Chapter 14
Tess
Pippa kicked my door open with her foot, both arms wrapped around a stack of pizza boxes that had no business being that tall.
"I brought sustenance," she announced. She peered around the tower of cardboard. "Also cider. The good kind, not the gross mulled stuff from the dining hall."
"How many pizzas did you—"
"Enough," she said. She dumped the boxes on my bed, sending Whiskey scrambling off the pillow with an offended yowl. "It's been a week, Tess. A week. You've earned carbs."
She wasn't wrong. My body was running on caffeine and whatever was left after a week of training, and the smell of melted cheese made me want to collapse into it.
I was so damn glad we'd planned this. Just us. No dragons, no mates, no magical crises—just pizza, drinks, and friends.
I grabbed the top box before Pippa could rearrange my entire bed into a picnic setup, which she was already doing—shoving pillows against the headboard and kicking off her boots in one efficient motion.
Anya arrived two minutes later with a candle that smelled like black currant and a bag of dark chocolate truffles. Because of course she did.
"I could feel the chaos from the hallway," she said, settling cross-legged at the foot of the bed. Whiskey immediately climbed into her lap.
"That's not chaos, that's enthusiasm," Pippa countered. "There's a difference."
"Is there?"
"Anya. Drink your cider," Pippa said, passing a bottle over.
I pulled my legs up and leaned back against the headboard with a slice of pepperoni already halfway gone. My suite was small, but with the three of us sprawled across the bed and the floor cushions Pippa had commandeered from somewhere, it felt exactly right.
God, what a concept.
"Okay," Pippa said, raising her bottle. "To both of you surviving one week of dragon rider training without anyone dying, getting expelled, or punching Valen in his smug little face."
"The week's not over," Anya said.
"To restraint, then."
We clinked bottles. The cider was sharp and sweet, and the first sip loosened tension in my chest.
Two slices in, Pippa was grilling me about training.
"Wait, wait, wait," she said, sitting up straighter, pizza crust gesturing dangerously close to Whiskey's ear. "Go back. Theron made you do what?"
"Defend-and-strike drills. First day. No warm-up, no introduction, just 'pair up and don't die,'" I said. I took another sip of cider. "And then he walked over during my offensive set and corrected my anchor point by just—standing behind me and adjusting my stance."
"Hands on?"
"Hands adjacent. Very..." I searched for the word. "Intense."
"Intense," Pippa repeated, grinning.
"He's my instructor," I said. I wanted the word to be professional. But intense was what came out, and now I couldn't take it back. Because it was true. The heat of him at my back, close enough that I felt his breath shift when he spoke. His voice dropped when he told me to widen my stance.
"I said nothing. I'm just sitting here, eating pizza, noting the word intense," Pippa said, grinning.
Anya's mouth twitched. She said nothing, which was somehow worse.
I threw a piece of crust at Pippa. "Moving on."
"Oh, we're not moving on," Pippa said. She tucked her feet underneath her and aimed her cider at me like a pointer. "Let's talk about Draven."
"What about Draven?"
"Tess. You run with him every morning," she said.
"The whole team runs every morning. It's conditioning."
"And the sparring?" Pippa asked, her eyebrows climbing. "Because Anya tells me Theron has you doing hand-to-hand combat drills out on the training grounds, and that you and Draven are partners for most of them."
I shot Anya a look. She scratched Whiskey behind the ear and offered nothing.
"It's training, Pip. We're learning to fight. Close-quarters stuff, grappling, how to use magic while someone's actively trying to take you down. It's—" I gestured with my cider bottle. "It's practical."
"Practical," Pippa said, nodding slowly. "And the incubus. During the practical grappling. On the ground. In the dirt. All sweaty from the morning run. How's that going for you?"
My face went hot.
Yesterday—pinned beneath him in the dirt, his forearm across my collarbone, his knee braced against my hip.
His hazel eyes shifted darker when I twisted free and reversed the hold.
The split second where neither of us moved, both of us breathing hard, his hand still wrapped around my wrist. He smiled before letting go.
"It's going fine."
"Fine."
"He's a good training partner. He reads the field, he adapts, and he doesn't go easy on me, which I appreciate," I said.
"I bet you do."
"Pippa."
"I'm just asking questions! Innocent questions about your professional development," she said.
