of a bench stopped mid-conversation. By the time Lucien and Liora were ten steps in, half the nearby tables had gone quiet and the whispering had started.

A Margrave and a Duskaran noble. Minor disgraced house, major demon money. The social implications would keep the gossip circuit occupied through lunch at least.

Lucien felt it like a weather shift.

Liora didn't seem to notice it at all. Or she noticed it completely and it made no difference.

She walked through the dining hall the same as she'd always walked through rooms: chin level, stride unhurried, unbothered by the attention because she'd grown up inside it.

Her grip on his hand stayed easy. Her tail swung in a slow arc behind her.

"The audience is attentive this morning," Corvath observed, threading between chair legs without touching any of them. “I wonder what they could possibly be interested in?”

“Do I detect sarcasm?” Lucien asked.

“Sarcasm is a language that I am extremely fluent in.”

“I’m well aware. You are just a bundle of fun this morning… most mornings.”

“I am fun. Thanks for noticing. You, on the other hand, are quite boring most days. Can you blow up something, perhaps? Make academy life more interesting for me,” Corvath replied.

“If you are so bored, why don’t you find yourself a guild in town and go on a quest?” Lucien shot back. “That will keep you busy for a while.”

“Who would look after you and keep you from falling flat on your face on a daily basis?” There was a clear smirk beneath the cat’s tone.

“My balance is just fine.”

“Balance maybe, but your love life? The jury is still out. We’ve been here at Ardenth Academy for maybe twelve minutes and you bonded to a demon girl for life.”

“Liora is amazing.”

“I won’t disagree,” Corvath said smugly. “Speaking of, does she have a cat familiar back home to set me up with? I’m sure Duskaran cats are quite exotic. My loins are beginning to tingle just thinking about it.”

Liora cleared her throat. “Are you talking to Corvath through the bond? Why do I always feel like you are talking about me when you do that?”

Corvath rubbed his back against her legs and spoke aloud so she could hear, “My darling, we love talking about you and how beautiful you are. Lucien is a lucky man. We have no secrets from you.”

They reached the serving line before Liora could respond.

Lucien grabbed a plate with his free hand, loaded it one-handed, and ended up with bread, sliced meat, and whatever vegetable the ladle guy put on the plate before he could object.

Liora released his hand long enough to build her own plate with the efficiency of someone who'd been managing public appearances since childhood.

She selected food with the same confidence she selected positions in a room: no second-guessing, no hesitation, just fork and go.

Tesslyn and Wulden were at their usual table, near the tall windows on the east wall.

Tesslyn sat with her notebook open, a cup of tea held in both hands. She'd pinned her hair up with the quill, which was losing its fight, one side already sliding toward her ear. She jotted something in the margin of her notes and looked up when they got close.

Her eyes went to Lucien, then to Liora, then down to their hands.

Her grip on the cup tightened. The knuckles went pale against the ceramic. Her greeting came a half-second late.

"Good morning." The two words were normal, but the timing was off by a fraction that nobody else would have caught.

Lucien caught it. He didn't know what to do with it. He had frameworks for combat, for politics, for every power play he'd seen across centuries. He didn't have one for the micro-hesitation of a girl who'd just seen something she'd already known confirmed in public.

"Morning," Liora said, easy and bright, and sat down next to Lucien across from Tesslyn.

It was new geometry, and the bench shifted under their weight. Liora's knee pressed against his under the table. Tesslyn's notebook sat between them on the wood, the margins full of small sketches he could make out upside down: leaves, rune fragments, something that might have been a cat.

Wulden's reaction was the opposite of subtle.

He had a spoon halfway to his mouth. The spoon stopped, and his eyes went wide. The porridge on the spoon wobbled and a clump of it slid off and hit the table with a soft sound that carried further than it should have in the morning quiet.

"Oh," he said. The spoon was still suspended. "So you're—you two are—" He looked at Lucien, then at Liora, then he noted their shoulders touching. "When did this happen?"

"Recently," Liora said.

"How recently?"

Liora leaned forward. "Does it matter, my nervous dwarven friend?"

Wulden's spoon completed its journey to his mouth. He chewed while processing. The porridge needed less chewing than the information did.

"Okay," he said. He swallowed. "Okay. That's. Huh." He put the spoon down and picked it up again and put it down again. "I mean, I'm not surprised. I told you, Lucien. I told you she stares. I thought there might be something there."

"You told me?"

"I tracked the staring patterns and everything. I documented this. Nobody listened."

"You mentioned it once in our room."

"That counts as documentation." He turned to Liora. "No offense. The staring. I don't mean it badly."

"None taken." She smiled with an edge to it, the look of someone who knew she'd been observed and didn't mind. "I wasn't hiding it."

"No," Wulden agreed. "You really weren't."

Liora shrugged shallowly. “I mean, look at Lucien. He’s an attractive man. I’m sure I wasn’t the only woman staring.”

“Yeah, I mean, yeah, he’s a good-looking fellow,” the dwarf replied.

Lucien snorted. “Why, Wulden, I’m honored you feel I’m attractive.”

Wulden cringed. “Ugh, you know what I meant. Hopefully.”

Tesslyn's tea hadn't moved from her hands. She held it with both palms wrapped around the cup, her posture straight and steady. She was present and listening and seemed fine.

"You two fought well together in the dungeon. There had to be some sort of romantic connection to do what you did," Tesslyn said. Her voice was even. "It makes sense."

It was the right thing to say. Clean and generous.

"Since when, though?" Wulden wasn't done. He wouldn't be done for another five minutes at least. New information was a physical event for him, something that needed to be turned over and examined before he could let it settle. "Like, since the dungeon? Before the dungeon? Is this a dungeon thing?"

"It's not a dungeon thing," Liora said.

"People do that, though. They go through a shared experience and then emotions happen. I read about it."

"You read about it? That shocks me. It really does," Lucien said with a smirk.

"In a book. About team dynamics. Ormon lent it to me." Wulden paused. "It was about military units, but the principle applies."

Liora's laugh came quick and sharp, and the tension at the table broke with it. "Wulden, I promise you, this didn't come from a book about military units."

"I'm just saying there's precedent."

"There is no precedent. You are cute for thinking so. Try reading a book about the laws of attraction next," Liora replied.

"Ormon's going to want to know. He's going to ask me and I'm going to have to say something and right now all I have is 'it happened recently.' That's not going to satisfy him. He's going to do that thing where he just looks at me and waits."

"Tell him we're together," Liora said. "That's what you have. That's it. You are making this too complicated. We’re a couple, for the love of the gods."

Wulden nodded, slowly, the nod of a man absorbing something under 'not my problem to solve.' A serving girl passed behind their bench carrying a tray of fresh bread and the smell cut through everything else in the room for a second, yeasty and warm.

Tesslyn's mouth moved. A flicker, there and gone. It could have been a smile at Wulden's expense. It could have been that the elf wanted to speak and decided not to.

Across the room, someone at a nearby table turned to look.

A girl from the cool kids group, one of the noble students whose names Lucien hadn't bothered learning.

She studied their table for three seconds, leaned sideways, and murmured something to the girl beside her. The girl beside her looked too.

Liora's eyes tracked the movement without pausing her conversation. She'd noticed it and dismissed it in the same glance. She had better things to notice than other first-years whispering about her new relationship.

Wulden glanced at the crested table and glanced back. "People are going to talk."

"People are already talking," Liora said. "I can see a girl three tables over trying to read our lips."

"That's Dalia Grenn. She does that with everyone. I notice things." Wulden shrugged.

Lucien let the moment pass and took a drink of his coffee. It was weak and too hot, the standard offering, the same coffee.