A bead of sweat dangled at the tip of my nose, refusing to fall.
Max circled me, eyes razor sharp with militant focus as he barked command after command. My palms were open, juggling with air and water and sparks and illusions and, of course, those silver butterflies, leaping into the air in great desperate bursts.
Start. Stop. Hover. Higher, faster, smaller, slower — control!
I anticipated each word before it was out of his mouth, yanking illusions closer or pushing them further, sculpting water into perfectly formed likenesses.
“What’s this?” Max barked, wiggling my loose, dangling elbow.
“Intentional,” I gasped, between clenched teeth.
“Good. Trick question. Don’t lock up. Show me those butterflies.” And then, before I could move, “Seamless, please. Control.”
The ball of water hovering between my hands was a perfect sphere — completely circular, without a drop escaping from its form, even as keeping it there took complete concentration. The water rushed in a circular motion, flowing within that sphere even as it never broke its bounds. With perfect fluidity, I peeled the butterflies
from it — one first, then two, then five, then the sphere broke and gave way to a pack of them. First wet, flapping things, then shifting into blue, translucent light that rose into the sky.
“Call them back.”
I did, yanking the butterflies back to my palms, circling them around my body. My hair rose with the breeze that swirled around my face, obscuring my vision. Still, that damn drop of sweat didn’t fall.
“Back to your hands.”
They gathered in my palms, cupped between my hands, pressing together.
“Now surprise me.”
I smiled. Closed my fingers. When I opened them, the handful of butterflies were cast in glittering metal.
Max peered into my hands, a smile twitching at one side of his mouth. “What is that, steel?”
“Yes.”
“Stronger than glass. Very poetic.”
I shrugged, holding back my own smug smirk. I thought so too.
But Max straightened, that echo of a smile gone beneath layers of stone, his hands clasped behind his back. He regarded me with hawk-eyed intensity that seemed so unlike him that it might have made me laugh if I wasn’t so focused. This, I thought, is what Max the soldier must have been like — this straight-backed, sharp-tongued, stone-faced captain.
Seconds passed. My stomach tightened.
And then, just as I was getting nervous, his face split into a grin. “Perfect.” He raised his hands, palms open, as if bestowing a blessing. “Tisaanah, you are ready.”
Nervousness quivered beneath my skin. My ensuing smile was short lived. “Even without—”
“You don’t need the Stratagrams. They won’t be expecting that.”
“But—”
“I’m far too pessimistic to tell you it’s fine if it’s not fine. There is no possible way they could look at that display and argue that you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re ready.”
“I know I’m ready.” My fingers fidgeted with each other. “But perhaps I should spend the night practicing for—”
“No. Not allowed. This is the cardinal rule: the night before an evaluation, you rest.”
“Did you obey that rule?”
“No. But I didn’t have a teacher as good as me.” He reached out with his thumb and swiped the tip of my nose, looking at his fingers and making a face. “I’ve been waiting for that to fall for the last fifteen minutes. Couldn’t resist.” He turned on his heel and began striding back to the cottage, waving me to follow. “Go take a bath. You’re disgusting. And I swear to the Ascended, if I see you sneaking Stratagrams like the most boring possible kind of addict, I’ll wring your neck.”
 |
I RAN my fingers through wet hair, pulling it over one shoulder and twirling the damp ends around my fingers. It had grown significantly since the night I first arrived here and chopped it all off in Max’s washroom. Funny how I didn’t notice until now exactly how much. The passage of time slipped by like that.
With my other hand, I absentmindedly traced circles on the wood of the table. Then one line, and two—
“Tisaanah!”
I jumped. Max stood above me, arms crossed. “How disappointingly predictable.”
“I wasn’t really—”
“Wasn’t really. Please.” He scoffed, then slid a glass of red wine down the table to me. “Here. A much better coping mechanism for uncooperative nerves.”
“I’m not nervous,” I said. I took a sip anyway, enjoying the distraction of the bitter tang over my tongue.
“We both know we’re past this bullshit.” He pressed a finger below one eye, raising his eyebrows at me. “I see you, Tisaanah. No great question.”
I laughed a quiet, uncomfortable chuckle — unsure of how to react to the way my chest tightened, the way my palms seized.
“Should I be — I don’t know — taking you out on the town, or something?” He slid into the chair across from me, leaning back, his own wine glass dangling from his fingers. “Feels like we should be celebrating. And it occurred to me that maybe your idea of celebrating isn’t sitting around at home with an unpleasant recluse like myself.”
“It’s too early to celebrate. Maybe we can go after I pass.”
The truth was, there was nowhere else I’d rather be than here, drinking up these final moments of comfortable companionship. One way or another, pass or fail, I had the distinct feeling that everything would be different by this time tomorrow. And there was so much that I didn’t want to change.
