Fabrisse Book 2 (Chapter 5)

He had given Severa Montreal a set of conditions. One: she must teach him at least one spell that’s high-value for the exam; something that makes them take notice. Two: she must explain exactly what the examiners want to see, not just the syllabus version. And three: she must run him through a practice duel and tell him where he was going wrong.

She had accepted the conditions surprisingly easily, which made him briefly regret not having asked for more. Maybe he should’ve asked her to return his Stupenstone too, but he doubted she still kept it. In any case, it seemed like that quartz was of more importance to her than he’d initially envisioned.

Serastra’s Ember Waltz, named after a thaumaturge named, well, Serastra, was the spell Severa had chosen for him. Even the name of the spell sounded vaguely like Severa, maybe so whenever he cast it in the future, he’d be reminded of how Severa had sacrificed her valuable time for him.

It looked deceptively simple when she did it. She pinched her fingers together, and a bead of fire blossomed there—not a flare or sputter, but a perfectly smooth ignition, as if flame were simply another element she could conjure from a drawer. With an almost lazy flick, it split into five spinning firewheels, each tracing a wide arc around her with deliberate symmetry before curling back into her palm and snuffing out with a polite tsk of heat.

“Again,” she said, and did it again.

Fabrisse’s eyes narrowed. He tried to watch her aether shaping, her wrist angle, the flare of her aether pattern. However, she moved too fast, each gesture flowing into the next with no pause to analyze. There was no commentary, no breakdown, not even a remark about the resonance balance between the initial bead and the split-phase ignition.

[Serastra’s Ember Waltz Comprehension Progress: 8%]

He tried it himself. Pinch, focus, ignite—his bead flared too hot, cracked apart into a ragged spark, then died.

“Mm. No,” she said, as if that were instruction enough. Another perfect Ember Waltz from her fingers.

He shifted his stance, adjusted his breathing, and attempted a more controlled ignition. This time, the bead formed, but when he tried to split it, it collapsed into a puff of smoke.

“Still no.”

She wasn’t so much teaching as demonstrating at him, and Fabrisse was already cataloguing what he could steal from watching her—the angle of her elbow, the way she seemed to pull the firewheels inward at the apex of their arcs—but there were gaps in the sequence he simply couldn’t fill by sight alone.

“Have you ever had to teach anybody, Montreal?” He asked.

“You’d be the first,” she said as she formed yet another beautiful bead of flames.

No wonder . . .

He stepped back, rubbing his thumb against his palm, feeling the faint warmth from his failed ignition still clinging to his skin. The rational part of his mind—the part that had survived Lorvan’s “teaching” style—told him he should just ask Severa to slow down, to explain her sequence, maybe even walk him through the shaping pattern in discrete phases. 

But the other part of him, the part that had spent the past two years cataloguing every twist of her smile, every little tightening at the corner of her mouth when she smelled incompetence, knew exactly what would happen. She’d tilt her head, give him that perfectly polite, scalpel-sharp look, and say something like, Of course I can explain it, Kestovar. If you think you can keep up.

Another demonstration flickered in his peripheral vision: five flawless firewheels, looping in serene unison. [Serastra’s Ember Waltz Comprehension Progress: 9%]

He exhaled slowly. Maybe I just need to watch her doing the skill for another 400 times.

“Your first stance is wrong,” Severa said suddenly.

He blinked at her. “My—what?”

She rolled her eyes, but didn’t sigh, yet. “Feet apart, left shoulder forward. You’re holding yourself like you’re about to shelve a book, not split an ignition. Reset.”

For a moment he just stood there, caught between surprise that she was actually telling him something useful and suspicion that she was only doing it because she’d reached the limits of her tolerance for watching him fail. He wasn’t going to say that last part out loud, of course.

Still, he adjusted, planting his feet the way she showed him. The shift in weight made his balance feel tighter, more deliberate.

“That’s step one,” she said, as if bestowing a royal secret. Then, without further elaboration, she conjured another bead of fire.

[Serastra’s Ember Waltz Comprehension Progress: 11%]

He sighed.

***

[Serastra’s Ember Waltz Comprehension Progress: 43%]

A bell later, that was as far as he’d gotten. Severa had technically tried to help, but her ‘instructions’ consisted mostly of saying like this over and over and performing the spell again—each time perfectly, infuriatingly—without a single concrete explanation of what she was actually doing. It was a miracle he comprehended that much, if at all.

Severa lowered her hands and stilled. She kept a blank face, except for the faint tightening between her brows. It looked like annoyance, but he couldn’t tell if it was aimed at him, the bell, or something else entirely.

“It’s late,” he said, breaking the quiet.

“It’s past dinner time,” she replied, glancing toward the high windows. Maybe she’s just hungry.

He’d always wondered what posh upperclass people like her actually ate—and, before he could stop himself, he’d formalized it into a question.

“Do you eat food?”

Her head turned sharply toward him. “Are you mocking me?”

“What? No. It’s a legitimate question. Some people have . . . regimens.”

She gave him a slow, assessing look, the kind you’d give a suspiciously-shaped cake before deciding whether to cut into it. “Yes, Kestovar. I eat food.”

“But you don’t eat dinner.”

“I do eat dinner.”

“But you didn’t bring any food.”

“Yes. I haven’t had dinner today, but I eat dinner, and by extension, I eat food.”

They just stared at each other for another second. It seemed like she was going to say something snarky again, so he figured he would cut her off first by saying something extremely witty and clever.

“I haven’t had dinner,” he said.

They stared at each other for another second.

“Is this an invitation, Kestovar?” She asked. Her gaze held steady, unblinking.

His brain stalled. Wait. That sounded . . . a lot like she was implying—no, outright suggesting—that he had just invited her somewhere. Which he absolutely hadn’t. Had he? He rewound the last twenty seconds in his head. Oh no. Oh, maybe he had.

“No . . . I don’t want to have dinner. But you can have dinner. I mean, I want to eat dinner. But not with you.”

They stared at each other for the third time.

Finally, she said, “Your dining habits are of no interest to me, Kestovar. Do, however, leave room in your schedule to call at the Montreal residence at your earliest convenience. For the quartz.”

“Yes. Yes. Of course.”

Professor Kaldrin picked the best time possible to walk in and save Fabrisse from this cursed exchange. “Kestovar. It is past curfew.”

Severa bent to retrieve her things, which amounted to precisely nothing except the faint shimmer of her completed spell still fading in the air. She straightened, smoothing an already-perfect sleeve.

“Good evening, Kestovar,” she said with polite finality before turning toward the newcomer. “Professor.”

“Miss Montreal.” Kaldrin’s expression softened into the kind of smile reserved for famous family names. “I see you’ve been hard at work.”

“Adequately,” Severa replied, as though they both knew the night’s efforts could be measured in finer gradations than ‘hard.’

Fabrisse, before he could think better of it, blurted, “Are you walking home alone?”

She paused , looking back at him as if weighing whether the question was concern or condescension. “Yes. I know how to fend for myself. It’s something you should pick up too, Kestovar.”

Then she disappeared from sight.

He still hadn’t learned what she eats.