Anya's violet eyes were steady on mine. "He watches you."
That landed differently than Pippa's teasing.
"We're on the same team," I said. "He watches everyone."
"No," Anya said simply. "He doesn't."
I sat with that. Anya didn't say things lightly. She saw people—really saw them, through all the walls they built. If she said Draven watched me differently, she meant it.
Pippa and Anya exchanged a look that contained an entire conversation I wasn't invited to.
"He's attractive," I said, because apparently my mouth had decided to stop consulting my brain.
And there it was. Out loud. I'd just admitted it.
To both of them. My brain scrambled. "Obviously.
He's an incubus, that's—the whole thing.
But we're teammates. Same team, instructor right there, Valen watching everything, Omnium observers—"
"So what you're saying is the timing is catastrophically terrible," Pippa said.
"The timing is irrelevant because there is no thing."
"Mmhmm," Pippa said, biting into her pizza.
I grabbed another slice just to have something to do with my hands. I could still feel Anya's gaze on me, her quiet observation echoing in my head. He watches you. I was deliberately changing the subject in my own mind and failing spectacularly at it.
"What about Raze?" Pippa asked, and I could have kissed her for the subject change. "How's that going?"
"Raze is a wrecking ball," I said, grinning despite myself. "He knocked Valen into the woods during our first combat drill and then apologized with the least sincere apology I've ever heard."
"Did Theron say anything?"
"He told Raze to calibrate his force output. Raze said 'copy that' and did the exact same thing ten minutes later," I said.
Pippa cackled. Even Anya smiled.
"Valen, though," I said. The grin faded. "He's being cooperative."
"That's worse," Pippa said immediately.
"It's so much worse. He's watching everything.
Every drill, every bond assessment, every time someone's magic flares—he's cataloguing it.
Not taking notes. Memorizing," I said. I peeled the label on my cider bottle.
"I don't know what he's building with all that information, but he's building something. "
Anya's hand paused on Whiskey's back.
"He'll show his hand eventually," Pippa said. "They always do."
I let that sit for a beat, then steered us somewhere warmer.
"Speaking of the team—Lunessa," I said. Her name settled right. "I want to invite her to the next girl's night."
Pippa's eyebrows rose. "Yeah?"
"She slipped me an extra dessert at dinner one time. Before any of us really knew each other," I said. The memory was small but it stuck. "And she fought beside me in the arena like it was nothing."
"Her wards are precise," Anya said. She tilted her head. "Too precise. She learned to hold everything tight because letting go was dangerous."
That was Anya—seeing people through the walls they built.
"Pippa," I said, looking at her, because Pippa always knew things. She collected information the way other people collected coffee mugs. "What do you know about her?"
Pippa was quiet for a beat. For Pippa, a beat of silence was basically a speech.
"Her parents were researchers. Magical theory—serious academic stuff. They died about five years ago. It was ruled an accident," she said. She lifted one shoulder. "Lunessa was seventeen. She says it wasn't. Nobody listened."
The pizza went heavy in my stomach.
"Councilor Maelin Seraphus—the one Lunessa reacted to at team assignments—she's basically family.
Not by blood. Maelin was investigating what happened to the parents and found Lunessa in the aftermath.
Took her in," Pippa said. She paused. "A mage taking in a witch kid she has no obligation to. That tells you something about Maelin."
We sat with it. Lunessa, who'd slipped me dessert and fought beside me in the arena, had been carrying weight that put all of my first-week stress in perspective.
"Definitely invite her," Pippa said. "She needs people who aren't going to look through her."
Look through her. That snagged in my chest.
I knew that feeling. Knew what it was like to stand in front of someone who was supposed to see you and watch their gaze slide past, searching for the version of you that served them better.
Lunessa had been seventeen. Alone. Telling a truth no one wanted to hear.
Yeah. I knew exactly why it snagged.
Pippa let it sit for exactly as long as she could stand, which was about four seconds, before she turned those green eyes on me.
"What about your family, Tess? Have you heard from them?" she asked.
I picked at the label on my bottle. "A couple of texts from my sister. Nothing real. My mom hasn't called."
"At all?"
"Not once," I said. I took a drink. "This is the longest I've gone without regular contact with either of them. Months now. And the thing is—"
I stopped. Tried to figure out how to say it.