Max raised his glass. “Tomorrow, then. When we’ll really have something to celebrate. I’m sure it’ll be much more fun to go out with you than sitting in a corner watching ladies stumble all over themselves for Sammerin, anyway.”
I snorted at that mental picture.
“It’s something to behold, honestly.” Max leaned over the table, making intense eye contact, lowering his voice in an imitation of Sammerin’s smooth, quiet drawl. “‘Oh, you’re a hatmaker? How fascinating. I knew from the moment I saw you that you had an artistic spirit.’” He shook his head. “It’s disgusting and, yet, riveting.”
I could imagine it. And imagine Max glowering from a corner, watching unamused.
“And what about you?”
“I’m not made for that.” He raised the glass to his lips, paused. “I’m referring to the social graces part.”
“But the part after — you are made for that?” The response slid out of me so easily, in a voice that hadn’t surfaced since my days dancing in Esmaris’s court. I took another sip of wine, drowning my own mild surprise. Watched Max’s mouth curl, ever so slightly.
“I receive no complaints,” he replied smoothly.
A shudder rose of the surface of my skin. I tore my eyes from Max’s face, traced the pattern of the wood grain. Dangerous territory. I didn’t even know where that came from.
For a long moment we were both silent, the air taut as if we were holding our breaths.
“I have something for you,” Max said, at last. The lightness to his voice snapped the thread of tension, and I exhaled. He rose from his chair and disappeared down the hall, emerging a moment later with a small, unassuming box in his hands. He placed it in front of me. Then he leaned back against the doorframe, casual and yet oddly tensed.
I looked down at the box. It was perhaps the size of my splayed hand, flat, neatly crafted from brown leather.
I flicked my gaze back to Max. I couldn’t help it. A lump was already rising in my throat.
He barked a rough, uncomfortable chuckle. “Open it before you give me that look. It could be a terrible gift.”
I obliged, and all I could do was sit there and blink at what was revealed, utterly stunned.
Inside the box was a golden necklace in a bed of black silk.
The back of it was an elegant thread of gold, which then widened into a beautiful, tangled mass of glimmering
butterflies. Their wings were so perfectly crafted I could have sworn they quivered— the metal so delicate that it seemed like light refracted through it. Glinting vines and thorns and familiar blossoms twined between them, weaving them into a wild landscape. On closer inspection, I saw that there was one snake nestled in between it all, small and unassuming, curling off to one side.
He’d had this crafted for me. He must have. It was too specific.
My chest hurt.
“Flip it over,” Max said, quietly. I obeyed. And there, where the metal would rest against my skin, were three tiny Stratagrams.
I didn’t notice that he had moved until I felt his breath next to my face, leaning over my shoulder. “This one,” he said, pointing to the first Stratagram, “will help you heal. Not a lot, but enough for little cuts and bruises. I had Sammerin help with it.”
That thought touched me so deeply I thought my heart might fold in on itself.
His finger moved to the next circle. “This one will bring you warmth. Help you start fires. Again, limited, but—” He paused, letting out an awkward, scuffing laugh. “I thought maybe if you’re traveling all over Threll, you might need that kind of thing.”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
There was a long pause. Max’s hand hovered.
“What about this?” I said at last, pointing to the third Stratagram.
Max straightened. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, rougher, as if he were tethering something back. “That one will bring you here.” He paused, cleared his throat. “If— if you ever wanted to return. It’ll only work within a few miles, but…”
His voice trailed off and did not resume. Gods.
At once, I understood. This was not about the necklace, beautiful and finely crafted as it was. He wasn’t giving me another pretty trinket. No, Max — Max, the man who had taken such great care to carve out his own solitary corner of the world — was giving me what I’d never had.
The real gift was not the necklace. The gift was a home to come back to.
“Just… if you want to,” he said, quietly, awkwardly. My eyes burned.
I wanted to say, Of course I want to return. I wanted to say, I don’t even want to leave.
But I didn’t even smile, because I didn’t know what would come out of my mouth if I opened it. Instead I slipped the necklace into Max’s hand, then lifted my hair, presenting my neck. As he fastened it around my throat, every brush of his fingers left little paths of fire along my skin, burning as they hovered there at the nape of my neck.
“Thank you,” I murmured, finally. “It is perfect.”
I let my hair drop. His fingers slid from my shoulders. “I figured you should have something both beautiful and functional, like you.”
He said it so quickly that it almost didn’t register. I whipped my head around to look at him. “Max,” I breathed, touching my heart with exaggerated awe, “you think I’m functional?”
A dancing smile glinted in his eyes. “I think,” he said, “that you are breathtakingly functional.”
My fingertips brushed those butterfly wings as I swept my eyes over him — over the muscle twitching in his throat, over the twist at the corners of his mouth, the unruly wave of the strand of hair that fell across his forehead.
Honestly? I thought he was breathtakingly functional too. He was the most breathtakingly functional thing I had ever seen.
