24. Chapter 24 The Dining Hall Reckoning #2
"She came to your room after hours in a sundress, delivered professional content she could have sent by note or the next day in class, stayed after the professional content was done, admitted she was afraid for you, and told you 'that's not why I came' on her way out the door.
" Liora ticked each point on her fingers.
"That's not a briefing. That's a woman who wanted to be in a room with you and wanted special attention.”
Corvath, who had been listening with both ears forward, offered his commentary. "I was outside the window for most of it. The sexual tension was extraordinary. You could have cut it with a knife."
"You were eavesdropping," Lucien said.
"I was conducting surveillance from an elevated position. The distinction matters."
"It really doesn't."
"It does to me. I am very professional."
Liora looked at the cat. "What did she smell like?"
"Lavender," Corvath said, without hesitation. "It was still in the room after she left."
"Lavender." Liora repeated the word like she was intending to remember it. She looked back at Lucien, and her expression was open and warm and sharp all at once, the combination that was uniquely hers.
"She definitely has feelings for you," Liora said.
The same assessment she'd given in the courtyard after the hearing, weeks ago, delivered now with updated evidence.
"She had them before. Now she's stopped pretending she doesn't, at least to herself. Coming to your room and coming inside your room was a risky move on her part. What would the other professors think? What would the headmistress think? I wonder.”
Tesslyn's hands had gone still on her notebook. She sat straight, her green eyes fixed on a point between her teacup and the salt. Her face held the composure she wore when she was carrying something heavy and had decided not to put it down in front of other people.
Lucien caught it. The stillness, the too-careful posture, the breathing that had slowed to something controlled.
Another woman had stood in his room in a sundress and told him something intimate on her way out, and Tesslyn was adding this information to the weight she already carried.
Lucien knew she had feelings for him but not exactly how much.
He thought about adding her to the coven.
He'd been thinking about it for days, the shape of the conversation, the timing, the trust it would require.
She was carrying more than she should without knowing the full picture.
The healing yesterday, the bond with Corvath, her feelings that she'd placed outside the walls of his relationship with Liora.
She thought the walls were where they belonged.
She didn't know the walls had doors from Lucien’s perspective.
He put the thought away. Breakfast was not the place.
Tesslyn's composure held. She picked up her cup and drank, steady, and when she set it down, she looked at Liora. Something passed between them that was too fast and too private for Lucien to read.
"This is certainly an interesting turn of events," Tesslyn said. Her voice gave nothing away.
Liora studied her for a half-second longer than the words deserved. Then she turned back to Lucien.
"I told you weeks ago," Liora said. She put her hand on his knee under the table, the heat of her coming through his trousers.
"Her attachment makes her both safer and more dangerous.
The safer part is done. She shielded you in that corridor and talked you down.
The dangerous part is just getting started.
" Her tail tapped his hip. "She's beautiful, she's smart, and she's brave enough to walk into a student's room in a sundress and say something honest and inappropriate on her way out.
I'd be more concerned if you weren't affected. "
"I didn't say I was affected."
"You didn't need to. I can see it in your eyes.”
“Renvaya is a complicated woman. This is a complicated situation.”
Corvath started purring. The sound was low and satisfied and he made no effort to hide it.
"Stop purring," Lucien said.
"I'm not purring."
"You are very clearly purring."
"I'm vibrating at a frequency that happens to resemble purring."
Liora laughed. It cut through the morning noise of the dining hall. She squeezed Lucien's knee once and pulled her hand back to her plate.
"Eat your eggs," she said. "You have Magical Theory this morning and your very gorgeous professor is going to walk in wearing her robes buttoned to the collar and you're going to sit there pretending you didn't watch her leave your room in a slutty dress twelve hours ago.
" She pointed at his plate with her fork. "You'll need the protein."
The group laughed. Wulden, who was deeply grateful the spotlight had moved off him, picked up his coffee and saluted it toward Lucien in quiet solidarity. “To Lucien, the master of bad decisions.”
Tesslyn gathered her things. She stood, shouldered her bag, and paused long enough to push the quill back into her hair one more time. "I need to drop my notes at the room before class. I'll see you there."
She walked away with her bag on one shoulder and her back straight. Lucien let her go and held the thought about the coven and the conversation he would have to have eventually. It was time for class with the lovely Professor Renvaya.
***
The walk to Magical Theory was short.
Liora fell into step beside him in the corridor, her bag on one shoulder. Her shoulder brushed his arm as they walked.
"Don't stare at the fox," she said, pitched for him and not for the students passing them. "Or do. I want a full report."
"I don't stare."
"You stare at me. It's one of your better qualities. Don't pretend you won't stare at her." Her tail tapped his hip once, and she straightened as they reached the classroom door. The mark on her forearm caught the corridor light.
The Magical Theory classroom was half-full.
Students sat in groups of two and three, bags on desks, conversations running at the low pitch that the minutes before a lecture produced.
The tall windows on the far wall let in the morning light and the chalk-marked slate that hadn't been cleaned from the previous session.