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The cafeteria was jammed packed with chatting students. I didn’t need to eavesdrop to know that news of the challenge was spreading among them quickly. Eyeing the crowd, I tried to find my victims for the night. This was the first dinner among many, and I had planned to make myself as available as possible. In order to know how things were really going, I needed to be present and open.
I could do it.
A familiar figure sat at a table with others and before I could think about it, I was already walking toward him. Ferys sat with two other men and another female. They were all in the NSFT program.
“Fancy seeing you guys here,” I said, placing my tray on the table next to Ferys.
All except Ferys’ eyes widened in surprise as I settled in. Being so close to the young shifter had my body warming up. I knew shifters ran hotter, but this was more than I had expected.
“Chairwoman Neutral,” one of the guys stumbled out as he nearly dropped his drink. “Wh-What are you doing here?”
His cheeks turned red as he gaped at me.
“Am I not allowed to eat?” I asked.
“Uh, um, yes?”
I tilted my head to the side. “Is that you giving me permission?”
“Yes, no, I mean, you don’t need permission.”
“What he’s trying to say is that you’re more than welcome to sit wherever you wish. You are the Chairwoman after all,” the female said. There was a little bite to her words, though her expression was blank as she looked at me. Her gray stormy eyes had magic thrumming through them, and I could feel the table vibrate with it as she lost a little control.
“I’d hope that I would sit where I am welcome,” I said carefully. “I guess I can see where the awkwardness would come from.” I flashed the man who had stumbled over his words a smile. “I am in a leadership role. It could make you feel uncomfortable by having to sit next to someone so powerful.”
A snicker came from Ferys. I grinned, weirdly excited about the fact that I was able to get a reaction out of him.
“That wasn’t what I meant,” the woman tried to say.
“No. I get it. You don’t want me here. I can hear it in your tone, even if you mastered that whole blank mask thingy.”
Her face whitened, and her eyes flickered to Ferys. Something in her expression, the way her skin seemed to have the tiniest hint of a blush in there, that made me wonder if they were a thing. I glanced at him, then back at her.
She saw the movement, and her eyes widened.
They weren’t a thing, but she’d like for it to happen. If he was already dating her, they would have been sitting together.
“Please remember, I’m not that much older than you guys, and we are all adults here.”
“How old are you?” Ferys asked.
The first time I got to hear his voice. It was a nice voice. Low and raspy, with a dose of sincerity. I knew I wasn’t going to have to worry about him saying something and meaning something else.
I liked it.
“Twenty-eight.”
“We’re twenty-three,” the woman said.
Smiling wide, I said, “See. Close in age.” I leaned back in my seat. “How was your first day of training?”
They exchanged glances.
“Intense,” Ferys said. “You saw.”
“I did.”
“Is Gaerlan your brother?” he asked.
“He is.” I leaned into him so our shoulders hit, giving him a playful push with my body. “Trying to get information out of me.”
“Would you tell us his weakness?” the woman asked.
“Only if you formally introduce yourselves. I know all the students here, but the NSFT program isn’t my thing.”
“Ferys. Shifter,” Ferys said.
“Maybe tell me something I don’t know?” I asked.
“For now, I think that’s enough.”
“Oh, the mystery route. Okay. I know asking what kind of shifter is a faux pass so I’ll just have to get you to shift someday so I can see.”
He grinned, flashing his teeth, and again I wondered what he would be. “Sounds like a date. By the way, where is your bodyguard, that warlock?”
“I made him stay away so I can bond with the kiddies.”
“And yet, you’re here at the adult table.”
I shrugged. “I’ll make rounds.” I turned to the female. “Introductions?”
“Laurette Hanlen. Fae.”
I looked at the silent man who hadn’t said anything since I’d sat down. I wasn’t sure if he was a man of few words or if he didn’t do well with strangers around. He glanced at me, back down at his tray, and then back up at me, squaring his shoulders.
Shy then.
“Tyson Kennon,” he replied in a deep voice. “Mage.”
“Oh, that should be fun. Mages make good allies in times of battle.”
That seemed to be the right thing to say as he blushed and looked back down at his tray.
“And you?” I asked the man who had been the most shocked that I had joined them.
“Um, Jorgen Lehmann. Wolf shifter.”
“It’s a pleasure meeting you all.” I made sure to meet all their gazes as I talked. “Thank you for joining Neutral Academy and I hope you get what you came here for, whatever that may be. If you ever need anything, please let me know.”
“Are you required to say that?” Ferys asked.
I laughed. “That did seem very professional and cookie-cutter, didn’t it?” Shaking my head, I said, “No. I really do mean it.”
“So, you know who we are now, do we get your brother’s weakness?”
“Sure.” I shrugged. They leaned forward, as if afraid to miss anything. “For now, his weakness is his left knee. If you noticed how he favored it—”
“Wait, for now?” Ferys asked.
“Yeah, for now.”
“What does that mean?” Laurette asked.
