24. Chapter 24 The Dining Hall Reckoning #3
He took his seat. Despite having to stop at her room, Tesslyn was already there in her usual seat with her notebook open, ready to learn.
Wulden sat to Lucien's right, unpacking his bag with the careful movements of someone who had accepted that today would happen to him whether he prepared for it or not.
Liora dropped into the seat on Lucien's left, crossed her legs, and opened her notebook without looking at him.
Corvath wasn't present. He'd stayed at the table to finish Lucien's abandoned eggs, which he'd announced were adequate but could have used more salt.
The door at the front opened.
Renvaya walked in and the room reorganized itself around her.
She wore her faculty robes belted at the waist with the brass fixtures she'd added herself, buttoned to the collar.
Her auburn hair fell past her shoulders, caught behind one ear in a way that showed the fox ear on the exposed side, dark-tipped and pointed forward.
She carried her leather folder in her left hand and crossed to the podium in the unhurried stride that didn't adjust for other people.
Twelve hours ago she had been standing in his doorway in a green floral sundress with the hemline above her knees, saying something she hadn't meant to say. The robes erased everything the sundress had shown. They hid the arms and the collarbone and put the professor back inside the uniform.
She swept the rows. A clean pass, her amber eyes moving at a steady speed that included every student and lingered on none.
"Page forty-three of the Aldessi supplemental," she said. "Today we're covering cross-affinity interference patterns. If you haven't done the reading, the next hour will be educational in ways you won't enjoy."
She taught, and she was good at it as always.
The lecture covered interference patterns between opposing affinity types during simultaneous channeling, material that sat at the edge of what the first-year curriculum demanded and pushed past it.
Renvaya believed her students could keep up or deserved to find out they couldn't. She built the framework on the slate in her flawless handwriting, white chalk on dark surface, and worked through two examples before opening the floor.
Lucien took notes he didn't need. The content was nothing new to him. The interference model she was presenting had been solved, forgotten, rediscovered, and formalized twice since his era. He wrote down what she said because writing kept his hands busy and his eyes on his notebook and not her.
She called on students. She corrected mistakes cleanly and pushed for more when the answer was only half right.
A dwarf boy in the third row mixed up destructive and constructive interference and Renvaya dismantled the error in two sentences and rebuilt his understanding in three.
A girl near the windows gave an answer good enough that Renvaya paused, tipped her head, and said, "Good.
Expand on that." It was the highest praise she'd given that girl in weeks.
She didn't call on Lucien.
The period moved. Chalk accumulated on the slate.
Students scratched notes, shifted in their seats, asked questions that ranged from solid to terrible.
Renvaya handled all of them with the same economy and authority, her face giving nothing away about the woman who had stood in his room and said, "That's not why I came. "
She passed his desk.
She was walking from the slate to the podium, returning the chalk to the tray, and the path took her down the aisle where Lucien sat.
She passed within two feet of his desk and the lavender reached him.
Faint, dispersed by classroom ventilation and thirty students' worth of air, but there.
The same scent that had filled his room and lingered after she'd gone.
Liora sat on his left, her elbow near his on the desk, and she didn't look up from her notes.
Their eyes met for half a second, maybe less.
Her amber eyes caught his and held, and in the space between one step and the next, something passed between them that had nothing to do with cross-affinity interference patterns.
She didn't slow her stride. She didn't break rhythm.
But the look landed, and he caught it, and then she was past him and back at the podium and the lecture continued.
Class ended twenty minutes later. Students packed their bags, conversations resumed, chairs scraped stone. Renvaya closed her folder and tucked it under her arm. She didn’t ask anyone to stay.
Lucien put his notebook in his bag. The chalk dust hung in the air where the morning light crossed the room, white particles turning slowly in the wide bars from the tall windows.
He stood, shouldered his bag, and walked toward the door.
“Great class, Professor,” Lucien said.
Her eyes locked on his and sparkled. “I’m glad you enjoyed it. I’m not used to my lectures receiving compliments.”
“Such a shame. They deserve praise.”
Renvaya's cheeks turned pink for a moment and she appeared speechless.
“I hope I haven’t said too much and embarrassed you,” Lucien quickly added.
“No, not at all,” Renvaya replied softly. She was taken aback. “Now, you need to get to your next class.”
She moved her arm to point to the door and knocked her coffee cup off the desk. The cup stopped two inches from the floor and slowly floated upward and returned to its spot on the desk.
The professor’s eyes widened.
“You should be more careful, Professor. That’s a nice cup.”