Chapter Fourteen: To Go Back | Part 5
Thirtyx fidgeted with one of the buttons on his jacket. “I’m becoming less convinced that it would save my skin, honestly. You’re right that if I can barely stay alive with you guys on my side, my odds without you are… pretty awful.” He stared into the trees. “You know, sometimes I forget that, while society may always have a baseline hatred of Veriths, the really bad periods come and go. This thing with Grimmary will blow over. They’ll catch the people responsible. Then, everyone will either realize I’m innocent, or they’ll forget about it over time. I just wish that this bad period could’ve waited until I wasn’t in the literal most stressful part of my education.”
He didn’t realize Seerla had sat beside him until she put her hand over his non-fidgeting one. “Whatever you decide, I’ll do anything I can to support you.”
He turned his hand over and grasped her thumb with a few of his fingers, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “I know.”
Her hand remained in his for a duration Thirtyx thought was far longer than necessary. He hoped she hadn’t felt his pulse pounding in his fingertips—or at least that she thought it was out of panic instead of some tangled emotional mess. For a long while, they simply sat, side by side, staring at the magical fire.
Thirtyx knew what he had to do. He had probably known all along, but he was grateful for Seerla’s input and for the time she allowed him to process everything.
“Ready to head back?” he asked at last.
Seerla’s raised eyebrow suggested both confusion and guarded hope. “Back?”
“Yeah. Rhea and Benn deserve a note, at the very least.”
She clearly wasn’t buying it, but she humored him by not interrupting his dramatic pause. “Tragically, I can’t think of any arguments convincing enough to keep them from coming after me,” he continued. “So, I probably should just stay at school. Save them the trouble.”
Seerla chuckled. “Sounds like you could use some more practice for the persuasive writing section of the Law Comp. Maybe we should work on that tomorrow before Rhea and Benn get back.”
“Ugh, is this really the reason you wanted me to stay? So you wouldn’t lose your study buddy?”
“Well, obviously. After the Comp, you can do what you want.”
Thirtyx pushed himself to his feet and tried futilely to brush the mud off his pants. After realizing it was a lost cause, he extended a hand to help Seerla.
Again, it seemed her hand stayed in his for longer than it needed to. The action just barely sated that gaping hole in his stomach or chest or perhaps both. Then, her hand slipped away, and the longing flared into a nearly physical ache. He’d imagined that, in the wake of a near-death experience, these feelings would be the furthest thing from his mind. But despite all the grief he’d given Seerla for coming to find him, it just made him fall harder for her.
And it made him wonder—now with a firmer argument than his abstract hope—if she was falling for him too.
It didn’t matter. Until Comps, nothing mattered apart from staying alive and continuing to cram. But he could tell his Verith hunger and stupid hormones that all he wanted, and shutting them up would still be a losing battle.
It would be an even harder battle if he thought Seerla might be fighting the same one.
“Hey, Thirtyx?”
He realized he was still standing there, dumbstruck, staring after Seerla as she and her dragonfire headed toward the path. His exaggerated steps to catch up did nothing to improve his image. “Yeah?”
The mischievous glimmer in her eye made his heart skip a beat. “I can’t wait to see their faces Onspane morning when you waltz into class like nothing happened.”
He wanted to say that he couldn’t either, but at that moment, there was only one face he cared about.
Calley Jones 