Chapter Twelve: Preparations | Part 1
As their Comps approached, Seerla became nearly inseparable from the group.
It took some coaxing. Once classes resumed, Seerla became strangely quiet and hesitant around Thirtyx. He assumed she was giving him space to process his trauma after the torture, until one night, Thirtyx asked about her internship to stimulate conversation.
He was caught completely off guard when she started crying.
“I… I really wanted to quit, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’m so sorry! You must think I’m terrible. But a guaranteed apprenticeship with Dexerro’s husband would launch my career advocating for marginalized people, and I… I can’t give that up, even if it’s wrong to you. But I’m sure it feels like the world’s biggest betrayal, and I’ve been waiting for you to call me on it, and I’m just really, really, really sorry!”
Seerla’s sniffling was the only sound for a long moment. “You… think I want you to quit your internship?”
“Dexerro tortured you! I’m a terrible person for serving someone like that!”
“You’re… not… a terrible person,” Thirtyx’s mind struggled to catch up with Seerla’s ramblings. “I guess I can see how you might feel conflicted, but you quitting your internship honestly never crossed my mind.”
“It… it didn’t?” She seemed torn between analyzing his face for deception and wanting to look literally anywhere else. “How could it not?”
Although Thirtyx certainly didn’t feel relaxed enough to shrug, he forced one anyway. “When a whole society is unfair, you have to work with what you’re given. It’s like you said—think of all the people you’re going to help with the experience you’re getting from Dexerro. If you wait to be trained by someone who doesn’t hate Veriths, you might be waiting an awfully long time.”
With that tension broken, they began studying together again—now more than ever. In a few days’ time, the magic students would travel to Eressee for the kickoff of Comps season, the only exam to be given off-campus at a central location for the ease of administering the practical section to students from every school at once. After that, the other Comps would follow in a whirlwind, and Law—the final Comp on the schedule—would be there before they knew it.
At some point, Thirtyx realized he was spending more time with Seerla than than with Rhea and Benn. And while Thirtyx enjoyed Seerla’s company, there was one thing about her that frustrated him to no end.
He found himself pacing in an anxious spiral while Benn packed for the Magic Comp, and Rhea doodled more sigils that might help them find Grimmary’s attackers. “There’s something weird about the energy I get from her. I don’t understand it.”
Benn looked up from his suitcase with a quirked eyebrow. “Seerla? Who helped save you from Azirenne? You think she could be working with the enemy?”
“No, it’s… it’s not a negative energy. I mean, she’s got secrets, but no more than anyone else. The thing is, when I’m feeding on her energy, it’s like I never feel satiated.” He raked his hand through his hair. How could he explain this to people who couldn’t sense energies from others? “Being around her makes me want something… more. Like I’m craving a different kind of energy that I don’t know how to get.”
Rhea made a big show of dropping her pencil, turning around in her chair, and crossing her legs with a very condescending expression. “Come on, buddy. You’re so close to figuring it out.”
“Figuring what out?”
“That you have a crush on Seerla!”
Thirtyx gritted his teeth. “I do not have a crush on Seerla! How many times do I have to say it?”
“You can say it because you’ve somehow convinced yourself, even if you haven’t convinced us,” Benn said over a pair of spellbooks he was deciding between. “I mean, Rhea and I believed you at first, but since you got tortured…” His expression floated somewhere between pity and amusement. “It really has been painfully obvious.”
“Humor us for a minute,” Rhea said with an air of infuriating innocence. “Think really deeply about how being around her makes you feel.”
Calley Jones 