“It means once you exploit it, he’ll change his weakness.
With a frustrated voice, Jorgen said, “That’s not a weakness, that’s him messing with us.”
“How old do you think my older brother is?” I asked.
“Thirty?”
“Forty?”
“Fifty?”
I rolled my eyes. “You guys are only going up by ten.”
“Are you saying we should go up by a century?” Ferys asked.
“Or two,” I said.
Their eyes widened.
“He’s nearly three hundred now.”
“Damn, I was not expecting him to be that old.”
Leaning back in my chair, I poked at my burger. The food here was good, I’d made sure of that, but all the stress of today was making it hard for me to enjoy it. “My mom is over a millennium old. We live for a long time if we don’t get killed.”
“Is it just you and your brother?” Ferys asked.
“Now it is. We used to have other siblings, but they were before both our times.”
“And your dad?” Laurette asked.
“He’s a necromancer. About five hundred years old. They married four hundred years ago and had my brother shortly after.”
“Damn, your history is hard to fully understand,” Jorgen said.
“It is what it is. The only time we lose someone in our bloodline is when they’re killed on a job. Or assassinated. There was a period about two hundred years ago where bounties were put on our family. My mom quickly resolved that.”
“So you’ll live that long?” Ferys asked.
“That’s the plan.”
He frowned. “I don’t know how I feel about that. If I were capable of living that long. Shifters can live for a few hundred years, but usually no longer than five hundred. That sounds like it could be lonely.”
I shifted in my seat, not liking the turn of the conversation. He hit too close to the truth. It sounded beautiful and amazing on paper, to find love, bind them to you, and stay with them for the rest of eternity. True love, yada, yada, yada. But that wasn’t the case. Sure, there were some couples who have been together for an insane amount of time.
But more often than not, there were people like my mother. She’d had two other husbands before meeting my father. She had other children.
And she outlived them all. The cruelty of life killed them off. I think that was why Vervain became so jaded and overprotective, especially when it came to me. She was ready for me to be a brief blip on her radar, but she was desperately hoping something would change.
Nothing had so far. Reaching adulthood had been the biggest hope, but the doctors said my body was still growing, still acting in a human-like fashion. Old age wasn’t far off for me.
“Where did your thoughts go?” Ferys asked, his lips near my ears. I suppressed a shudder from the heat of his breath against my ear and neck.
“Hm? I didn’t go anywhere.”
“Right.”
I had expected to hear humor in his voice, but the concern threw me.
“Really, I’m fine.”
“Okay.”
I glared at him. “Really, I am.”
Now the humor appeared as his lips turned up into a knowing smile. “Of course.”
Sighing, I stood up. “I want to make my rounds before dinner ends. It was a pleasure talking with all of you, and I hope we have more conversations like this in the future.”
“It’s a date,” Ferys said.
I giggled. The flirting was not expected. “Go ahead and keep it up, Ferys. I’m interested to see where you go with it.”
Ferys’ teeth flashed as he took the challenge for what it was, permission to flirt with me. I walked away and dumped the remainder of my food. After that, I made sure to spend time with the students, getting a sense of how their days went overall.
Many of them were happy, some had gripes they had no issues sharing, and others shied away from me as I expected. By the time dinner ended, I had more ideas. I prepared myself to drive Dany up a wall.
Once the students began clearing out of the cafeteria, I decided to turn in for the night and headed back to my place.
Ferys’ POV
I couldn’t stop tracking her as she moved about the cafeteria, talking to students, laughing with those brave enough to joke with her. The chairwoman demanded attention, and everyone was willing to give it to her.
“What do you think about her?” Laurette asked. She too was watching her as she talked with a boy with blushing cheeks and a shy smile as he listened.
“I don’t know yet,” Tyson answered. He always took his time when it came to coming to conclusions. He was patient and non-judgmental. It made his opinions matter when he did voice them, because they were only voiced after going through a lot of consideration.
“She’s fun,” Jorgen answered, the opposite of Tyson, always going with his first impression until they proved him wrong.
Laurette’s frown deepened. “She sees a lot, and I don’t like that.”
“You’re just mad that she teased you,” Jorgen said. “She saw right through you.”
The table shook, and Jorgen swore.
“Why’d you kick me?” he whined.
“Because you need to keep your mouth shut.”
I chuckled at the two of them. They were always bickering but not in a bad way. It was their thing.
“What about you?” Laurette asked, turning her attention to me.
“What about me?”
Her frown deepened. “What do you think about Chairwoman Neutral?”
I shrugged, trying to come up with an answer. Glancing over at her, I hoped she’d inspire an answer out of me. She was grinning big as a girl waved her hands about, really into the story she was telling. Something about Chairwoman Neutral was off. Her magic was strong, like any other Neutral I had managed to meet. She felt like she was on par with her brother. But there was something else there.
When she had sat next to me, my nose had twitched with her magic, picking something else out.
“I don’t know,” I finally answered. “She’s interesting though.”
